ChallengeFilms Reviews

Buried in Barstow (2022 TV Movie)

Did someone forget to film the last 10 minutes?

[6/10 · 25 March 2023]

Good movie until.... no ending.

We're just left to try and figure out what happens next? If this is a 2-parter, it would have been nice if someone stated that. There's no mention of part 2 on IMDB even being filmed.

90% of this movie was better than your average Lifeime movie, which was a pleasant surprise. Decent writing for the most part with some twists. Until the end, or lack of it. Disappointing.

Harmon plays a woman running from her past.. until an unpaid debt for her past needs to be settled. She's created a new life, a new business, and raising a daughter- happy but always on alert and wary.

Nice reunion of sorts with Angie Harmon and her old partner from the Rizzolli and Isles TV series.

Alternate Endings: Six New Ways to Die in America (2019 TV Movie)

Bring your tissues and your thinking cap

[10/10 · 8 August 2022]

This movie explores how various people said no to the traditional "funeral" and did things a little differently. Celebrating life WiTH your loved ones, not being embalmed, choosing yo go out on your own terms. Listening to a child's thought on what a funeral should be - hint: it includes bounce houses!

Compelling, thoughtful, rejoiceful- you may even find yourself rethinking the way "normal" death is.

Catch the Fair One (2021)

Great story and timely, too

[10/10 · 9 October 2021]

An ex-boxer (real life boxer Kali Reis) deliberately enters the world of sex trafficking in order to find her younger sister.

You won't even want to munch on your popcorn watching this, it's that good. The acting is great, and it's wonderful to see a story about native Indians being portrayed by them.

It's stark and bleak- filmed in the dead of winter in a northeast city, (Buffalo) yet the cold of the land matches the cold of the heartless men who treat trafficking woman as simply a business- capture them, drug them, photograph them, "advertise" them and sell them. Next.

On a "social message" side, in these current times of seeing the nation focus on one female white girl go missing, this movie discloses how hundreds of indigenous girls have gone missing to which our nation shrugs. It may not change the world,, but it can help enlighten it.