Fantastic Four: The Complete 1994-1995 Animated Television Series – DVD

August 7, 2005Posted in1990s, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Sci-Fi, Superhero, Television

Image C- Sound C- Extras D
"The Origin of the Fantastic Four, Part One," "The Origin of the Fantastic Four, Part Two," "Now Comes the Sub-Mariner," "Incursion of the Skrulls," "The Silver Surfer and the Coming of Galactus, Part One," "The Silver Surfer and the Coming of Galactus, Part Two," "Superskrull," "The Mask of Doom, Part One," "The Mask of Doom, Part Two," "The Mask of Doom, Part Three," "Mole Man," "Behold the Negative Zone," "The Silver Surfer and the Return of Galactus," "And a Blind Man Shall Lead Them," "And the Wind Cries Medusa," "The Inhumans Among Us," "Beware the Hidden Land," "Worlds Within Worlds," "To Battle the Living Planet," "Prey of the Black Panther," "When Calls Galactus," "Nightmare in Green," "Behold, a Distant Star," "Hopelessly Impossible," "The Sentry Sinister," "Doomsday"

by Walter Chaw Watching the short-lived "Fantastic Four" animated series from the mid-'90s is a lot like sticking forks in your eyes. It's terribly animated, terribly written, and generally uninspired. The only thing more depressing than hunkering down for a prolonged exposure to this mess is the prospect of actually having to write about it. People who think that what we do isn't a job haven't had the experience of not only being forced to endure something they never would have thought to endure on their own, ever, but also of later having to find the will to write something like an analysis of said experience for the appreciation of the handful of people in the world lonely and pathological enough to start hateful correspondence in defense of it. Think about it: by agreeing to review "Fantastic Four", I'm all but consenting to a conversation with the small tribe of Morlocks who consider this shit gold, mainly because a nine-year-old version of themselves used to like it when they watched it in their footed pyjamas and helmets. So, as a pre-emptive strike (as if it matters): yes, I was a child once; no, I don't hate happiness; no, I don't think that everything has to be Citizen Kane; and, oddly, thinking is not something I believe to be mutually exclusive from pleasure.

Please Don’t Eat the Daisies (1960) – DVD

August 5, 2005Posted in1960s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD, Family, Romance

***/**** Image A- Sound A-
starring Doris Day, David Niven, Janis Paige, Spring Byington
screenplay by Isobel Lennart, based on the book by Jean Kerr
directed by Charles Walters

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Please Don't Eat the Daisies is not a seismic work of filmic mastery, but instead a rather modest (if well-upholstered) domestic comedy with Doris Day thanklessly holding down the fort as she so often used to. David Niven is her husband, recently hired as one of the "Butchers of Broadway" who decides which shows live or die; he's British enough to be classy, yet Hollywood enough to believe that a play's first mission is "to entertain." And there are the "four little monsters," the children who go through babysitters and hugely inconvenience poor Doris. But as you wait for Please Don't Eat the Daisies to turn condescending or cute, it somehow never does–creeping up and gently holding you until the curtain finally falls. Sometimes we critics thank heaven for small mercies.

Target (1985) – DVD

August 3, 2005Posted in1980s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Thriller

½*/**** Image D+ Sound D+
starring Gene Hackman, Matt Dillon, Gayle Hunnicutt, Josef Sommer
screenplay by Howard Berk and Don Petersen
directed by Arthur Penn

by Walter Chaw Of the myriad disappointments of Arthur Penn's atrocious Target, one of the smaller ones is the appalling score by Michael Small, who, in the Seventies, was doing very fine work on Penn films like Night Moves and Alan Pakula flicks like The Parallax View and Klute. His music for Target reminds of the incidental cues on "Scarecrow and Mrs. King". The rest runs the gamut from flat direction from one of the prime architects of the amazing cinema of the American '70s, an unspeakable screenplay by non-native speaker José Luis Navarro and some idiot named Don Petersen, a pair of squandered (if only mediocre) performances from the great Gene Hackman and the badly-miscast Matt Dillon, and a plot that's an unapologetic ripper of John Schlesinger's Marathon Man. It's such a bad film, in fact, that the only enjoyment to be had from the thing is through the cruel deconstruction of its gaping implausibility. If Target finally provides a few chuckles, it does so at the expense of one of the United States' genuinely important actors (Hackman, natch) and directors.

