Home

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 (Blu-ray combo)

August 12, 2014

James Plath, Family Home Theater Action-Adventure, PG-13 rated, Sci-Fi/Fantasy Leave a comment

AmazingSpiderman2coverGrade: B+
Entire family: Maybe; use your discretion
2014, 141 min., Color
Sony Pictures
Rated PG-13 for sequences of sci-fi action violence
Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
Featured audio: English DTS-HD MA 5.1
Includes: Blu-ray, DVD, Digital HD
Bonus features: B
Trailer

If the previous Spider-Man trilogy and the new Amazing Spider-Man trilogy-in-progress (yes, a third installment has been announced for 2018 release) were tucked inside a time capsule with instructions for researchers to divide a test audience into two groups and show the trilogies one after the other, would their favorite depend on which one they see first? Maybe. Both trilogies are comparable blockbusters with slick special effects, charismatic casts, and airtight screenplays that follow the Marvel handbook pretty closely.

But there are some differences. In Sam Raimi’s 2002, 2004, and 2007 films, Tobey Maguire was a bit of a nerd as Peter Parker, and his superhero adventure played like a coming-of-age story. The series was campy, too, deliberately going for a playful tone to bring it in line with the comic book world.

That world has grown darker, though, and in the 2012 reboot from director Marc Webb, Andrew Garfield was a little edgier than the doe-eyed Maguire, more skate punk with attitude than an innocent teen, and in this new series Gwen’s father’s objections to him are more intense (and justifiably so). It’s the same in The Amazing Spider-Man 2.

AmazingSpiderman2screen2But darker or edgier doesn’t mean more less family-friendly. Both series are rated PG-13 and are similar in terms of appropriate content, and in this film there’s no nudity or sexual situations, very little in the way of language, and violence that’s mostly tied to spectacular effects or to the fantastic.   More

NEED FOR SPEED (Blu-ray)

August 4, 2014

James Plath, Family Home Theater Action-Adventure, PG-13 rated Leave a comment

NeedforSpeedcoverGrade: B-
Entire family: No
2014, 132 min., Color
DreamWorks-Touchstone
Aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Rated PG-13 for intense racing scenes and some violence and language
Featured audio: English DTS-HD MA 7.1
Includes: Blu-ray, Digital HD Copy
Bonus features: B-
Trailer

Watching this 2014 action film from DreamWorks-Touchstone, I felt like a judge on The Voice, but with the chairs in reverse. I was facing the action and had my hand on the button a bunch of times to turn that chair around and give Need for Speed a bad review. But every time I got close to that imaginary button, I’d pull back. Though there’s more action than character development, though the plot has big chunks missing so that director Scott Waugh could get on with the action, and though there was no shortage of cheesy or predictable moments, I still got caught up in this film.

Racing is an adrenalin rush, and so, apparently, is vicariously riding along.

Bryan Cranston’s TV sidekick Aaron Paul breaks a little badder as Tobey Marshall, the main character in Need for Speed who makes more money driving in illegal street races than he does working on high performance cars in his garage. He uses a team that includes not just car people, but a pilot who advises him and others about traffic up ahead. And let’s not underestimate the importance of this pilot, who keeps wanting his pals to call him “Maverick.” The cars are traveling 130-150 miles per hour, driving on both sides of the street and through intersections. I’m no racing expert, but it all looked scarily real to me—which is what you’d expect when the director is a former stuntman.   More

DIVERGENT (Blu-ray combo)

August 2, 2014

James Plath, Family Home Theater Action-Adventure, Drama, PG-13 rated, Sci-Fi/Fantasy Leave a comment

DivergentcoverGrade:  B
Entire family: No
2014, 139 min., Color
Rated PG-13 for intense violence and action, thematic elements and some sensuality
Summit Entertainment
Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
Featured audio: English DTS-HD MA 7.1
Includes: Blu-ray, DVD, Digital HD Copy
Bonus features: C+
Trailer

These days, the money seems to be in young adult novels—especially if they’re made into movies. I suppose you could say J.K. Rowling started the trend with a Harry Potter series that began in 1997, and then in 2003 Stephenie Meyer hit pay dirt with the first of her Twilight vampire-werewolf romance novels. The next big score came from Suzanne Collins, whose futuristic Hunger Games novels first emerged in 2008. Now to film comes Divergent, based on a popular young adult trilogy from Veronica Roth that began in 2011 with Divergent, followed by Insurgent (2012), and Allegiant (2013).

