Next Stop Murder (2010)

Best movie of this year hands down!

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

A film where the plot is extremely contrived. Anyone see some similarity to the 1950's Hitchcock thriller, "Strangers on A Train?" Obviously, it's not the same thing but the believed to be chance meeting of 2 strangers on a vehicle leading to plotting for murder can't be totally overlooked.In this case, the meeting takes place on the bus. Of course, it turns out that this was not as innocent as it first appears. When one of the people just casts the meeting off as being made up by some kind of nut job, things begin to happen as our second person is victimized and almost drawn into this plot by a really sick woman.

****SPOILERS**** Updated version of the 1951 Hitchcock classic "Strangers on a Train" where this time the story takes place on a bus with the manipulating and spoiled rotten Sophie Johanon, Allison Lang, trying to pull off a double murder. That by her getting paralegal Molly Beckhard, Brigid Brannagh, to knock off her strict but caring dad Judge Warren Johanson, Joe Regalbuto,in return for Sophie murdering Molly's husbands Jeff's, Brian Krause, ex Heather Plumb, Rosa Blasi. We've seen it dozens of times before, "Strangers on a Train" clones, but this time around it has a knock your socks off surprise ending that hits you well before the film is over which makes it more then worth watching.Sophie who was just released from the Rolling Hills Mental Institution has had it in for her father since she was a little girl in him keeping her on a short lease by grounding her in taking away the keys to her sports car. That's after she had a sting of preventable car accidents that resulted from her drinking. This forced Sophie take the local Gold Line Bus where she eventually met Molly commuting back and forth from law school.It's when Molly told her about the problems she's having with Heather in trying to get her, Heather's, daughter Gracie, Charlie Stewart, away from her that a light lit up in Sophie's head! Wanting to get her pop out of the way Sophie comes up with this plan in that she'll knock off the pesky Heather and in return Molly would finish off her annoying pop! Thinking this is some kind of a joke Molly soon realizes what a nut case Sophie really is in always getting in touch with her,on the Gold Line bus, and pressing the issue to the point that Molly tries to avoid her at all costs!***SPOILERS*** It when Sophies tarts to impersonate Heather, by covering her blond hair with a red wig, and almost sets the Beckhard home on fire that Molly goes to the police to have the what later turned to be innocent Heather arrested! Things soon turn deadly with Sophie murdering Heather in the local needle park where the drug addicted and alcoholic Heather hangs out that Molly becomes the #1 suspect in her murder! Knowing that she's been set up but not having the proof Molly reluctantly agrees to carry out Sophie's plan to ice her pop in order not to be implicated by fake evidence Sophie planted at Heather's murder scene!It's when your just about get up and turn the boring as dishwater movie off in feeling you've seen it all before your hit with a shock, obviously timed to perfection by the films director, that knocks you as well as almost everybody else in the cast flat on your back! As it turns out Molly finds out the truth about Sophie from her dad the Judge when she broke into his home to take him out, of his life not for dinner, that left her speechless! It' then that the film that was as predictable as the morning sunrise really started to get interesting!Great final sequence with Molly and Sophie together with the Judge and Jeff having it out on the Gold Line bus with the passengers and bus driver running for cover to prevent themselves from being, in this no holds bar cat fight, scratched to death! It was Sophie kidnapping Gracie, to make sure Molly would carry out her deranged plan, that really tipped the scales against her. Molly was willing to take all the abuse that Sophie could dish out on her, even a jail sentence from a crime that she didn't commit, but when she started messing with her daughter it turned out to be the last straw for her!

I didn't even bother finishing this movie!! I feel that credit should have been given to Patricia Highsmith who already WROTE this premise a long time ago in Strangers on a Train!! Very poor, sorry to say. Nothing else was on TV so I tried this one but I didn't even give it 40 minutes. Are you trying to tell me that ANYONE would charge up thousands and then dump it in a trash pail? Even if they were crazy, this would not happen, I really believe THAT, not what happened in the film. I really hate to see Lifetime waste our time with such c r a p. There's little talent involved in the making of this horrible movie. Sorry to say, but true.

This almost tops the list as the worst film of the year. Story is just plain stupid. The acting is just as bad on every one's part, except the little girl and the father who managed to make a decent performance out of a trite and idiotic story line. The two leading ladies, won't mention their names as I'd sooner forget their work. One goes around looking like a vampire as the daughter who wants her daddy dead. The other goes around with this weird look on her face. She looks crazier than the crazy one. Backed by over the hill acting. And the guy playing the husband is just as bad. The acting on all parts is so bad, I laughed.Writing, directing not so good either. Wow, sure would like the money they spent in producing this loser. It might have backed a more worthy work of art. Too bad.