The X Files: Abduction (1993-1995) [Four-Disc Mythology Collection] – DVD

August 3, 2005Posted in1990s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Television, Thriller

Image B Sound B Extras D
"Pilot," "Deep Throat," "Fallen Angel," "E.B.E.," "The Erlenmeyer Flask," "Little Green Men," "Duane Barry," "Ascension," "One Breath," "Red Museum," "Colony," "End Game," "Anasazi," "The Blessing Way," "Paper Clip"

Xfilesmyth1by Walter Chaw I used to, like every other dork I know, love "The X Files"–used to look forward to its mythology episodes as though series creator Chris Carter actually had something up his sleeve in terms of a long-term plan for his show, never suspecting until the middle seasons that the emperor was nude. (Desperate, too.) See, "The X Files" is guilty of giving the public what it wanted, forgetting that the public never really knows what it wants (would it have asked for a show about two platonic FBI agents investigating UFOs in the first place?) and that once it gets what it thinks it wants, it tends to stop waiting around for it. "The X Files"' slogan "The Truth is Out There" became something of an early-Nineties pop-cultural mantra akin to "Keep On Truckin'" of the mid-'60s to mid-'70s and "Shit Happens" of Reagan-era id suppression (the biggest surprise of "The X Files" may be how creaky and antiquated it is a mere twelve years out of the can)–and like other shorthands for real thinking, it has a bumper-sticker hookiness to it but not a lot of meat upon closer examination. That kind of lack of substance dooms it to cultural specificity, with camp immortality and flea-market coffee mugs its only eternal footmen. In retrospect, "The X Files" couldn't have had a better tagline.

Little Caesar (1931) – DVD

August 2, 2005Posted in1930s, Action, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Crime, Drama, DVD, Gangster, Romance

***/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras A-
starring Edward G. Robinson, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Glenda Farrell, William Collier, Jr.
screenplay by Francis Edwards Faragoh, based on the novel by W.R. Burnett
directed by Mervyn LeRoy

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover At first glance, Little Caesar doesn’t appear to have too much going for it. Its dramatics are primitive, its style is unremarkable and hobbled by early sound limitations, and its supporting cast plays things so broadly as to strain credulity. But none of this matters. The incomparable Edward G. Robinson renders glorious the immorality of gangster Caesar Enrico Bandello, and his cruel, conceited portrayal is cinema enough for this critic. The shortish, nasal actor would seem the unlikeliest subject for demimonde glamour if that weren’t exactly the point: he’s every brutal schemer with nothing going for him but drive and a lack of scruples–and his terrible triumph is twisted inspiration for everyone else on the outside looking in. Robinson flaunts his lack of matinee grace, opening your eyes to the joy of beating the system.

National Lampoon’s Movie Madness (1983) – DVD

August 1, 2005Posted in1980s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, DVD, Satire

National Lampoon Goes to the Movies
Movie Madness
*/**** Image C- Sound C+
starring Robby Benson, Richard Widmark, Diane Lane, Candy Clark
screenplay by Tod Carroll, Shary Flenniken, Pat Mephitis, Gerald Sussman and Ellis Weiner
directed by Bob Giraldi and Henry Jaglom

by Alex Jackson There is a Japanese restaurant in Beverly Hills called Ginza Sushi-Ko where some dishes are only in season for two days. The owner imports 90-95 percent of his fish from Japan and so his menu is contingent upon the current geographic conditions of the country. If the fishermen can't go out because of a typhoon, he'll close down his restaurant and cancel reservations. National Lampoon's Movie Madness is a film like that: it's as hyper-topical as a late-show monologue–every reference is isolated in 1981 and unable to expand itself onto a greater context. By the time the picture was actually released a mere two years later (direct-to-video in most territories), many of its jokes had already become dated. Just think of what an additional twenty-two years has done. Reviewing this thing isn't film criticism, it's archaeology.