In our family of four, my daughter is the target audience for all of these books, while my wife reads them with her. They’re fans of the films as well, and they thought, as I did, that the film version of Divergent is pretty comparable to the The Hunger Games, only instead of Jennifer Lawrence as an archer playing a futuristic survival game in the world’s largest arena we get Shailene Woodley as a free running initiate into a faction of a futuristic society that’s charged with the task of protecting it from outside—and inside—dangers.   More

THE OTHER WOMAN (Blu-ray)

July 30, 2014

James Plath, Family Home Theater Comedy, PG-13 rated Leave a comment

OtherWomancoverGrade: B
Entire family: No (not for younger children)
2014, 109 min., Color
Rated PG-13 for mature thematic material, sexual references, and language
20th Century Fox
Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
Featured audio: English DTS-HD MA 5.1
Includes: Blu-ray, Digital HD Copy
Bonus features: D
Trailer

Rare is the sex comedy that lives up to its PG-13 rating. Most of them push those boundaries like a teen testing curfew. But The Other Woman is pretty accurately PG-13 rated, with the most questionable scene coming conveniently in the opening, when concerned parents can tell their ‘tweens to make themselves a snack. But even that scene doesn’t show anything. There’s no nudity, only sexual references, and they’re all comic. And the language is tame compared to most PG-13 movies these days.

First-time screenwriter Melissa Stack and director Nick Cassavetes (The Notebook) offer a variation of the 1980 light comedy Nine to Five, in which three women got revenge on their lying, cheating, sexist pig of a boss—only now, rather than being co-workers, the women are strangers to each other who have unknowingly slept with the same man. The filmmakers also cast by two established actresses—Cameron Diaz and Leslie Mann—alongside a relative newcomer who’s better known for a different field of entertainment. In this case it’s model Kate Upton, who graced the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue for the past two years.

Though Nine to Five played out as an ensemble film, The Other Woman is totally taken over by Mann, who swipes every scene with her hilariously sympathetic portrayal of a needy, ditzy, and slightly manic wife who’s surprised one day at her front door by someone who turns out to be “the other woman” (Diaz), dressed as a naughty plumber and asking for her husband by name. That he’s having an affair is nearly as shocking to her as it is for lawyer Kate to discover he’s married.   More

NOAH (Blu-ray combo)

July 8, 2014

James Plath, Family Home Theater Action-Adventure, PG-13 rated Leave a comment

NoahcoverGrade: C-
Entire family: No
2014, 138 min., Color
Rated PG-13 for violence, disturbing images and brief suggestive content
Paramount
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1, “enhanced” for 16×9 monitors
Featured audio: DTS-HD MA 7.1
Includes: Blu-ray, DVD, UV
Bonus features: B-
Trailer

Darren Aronofsky’s Noah has sparked all kinds of criticism for it’s looser-than-loose interpretation of the story of The Flood that’s recounted in The Bible. The film was banned in China on religious grounds, condemned by Muslims for the way it treats prophets, and branded by the official Vatican newspaper as a “strange” and “perplexing” movie that adds up to a “missed opportunity.” Christian audiences have generally decried its inexplicable departure from the traditional Bible story.

But let’s be fair. There are a number of perplexities in The Bible, none of which have anything to do with Darren Aronofsky (The Black Swan). Adam and Eve are supposed to be the mother and father of all humanity, but the Book of Genesis tells us that they begat Cain and Abel—no daughters. And when Cain is confronted by God after murdering his brother he worries that he will become a fugitive and that whoever finds him will slay him—which implies that people exist apart from Adam’s lineage. Later we’re told that Cain “knew” his wife and begat children of his own. Where she came from is not specified.

As for Noah, The Bible says he was 500 years old when he became the father of three sons, and 600 when God commanded him to build an ark and take into it his sons, their wives, and two of all the beasts of the air and ground. There was no mention of fantastic mud-and-rock creatures called “Watchers” helping him to build this massive boat, as we see in Noah.

