Okay, this had to be the one, didn’t it? I mean, come on–two consecutive good reviews in a row? For Tyler Perry titles? Surely this is the one! This is the one where, if it were a used car, the wheels fly off and the undercarriage starts throwing sparks and the radio starts screaming insults at me. It’s Meet The Browns Season Three, and the folks at Lions Gate sent out a copy for me to review. Time to see if the Broken Clock Principle swings both ways!

Once again, Meet The Browns takes us back out to Brown Meadows and the various Browns–and not so Browns–that have come to make up the highly unconventional Brown family. And there’s plenty of change going on at the Brown house, in pretty much every sense of the term. A lot of things are going on out there; people are leaving, some new ones are arriving, and the ones who stick around are somewhat different than they were.

And indeed, this is the series where things start going wrong. See, Tyler Perry makes the horrendous mistake of making Meet The Browns a bit more like House of Payne. In a surprisingly large number of instances, events that are clearly not at all funny are thrown in–someone gets assaulted, the Browns’ quasi-adopted daughter (who will later become adopted) is on birth control and likely sleeping around, and then there’s the worst of the lot where the younger Browns actually threaten their quasi-adopted daughter with a RETURN TO FOSTER CARE if she doesn’t improve her attitude.  They threaten to, essentially, THROW THEIR OWN KID AWAY if she doesn’t do as she’s told. That’s not funny. That’s disturbing.

But then, then Meet The Browns manages to recover by going back to its true strength, the thoroughly irrepressible antics of David Mann, surprisingly top-notch comic actor. Mann throws himself into his comedy, throwing up both the comedy of dialogue (the man commits more Spoonerisms than possibly even Spooner himself) and some great physical comedy on the side. The man is excellent, and he’s backed up by some surprisingly good writing.

And after a few false starts, you’ll find much of the rest of Meet The Browns surprisingly palatable. A little too much Tyler Perry drama gets into this for my tastes, but there’s still plenty of fine Meet The Browns comedy. I’m hopeful that future seasons of Meet The Browns will understand what works and what doesn’t, but this one is starting to show some cracks.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Meet The Browns Season Three a seven out of ten–a little too much Tyler Perry drama gets infused in this one, but a good chunk of the earlier-season laughs still manages to slip through and provide a good time.

Something big for you today, folks, as the crew out at Anchor Bay sent over a copy of Our Idiot Brother for us to review. And this one’s going to be a lot stranger–yet also a lot more engaging–than you might think.

Our Idiot Brother follows a family of four, three sisters whose lives may look pretty good but have some interesting issues scattered throughout and a brother who’s got possibly just a bit too much trust in humanity. While the sisters have industriously built their lives, their brother went into organic farming. And his organic farm covers a whole lot more than impressive strawberries and the best rhubarb in town, as he discovers when he gets locked up. His girlfriend–yes, he has a girlfriend–has thrown him off the farm, and with nowhere left to go, he turns to his sisters. But their brothers’ uncompromising honesty and faith in humanity–even in the strangest parts–will shake up their world beyond all their expectations.

It’s hard to call a movie heartwarming without it sounding like some giant sad cliche, but Our Idiot Brother does an excellent job of doing just that. See, this one focuses on what happens when a big part of your life is suddenly changed, and that changes the whole picture. And that’s how it works for the whole family: Ned loses the farm, his only real stability, and the family gains the biggest destabilizing influence of all, a man who has virtually no stability. This ends up changing everything, and the process of changing manages to make them all substantially better. You’d think that would be a big cliche, and I suppose it is on some level, but there are plenty of laughs thrown in for added variety and substance. Paul Rudd dancing to Willie Nelson’s Midnight Rider is inherently wild, and it gets better from there as their brother’s unusual philosophy interacts on all their lives.

Plain and simple, Our Idiot Brother is surprisingly fun to watch, especially for a movie that’s basically about people’s lives changing. This is going to be a shot of drama that will go down very smooth, thanks to the laughs mixed in.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Our Idiot Brother a very sharp eight out of ten. It’s hard to find drama that doesn’t choke you under the weight of its own self-importance, and Our Idiot Brother takes a path that you’re certainly going enjoy.

This week’s multi-review comes our way from the folks out at Lions Gate, who sent out a variety of impressive titles for us to tackle, and we’ll be looking at a real mixed bag of them today with Blood Out, Pros And Ex-Cons, and Rabbit Hole.

