Let's Leave the Lifetime Movies to Lifetime, Shall We Netflix?

Netflix’s Brazen attempt to rip-off
Lifetime schlock.

Last December I cancelled my subscription to the Lifetime Movie Club. Though the service brought me plenty of joy for the year I had it —not to mention material—it was beginning to bring more sighs and shrugs than shits and giggles. The monthly $4.99 subscription fee may not be much, but it’s too much to spend on meh.

Besides, subscribing to whole other streaming service might not be necessary. In its desperate bid to become our everything, Netflix has been offering its own versions of Lifetime movies, because it knows that the one thing viewers crave when subscribing to a streaming service is basic cable content. Last month I watched Netflix’s stab at Hallmark/Lifetime’s stab at schmaltzy holiday inclusivity, the sugar-coated gay romcom Single All the Way. This month, I decided to check out the streaming service’s new Lifetimey thriller, BRAZEN, starring Alyssa Milano, a weirdly controversial casting choice.

Milano plays Grace Miller, an author of mystery novels and thrillers that are so popular that her bookstore appearances are standing room only.

Her books may also be the only ones stocked in this mall atrium.

Grace’s latest novel is Brazen Virtue, the same title as the Nora Roberts’ novel on which Brazen is based. How meta! The passage Grace reads from it, describing an “unremarkable” murder victim and wondering if she had a secret life, might have counted as foreshadowing if Brazen had the patience to let us discover those secrets in due time, instead of revealing them in the movie’s prologue. Grace’s readers are enthralled and applaud as if they just heard Beyoncé perform her latest. “That was the best turn-out we’ve had all year,” gushes the bookstore’s manager. “Keep writing, Grace Miller. You’re the best.” Interestingly, her fans keep their distance, which is telling because wait until you get to know Grace!

You see, Grace is supposed to be a strong, confident woman. Unfortunately, to convey her strength screenwriters Edithe Swensen and Donald Martin have made her into a self-satisfied asshole, someone who is superior in all things, be it investigating crimes or uncorking wine bottles. Of course, her greatness comes at a cost: all other characters must be slightly (or a lot) dumber. Near the movie’s climax, she actually tells a police captain to make sure the evidence they have on a suspect is solid to ensure the arrest sticks. That the captain doesn’t respond with a well-deserved “No shit, Sherlock” should tell you how far up Grace’s ass this movie is.

Despite Grace’s grating personality, she is the first person her sister Kathleen (Emily Ullerup) calls when she needs help. Grace immediately ditches her book tour to fly to D.C. so she can criticize her sister’s taste in wine, as well as pointedly bring up Kathleen’s past mistakes: a disastrous marriage, a drug addiction (just pills; she wasn’t a filthy heroin addict or scabby faced tweaker), leaving her son behind when she left her husband.

Kathleen assures Grace that she’s gotten her shit together. She’s kicked “the meds” and is now teaching English at an exclusive private school. She’s also decided to fight to regain custody of her son. Because this is an expensive undertaking, she needs money, which is why she called Grace—not for a loan, but for Grace to consent to a second mortgage on the house they inherited from their parents and that Kathleen now lives in. Grace, likely thinking, I cut my book tour short for this?, is dubious the loan will provide enough money to finance the impending legal battle, but Kathleen assures her she’s working on “other things” to raise the money.

But enough about Kathleen and her problems. The next morning, while Kathleen’s at her day job of teaching rich kids about Shakespeare, Grace tries to work on a new book but can’t concentrate because her sister’s neighbor keeps firing up a buzzsaw every few seconds. Grace, incensed that someone would have the audacity to work on a construction project at 10 a.m. on a weekday, complains because of course she does. But then, upon seeing that the neighbor is played by Sam Page, decides to make peace and bring him an empty mug that she says contains coffee. The neighbor, Ed, doesn’t do caffeine, but Grace forgives him because it turns out that Ed is a huge fan of her work. Making the previous sentence a bit more implausible is that Ed is also a detective on the D.C. police force. A cop who doesn’t consume caffeine? I’m not buying it, just as you won’t buy that he’s immediately attracted to Grace, but who knows. Maybe her books are just that good.

Sam Page (left) is ready to be your new Greg Evigan.

