Gideon58's Reviews

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Alfie (1966)
Michael Caine earned his first Best Actor nomination for his bold and unapologetic performance in Alfie, an adult drama that looks at the sexual mores of the 1960's through the eyes of a truly reprehensible central character who learns there are consequences related to his behavior.

Alfie is a womanizing stud who thinks sex with as many women as possible is the only reason to live. He doesn't care how old they are or their marital status, as long the "birds" are in "beautiful condition." During the course of this story, we see Alfie's backstreet affair with a married woman (Millicent Martin), a young woman who he actually gets pregnant (Julia Foster), a wealthy American divorcee (Shelley Winters) and a young hitchhiker (Jane Asher) Alfie brings home to cook and clean for him.

This film is based on an unsuccessful play by Bill Naughton, that premiered on Broadway in 1965 with Terrence Stamp in the starring role and ran for an unimpressive 21 performances. I'm sure the play's limited run had a lot to do with the subject matter and the central character, a slime bucket who treats women like possessions. More than once when talking about women here, Alfie actually uses the word "it" instead of "she" or "her". His reaction to learning that he's gotten a woman pregnant doesn't exactly burst with politically correctness, but we do see him begin to bond with the child and think there might be some redemption for this character, but it's not to be.

This was also one of the first mainstream theatrical films where the central character actually talks directly to the camera, taking us inside Alfie's world and hopefully making the character a little more sympathetic, but that never really happens. Alfie is a charmer on the surface and as much as we want to like him, watching the way he treats these women makes that pretty much impossible.

Michael Caine delivers a rich performance that simultaneously works hard at making the character likable and wanting to punch him in the mouth for treating these women the way he does. Shelley Winters is terrific as Ruby and Vivien Merchant's pathetic Lily earned her a Supporting Actress nomination. Lewis Gilbert's direction employs some really interesting camerawork and makes the viewer comfortable with Alfie speaking directly to us, even though the guy is such a jerk, but the character gets payback for his behavior even if it isn't enough, but it's enough to make Alfie's journey a credible one. Gilbert would direct Caine to another Oscar nomination 17 years later in Educating Rita. This film was remade in 2004 with Jude Law playing Alfie.



King of California
The story is silly and strains credibility at every turn, but the performances by the stars do make 2017's King of California worth a look.

The comedy stars Oscar winner Michael Douglas as a recently returned home mental patient who turns his estranged daughter's life upside down as he tries to convince her that there is a Spanish treasure chest full of gold buried somewhere in the suburban neighborhood where his daughter lives.

Writer/director Mike Cahill does manage to give this loopy story some legs by immediately establishing the relationship between this father and daughter. Utilizing flashbacks and other film techniques, we learn that this a father who has been letting his daughter down long before he was ever committed. The relationship between them is so contentious that the girl refers to him throughout the movie as Charlie instead of "Dad."

Miranda, the daughter, has carved out a decent existence for herself despite the lack of a father figure in her life. We admire Miranda's independence, but Charlie is so darned likable that we really want to see he and Miranda mend fences, as old and rickety as those fences might be We want this to happen because of Michael Douglas' colorful performance in the starring role, a performance that endears the viewer to the character and makes us want for him everything he wants.

Evan Rachel Wood's large, soulful eyes have rarely been used to better advantage in bringing the often fiery Miranda to the screen. This performance actually rivals her work as Mickey Roarke's daughter in The Wrestler and it is this performance that really is the anchor of this over-the-top comedy.

The film features effective cinematography, editing, and David Robbins' music is wonderful. Michael Douglas offers one of his loopiest characterizations as Charlie and works extremely well with the luminous Evan Rachel Wood. The movie is a little labored but the stars and the bittersweet ending make it worth a look.



East of Eden (1955)
After four years of working in television and a few bit parts in movies, James Dean exploded on the Hollywood scene with his first leading role in 1955's East of Eden, the big budget adaptation of the John Steinbeck novel that is emotionally charged by its compelling story and some first rate performances.