We kick things off with Rabbit Hole, a movie that introduces us to Becca and Howie, a young couple who kicked off life together in the grandest of fashions, together, along with their young son only eight months prior. But fast forward to eight months later and we see how much life can change in even the shortest of times. But will the loss that Becca and Howie find themselves forced to endure break their life apart again and provide them with a whole new loss, each other?

Considering that this is based on a stage play, you probably have a pretty good idea of what we’re in for here, a downer on an absolutely epic scale that some people will take the opportunity to call “powerful” or “moving” but for the most part just means is the opportunity to feel really, really depressed for ninety minutes or so. And, just as a bonus, it will feel much, much longer. That’s not to say the whole thing is bad, of course–it’s got some really nice moments in here that should make you smile–but for the most part we’re watching a movie about a couple whose kid has recently died and they’re moving apart as a result. It hangs over everything, and though this is, for the most part, the point, it still doesn’t exactly make for light-hearted entertaining fare.  Good, but not good if you’re looking for a happy, fun experience.

Next up is Pros And Ex-Cons, and now we join a pair of the titular ex-cons who’ve joined up with a crime boss who has a mysterious project in mind for them. They finish the job nicely, but discover that the job didn’t go as smoothly as they’d thought when they took it on. Now they’ve got to undertake a much more dangerous project in order to correct the first before it’s too late. And moreover, they’re going to be in the middle of a whole lot of other affairs as well.

I know I’m being a little bit cryptic about this one, and with good reason. If I go too far into it and tell you about the projects in question, I’ll actually give away large parts of the movie. And on the surface, you might think this sounds like one of those great English crime dramas like Layer Cake, Snatch, or Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Indeed, that’s just what’s going on here. It’s actually quite fun in a few parts, very much Ocean’s 11 style as done by complete incompetents.  If you like your crime dramas with a little bit of comedy involved, then you’ll be very happy with Pros And Ex-Cons.

Lastly, we’ve got Blood Out, a movie that gives us a man who loses his brother to gang violence far too soon in life. And now, a small town sheriff is the only thing that can get justice for the murder when the big city police refuse to step in and do the job. But the further in the sheriff gets, the more he discovers that things were never really as they seemed.

Admittedly, the biggest red flag in this one is the appearance of Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, which has never exactly been a bell-ringer as far as quality filmmaking goes. But still, the end result isn’t too bad. It’s very much an action title, but without the comic edge that we got from Pros And Ex-Cons. Straightforward and predictable were the watchwords for this one, but still, it’s reasonably likeable. It’s got something of the Walking Tall vibe in it, though without the fun that one put up thanks to the unusual styling that The Rock brought along in the role of county sheriff. Blood Out takes itself substantially more seriously than it probably should, and this is to its detriment, but the end result is still of fairly good quality.

And there you have it, another three choice titles from Lions Gate to make up our weekly multi-review. Some better than others, of course, but no matter what your taste there was likely something in here for you today.

The folks out at Image Entertainment shipped us  out a copy of Money Matters to cover, and if you thought yesterday’s entrant, The Littlest Angel, was heavy handed, then brace yourself for a fist made of iron with this one. It only just hit shelves today, but chances are there won’t be a whole lot of interest going on unless you already enjoy this kind of thing.

Money Matters follows the title character–yes, it’s about a girl named Monique “Money” Matters–who finds herself neck deep in a whole lot of very urban problems. Her mother’s trying to keep a roof over their head, which isn’t easy since she often finds herself living with a series of less than sterling men, and daughter Money is having plenty of girl-growing-up problems of her own in the midst of a Catholic school that is often less than supportive. But as mother and daughter struggle toward their own ends, never really knowing just how similar said ends are. But when Money ends up meeting a new girl that offers up a surprisingly friendly posture, that friendship will push a few boundaries in its own right. How will it all end up? Well, you’ll find out.

This is the kind of movie that made Don’t Be A Menace To South Central While Drinking Your Juice In The Hood possible in the first place, a movie so thick with lessons and morals that it might as well have some guy come by the camera, look into it, and shout “Message!” every time they try to make a point. The only problem with that approach, however, would be that by the end of the movie the poor schmoe assigned to the role would keel over from exhaustion, because he’d be shouting every couple of minutes.