Million Dollar Baby (2004) [2-Disc Widescreen Edition] – DVD

July 28, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Clint Eastwood, Drama, DVD, Sports

**/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras C+
starring Clint Eastwood, Hilary Swank, Morgan Freeman, Jay Baruchel
screenplay by Paul Haggis, based on stories from Rope Burns by F.X. Toole
directed by Clint Eastwood

Milliondollarbabycap

by Walter Chaw As a fighter, Clint Eastwood's boxing flick Million Dollar Baby telegraphs its punches, demonstrates some muddy footwork, and, when all's said and done, doesn't pack much of a wallop no matter how many roundhouses it throws to the rafters. It stretches for timelessness, which Eastwood seems to equate with poor lighting and a lack of coverage, and it casts Morgan Freeman in another one of those Morgan Freeman roles where he contextualizes, in his homey, lightly-accented basso profundo warmth, the life and times of the white iconoclast for whom he is the catalyzing agent and confidante (The Shawshank Redemption, Driving Miss Daisy, Bruce Almighty, Clean and Sober). The picture has a framing story and a movie-long narration, two more ingredients in the neo-noir/American Gothic stew that Eastwood has continued to perpetuate long after his twin Americana triumphs A Perfect World and Unforgiven rendered the conversation–at least inasmuch as Eastwood is capable of carrying it–moot. Not to say that Million Dollar Baby is a total mutt, just that it's an obvious, self-important, overwritten thing designed to appeal to specific, stodgy, awards-season prestige audiences that love film so much, this will be the first movie they see this year.

Premonition (2004) – DVD

July 26, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, DVD, Horror, Japan

Yogen
*½/**** Image B Sound A- Extras C-
starring Hiroshi Mikami, Noriko Sakai, Maki Horikita, Mayumi Ono
screenplay by Noboru Takagi, Norio Tsuruta, based on the comic by Jiro Tsunoda
directed by Norio Tsuruta

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I could spin many a yarn about the kernel of goodness trapped inside Premonition. As the tale of a teacher named Hideki Satomi (Hiroshi Mikami) who finds supernatural newspapers that predict horrible events, it's poised to say plenty about the information age, the anxiety of which is manifested in the fact that Hideki is either helpless to stop the events or winds up physically wasted as a result of trying. But the point of mentioning that is scotched by the production team's total obliviousness to thematics, which makes any exegesis purely symptomatic. There's a swell sociology paper somewhere in Premonition's context within the rest of the J-Horror canon, but its pleasures are largely as an artifact rather than as something to be enjoyed on its own terms.

The Garbage Pail Kids Movie (1987) – DVD

July 24, 2005Posted in1980s, Adventure, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, DVD, Family, Musical, Sci-Fi

**/**** Image B+ Sound C
starring Anthony Newley, Mackenzie Astin, Katie Barbieri, "The Garbage Gang"
screenplay by Melinda Palmer & Rod Amateau
directed by Rod Amateau

by Alex Jackson I don't think that there is any getting around the fact that any true connoisseur of trash cinema has to see Rodney Amateau's The Garbage Pail Kids Movie. This was, after all, the feature film debut of Mackenzie Astin, a.k.a. the horny kid from "The Facts of Life", and of Spanish soap star Katie Barbieri. Just as the picture marked the start of a career for some, it marked the end of a career for others. The presence of child star, singer, and Joan Collins's bitchy ex-husband Anthony Newley is a chief selling point in the film's trailer, but he was on his way out. And The Garbage Pail Kids Movie was the last feature from television director Amateau, who seems to have viewed it as his own personal Fanny and Alexander, taking on writing and producing chores in addition to casting other Amateaus (J.P. and Chloe) in minor roles.

Hustle (1975) – DVD

July 20, 2005Posted in1970s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Thriller

½*/**** Image B+ Sound A-
starring Burt Reynolds, Catherine Deneuve, Ben Johnson, Paul Winfield
screenplay by Steve Shagan
directed by Robert Aldrich

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover In 1955, Robert Aldrich directed Kiss Me Deadly. Ending in a fiery conflagration that suggested the end of civilization, its chief selling point was the chance to watch a bunch of degenerates lose their last shred of decency. And because it transgressed norms that would not be fully shattered until a decade-plus later, it had a nasty kick that was hard to shake. Flash forward twenty years to 1975, and the director is in a bit of a bind: with norms everywhere falling like a stripper's pasties, it's clear that civilization has, indeed, come to an end–not with the bang of Kiss Me Deadly, but with the whimper of Hustle, a film that flaunts its creep credentials with such pathetic stridency that you can't even raise the enthusiasm to take offense. You're merely bored with a director whose raison d'être had been rendered obsolete.

