'HARMLESS WOMEN......THE ODDEST COUPLE EVER WHO END UP ON THE RUN T0GETHER......(****)

  Harmless Women by Rebecca Sharpe (2026)

     By the time I finished this book, I felt like taking the same deep breaths as the two women lead characters. What a long long, exhausting, treacherous, perilous odyssey these girls embark on.......with the book re-inventing itself into some new unexpected genres right along with its characters.

     I can't say all of it was swift or fast paced, but by the halfway mark, I became engrossed and utterly enthralled with Avalon and Prim's frantic adventures, especially their suspense crammed finale that dabbles with elements of tragic horror.

     The opening promises sort of a nasty, smooth criminal thriller. Avalon, master of disguises, cons and thievery has just left her latest victim Primrose drugged, physically made over and with her considerable bank account cleaned out. What Avalon didn't count on - Prim's husband already dead on the floor and Prim ending up on the run with Avalon, both fugitives from justice together.

     Sociopathic loner Avalon and sympathetic emotional Prim actively despise each other as they go on an endless hike through the English countryside, in hopes of reaching the coast....and boats. But disturbing, heart wrenching reversals-of-fortune along the way forever change the two women in ways both they (and we readers) could never imagine.

     Avalon and Prim's points-of=view are at times interrupted by the seemingly unrelated story of Bianca. She's a tragic, middle aged widow, her mind coming undone by haunted memories of an abusive husband and a beloved adult daughter who fled the house, not to be seen again. Even when these stories inevitably collide, I'd credit author Rebecca Sharpe with still managing to make it all fresh, startling.......and compulsively page turning.

     It took patience for me to stay with this book as it would slowly execute its plot lurches and character arcs from one trope to the next. But eventually it drew me fully into Prim and Avalon's tortuous trek, their small triumphs, their physical and emotional agonies and unnerving encounters with people who cross their path......where everyone's a potential threat.
    
     Since,, "Harmless Women" did finally capture me in full "I gotta know what happens next" fury, I'd decided to round up my 3.5 rating to a full 4 stars. A long but ultimately rewarding and entertaining read....perfect material for one of those 10 episode streaming series.

     4 stars (****).

'THE ESCAPE GAME'......ELIMINATION TIME IS A REAL KILLER.....(****

 The Escape Game by Marissa Meyer and Tamara Moss (2026)

     Enormous fun to be had here for fans of murder mysteries, puzzle solving, code cracking and that surefire winner......smart endearing teens up against a slew of obnoxious, criminal adults.

     Not to mention my personal favorite as someone who grows nauseous at the thought spending even 10 seconds watching reality TV, the depiction of Reality TV show producers and assorted staff as loathsome, creepy and overall moronic individuals. Put that in a book and you had me at hello......

     "The Escape Game's previous season finished up with one of its teen contestants, Alicia Angelos, murdered and found in a coffin. You'd think that would be enough for cancellation, but in a pop culture universe where high ratings and click-bait rule, the show must go on. Not only go on, but include one of last season's contestants, the victim's sister Sierra. The laser-focused, goth-outfitted Sierra, temper always at a full boil, was accused but never charged with her sister's murder; And now she'll settle for no less that winning the game and hunting down the real killer.

     So the game's afoot, Sierra leads four teammates (handsome, bookish Adi, influencer Carter, game master Beck). They're up against similar hotly competitive teams in solving their way out of a series of Escape Room challenges, each room with its own theme and densely packed with clues and codes to break..

     While I realize that for a lot of readers, the puzzle and clue solving sequences will sound like heaven on earth, those parts of the book held the least amount of interest to me. What I did love and enjoy was the time and attention authors Marissa Meyer and Tamara Moss spent to bring all these characters to life and make me care for them, root for them and fear for them when they're courting danger. I was really taken with Carter Kelly ("Kick It Carter"), a shy introverted girl employing, like the Wizard of Oz, a manic pixie exaggerated animated avatar as her public persona.

     And given my low opinion of reality shows and those who produce and create them, the miserable collection of cynical, devious corrupt and altogether odious people in charge of the game here fulfilled all my worst expectation.......(with the exception of 'Fitzy' the show's bubbly, live wire young Australian M.C., who's not much older than the contestants.)