Money Matters is thicker than hip-deep caramel and moves just about as fast. It’s dull, pompous and spectacularly preachy. It’s clearly trying to be a powerful independent movie, and that is, in a nutshell, Money Matters’ biggest problem. It’s trying, it’s clearly trying, it’s trying so hard that it’s next to impossible to take it seriously because it’s so busy taking itself seriously that there’s no room for anyone else. Even better, it’ll be another one of those movies where pretty much every guy–from the drug dealing boyfriend to the rapist ex-boyfriend to the child-molesting Catholic priest–is a complete waste of skin who exists for no other reason than to give Money and her mother yet another Challenge to Overcome. It’s every inch as bad as Tyler Perry, but almost worse for its clear lack of a shooting budget.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Money Matters a three out of ten for trying way too hard and taking itself way too seriously. Being “indie” is not an excuse for building a half-decent narrative and making a story more than a handful of people want to hear about.

The folks out at Image Entertainment sent out a copy of A Little Help for us to cover, and while you won’t be able to get your hands on this one until sometime after Tuesday, if you’re a Jenna Fischer fan from her tenure over at Donder-Mifflin, well, you’ll definitely want a piece of this.

A Little Help follows a family that’s got plenty of issues, including an overworked dental hygienist with an overbearing family, a husband who’s got a few secrets of his own, a son who’s steadily growing more distant from her, and a life that’s in general so woefully unpleasant that she’s taken to slamming Budweisers and smoking frequently (even though she said she’d quit some time previously). But life is about to get seriously shaken up for her, when her husband unexpectedly dies. And that’s going to kick off a whole pack of new and strange horrors for her, and she’s going to have to pick up the pieces as best she can, which is surprisingly well.

You could probably tell, right when I said “family with plenty of issues”, what kind of movie this was going to be. And yes, for the most part–at least for the first half–it is indeed one of those kinds of movies. It’s a very well-trod path, the path that A Little Help takes on. They did try, and I give them all the credit in the world for trying, to interject some humor in here, and it does succeed on a few levels and more than a few instances, but sometimes the humor just seems wildly out of place.  It’s a bit uncomfortable in a lot of places, and probably more of a “chick flick” than anything else. Worse, by the time you get to the halfway mark, you begin to figure where most of the family’s problems come from, and they can all be traced to pretty much one key focal point. Frankly, entirely too large portions of A Little Help spend far too much time being depressing to be all that interesting. There is something that improves, though, when you get toward the end as people start realizing just how life actually should be, and it provides a bit of comeuppance to said problem, but still.

But still, if you’re looking for a lot of drama in your movies, and you don’t mind feeling bad about it, Image Entertainment’s latest presentation should be just what you want.

The Screenhead Ten Scale, meanwhile, gives A Little Help a six out of ten–there’s plenty of drama, a few good laughs, and way, way too much of a downer to really be enjoyed by people who like their movies to be at least somewhat happy.

The folks out at Anchor Bay sent us a copy of Beautiful Boy for us to review, and this one, you won’t be able to get hands on until tomorrow. But rest assured, for those of you who like a good drama but don’t particularly care if it makes you feel bad the entire time you watch it, well, you’ll do pretty nicely here indeed.

Beautiful Boy follows a married couple who’s been pretty much estranged for years, except for the child they had together. But when said child embarks on a mass shooting at the college he attends before killing himself, the couple suddenly finds themselves thrust together much more than they had been in recent years, and though no one’s sure just how it will all turn out, it’s going to be a long, strange trip the two had never wanted to take, though the trip may well leave them much better off than they expected.

The end result of the whole thing is, frankly, a massive downer, especially in the early going. The family is clearly fragmenting, the kid’s clearly buckling, and then, oh, by the way, junior ran amok with a gun and left a pile of corpses in his wake, this is not the kind of movie you want to watch if you’re having a bad day and you want to cheer up. This is actually the kind of movie you probably want to watch if you’ve been thinking, jeepers, I’ve been entirely too happy lately and it’s about time I was just miserable for an hour and forty minutes.

In fact, the whole thing actually manages to get worse following the announcement as the estranged couple is now living down the death of their son and are largely unable to comfort each other because they barely know who they are any more. Mom spends half her time on her son’s bed while Dad’s off sobbing in the shower before work. Long stretches will go by in silence, making the whole thing even more gut-wrenching than the subject matter would imply. Then we discover that Junior’s got a manifesto, and things get even more depressing from there, up to where husband and wife are passing around press statements and not saying anything.