The Bob Newhart Show: The Complete First Season (1972-1973) – DVD

July 19, 2005Posted in1970s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD, Television

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"Fly the Unfriendly Skies," "Tracy Grammar School, I'll Lick You Yet," "Tennis, Emily?," "Mom, I L-L-Love You," "Goodnight Nancy," "Come Live with Me," "Father Knows Worst," "Don't Go to Bed Mad," "P-I-L-O-T," "Anything Happen While I Was Gone?," "I Want to Be Alone," "Bob and Emily and Howard and Carol and Jerry," "I Owe It All to You… But Not That Much," "His Busiest Season," "Let's Get Away From it Almost," "The Crash of 29 Years Old," "The Man with the Golden Wrist," "The Two Loves of Dr. Hartley," "Not With My Sister You Don't," "A Home is Not Necessarily a House," "Emily, I'm Home… Emily?," "You Can Win 'Em All," "Bum Voyage," "Who's Been Sleeping on My Couch?"

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Watching old movies, even when they're bad, is like watching our collective hopes and dreams speaking to each other as they drift into history. But watching old television, even when it's good, is like trying to decipher the messages from a distant and very stuffy alien race. I wanted so badly to rise to the level of "The Bob Newhart Show", because Newhart himself is very funny in a non-classical way. Alas, his show is strait-jacketed by an outdated format that current TV viewers (let alone moviegoers) will find utterly incompatible with anything that came after. Despite its self-image as being above the pack in intelligence, it's incredibly limited, to the point that you look at the cinema of the same era and wonder how they could ever be temporally linked.

Steamboy (2004) [Collector’s Gift Set] – DVD

July 17, 2005Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Fantasy, Japan, Sci-Fi, Thriller

*/**** Image C+ Sound A Extras B+
screenplay by Sadayuki Murai and Katsuhiro Otomo
directed by Katsuhiro Otomo

Steamboycapby Walter Chaw Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira is both the best and the worst thing ever to happen to anime in the United States. For the believer, its Blade Runner cyberpunk ultra-cool was an eye-opener, but to hold the film up as the standard for the medium means that a lot of people looking to it as their introduction believe that anime is a little excitement cordoned off by long stretches of confused, gravid exposition. It tries to condense hundreds of pages of metaphysical text into scientist characters delivering what seem like endless exchanges in high-minded gobbledygook. Akira's popularity obscures the finest examples of the medium, films that manage to balance serious metaphysical musing with actual forward momentum (the two Ghost in the Shell films, for instance); to tell adult tales in affecting ways (Grave of the Fireflies); to redefine genre thriller (Perfect Blue), action (Ninja Scroll), and fantasy (Princess Mononoke); and to present children's fables as artifacts that are as useful for adults as they are for kids (Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro). Akira isn't the greatest anime film, just the most well-known, and it's worth speculating how its notoriety may have retarded the maturation of American animation.

The Story of My Life (2004) – DVD

July 14, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD, France, Romance

Mensonges et trahisons
Mensonges et trahisons et plus si affinités…
**½/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras N/A
starring Edouard Baer, Marie-Josée Croze, Alice Taglioni, Clovis Cornillac
written and directed by Laurent Tirard

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Ugly flashbacks to the indie '90s are unavoidable when considering The Story of My Life (Mensonges et trahisons). This French rom-com integrates the worst of Woody Allen worship with the worst of pre-fame artist's angst: it practically screams that it wants to be taken seriously while making every effort to ensure that you don't, a tactic typical of the callow and the imprecise. But though it treats the artistic vocation as just another tony career move, the film has its charms as light entertainment, with a couple of appealing performances and some handsome design. If nothing else, The Story of My Life is proof positive that Canada has had the bad effect on Quebec export Marie-Josée Croze and not the other way around.