Their unlikely romance stalls temporarily when Grace returns from her first date with Ed to discover Kathleen murdered. She also discovers the nature of the “other things” Kathleen was working on to pad her bank account: doing cam shows as a dominatrix named Desiree. 

Beats the hell out of being an Uber driver.

We in the audience knew this secret already as it’s revealed before the opening credits, presumably to hook us with the salacious stuff. Except Kathleen’s kinky internet show is tame enough to make her viewers think they’ve accidentally logged on to Disney+ (“Well, I guess I can rub one out to Maleficent.”) I’m not suggesting she be wearing nothing but thigh-high boots and a clit ring, but maybe spice things up with some puppy play, or leading her viewers through elaborate omorashi scenarios instead of this tired whip cracking crap.

But I digress. The prime suspect is Kathleen’s ex, Jonathan (David Lewis). David is a smug prick, but he’s got an air-tight alibi and he’s too obvious besides. He also provides Brazen with its best scene.

Grace, perfect at everything else, also throws a mean left hook.

Finding Kathleen’s killer is further complicated when other online dominatrixes are murdered. Now there’s the possibility that the cops are dealing with a serial killer, one who is targeting PG-rated doms. Seriously, movie, no one is paying $40 a month to watch moms do steampunk cosplay.

Especially when they wear their Maidenform One Fab Fit®
underneath their leather corsets.

But stopping a serial killer isn’t the only thing the cops are up against. They also have to contend with Grace’s “help.”

Though Ed was given a week off for solving a big case (or maybe he’d already put in for the time, which is more believable), he forfeits his PTO in favor of investigating the murder of his love interest’s sister. No good deed goes unpunished, of course. Grace doesn’t just do the typical mystery/thriller thing of trying to solve her sister’s murder on her own, or even unofficially assisting Ed on the downlow. No, she wants to be an active member of the investigating team—and Ed’s captain (Alison Araya) allows it.

With Grace now appointed as a consultant, Ed and his partner Ben (Malachi Weir) are now having to suffer her company as she accompanies them to interview suspects. Ben is strangely accepting of this arrangement, but then, Ben’s a pretty chill guy. Yet even Ben gives their “consultant” an eat shit look when she barges into a meeting between the detectives and the captain to share evidence she’s turned up from her solo sleuthing.

When their two most likely suspects/obvious red herrings are cleared, there’s only one thing left to do, and that one thing telegraphed by a lingering shot of one of Kathleen’s leather costumes laid out on display on the bed of her “dungeon.” 

The star of Poison Ivy II shows us she’s still got it!

Safe to Assume the Book is Better

Phone sex was Kathleen’s
porny source of extra cash in
the book as it was originally
published in 1988.

I’ve only read only one Nora Roberts novel, ever: Montana Sky. An aunt gave it to me, evidently thinking I’d read anything plucked from a CVS book rack (that’s fair). I thought it was all right, but not really my thing. The only part of the book that stuck with me was a sex scene in which a character rides her lover “hard and fast and well.” Still, while I’ve never read Roberts’ Brazen Virtue, I think I can say with some confidence that the novel is better than its Netflix adaptation.

It’s not that Brazen is a complete piece of shit. Monika Mitchell’s directing is competent if uninspired and, apart from some flat performances by actors in minor roles, the acting is decent enough, though no one should hold their breath for an Emmy nomination. It’s just that the movie is so goddamned soulless. It’s a thriller without suspense; a romance without heat. As irritating as I found the character of Grace (just the character; Milano’s performance is fine), hating her was what kept me invested in the movie. That, and hoping Sam Page would strip down to boxer briefs at some point (spoiler: he doesn’t). You’d do better to just watch an episode of Law & Order: SVU.

At the end of the day, the only thing that sets Brazen apart from any other Lifetime movie is it’s on Netflix. I don’t think I’d be any more forgiving had it been an official Lifetime movie, but then my expectations would be calibrated accordingly. On Lifetime, Brazen would rank among its more mediocre offerings—too proficient to enjoy ironically, not good enough to merit anyone’s time. On Netflix, it’s just one more example of the streaming service’s putting quantity over quality. If $4.99/month is too much to spend on meh on the Lifetime Movie Club, Netflix’s (increasing) fees are tantamount to robbery. Considering Netflix’s recent numbers, the streamer might do better to focus less on trying to be all things to all viewers and more on offering content that’s actually worth watching.