     Along with those incredibly challenging Escape rooms, Sierra and her Scooby gang must also plow through all the hidden secrets, twists and reveals that will lead them to unmask the murderer of Sierra's sister. And I can only tell you that their climactic showdown throwdown is everything you'd expect of it......thrilling, threatening, action-packed, surprising and even, at times, weirdly funny.

     Even if I'm no great fan of puzzles, this bunch I had a good time hanging out with, and wouldn't mind seeing them all re-assemble for further adventures.

     4 stars (****).

WEEKEND MADNESS WRAP-UP.....SPECIAL 'YOU CAN'T FIRE ME! THE DOW MIGHT GO UP AGAIN!! EDITION.......

Weekend Madness bids a fond farewell to the nation's all time worst Attorney General.....oh, Pammy, how we'll miss your foam-at-the-mouth routines at Senate hearings.....

And the Madness goes on and on......

BQ visitors: Wonderful weekend to you! Always appreciate your stopping by,,,,

To 'I never dreamed he'd do THIS!' Trump voters....don't you think Trump's young larva should start helping out Dad?

'THE LONG WALK'......THE KILL OF VICTORY....AND THE AGONY OF THE FEET........

 The Long Walk (2025)

     How do we even begin to think of a rating for this movie?

       How do we review a movie where we loved the cast but hated the film that showcases them?

       Okay, fine. We accept the challenge and we'll press on......

        The film's derived from one of those largely unsung novels that Stephen King wrote under the pseudonym 'Richard Bachman'. 

         We open in that not-too-distant dystopian future. A civil war has sent the U.S. back to a 1930's Great Depression economy and terminal malaise. The military dictatorship in charge tries bucking up the national morale by inviting young men to sign up for a marathon, last-man-standing walk.

       We're not kidding about the last man standing part. The kids who falter, slow down or just plain collapse get three warnings before they're executed on the spot, their brains and blood splattering the highway. The rest of the contestants don't even dare break their stride to watch.

        Nothing like dead young guys sprawled on the road to bring a nation together, right?  No wonder this ugly, stupid bizarro premise fell to director Francis Lawrence, the shepherd of the 'Hunger Games' series.  After all, who else but this guy could convince audiences that in the future, we'll enjoy the sight of children slaughtering each other even more than 'American Idol' and the Super Bowl. 

       Sorry, Francis. Sorry Uncle Stevie. We've never been on board with far-fetched dumb-topia movies that practically require a lobotomy in order to swallow their tall tale premise. 

       And 'The Long Walk' doesn't do itself any favors throwing in Mark Hamill as 'The Major', the gargle-voiced military madman in charge of the contest.....(he's George C Scott's Patton crossed with Sterling Hayden's Gen. Jack D. Ripper and he's a ridiculous cartoon all the way through.....)

       Enough about the rotten core of the movie, instead let's talk about its beating heart.....the stellar performances by all the young men in the cast. 

        These brilliant new talents, all of them deeply committed to their roles, make the most of this opportunity given to them.  They bring tragedy, humor, humanity and pathos to their characters, holding an audience in their grip and making us agonize over their oncoming fates. 

           The young men in this extraordinary ensemble cast kept me with them from the beginning to the bloody corrosive end. It's a tribute to their gifts that they command the screen (and our riveted attention) in a film primarily devoted to them walking down lonely rural roads. 

           Let us at least take the time to salute the lead players - Cooper Hoffman (yes, the son of Philip Seymour Hoffman),  David Jonsson, Garrett Waering, Tut Nyuot, Charlie Plummer, Ben Wang, Jordan Gonzalez,  Joshua Odjick, Roman Griffin David, Noah de Mal....all of them we look forward to seeing in other films.

           We're thrilled these actors got the chance to strut their stuff even though we despised the movie they're in.....a foul, depressing exercise in fake nihilism. ( The film's climax, both unbelievable and confusing, only contributes to the overall stench of hopelessness, making us wonder why we wasted our time.....)

           For the cast, 5 stars (*****). For the concept of the movie itself....Zero Stars (0).  So between the two ratings, we'll boil it down to an overall 2 stars. (**)....which we entirely credit to the cast alone and not a smidge to the filmmakers.  

       An odd way to rate a movie, we admit, but what the hell.....that's how the film struck us. 