By the time I got done watching Beautiful Boy I wanted to call my own parents and apologize. I wasn’t sure for what, exactly, but all I knew was I felt like apologizing. This was easily one of the most depressing movies I’d seen in months, possibly ever, and frankly, I regret watching it. It’s not that it was a bad movie, or a particularly poorly-done movie, it’s just that the content was so plainly, oppressively depressing that watching it was an ordeal better reserved for circles of Hell itself.

If you want to feel bad watching a movie, then Beautiful Boy was made just for you. It’s a very well put together film, it’s just such a disaster to watch that it’s hard to recommend. Thus, the Screenhead Ten Scale splits the difference and gives Beautiful Boy, a very well put together device that will gouge out your soul while you watch it, a six out of ten because, as good as it is, it’s still a lot like the Breakfast Machine from Family Guy. It doesn’t make breakfast at all…it just shoots you in the arm. And that’s what watching Beautiful Boy is like, a giant, impressive piece of work that just shoots you in the arm.

When you watch most BBC videos, at least the ones we’ve covered here so far, there’s often a little blurb before the presentation starts, talking about the various content offered. And one of the things they describe is the British capacity for drama. When you take a class-ridden society that represses its emotions on a regular basis, or something like that, you have the capability to produce said drama. And that’s kind of what you’ll get with Reggie Perrin. And the folks out at Acorn Media sent out a copy of Reggie Perrin set one for us to review, and the end result is terrific drama couched in a surprisingly delightful comedy.

Reggie Perrin follows the title character, Reggie Perrin, the head of a disposable razors division that’s seen better days. Work is getting downright absurd, he’s getting bored at home, and his entire world is getting more absurd and alienating every single day. But Reggie has two things that keeps him sane: his fantasy life, which is unsettlingly active, and his aggressively tactless nature. He’s resolved to live a little more on impulse, but will this cause more trouble than it solves?

Reggie Perrin is actually a spectacularly funny affair. In the first episode alone I think I laughed half a dozen times, and in a half-hour sitcom, that’s not normal. And in fact, it’s a delightful change. What impresses me about this, though, is how often the parts of Reggie Perrin prove to be the same from episode to episode, but with slight changes between them. For instance, there’s the Late For Work Excuse section, and the Late Coming Home Excuse section. At one point, Reggie’s regular commuter train is delayed, and the reason? “Whatever.” Really, “whatever”. That was the reason. And I just laughed like crazy.

Reggie’s fantasy life, meanwhile, has a strange way of getting him in trouble and saving him from it, which always leaves you wondering just what’s going to happen to him next. Yet, on a certain level, you often know what will happen next. And it usually winds up being hilarious.

This is one of the better sitcoms out there, and frankly, I’m almost ashamed to see the Brits beat us to it. But they have Martin Clunes, who is his era’s Kelsey Grammer, so we can hardly be blamed for losing out on this one.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Reggie Perrin Set One an eight out of ten. It’s uproarious, delightful stuff that may not be for everyone, but should be at least worth a look for most anybody.

The folks out at Lions Gate sent over a copy of Boy Meets World The Complete Sixth Season, and this one is going to be much the same as previous seasons, though that’s not the insult you might think it was. If you liked the previous seasons, you should get a real charge out of this one.

Boy Meets World The Complete Sixth Season kicks off where the fifth season previously left off, with Cory’s parents looking to have a baby, Feeny looking at retirement, Cory and Topanga looking at college…and more besides, and so on from there. Now it’ll be a whole new set of adjustments as the gang heads off to college and gets into a whole new set of dramatic issues.

Okay, admittedly, believability is shot all to hell and gone in this season. High school kids getting married, idiots taking college classes, a high school teacher getting promoted to principal then retiring to take a job at the college where his most recent graduating class happens to be…none of this makes sense. Eric, meanwhile, has gone even further off the rails than even I had thought possible. He is now so far from the rails that he no longer qualifies as a train, but rather, some kind of hovercraft.

And worse, it’s heavier on the drama than the earlier seasons. Frankly, if the drama keeps up at this pace, we’re going to be bursting at the seams with the stuff. It’s really got me wondering just what the seventh season will look like, and frankly, I don’t remember the seventh season from when it was on television. The comedy has gotten thicker too, almost disturbingly so. I’ve seen horror movies featuring insane asylums that have this kind of strange comedy to them. It’s almost hysteria.