At Least She Didn’t Go to Vanderbilt

This fifth installment in Robert Vincent
O’Neil’s Angel franchise is pretty
underwhelming.

In the right hands, the story of Miriam Weeks, the Duke University student who began starring in porn videos as Belle Knox as a means to pay the school’s astronomical tuition, has the potential to serve as a social commentary on soaring education costs, men’s and/or society’s fucked up attitudes towards female sexuality, and how the Internet simultaneously feeds and devours our fame-obsessed culture. It could easily become a biting satire in the vein of Election or I, Tonya.

But the 2017 biopic FROM STRAIGHT A’S TO XXX was in the hands of Lifetime, so it has nothing to say beyond the salacious title they spent all of three minutes coming up with.

In the opening disclaimers, it’s explained that “Miriam Weeks did not authorize this Film and disputes her portrayal in the Film.” No shit. I also dispute its portrayal of Weeks, and my knowledge of her doesn’t go beyond vaguely recalling seeing a few titillating headlines about her while in line at the grocery store. Then again, that’s about all the makers of From Straight A’s to XXX know about her, too.

In the first few minutes of the movie, Miriam (Haley Pullos) learns she’s been accepted into Duke University, though the school is stingy with its aid money. “Vanderbilt offered you a full ride. It’s just as good a school,” says Miriam’s tight-assed older brother Paul (Garrett Black). But Miriam is determined to go to Duke. “If Duke is what you have your heart set on, then we’ll find a way to make the finances work,” says Miriam’s father (Pete Graham). Miriam’s father is a doctor, by the way, but, as we later learn, he has only recently paid off his student loans.

And he still can’t afford to buy lenses for Miriam’s glasses.

And Miriam wants to avoid a similar fate. So when her father, also a military reservist, is called back to Afghanistan — “That’s a huge pay cut,” gasps Miriam’s mother (Imali Perera), worrying about what really matters — jeopardizing the financing of Miriam’s college education, she’s as adamant about not taking out any loans as she is about not going to Vanderbilt. But how else is Daddy’s baby girl going to afford her $60,000-a-year dream college?

Her roommate Jolie (Sasha Clements, who adopts a thick Alabama debutante drawl even though her character is supposed to hail from New Orleans) suggests she take an on-campus job, but Miriam dismisses that idea, correctly reasoning that any job she could get wouldn’t make a dent in her tuition costs. Then she and Jolie make a few joking suggestions, like starting a Ponzi scheme or robbing a bank. When Miriam giggles and suggests she become a porn star (as if!), I half expected an animated lightbulb to appear above her head.

Her women’s studies classes usually don’t teach such things
until a student’s sophomore year.

Sure enough, after thirty seconds of careful consideration Miriam’s submitting her application and scantily clad selfie to Kinky Jobs. She’s immediately contacted by a producer offering to fly Miriam to New York to do a scene for FacialAssault.com for $1,500. In reality, the site was Facial Abuse, which has created a Facial Assault URL [very NSFW] that simultaneously promotes Belle Knox’s scenes for the site and From Straight A’s to XXX, a bit of piggyback marketing I didn’t expect, especially since the Lifetime movie depicts the site as being run by a bunch of rapists.

Which might not be too far from the truth.

Miriam may be traumatized by her intro to sex work, but she’s not dissuaded. She gets the name of a reputable agent and flies out to L.A. to meet with him. The agent, Don, is played by none other than Judd Nelson, so anyone worried that he was no longer getting work can breathe a sigh of relief. Don is significantly more supportive than the pigs in New York, and though she’s a little awkward in her first girl-girl scene, she quickly gets into her weekend alter-ego Belle Knox. 

“No, really. They used to put my name above the title and
everything. God, I miss the ’80s.”

The hottest Zoom call ever.

She forgets, however, that Belle Knox’s existence isn’t confined to weekends and that people also watch the videos. Miriam nearly shits her pants when a classmate, Jeff (Cardi Wong), asks her point blank if she’s in a porn video. She tries to deny it, but finally breaks down and admits she’s Belle Knox, getting Jeff to pinkie swear that he’ll tell no one. 