The setting is Salinas Valley, California right before the outbreak of WWI. Adam Trask (Raymond Massey) is a hard working, God-fearing rancher who is working on a new idea for preserving vegetables called refrigeration. Adam has two sons: Aron (Richard Davalos) seems to be the apple of his father's eye and the desperately angry and unhappy Cal (Dean) can't seem to do anything right where his father is concerned. Cal's anger has a lot to do with the fact that he has recently found out that his father lied to him about his mother's death. Kate Trask (Jo Van Fleet) is alive and well in the neighboring town of Monterrey where she operates a very successful whorehouse.

Aron is in a relationship with the flighty and intelligent Abra (Julie Harris), but the girl clearly is attracted to Cal as well and is in deep denial about it. As much as Cal wants to get to know his mother, he is still obsessed with pleasing his father and actually turns to his mother for her help with that while trying to fight his attraction to Abra.

First of all, this review is coming from someone who never read the book so I cannot comment on how faithful this film version is to the book. What I can say is that this contemporary re-thinking of the story of Cain and Abel was a breathtaking and mesmerizing motion picture experience that had me glued to the screen. It's been awhile since a story tied my stomach up in knots the way this one did. I really felt for the character of Cal, not only being kept in the dark about his mother, but the complete inability to get any sign from his father that he loves him. The scene of Adam's birthday party where we think Cal is finally going to get what he wants was absolutely heartbreaking.

Conflicted feelings also arose regarding the character of Kate. On the surface, this is a woman who abandoned her children and has made no attempt to keep connected with them. She didn't even know that, until Cal told her, Adam had told them she was dead. There is another layer of Kate though that shines through...a woman who was desperately unhappy with Adam and had to get away from him for the sake of her own sanity, so she went out and made a name and a life of her own. Such an interesting, three-dimensional character for a 1950's film...the scene where she and Cal actually sit down and talk for the first time sizzles with tension.

Elia Kazan provides the kind of sensitive direction he did to A Streetcar Named Desire and would provide for his next film A Face in the Crowd. It goes without saying that James Dean's powerhouse performance absolutely dominates the proceedings but, and I can't believe I'm saying this, I think this was the best performance out of the "big 3" movies he did. Dean died five months after the release of the film and received the Academy's first posthumous Oscar nomination for his work here. I can't think of a performance more worthy of the honor. Raymond Massey was a lovely combination of warmth and strength as Adam and Jo Van Fleet won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her hard-as nails Kate. Julie Harris is luminous in the complex role of Abra and I also loved future Oscar winner Burl Ives as the sheriff. A sad and haunting film experience.

Remade as a TV miniseries in 1981 with Sam Bottoms as Cal, Hart Bochner as Aron, Timothy Bottoms as Adam, and Karen Allen as Abra. But like I always say, stick to the original.



East of Eden (1955)

Elia Kazan provides the kind of sensitive direction he did to A Streetcar Named Desire and would provide for his next film A Face in the Crowd.

It goes without saying that James Dean's powerhouse performance absolutely dominates the proceedings but, and I can't believe I'm saying this, I think this was the best performance out of the "big 3" movies he did.

Yes! I knew you'd love this. I'm so glad you finally watched it and I agree with everything you said.



OK, I'm glad you brought this up, because I'm really on the fence regarding this character as a bad mother. First of all, Kate was pretty much forced into her marriage to Adam and was completely open about her contempt about married life and being tied down. She wanted a life of her own and her marriage to Adam was suffocating her. Yes, she was a mother, but she didn't want to be. Adam pretty much forced her into that too. Yes, she chose not to communicate with her sons once she left, but Adam told them she was dead. And when she was finally reunited with Cal, she did give him that $5000 he wanted, even if it was guilt money. So unless you can give me an argument to sway me, right now I'm inclined not to put Kate on my bad mothers list.