         

'WE KILL FOR LOVE'......THE STEAMY WORLD OF THE LONG LOST STRAIGHT-TO-VIDEO SEX THRILLER.....

We Kill For Love (2023)

      Having toiled away at buying movies for video store inventories throughout the 80's and 90's, we could hardly stay away from this documentary......

.......a long exhausting, pretentiously self-important history of the cheapo erotic thrillers that cluttered up rental shelves and late night pay-cable TV schedules.

        Yes indeedy, over the course of our buying sprees we probably stocked up on more than a few of the titles covered here. And in the landfill pile-up of hundreds upon hundreds of film clips, we don't think this doc missed a single one. 

        Many of these films, as you might guess, owed their birth to the Paul Verhoeven's 1992 earth-mover "Basic Instinct", the film that served up the combo platter of violent death and Sharon Stone's vagina to a panting America. 

         Producers, directors, writers and actors, with only a few bucks between all of them, rushed in to flood the market with fast 'n cheap knockoffs. All  you really needed was a few sets, a hot babe and a studly hunk with 6 pack abs and not many brain cells.  Sprinkle soft porn over a few dead bodies and you're got yourself an erotic whambammer that customer's will snap up when all the copies of A-list titles are out on rental......

          Titles? Completely inter changeable.....you could swap the adjectives and nouns freely... 'murderous obsession', 'lethal passion', 'heated danger', 'Obsessive Seduction', 'Fatal Arousal'..etc, etc.......

         'We Kill For Love' is determined to take you on an encyclopedic tour through every last one of them, with director Anthony Penta creating a brooding ominous aura of a private eye film noir  investigation of the genre.  We'll leave it up to individual viewers to decide if they find this construct either clever, unintentionally funny and just plain annoying.  At a tiring running time of 2 hours and 43 minutes, we'd go with the latter. 

        What's interesting to note: The sheer amount of sex thrillers in production generated its own little community of actors and filmmakers who worked exclusively in the genre and many of them are represented here, in both the clips and in live interviews. Prime among them (the wise old mentor of such films) is actor, producer Andrew Stevens (son of beloved 1960's starlet Stella Stevens.....and one of the best, most effective contributors to the documentary. 

     Apart from the silly, private eye-noir framing stuff, this is as complete, comprehensive and  intelligent a view of this long lost genre as you're ever likely to enjoy. (We can't imagine if anyone would get around to making another one.....)

       The copious amount of clips harvested from these films, identical in their cheapness and sexual monotony (hot-to-trot femme fatales and their male targets stripping down for action) may lead you believe you're watching one single epic 10 & 1/2 hour erotic thriller.......the 'Lawrence of Arabia' of soft porn cautionary tales......

       Devoted cinephiles will want to check this out, as well as retired video store customers whose hearts picked up the pace every time they rented 'Simmering Tumescence' for the 7 or 8th time. For everyone else, the film feels like a tumble through a rabbit hole to land in an odd cinema universe long gone, a world more lost than Jurassic Park......

       2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2).

          

'KILLING ME SOFTLY'.....ONE BAD NIGHT AND THIS COUPLE'S GOT BIG TROUBLES......

  Killing Me Softly by Sandie Jones (2026)

     Oh, what a tangled web this married young couple (and dedicated unreliable narrators) lead.....

     Did I mention unreliable? If my house was flooded and floating down the street I still wouldn't believe these two if they told me it was raining..

     We see them first as perfectly beautiful, golden rising stars. Michael's a superb new Master Chef, working for and being mentored by an even more famous Chef-Restauranteur. Freya, a tireless humanitarian for worthy causes, manages non-profit charities.. Well on their way to fulfilling lives and careers, one horrible night sends them spiraling into chaos.......gripping them with guilt, anxiety, growing suspicion of each other and the dread of criminal prosecution. These two suddenly find themselves awash in a sea of troubles, with no life preservers in sight.

     For thriller fans, here's where the real nasty fun kicks off. Michael and Freya's alternating narratives lead them to deconstruct their marriage, both asking themselves the same question......"Who really IS this person I thought I fell head over heels for?" And throughout the length of the book, strewn with more upsetting baffling incidents and encounters, readers will want to ponder this confounding riddle right along with them.