Free lunch.

And he doesn’t…until he gets a couple drinks in him at a frat party. Soon, Miriam’s the target of online and IRL harassment (in one scene guys pelt her with hot dogs and sodas as she walks by). Miriam’s crush, Josh, who has heretofore snubbed her because her lens-less glasses and cardigans have blinded him to the fact that she looks like Haley Pullos, is now suddenly inviting Miriam back to his place, an offer she almost accepts until she realizes he’s setting her up for a gang bang.

Though she’s at first miffed that her roommate kept her double life a secret from her, Jolie quickly becomes Miriam’s staunchest ally. She encourages Miriam to do an interview with the school paper to tell her side and defend her choice. Though the paper protects Miriam’s identity, Miriam’s nevertheless unsatisfied with the resulting article, complaining it “makes me sound like I contradict myself!” Wait until she sees From Straight A’s to XXX!

All the stress of her campus life starts to take a toll on Miriam’s porn career. She interrupts a scene to complain that the man she’s about to straddle is too old. “I’ve been super clear that I don’t want to book any scene with any co-star over thirty-five,” she whines to Don, as if she’s been paired with Ron Jeremy and not someone who looks like he could play the lead in a prime-time soap. 

You know he can hear you, right?

Also, was Miriam driven to set blindfolded? Even Facial Assault introduced her to her co-star prior to shooting. Anyway, Don warns Miriam that if she refuses to do the scene, she’ll be labeled difficult, which is enough to convince the poor thing to endure fucking a handsome blond DILF.

Between shooting her porn scenes, Miriam tells performer, Dora (Alyson Bath) about the stress she’s been under since being outed on campus. Dora encourages her to come out to her family as well, since they’re bound to find out eventually and it’s better that it comes from her. So, Miriam texts her mom, who calls her back because of course she does. Miriam has already tested the waters in an earlier scene when she told her mother she was paying tuition with money earned from selling pot, which went about as well as you’d expect (“You could get expelled from school! You could get arrested!”) Mom’s not any happier to learn where her daughter’s money is really coming from, telling Miriam, basically, that’s she’s thrown her life away.

Having ripped off that Band-Aid, Miriam decides to come out nationally, agreeing to be interviewed on CNN. She also appears on The View, where Miriam tells of being a porn consumer since she was 12 years old, which was a bit of a surprise given that this movie portrays her as having no prior interest in pornography beyond it being a source of quick cash.

Is sitting across from Piers Morgan more or less dignified
than being spackled with cum? Discuss.

You Go, Whore!

Miriam’s hitting the talk show circuit has mixed results. Her father is heartbroken, her mother scandalized and her brother Paul, who’s got a stick the size of a California Redwood up his ass, refuses to be in the same room with her. The national exposure raises her status as Belle Knox, but also raises the hackles of her porn peers. According to From Straight A’s to XXX, Belle Knox is porn’s biggest star/pariah since Traci Lords. “No one asked you to go on every talk show and blog and speak for us,” Dora hisses during an adult industry awards ceremony after party. “You’ve been in this industry for five minutes and you don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

Mean girls.

By the movie’s end, Miriam is speaking at a feminist rally on campus, proclaiming herself as economically conservative and socially liberal, then espousing her Libertarian views (the real-life Miriam Weeks is reportedly a fan of Ron and Rand Paul), further proving that her story is perfect fodder for satire. After the speech she’s approached by the same school newspaper reporter who first interviewed her. Miriam turns down the reporter’s request for an interview. “I’m trying to keep a low profile,” she says with nary a whiff of irony. She does sorta kinda answer one off the record question: Is she still doing porn? “Let’s just say I’m refocusing my energy on the bigger picture,” she says, forgetting that IMDb is a thing. Now she’s concentrating on politics.

Uber.