Thick drama, thick comedy, man…this season is downright thick. And there’s almost even proportions here, so whether you’re here for the drama or you’re here for the comedy, you’re going to come away reasonably satisfied with the end result here. Of course, those here for the drama will likely be put off by the comedy, and vice versa, of course, but if you can be sufficiently satisfied with the reason you came, then this drama / comedy chimera will be welcome for you no matter what.

The Screenhead Ten Scale, in turn, gives Boy Meets World The Complete Sixth Season a seven out of ten. It’s weirder than normal, and the drama and comedy have been polarized to an almost disturbing degree, but whatever you came here for is likely going to be well received.

It’s not every day we get a crack at historical drama around here, and so, I was definitely glad when Lions Gate sent out a copy of The Conspirator for me to review. After all, this was something we didn’t see every day, but how would it turn out?

The Conspirator takes us to the closing days of the American Civil War, with the Union winning and the Confederacy about to close up shop. And of course, it’s inevitable that John Wilkes Booth should stage his assassination of Abraham Lincoln. But that’s not who we’re dealing with here; no, we’re dealing with the lesser-known names, the names who went to trial as accessories, as conspirators, in the death of a president. The trial surrounding said conspirators was, if you believe The Conspirator, a deck so spectacularly stacked as to be mindboggling. But since history already shows what happened, the ultimate ending won’t be much of a surprise.

Admittedly, this is a little bit of a farce. Anyone with three minutes and Wikipedia handy will know exactly what happened to these people, and that wouldn’t take two hours to run through, as The Conspirator does. But the appeal of The Conspirator is not in its plot, but rather, in its execution. Accomplished actors (Kevin Kline, Colm Meaney, Stephen Root, and a host of others) backed up by a script that’s only slightly familiar.

It’s a little heavy-handed at times, so much so that it’s a wonder they didn’t have director Robert Redford walk in front of the camera at random intervals and scream “THIS TRIAL WAS AN UTTER TRAVESTY!” and then walk off. Frankly, they might as well have for all the subtlety they exhibited in this one. But still, for all the sheer and crashing lack of subtlety in The Conspirator, it’s still a well done, and well put together, piece of work that’s well worth watching for any history buff out there, or anyone who appreciates a good and extremely authentic period drama.

The Conspirator is not for everyone, but for those who enjoy this specific class of film, they will find a masterfully done piece of work, even if it’s decidedly lacking in subtlety.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives The Conspirator an eight out of ten for doing a great job, if doing it a little too enthusiastically for its own good at times. It’s a good old fashioned piece of historical drama, and you should enjoy it.

You’ve seen our giveaway of Winter In Wartime thanks to my able cohort Kenna, and now, we’re going to tackle it right here for a review. The folks out at Sony sent me a copy to cover too, and now, we’re going to check it out right here.

Winter In Wartime takes us to a snow-covered village in the midst of Nazi-occupied Holland in 1945. Specifically, to a thirteen year old boy named Michiel in said Nazi-occupied Holland, who has found himself only somewhat willingly dragooned into the resistance after aiding a downed British paratrooper. Michiel finds himself in a much more dangerous world than he ever imagined possible, and is desperate to find who he can trust, and who won’t turn him in to the Nazis, themselves progressively more desperate as Hitler’s two-front war finds itself collapsing on either side.

It’s an interesting concept, but fair warning: this movie is shot mainly in Dutch, with optional French audio, and the only bone Anglophiles will get is subtitles in English and some dialogue that isn’t subtitled for some reason. So, know this going in in case you’re put off by subtitles. Me, I prefer them, even in English-language film, so I can always be sure of the dialogue, which is why I was deeply saddened to see that the actual English language dialogue for some reason didn’t get a lick of subtitling.

You might wonder about a movie like this; foreign language film has a not-altogether unearned reputation for being dull and inaccessible, but at the same time, you know many World War II movies have proven exciting. This one will be somewhat in the middle, a mix of inaccessible and exciting. It’s a strange mix, no mistake–call this an action-drama hybrid, which is always a strange animal in its own right–and will spend more than a bit of time talking while throwing in some interesting twists and thrills from time to time.

The end result is surprisingly watchable, and not so much as a hint of the ending is given away in advance. You’ll have a pretty good time here, especially if you like World War II fare and don’t mind a shortage of action in favor of more drama.

The Screenhead Ten Scale, meanwhile, gives Winter In Wartime a somewhat surprised eight out of ten–it’s a little short on action, but makes that up with a surfeit of drama and suspense. All things considered, it’s a very welcome title that does a nice job.