     I'll freely admit, I didn't know what to make of Michael and Freya until the twists and reveals  start piling up in the final chapters like a chain reaction multiple vehicle highway accident. Though the plotting's overly cluttered and stretches believability, anyone who savors a malicious Sundae with a poison cherry on top, will want to dig right in to this one.

      4 stars (****).

'REMINDERS OF HIM'......REMAINDERS OF COLLEEN HOOVER.....

 Reminders of Him (2026)

      For those who've spent the last few years in their Panic Rooms or homemade bomb shelters (or who've blocked out the perpetual bleat of pop culture) let us speak of author Colleen Hoover.

        (Or as she's known by her legions of loyal readers...CoHo.)

         CoHo's relentless output of overheated romantic melodramas (and her sales numbers) finally caught Hollywood's attention......much in the same way it devoted itself to adapting the heartfelt, slow burn redemptive romances of Nicholas Sparks. ("A Walk to Remember", "The Notebook").

         And the CoHo movie machine revved up its engines, starting with 2024's domestic abuse hand-wringer "It Ends With Us" (a big hit for sure, but now notorious for the eternal toxic legal warfare between its star Blake Lively and co-star/director Justin Baldoni) In our 08/19/24 review, we noted how Lively and Baldoni delivered the drama well enough, even as the film suffered from overlength and painfully slow pacing.

         Second one up was 2025's 'Regretting You', reviewed by us 11/13/25, a tangled middling soapy mess shot like a TV movie.....the kind of movie you could easily forget 10 minutes after you saw it. And the cast did little or nothing for it. 

        So now let us plunge into the latest CoHo Movie Show.......

         Unlike Nicholas Sparks, who'd start his tearjerkers at a slow boil and gradually work his way up to those open-your-tear-ducts moments, CoHo hurls you directly into the tragedy, pain and fractured family dynamics of 'Reminders of Him'. 

         Recently released from a seven year prison stint for Vehicular Homicide, Kenna (horror movie scream queen Maika Monroe) heads back to her little Wyoming town put the pieces of her shattered life back together. 

        When out for a fun drive with her beloved fiance Scotty Landry(Rudy Pankow of "Outer Banks") she swerved to avoid hitting a large rock, crashing the car. Rudy's dead and nobody believes her story of staggering down the highway trying to flag down help. 

       Apparently saddled with the worst public defender in the Wyoming justice department, Kenna pleads guilty to.....vehicular homicide?? Really?  Like she deliberately tried to kill him?  With what proof? What motive?  Anybody in Wyoming (or CoHo for that matter) ever hear of the phrase, 'manslaughter'??  Nobody wanted to look it up?

        But we digress.....but there's more. While in prison, Kenna gives birth to her and Scotty's baby girl, who is promptly wrenched away from her and given over to the custody. Scotty parents Grace and Patrick (Lauren Graham, Bradley Whitford). 

        (This all sounds like CoHo's legal research came mostly out of Charles Dickens novels.....)

         Kenna's aching to see her little daughter Diem now a toddler, but the Landrys, who fervently believe the 'homicide' part of Kenna's conviction, treat her like the devil incarnate come to snatch away their beloved granddaughter.  They file a restraining order against Kenna and they're aided in blocking Kenna's access to Diem by their young handsome neighbor Ledger (Tyriq Withers), who's become a loving uncle figure to the little girl. 

       Ah, but guess who falls in love?  Anybody want to guess Kenna and Ledger? Anybody? Anybody?  Don't all raise your hands at once.....

        So sorry, but anyone hoping for a good old fashioned guilty pleasure ugly cry won't get it from this movie. Outside of her comfort zone of horror, Maika Monroe appears lost, distracted and barely committed to the role. Lauren Graham does manage to work in a few emotional close-ups, but the rest of the cast just punches the clock (the exception of Down Syndrome actress Monika Myers as Monroe's feisty apartment complex neighbor) 

      If it's tears you hope to shed, the film won't come anywhere near that moment you want until its very final minutes.....that is, if you're still interested by that time.

        Strictly for CoHo die-hards...and even they probably won't appreciate all the stuff left out of the book. A waste of time for everyone else. 2 stars (**).

       (And maybe CoHo should read more John Grisham novels or watch more 'Law and Order' episodes for her legal background........)