OK, I'm glad you brought this up, because I'm really on the fence regarding this character as a bad mother. First of all, Kate was pretty much forced into her marriage to Adam and was completely open about her contempt about married life and being tied down. She wanted a life of her own and her marriage to Adam was suffocating her. Yes, she was a mother, but she didn't want to be. Adam pretty much forced her into that too. Yes, she chose not to communicate with her sons once she left, but Adam told them she was dead. And when she was finally reunited with Cal, she did give him that $5000 he wanted, even if it was guilt money. So unless you can give me an argument to sway me, right now I'm inclined not to put Kate on my bad mothers list.
I'm just happy you seen the movie! East of Eden is one of my favorites, such a powerful performance from James Dean. It's so sad he only starred in 3 major films.



I was so impressed with this movie...I didn't think James Dean could be better than he was in Rebel Without a Cause, but he was. Dean was amazing in this movie.



The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
A crisp and charismatic performance by the divine Maggie Smith that officially made her a movie star, anchors the 1969 film version of a luminous and adult blending of character study and romantic melodrama called The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

The central character of this drama is one of the most fascinating characters to have a movie wrapped around her. Jean Brodie is an intelligent, articulate, and deliciously self-absorbed history teacher at an exclusive girls' school in 1930's Scotland. Miss Brodie considers her girls the "creme de la creme" and adopts certain girls each year and gives them special treatment, treatment which included assigning futures to each of the girls, whether or not the girls are really interested and how one girl named Sandy (Pamela Franklin) refuses to conform to the future Miss Brodie has concocted for her.

The story also features a romantic drama involving the endlessly fascinating Miss Brodie, who pretends to be above such nonsense as love and sex, but underneath is a bubbling cauldron of sexuality, which has garnered her attraction from the sweet but dull Gordon Lowther (Gordon Jackson), the school's music teacher and the passionate Teddy Lloyd (Robert Stephens), the art teacher and married father of six children. We are also witness to the school's headmistress (Celia Johnson) trying to figure out a way to oust Miss Brodie from the school, disturbed by Brodie's influence on her girls.

This is the film version of a play by Murial Sparks that premiered on Broadway in January of 1968 with the legendary Zoe Caldwell playing the title role. Smith inherits the role for the film and gives the performance of a lifetime. Aided by director Ronald Neame (Brief Encounter), Smith gives a delicately nuanced and rich performance where every move she makes and word she utters is carefully crafted before they happen. Smith is absolutely fascinating here, so fascinating that it's very easy to overlook some of Miss Brodie's lesser qualities, like her unabashed arrogance. Her refusal to accept being terminated at the end of the second act is pretty ballsy and hard to swallow, but that scene is also the highlight of the film. The fire bubbling through Brodie, brought brilliantly to life by Maggie Smith, is an acting class in itself.

Favorites for the Best Actress Oscar that year were Jane Fonda and Liza Minnelli, but Smith blindsided both and once you witness this performance, you will understand why. Also loved Robert Stephens as the explosive Teddy Lloyd and Franklin as the wise beyond her years Sandy. Franklin was one of the hardest working and most underrated actresses of the 60's and this might be her best work. Shortly after this film was released, Smith and Stephens were actually married IRL. A high octane soap opera given its gas by the divine Maggie Smith.



Second Act
Netflix decided to throw Jennifer Lopez a lifeline regarding her fading film career with a lame 2018 vehicle called Second Act that starts off as one kind of movie, and then becomes a completely different movie, but neither movie is really very funny.

Lopez plays a bulk store mid-level supervisor who loses a big promotion at work while her best friend's son sets her up for a job interview on Madison Avenue with the aid of a souped up resume and social media presence. With her newly established backstory and a few choice words at the interview, Lopez gets the job but immediately clashes with the young female second in command, played by Vanessa Hudgens. Lopez is thrown for a loop when it eventually comes to light that Hudgens is the daughter that Lopez gave up for adoption when she was 17.

This film coasts a long way on Lopez' reputation, because the story is slightly pretentious and long-winded, trying to put across a couple of well-worn messages like the importance of honesty in business practices and in your personal life, as well as being satisfied with who you are and making the most of who you really are. Unfortunately, these messages get lost in a lot of scenes about marketing and merchandising cosmetics that seem more suited to daytime drama.