When it comes to Hollywood, I don’t expect film adaptations to be exact. I didn’t, for example, mind that the land Noah traverses looked more like a desolate apocalyptic wasteland than the arid, olive tree-filled Holy Land we typically see. But I do expect filmmakers to operate in the general vicinity of truthfulness or reality. Infusing Noah’s story, however fictional or true you believe it to be, with the kind of rock creatures we saw in GalaxyQuest is like trying to tell the story of Geronimo with an E.T.-like alien turning up in the Apache desert to offer his assistance. It’s too over-the-top and, because it stands in such sharp contrast to the biblical account and the kind of God-talk that Aronofsky includes, it’s also more than a little hokey.    More

CROCODILE DUNDEE / CROCODILE DUNDEE 2 (Blu-ray)

May 2, 2014

James Plath, Family Home Theater Action-Adventure, Comedy, PG-13 rated 1 Comment

CrocodileDundeecoverGrade: B, C+
Entire family: No
1986, 1988; 97 min., 111 min,; Color
Paramount
PG-13 for adult situations, mild language, violence; PG for violence, language
Aspect ratio: 2.40:1 widescreen
Featured audio: DTS-HD MA 2.0, DTS-HD MA 5.1
Bonus features: N/A, D
Trailer / trailer

The ‘80s were big on a lot of things—like big hair, big shoulder pads, and big techno beats driving the music. In Hollywood, filmmakers were big on fish-out-of-water stories. You saw Eddie Murphy as a streetwise cop who shakes Beverly Hills up while on vacation, and Arnold Schwarzenegger as a cop out of his element as a kindergarten teacher, working undercover to catch a bad guy. But the most surprising fish-out-of-water—make that croc-out-of-water—success story was a 1986 Australian comedy-adventure starring Paul Hogan as Crocodile Dundee. The relatively low-budget film became the second highest grossing movie in the U.S. that year, and also worldwide.

The likable Hogan co-wrote the screenplay and starred as Mick Dundee, an outback guide who draws the attention of a New York journalist on assignment in Sydney. Dressed to the nines in ‘80s style, she heads for the outback to see where this Dundee fellow was when he was attacked by a monster crocodile, but managed to drag himself out of the bush to seek medical help. So the two of them have a little outback adventure all their own as she tries to get him to retrace his steps for her magazine story. Predictably, this Jane starts to fall for her rugged Tarzan, who doesn’t skip a beat in conversation as he picks up a snake near their campfire, breaks its neck, and tosses it aside. There’s mild violence here that’s mostly played for laughs, but there is one moment of peril Sue has with a crocodile that will briefly scare younger children.  More

DELIVERY MAN (Blu-ray)

March 30, 2014

James Plath, Family Home Theater Comedy, PG-13 rated Leave a comment

DeliveryMancoverGrade: B-/C+
Entire family: No
2013, 105 min., Color
DreamWorks/Touchstone
Rated PG-13 for thematic elements, sexual content, some drug material, brief violence and language
Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
Featured audio: DTS-HD MA 5.1
Bonus features: C
Trailer

Now is a good time to remind readers that this site is devoted to TV shows and films that are rated PG-13, PG, or G—and amazingly, this Vince Vaughn comedy qualifies.

You’d expect a film about an underachiever who learns that some 600 “donations” he made to a sperm bank 20 years ago produced 533 children, 142 of which have filed a class-action lawsuit to learn his identity, would go the direction of R-rated raunchy comedies. But with Delivery Man, writer-director Ken Scott gives us a surprisingly sweet PG-13 film that has some language, some drug content, and brief violence, with Vaughn playing a nice guy with a darned good reason for doing what he did 20 years ago.

If you have children in sixth grade or older who aren’t being home schooled, I hate to say it but they’re already familiar with how babies are made, and they know what sperm is. What’s more, they probably won’t even ask about the “banking” aspect, because this isn’t the kind of movie that’s driven by logic. Heck, the premise itself is beyond belief, just as it’s hard to swallow that our hapless hero would be dogged by loan sharks in the first act and then ignored for basically the rest of the movie, or that this man who works as a meat truck deliveryman for the family business could just take off work every day to try to find out more about the children he’s fathered.  More

SAVING MR. BANKS (Blu-ray)

March 14, 2014

James Plath, Family Home Theater Comedy, Drama, PG-13 rated 1 Comment

SavingMrBankscoverGrade:  A-
Entire family:  Possibly
2013, 125 min., Color
Disney
Rated PG-13 for thematic elements, including some unsettling images
Aspect ratio:  2.40:1
Featured audio:  DTS-HD MA 5.1
Includes: Blu-ray, DigitalHD Copy
Bonus features: C-
Trailer

Ever since Old Yeller, parents have had to decide where to draw the line with live-action Disney movies—and that line gets a little blurry with Saving Mr. Banks, the 2013 behind-the-scenes story of what it took for Disney to fulfill a 20-year promise he made to his daughter.