As lurid Lifetime ripped-from-the-headlines biopics go, From Straight A’s to XXX isn’t as terrible as I expected, but it’s a far cry from good, not even the “so-bad-it’s…” kind. Considering Anne-Marie Hess’s screenplay isn’t interested in its subject and her motivations so much as it is in recreating/embellishing key events culled from the Belle Knox Wikipedia page, the movie gets far better performances from its cast than it deserves. Pullos’ performance is a bit uneven, but then again, she’s having to navigate the constantly shifting characterization of Miriam. Is she a socially awkward nerd? A resourceful vixen? A victim? A sex positive feminist? A duplicitous slut? The movie’s answer is yes.

Ultimately, From Straight A’s to XXX embodies the attitudes of WAP, both its 1970s meaning and its present meaning. It’s shaking its fingers at the hypocrites shaming Miriam Weeks for her choices while simultaneously doing the same thing, but also covering its ass by adding some half-hearted defenses of sex work and incorporating the word “feminist” in a few lines of dialog. So, in the end, the movie’s message is less You go, girl! and more, You go, whore!

And also: Fuck Vanderbilt!

Welcome to Lifetime TV!

Lifetime: Where Men are Psychos and Women are Schizo

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Holy Shit, Courtney Love Starred in a Lifetime TV Movie!

A notorious 1990s murder case AND
Courtney Love? Yes, please.

I was pretty busy in 2017, so I missed the news that Courtney Love—the answer to the hypothetical question: What if Nancy Spungen lived?—was appearing in a Lifetime movie based on one of the most notorious murder trials of the 1990s (not the O.J. case, the other one). 

And ignorant I might have remained were it not for a subscription to the Lifetime Movie Club purchased last Christmas. I was scrolling through the “Ripped from the Headlines, and Beyond” category when I encountered MENENDEZ: BLOOD BROTHERS. The title didn’t grab me but the name above it did: Courtney Love. Oh, hell yeah!

Love is cast as Kitty Menendez, the wife of entertainment executive José Menendez, both of whom were murdered in 1989 by their sons Lyle and Erik Menendez. Casting her as a murder victim tracks. After all, who hasn’t heard the name Courtney Love uttered in a news broadcast and waited for the phrase “found dead today”? But Love—who, among other things, revealed in a 1992 Vanity Fair interview that she used heroin while pregnant (vehemently denied at the time the article was published, then Love later confirmed that yes, she did); was arrested on drug charges in 1994 on the same day her husband Kurt Cobain shot himself; was arrested for an “air rage incident” at London’s Heathrow Airport in 2003 and subsequently banned from Virgin Airlines; was arrested on her 40th birthday for failure to appear in court and later taken to Bellvue Hospital in NYC; had a temporary restraining order issued against her in 2009 prohibiting any contact with her daughter Frances Bean Cobain; and was evicted from her Manhattan townhouse in 2011—as a Beverly Hills housewife? This has got to be seen.

“I’m not a woman. I’m a force of nature.” — Courtney Love

While it is kind of jarring to see Love, now so surgically altered she looks more like Tori Spelling in The Courtney Love Story than Courtney Love, wearing tie neck blouses, tending to the flowers in her greenhouse and using a treadmill, there is little in her performance that pushes Menendez: Blood Brothers into the Valhalla of camp TV. She has her moments, though, like when she tries to defuse the tension between her husband José (Benito Martinez, appropriately menacing) and their son Erik (Myko Olivier) by blurting out, “I can’t believe Lucille Ball died. I really did love Lucy.” 

The taming of Courtney Love.

Later, she suggests she and her sons could go see When Harry Met Sally, approximating the same level of eagerness she might display if responding to an invitation to do a couple lines with Tarantino while at Sundance. The delightful weirdness of Love feigning enthusiasm for a romcom is dashed, however, when the boys mockingly suggest their mother instead go see that movie with her girlfriends. I actually felt sorry for Love at this moment, imagining this was the same response she got from her castmates when she asked if she could tag along with them for lunch.

With his bad toupee removed, Lyle Menendez
is transformed into a young Peter Boyle
in Young Frankenstein.

Love’s most Lifetime TV moment comes a couple scenes later, when she tears off Lyle’s (Nico Totorella) toupee. Lyle storms off, leaving his mother to confront the cold, judgmental glare of Erik, who witnessed the whole thing. “He’s my son,” she sobs. “He’s supposed to love me.” Oh, yeah, that’s what I’m talking about! Then I considered that Love has probably cried something similar in open court when she lost custody of Frances Bean, and felt shitty for enjoying the scene ironically. But only a little bit.