The film is well mounted, offering first rate production values, including a wardrobe department that does their best to make the most out of Lopez' ever expanding physical assets, which have continued to expand over the years, to the point where I found myself unable to concentrate on what was going on in the story because I couldn't take my eyes off Lopez' ass. This was only made worse by the casting of the perfectly chiseled Milo Ventimiglia (This is Us) as her boyfriend.

Both Lopez and Hudgens plays this story a little too straight-faced which adds to the deadening pace of the story. A few familiar faces pop up in the supporting cast including Leah Remini (when was the last time you saw her in a movie?), Larry Miller, and Treat Wiliams, but their thankless roles are just there to prop up Lopez, who needed more help from the writer than from the cast.



Toy Story 4
I concluded my review of Toy Story 3 by saying that I would be able to live with it if there never was a Toy Story 4, but now that 4 has become a reality, I am here to humbly and apologetically eat my words, as the geniuses of Disney Pixar have done what I never thought they could: Come up with another dazzling and effectively layered comic yarn set in Toy World that challenges cinematic tradition, provides consistent belly laughs throughout and can ignite tear ducts if caught in the right mood.

As we return to our friends, Andy is off to college and all of our friends have been given to a little girl named Bonnie who is very apprehensive about her first day in kindergarten. Worried about Bonnie, Woody (voiced by Tom Hanks) hides in her backpack and goes to school with her. Woody observes Bonnie build her own toy out of a plastic fork which she cleverly names Forky (voiced by Tony Hale) who Woody introduces to the rest of the gang and tries to make them understand how important Forky is to Bonnie, which comes to light when Woody and Forky are kidnapped by an insane doll named Gabby Gabby (voiced by Christina Hendricks), who is trying to win her kid, Harmony, back. During this adventure, Woody is reunited with Bo Peep (voiced by Annie Potts), who belonged to Andy's little sister, Molly.

This was the best entry in the franchise since the first one. Director Josh Cooley and the screenwriters, including story creator John Lasseter and actress Rashida Jones, have once again done Oscar-worthy work in giving us a toys-eye-view of the world and class separation and how things in toy world might or might not be different than in the real world. This film gives the viewer a true sense of the size and scope of toy world as opposed to the size and scope of human world. This is impressively overlaid with a look at class separation in toy world...the difference between being a lost toy and being a toy who actually has a kid.

Of course, there are so many characters that are part of this franchise by now that they can't all be center stage. Characters who have been glorified extras in previous films get more screentime here and characters who dominated previous films have been pushed to the back burner. The relationship between Woody and Bo Peep was purely a product of this film...Bo was only in about three minutes of the first film and, if memory serves, wasn't in 2 or 3 at all, but she is center stage here, still voiced by the brilliant Annie Potts, who is more than up for the challenge. Also loved the character of Gabby Gabby, the first character in this franchise who comes off as insane, giving this film an edgy, squirm-worthy quality missing from the previous films.

The look of this film is nothing short of spectacular. Animation is Oscar-worthy, producing some breathtaking visuals that will be difficult to erase from the memory. When Buzz (voiced by Tim Allen), is shot out of the carnival toward the neighboring highway, the highway looks absolutely real. The climb to the roof of the antique store that Woody and Bo make offers a thrilling view as well, and that antique store...can we talk about that antique store? Just incredible the way everything was stacked on to of everything else as far as the eye could see with ventriloquist dummies overlooking the place like gargoyles.

The actors are comfortable providing these toys their voices, but they still take what they are doing seriously. Tom Hanks' work as Woody in this film is just as moving as it was in the first film and there is also outstanding work from Potts as Bo Peep, Hendricks as Gabby, Hale as Forky, and especially Keanu Reeves as a toy stunt motorcycle driver named Duke Caboom...Reeves is completely unrecognizable and a total scene stealer. An animated joy from start to finish.



The Beguiled (1971)
Before De Niro and Scorsese and Depp and Burton, there was Eastwood and Siegel. Clint Eastwood and Don Siegel spent a lot of the 1970's collaborating as actor and director and the most intriguing of their work together was The Beguiled,a bizarre and often chilling psycho-sexual melodrama blistering with suspense and sexual tension unlike anything we had seen onscreen.