On the one hand, Saving Mr. Banks is a bittersweet tale of how the Disney bunch finally managed to wear down the dour and stodgy P.L. Travers and convince her to assign them the film rights to her Mary Poppins books.

Mark Twain famously said, “Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please,” and that’s exactly what screenwriters Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith have done. But if you like Disney’s live-action/animated musical Mary Poppins, odds are you’ll enjoy seeing the curtain parted to show Disney and his writing and songwriting team wooing Travers. There’s plenty of humor and warmth in these sections, which are set in 1964 mostly in and around the Disney studio—a setting that’s almost as magical and fun to see as the movies and theme parks. But the story behind the story is . . . well, another story.  More

THOR: THE DARK WORLD (Blu-ray)

February 8, 2014

James Plath, Family Home Theater Action-Adventure, PG-13 rated, Sci-Fi/Fantasy Leave a comment

ThorDarkWorldcoverGrade:  B+
Entire family:  No
2013, 112 min., Color
Rated PG-13
Disney
Aspect ratio:  2.40:1
Featured audio:  DTS-HD MA 7.1
Bonus features: C+
Trailer

Thor: The Dark World is rated PG-13 for “sequences of intense sci-fi action and violence and some suggestive content.” I don’t know what suggestive content they’re suggesting, but this 2013 sequel is definitely more violent than the first Thor. Main characters die and there are plenty of first-act hack-and-slash battle sequences similar to ones from the Lord of the Rings trilogy, while spaceship battle action will remind you a bit of those in Star Wars: Episode I. Which is to say, Thor: The Dark World seems to owe a substantial debt for its production design, art direction, set decoration, costume design, and battle sequences and effects to those two fantasy franchises.

But I will say this:  at least the special effects and borrowed elements are quite good, and both my teenage son and I thought Thor: The Dark World superior to the 2011 original. There’s more action this time around, and less deliberate manipulation of the Marvel universe. The result is a film that flows better and gives the characters a little more room to be themselves. Despite the frenetic movement and pacing, we actually notice the performances more—and though minor characters and elves tend toward the wooden, the rest are more than good enough to sustain the illusion.    More

CAPTAIN PHILLIPS (DVD)

January 12, 2014

James Plath, Family Home Theater Action-Adventure, PG-13 rated, Thriller Leave a comment

CaptainPhillipscoverGrade:  A-
Entire family:  No
2013, 134 min., Color
Rated PG-13 for sustained intense sequences of menace, some violence with bloody images, and substance abuse
Columbia/Sony
Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
Featured audio: Dolby Digital 5.1
Bonus features: C+
Trailer

Family Home Theater has the tagline “stuff your kids can see,” and to that end I review films that are rated PG-13 or under. Not all PG-13 films are candidates for family viewing, and Captain Phillips is borderline. I’d say that children have to be at LEAST 13 to watch this taut thriller about a small band of Somali pirates who, in 2009, became the first to hijack a U.S. ship in 200 years. The nature of the film will make it more appealing to teenage boys than to teenage girls.

For all but 10 minutes, Captain Phillips plays like a thriller in the tradition of such siege pictures as Air Force One and Panic Room. For all but 10 minutes, menace, not violence, creates a tension that holds you in its grip until the final outcome. But there are, in fact, a few brief bloody moments, and the fact that the film is based on a true story makes those moments seem more intense. So does an ending that changes the whole feel of the film and appears largely designed to give Tom Hanks an Oscar moment by pushing his emotional range.

After a slow and contrived opening sequence that shows Phillips with his wife before she drops him off at the airport, where he’ll fly to Oman to take command of the container freighter Maersk Alabama and guide it through pirate waters off the Somali coast, the narrative almost shapes itself once Phillips gets onboard. You may have heard that crew members objected to the film because, in their words, Phillips “wasn’t that brave,” but this is Hollywood and one expects a degree of exaggeration in order to craft a more effective and powerful film.   More

Older Entries Newer Entries