I had zero remorse for the shit-eating grin on my face while watching Love’s desperate struggle to find her inner Shelley Winters during her death scene.

Evidently it is possible to under- and over-act at the same time. Her bug-eyed approximation of terror borders on parody, while her unconvincing screaming had me wondering if she thought they were still in rehearsal. Love sticks the landing, though, sounding genuinely terrified as she pleads for her life. Still, I found it hard to separate Love from the character she was playing. You know if Courtney Love were ever staring at the end of a gun barrel (Wait, has she? A quick Google search tells me no, not yet) she’d go down fighting, screaming words not suitable for Lifetime TV. 

We’re not even 30-minutes in before José and Kitty are murdered, but don’t worry, the producers aren’t done with their high-profile cast member just yet. Throughout the rest of the movie, we get Ghost Kitty — and, on occasion, Ghost José — who appears to Erik, sometimes to beg his forgiveness for not helping him (“I was weak”), sometimes to comment on the love letters he receives in jail (“I’m glad to see you like a girl. I never thought you’d have a normal relationship.”)  She even sings a few lines of “Beautiful Dreamer,” her raspy rendition making me think she could pull off an album of Marianne Faithfull covers (🤞).

The specter of Courtney Love haunts the Menendez trial.

As for the movie as a whole, Menendez: Blood Brothers is pretty much what you’d expect from a Lifetime movie. It’s cheap looking (the sets for the Menendez’s home look pretty cramped for a Beverly Hills mansion), and the 90-minute runtime means we don’t get more than a Cliff Notes account of the murder and sensational trial. Consequently, the movie has little patience for nuance and subtlety, often at the expense of good taste. At its ickiest are the scenes where José is sexually abusing Erik. Not content to just show José entering his son’s room and closing the door behind him, Menendez: Blood Brothers takes us inside the bedroom. And though the action does take place offscreen (there are still some lines you can’t cross on basic cable), the Foley artist leaves little doubt as to what Erik is doing.

As does the closed captioning.

Not quite as uncomfortable but still questionable are the scenes that seem to exist solely to show off Olivier’s hot bod, such as when he’s strip searched upon being booked into jail or working out in the yard. Ordinarily I wouldn’t object to gratuitous man-ass (you go, Lifetime!), but do you really want your audience thinking I’d hit that while watching your docudrama about sexual abuse and murder? I guess one could argue that co-directors Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato (yes, the same team behind the documentaries The Eyes of Tammy Faye and Inside Deep Throat) are simply acknowledging that the physical attractiveness of the real-life brothers played a part in the nation’s fascination with the Menendez trial, but, no, sorry, it’s strictly for audience titillation.

Am I being a hypocrite, showing screen shots of Myko Olivier
nude after calling the scene out for being exploitative? Yes.
Do I care? No.

Olivier, BTW, is quite effective in the role of Erik, and a good thing, too, as most of the movie is told from his POV. Totorella doesn’t fair quite as well in the role of Lyle, that awful hairpiece distracting us from his performance. Speaking of wigs, the one Meredith Scott Lynn wears as defense attorney Leslie Abramson is reminiscent of Barbra Streisand’s perm years, and though Scott Lynn’s performance is perfectly adequate I couldn’t help thinking it would be worth the sacrifice of a testicle to see Barbra as Abramson, never mind that’s she’s too old for the part. Barbra Streisand and Courtney Love in the same cheesy Lifetime movie—Oh! I just came.

Meredith Scott Lynn is fine as defense attorney Leslie Abramson,
but the thought of Barbra in this role is positively moisture-inducing.

If you have a genuine interest in the Menendez case, you’d do better to check out the 1994 mini-series Menendez: A Killing in Beverly Hills or, even better, Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders, released the same year as Menendez: Blood Brothers. There are also numerous documentaries, including a couple currently streaming on Hulu. If, however, you want to see the spectacle of Courtney Love impersonating a functioning adult, well, you know where to go.

The prosecuting Karen demands a word
with the Menendez brothers’ manager.