My Professor's Guide to Murder

I must admit I've only recently discovered Lifetime movies and they really are a genre on its own, and sure there are a lot of plot holes and low budget but they are what they are init. Anyway, LaGrange College was the setting for this 2023 Lifetime movie, A Guide to Murder, and I must admit I liked the college feel in the first half of the movie, and I was thinking that maybe something quite gruesome could arise like in Saw or Hostel and the student trapped in the well kind of got closer there of sorts. All credit to Rae DeRosa in the lead role of Ashley, and hopefully her career will progress.

Guest Professor Miles is eerily similar to Bryan K! Is this Art imitating Life or Life imitating Art? Storyline drags on and as most LMN movies has more commercials than content. Guest Professor Miles is eerily similar to Bryan K! Is this Art imitating Life or Life imitating Art? Storyline drags on and as most LMN movies has more commercials than content. Guest Professor Miles is eerily similar to Bryan K! Is this Art imitating Life or Life imitating Art? Storyline drags on and as most LMN movies has more commercials than content. Not sure why there is a required word count for viewers review...

Good movie!

Ashley (played by Rae DeRosa) is a creative writing graduate working on her first novel, which will also serve as her thesis. Her mentor calls her in and reveals that the celebrity writer, Miles Blake, will teach campus classes. He asks Ashley to be his teaching assistant. Ashley, a passionate fan of Miles, is thrilled at the chance to work with him and help a group of crime writers to embark on a quest to discover the perfect murderous plot for the course. However, she is also headstrong and sees this experience as a way to improve her own writing and develop her novel. A few murders occur - a woman gets kidnapped and drowned ... another one will soon follow ... Ashley suspects it's David who is a huge fan of Miles Blake and becomes angry when Ashley is assigned as his teaching assistant instead of him. He's quite one creepy dude. I didn't think this would be good but it was well-acted, features some tense moments in the forest and the killer really goes over the edge. It's formulaic but quite captivating and entertaining.

Good movie!

source: A Guide to Murder

The genre is thriller and I wasn't thrilled. Ashley is a graduate student who has been asked to assist Miles Blake, a famous mystery writer, who is teaching a course at her school and taking a break from his next best seller. Anyway, Miles gives all of his students a creative writing assignment: Plan the perfect murder. Yawn. This trope has been used in the past by Lifetime and a campus student turns up dead. But there are questions about the autopsy. Of course, there are.... but Ashley intends to figure out what happened and why. Uh, oh. As the movie progresses it is quite obvious who the murderer is and frankly, I didn't care because the acting was wooden, the script bad, and the directing horrible! Skip it! I wish I had.

The opening scene of a Lifetime film often depicts a woman running desperately away from an assailant. In "My Professor's Guide to Murder," the sequence is an over-the-top, dream-like experience that is in fact a dramatic reading from a mystery novel taking place in a bookstore. The scene worked brilliantly as parody. Indeed, the film adopted a tongue-in-cheek style involving moments of levity, especially of those featuring the swashbuckling, bestselling author Miles Blake. Miles accepts an offer to teach at a small college. His classroom lecturing and demonstrations are priceless as the cocky writer invariably lapses into narcissism in his antics. The other characters were also well-developed and ably performed by the ensemble cast. Miles's assistant Ashley was by all appearances a better writer than Miles. She was never fawning or currying favor with the famous author. Her best friend Jordan was an aspiring detective, whose character fit smoothly into the narrative. David, the talented nerd who idolizes Miles, conveyed a wide range of emotions and mood changes as the film's most complex character. The well-scripted film was crisply directed with effective pacing, dynamic compositional choices, and dramatic use of close-ups. One of the tenets of master writer Miles Blake is that every great story needs a twist, and this film cleverly develops one. "My Professor's Guide to Murder" is a winner and well worth a watch!