Father of the Bride (1991) [15th Anniversary Special Edition] – DVD

July 13, 2005Posted in1990s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Family, Romance

*/**** Image B- Sound B- Extras C-
starring Steve Martin, Diane Keaton, Kimberly Williams, Martin Short
screenplay by Frances Goodrich & Albert Hackett and Nancy Meyers & Charles Shyer
directed by Charles Shyer

by Walter Chaw Ah, what could be better than 105 minutes of insipid sentiment laced with racism, homophobia, misogyny, and a relentless, ceaseless torrent of psychotic whining? Some films should come packaged with hypodermics full of insulin–Charles Shyer's Father of the Bride should furthermore contain instructions to jam those puppies right in the ol' eyeballs. Now if there were just something you could do about the whole hearing thing. Steve Martin writes smart books and was a time he performed smart routines: his work in All Of Me remains a high watermark for a certain kind of non-silent physical comedy that resurfaced for a while in the work of Jim Carrey and Jackie Chan. But beginning around the time of Father of the Bride, Martin, with a notable exception or two (The Spanish Prisoner, Joe Gould's Secret), embarked on the Eddie Murphy path of career resuscitation by transforming himself from one of the edgiest comics in the country into king milquetoast of the family-movie brigade–those baby blues, once so cunning in stuff like Pennies from Heaven, now set to glinting doll-like with Gene Wilder bathos as some vomitous Oompa-Loompa score paints us a picture of his bottomless empathy.

Dad (1989) – DVD

July 12, 2005Posted in1980s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Spielberg

**/**** Image A- Sound A-
starring Jack Lemmon, Ted Danson, Olympia Dukakis, Ethan Hawke
screenplay by Gary David Goldberg, based on the novel by William Wharton
directed by Gary David Goldberg

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover When we talk about family dramas, we inevitably mean male-oriented family dramas. I can't remember the last time I saw a film in which three generations of women strengthened bonds and sought solace in each other, nor can I recall the last time a family of men and women interacted onscreen in a way that didn't toe the patriarchal line. In one sense, Dad is a reasonably decent member of the genus, relatively low-key and only marginally giving in to soap-opera fantasy. But its total erasure of anything that gets in the way of fathers relating to sons blows its credibility in a big way. It's as though half the human race either did not exist, or does so to bolster men–and God help you narratively if you dare to cross that divide.

Freaked (1993) – DVD

July 11, 2005Posted in1990s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD, Sci-Fi

**/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras C-
starring Alex Winter, Randy Quaid, William Sadler, Megan Ward
screenplay by Tim Burns & Tom Stern & Alex Winter
directed by Tom Stern & Alex Winter

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I suppose it wouldn't take much to turn Freaked into a masterpiece–simply a viewer at the right age, watching it in the right dorm room, smoking the right amount of dope from the right Homer Simpson bong. Alas, those who watch the film straight and out of college are in for a rough ride. Despite the enthusiastic efforts of co-creators Tom Stern and Alex Winter (also the film's star), there's no denying that Freaked is a dog's breakfast of witless wit and sub-Fellini grotesquerie that's more assaulting than amusing. While I can give points for not being a character-building snooze like many a Hollywood comedy, there's simply too little intelligence here for it to become something substantial, leaving you stranded in a dated haze of DayGlo colours and the idea that walking Rastafarian eyeballs is the last word in hilarious.

House Calls (1978) – DVD

July 7, 2005Posted in1970s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance

***/**** Image A- Sound A-
starring Walter Matthau, Glenda Jackson, Art Carney, Richard Benjamin
screenplay by Max Shulman & Julius J. Epstein and Alan Mandell & Charles Shyer
directed by Howard Zieff

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover House Calls is an unusually sharp entry in the normally anemic romantic comedy genre. Standard rom-com procedure is to be as inoffensive as possible, or at least sniggeringly condescending towards whatever is potentially offensive: that famous faux-orgasm in When Harry Met Sally… is a reminder to the audience that they're racy and adventurous, thus releasing them to be as uptight and cowardly as they really are. Not so House Calls, which possesses a surprising level of maturity while managing to take a few good shots at capitalist medicine. None of this is enough to help the film amount to more than a solid romantic comedy, but with such weak competition in the field, it can't help but look sparkling by comparison.