Set during the Civil War, Eastwood plays John McBurney, a Union soldier who has been severely injured and is taken back to a small Confederate girls' school to be nursed back to health. Initially treated as a prisoner, it's not long before McBurney awakens sexual desire among more than one woman at this school, escalating in an internal battle of wills between the women, which finds them turning on each other, and eventually on McBurney.

The screenplay, based on a book by Thomas Cullinan is bold and adult in its depiction of this John McBurney character and how his seemingly innocent need for a place to heal melds with a sexual awakening that he causes with some of these women. And instead of trying to navigate around it, McBurney embraces it and decides to use his sexual prowess as not only a way of not returning to the war, but having his own private set of concubines at his beck and call. We are given our first major clue that we are not going to be treated to the traditional Civil War drama when the first kiss McBurney has onscreen is with a 12 year old girl...Gone with the Wind this ain't.

I especially loved the beginning section of the story as McBurney gets cleaned up and looking right and how the girl have been forbidden to go into his room, which doesn't stop any of them. As soon as one leaves his room, another is knocking and McBurney just rolls with it.

This movie was made when Clint Eastwood was still smoking hot and Siegel takes full advantage of that, pulling an electric sex on legs performance from the rising star. Geraldine Page was superb, as always, as the head of the school, as were the lovely Elizabeth Hartman as the teacher and JoAnn Harris as a horny 17 year old who throws herself at McBurney throughout. And if they look closely, Young and the Restless fans might recognize a teenage Melody Thomas Scott playing the role of Abigail. A sizzling adult drama fraught with sexual tension and directed with some genuine style.



The Happytime Murders
Brian Henson, son of the legendary Jim Henson and the creative force behind the Muppet versions of A Christmas Carol and Treasure Island tries for something more original with 2018's The Happytime Murders a film that worked a lot better when it was called Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

This film is set in a world where human beings and puppets co-exist but puppets are considered second class citizens. When the cast members of an old puppet television show called "The Happytime Gang" begin getting bumped off one by one, a former cop who is now a private eye (and a puppet) named Phil Phillips (voiced by Bill Barretta) stumbles onto the murder scene and finds his former human partner, Detective Connie Edwards (Melissa McCarthy) and when it turns out that someone is trying frame Phil for these murders, he and Connie decide to team up in order to clear Phil's name.

It's hard to tell exactly what Henson was attempting to do here. The film's setting is contemporary, but Todd Berger's screenplay has a very 1940's noir-ish sensibility to it. You can almost hear the lone saxophone wailing in the background of a couple of scenes. But this story seems to be trying be hip and relevant, pointing out the jets and Sharks-type war going on between the humans and the puppets. The canvas is laid out in the opening scenes and firmly established with the central characters who are human and puppet, but they're both spouting dialogue that sounds like something out of an old Humphrey Bogart movie.

There are selected laughs provided mostly through Henson's merciless treatment of the puppets that symbolically breaks the 4th wall...we see button eyes get pulled off some puppets and when one puppet is murdered and found in the ocean, the CSI unit actually twist him up like a dishrag and wring him dry. There is also a very funny scene where McCarthy's Connie gets suspended and she storms through the office telling everyone in the squadroom off. This scene features a cameo by McCarthy's husband, Ben Falcone and I wish the rest of the movie had been as funny as this scene was.

McCarthy works very hard at creating viable relationships with puppets and there are some good bits contributed along the way by Maya Rudolph as Phil's secretary and Joel McHale as McCarthy's boss, but this attempt to have Who Framed Roger Rabbit? lightening strike twice, never really catches on.



The Favor
Released during a very good year for movies, 1994's The Favor is a silly sex comedy featuring unappealing characters doing stupid things and thanks to lead-footed direction, the film seems twice as long as it really is.

Kathy is a happily married housewife and mother of two daughters residing in Portland who, for some reason, can't stop fantasizing about her high school boyfriend, Tom, who now resides in Denver. When Kathy's best friend, Emily, has to go to Denver on business, she begs Emily to look Tom up but realizes she can't put her fantasies to rest unless Emily actually sleeps with Tom. Emily returns from Denver and informs Kathy that her one night stand with Tom was the best sex she ever had and now wants to dump her current boyfriend, Elliott. Things get even messier when Kathy comes on to Elliott to get back at Emily and Emily turns up pregnant.