Invincible (2002) – DVD

July 6, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Werner Herzog, Drama, DVD, Germany, Ireland, UK, War

***/**** Image A Sound A+
starring Tim Roth, Jouko Ahola, Anna Gourari, Jacob Wein
written and directed by Werner Herzog

by Walter Chaw With casting, in true Herzog fashion, being the lion’s portion of performance, Finnish strongman Jouka Ahola starring as legendary Jewish strongman Zishe Breitbart in Herzog’s Invincible is a stroke of inspired madness. Herzog fashions Ahola’s total lack of experience and guile into something like an ecstatic holiness. He’s done this before, of course, with madmen Bruno S. in The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser and Stroszek and the certifiable Klaus Kinski in some five astonishing pictures (astonishing not only for their quality, but also for the fact that there were five), so although extratextual complexity ever-threatens to become a distraction in Herzog’s films, it’s the sort of distraction that edifies Herzog’s preoccupation with blurring the distinction between performance and naturalism, fiction and documentary. No less so than in Invincible: The first time Herzog has returned to the pre-Bellum Nazi period in Germany since his directorial debut, Signs of Life, it pits one of Herzog’s classic social naïfs against a creature of pure manipulative malevolence, Hanussen (Tim Roth), who is, naturally, the kind of master showman/entertainer Herzog has always mistrusted.

The Machinist (2004) [Widescreen] + Enduring Love (2004) [Widescreen] – DVDs

July 4, 2005Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, France, Mystery, Romance, Spain, Thriller, UK

THE MACHINIST
***/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B
starring Christian Bale, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Aitana Sanchez-Gijon, Michael Ironside
screenplay by Scott Kosar
directed by Brad Anderson

ENDURING LOVE
***/**** Image A Sound A
starring Daniel Craig, Rhys Ifans, Samantha Morton, Bill Nighy
screenplay by Joe Penhall, based on the novel by Ian McEwan
directed by Roger Michell

Machinistcapby Walter Chaw Sickness sweats out of every pore of Brad Anderson's The Machinist. It's leprous green, corpse flesh lit by sulphur light, marking the end of a progression that took Anderson from the sunny Happy Accidents to the sepia-inflected Session 9 to the bleak and subterranean–Plutonian, really–The Machinist. But like all of Anderson's work, the current film seems best described as coitus interruptus–congress interrupted at the moment of climax by the director's peculiar fixation on mendacity in favour of the supernatural. It's all about the tease for Anderson's genre explorations: time travel in Happy Accidents, haunted asylums in Session 9, and now–what, possession? Murderous blackouts? By plumbing the depths of human failings in a literal-minded fashion, one after the other (obsession, then greed, and finally guilt), Anderson ignores the possibility that genre is sharpest when wielded as metaphor for the same. Even the profession of machining speaks to the idea of precision and craftsmanship over flights of fancy or suspicions of otherness. It's a shame that The Machinist isn't ultimately more than an elaborate Rubik's Cube: not that hard to solve, not high on replay value.

The Pacifier (2005) [Widescreen] – DVD

July 3, 2005Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Disney, Drama, DVD, Family, Thriller

½*/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras D+
starring Vin Diesel, Lauren Graham, Faith Ford, Brittany Snow
screenplay by Thomas Lennon & Robert Ben Garant
directed by Adam Shankman

Pacifiercap

by Bill Chambers Three months after failing to return kidnapped professor Howard Plummer (Tate Donovan) to safety, Special Ops lieutenant Shane Wolfe (Vin Diesel) is assigned to stay with the late scientist's family while their mother (Faith Ford) visits Switzerland with Shane's superior (Chris Potter) to claim the contents of Howard's safety deposit box. Professor Plummer was killed over a piece of software named G.H.O.S.T. (though not in the pantry with a candlestick) now believed to have been stashed somewhere in his home; when the snot-nosed kids–vain Zoe (Brittany Snow), surly Seth (Max Thieriot), precocious Lulu (Morgan York, also one of the Cheaper by the Dozen brats), and reaction-shot fodder Peter (Keegan & Logan Hoover) and Baby Tyler (Bo & Luke Vink (and with "The Dukes of Hazzard"'s impending renaissance, boy are those two in for a rude awakening at the start of school))–grease the stairwell to take out Shane, they end up driving away their German nanny (a typically misused Carol Kane) instead, forcing Shane into a more maternal role and leaving him little time to search for the computer program.