Even though this film was released in 1994, it was actually filmed in 1990 and shelved, like the Jessica Lange drama Blue Sky because of the financial troubles at Orion Studios. Unfortunately, this film isn't nearly as good as Blue Sky and the blame must go partially to a ridiculous story centered around a really unappealing central character whose behavior in this film redefines questionable. This woman Kathy has been married for years and still having fantasies about a high school boyfriend? She then pretty much demands that her best friend sleep with her old boyfriend and then resents her when she actually does it? And there's no justifying Kathy's behavior when she learns Emily is pregnant. This is where any appeal the character had goes out the window.

The rest of the blame has to go to Donald Petrie, a proven commodity behind the camera lens with films like Grumpy Old Men and Miss Congeniality to his credit. This film only runs 90 minutes, but Petrie's wooden direction keeps this story moving at a snail's pace and makes the film seem twice as long as it is. I swear I didn't think this movie was ever going to end.

There's some odd casting here as well...Harley Jane Kozak, a former soap actress who appeared in films like Parenthood and Arachnophobia, works very hard trying to make Kathy likable but the story is fighting her all the way. Not to mention she's trying to be convincing in a role that was clearly written for Meg Ryan. Elizabeth McGovern gives one of her most wooden performances as Emily, which doesn't exactly help keeping us invested in the story. Bill Pullman and Brad Pitt made the most of thankless roles and there was a funny cameo from Holland Tayor as a lamaze coach, but this movie is pretty forgettable.



Halloween (2018)
John Carpenter, Debra Hill, and director David Gordon Greene reach back to the roots of the 1978 film that began the whole franchise with their 2018 version of Halloween, which brings the gore we expect from the franchise, but the backstory and character development supporting this new story just don't make sense.

Jamie Lee Curtis returns to the role that made her a star, Laurie Strode, much older but maybe not wiser, still living in the same town where Michael Meyers terrorized her 40 years ago. Laurie now lives like a survivalist, in a home that she has converted into a security nightmare when she is approached by a pair of podcasters who want to interview her about her history with Michael. Laurie's daughter and her granddaughter think Laurie is a little on the nutty side and then, while Michael Meyers is being transferred to another facility, Michael escapes, killing three people in the process.

Personally, I had felt this franchise had run its course 20 years ago with Halloween H20, but decided that this film might be worth checking out since original writer/director John Carpenter appeared to be the screenwriter but that turned out to not be the case after all. Three other writers did the screenplay with "characters created by" Carpenter and this becomes obvious pretty quickly as the backstory established here just doesn't make a whole lot of sense, starting with the incarceration of Michael Meyers. This guy has been locked up, studied, poked, prodded , drugged, studied, and analyzed for the last four decades and he is the exact same guy who was locked up four decades ago? It seems to me that after 40 years of treatment, some kind of mellowing would have occurred with this character but no such thing happens here...Michael is just as destructive and dangerous as he was in 1978.

The changes in the Laurie Strode character completely disregard the Laurie Strode we met in Halloween H20, where Laurie was a college dean working under an assumed name who had become an alcoholic. In this film, Laurie is presented as a slightly crazier variation on Sarah Conner in Terminator 2, who knows the danger but can't get anyone else to believe her, except for the wimpy local sheriff. Even Laurie's own family is confused and embarrassed by her and it was a little disheartening seeing the woman's own family unwilling to have her back.

Then there were some other big gaps in story logic that were hard to swallow, especially regarding the transportation of Michael to another facility. First of all, what was going to be the benefit of transferring Michael somewhere else for 40 years and as dangerous as Michael is, wouldn't it have been prudent to have him secured a little more effectively, akin to the way Hannibal Lecter was secured in Silence of the Lambs or Garland Green in Con Air?

Director David Gordon Green takes a little too much time with exposition, but once the killing starts, this does demand viewer attention, but the first 40 minutes are pretty slow going. Curtis rolls nicely with the constant changes in Laurie and Judy Greer got the most significant role of her career as Laurie's daughter. Also enjoyed Will Patton as the aforementioned sheriff. Green and his writers know how to bring the gore, but a little more attention to logical storytelling would have been nice.



The Pacifier
Disney offered action star Vin Diesel a welcome change of pace with 2005's The Pacifier, a contrived and predictable action comedy awash in cliched plotting and a rampant predictability that really tries viewer patience.

Diesel plays Shane Wolfe, a Navy SEAL who is assigned to guard the five children of a recently murdered government scientist because the program he was working on is believed to still be in the house and the widow and mother of the kids has to leave the country for a few days to retrieve another part of the program.

This film really suffers from a serious lack of surprises in Robert Ben Grant and Thomas Lennon's screenplay. The fish out of water concept of a soldier turned suburban babysitter is a concept rife with possibilities, unfortunately, most of what Grant and Lennon come up with is pretty predictable. Of course, we get the initial defiance from the kids having to take orders from a soldier, but it just gets sillier, from Shane's first encounter with a dirty diaper, a scene we've seen in a million other movies, the tired comments about Shane's man boobs, to his having to do a stupid dance in order for one of the kids to sleep, but all credibility goes out the window when Shane agrees to take over as the director of the eldest son's production of The Sound of Music and it's pretty much checkout time for the viewer.

There were also certain issues with the premise that I couldn't wrap my head around. First of all, we are told that this murdered scientist was away from home for seven or eight months at a time, but somehow he found time to father five children? I also didn't buy the way the scientist died...he and Shane are standing alone on a beach and when Shane leaves the guy alone for a second, he kills the dad and wounds Shane. And why wouldn't the mother (Faith Ford) make it clear to her children how much danger they were in? I guess that was so the scene where the ninjas break into the house and the kids finally get it made a little more sense. I have to admit that I did enjoy the film's take on an action movie staple...the "suiting up" scene which involved pampers and juice boxes.

Adam Shankman, whose next directorial assignment would be the film version of Hairspray, provides lethargic direction, though he does display an affinity for action sequences. Diesel's straight-faced performance sucks all the humor out of the character. The only real laughs in the film are provided by Brad Garrett playing the school's smart-ass vice principal. A good idea on paper that definitely lost something in execution.



The Game (1997)
A relentlessly frightening story and the uncompromising directorial style of David Fincher make a logic-defying nightmare from 1997 called The Game riveting motion picture entertainment, even if we don't always have a clear picture as to what exactly is going on.

Michael Douglas stars as Nicholas Van Orton, a wealthy investment banker who reunites with his estranged brother, Conrad (Sean Penn) on his 48th birthday. Conrad gives his brother a gift certificate for a special "game" from a mysterious entertainment company called Consumer Recreation Services. After a long and involved registration process for the game, it is not long before Nicholas finds himself caught in the middle of a hellish nightmare

The screenplay for this enigmatic film experience is from the writers of The Net and Terminator 3, rich with red herrings everywhere, consistently offering more questions than answering them. We know that something's not right when we see that elaborate registration process that Nicholas has to go through and all of the questions that he has to answer. IRL, most people would have run screaming for the hills during that testing process, but if Nicholas had done that, we wouldn't have had a movie.

The most frightening aspect of this story is the power that Consumer Recreation Services is able to wield over Van Orton simply through the information they gleaned during the testing. Most frightening is the fact that setting up Nicholas' game took just a little over 24 hours and I loved that they told him he was deemed ineligible so that he didn't see it coming.

Once again, David Fincher's direction is inventive, providing arresting visuals and an air of tension that pervades the film from opening credits to the somewhat hard to swallow ending. Michael Douglas offers one of his best performances as Van Orton and gets solid support from Deborah Kara Unger, Peter Donat, James Rebhorn, and Carroll Baker. Sadly, Penn is wasted in a surprisingly thankless role, but just like he did with Fight Club, David Fincher takes a confusing and muddy story and makes it sparkle.