Home Media Magazine - September 2-8, 2007 - (Page 36) REVIEWS I HAM & CHEESE Street 9/18 Cinequest, Comedy, $24.99 DVD, NR. Stars Mike Beaver, Jason Jones, Jennifer Baxter, Samantha Bee, Scott Thompson, Dave Foley. www.homemediamagazine.com or anyone who is an actor, an aspiring actor or simply interested in the world of professional acting, Ham & Cheese is an absolute must-see. Employing low-key, understated Canadian humor and a dead-pan zaniness similar to the Christopher Guest mockumentaries Waiting for Guffman and Best in Show, Ham & Cheese is a genuinely side-splitting exercise in comedy that might cure even the most dedicated would-be thespians of any notions of pursuing a career in show business. F Co-writers Beaver and Jones star as two guys who want nothing more than to become successful actors, and they will stop at nothing to hold onto their particularly unrealistic dreams. Becoming a successful actor is hard enough, but attempting to do so with absolutely no talent is really asking for a slap in the face from Mr. Hard Facts. Taking a semi-documentary approach to following the plight of the two characters — Richard Wolanski, a pitiful, overweight manchild, and Barry Goodson (Jones), who is married, gainfully employed, cocky and every bit as delusional and untalented as Richard. The film traces their various paths around the idea of “making it” without ever getting there. Barry has a terminally ill agent who has been trying to get him jobs since he was a teenager. Richard has a sadistic, narcissistic acting teacher (“Kids in the Hall” alumnus Foley in a hilarious performance). Highlights of the film include Barry’s stint as an officer on a cop show and Richard’s oneman adaptation of “Happy Days.” Really, the whole film is just one funny bit after another, although it is hard to ignore the genuine pathos of these truly pathetic characters, and there is enough gravitas in the real lives of these guys to fill several dramas. — David Greenberg I DO OR DIE Street 9/11 BFS, Drama, $24.98 DVD, NR. Stars Tom Long, Kate Ashfield, Hugo Speer. o or Die, its title getting straight to the point, is not for the easily rattled. The thrill-a-minute Aussie drama is a whirlwind action piece, comparable in style to such outings as Run Lola Run. Kate Ashfield plays a British doctor whose young son is suffering from leukemia. He needs a bone-marrow transplant, but there’s a problem when her husband volun- D teers his own: He’s not the real father, a fact previously unknown to him. Instead, the real father is a cunning Australian criminal with whom the mother had a vacation fling long ago, before she met her current husband. She needs the con to save her son, but big complications ensue when the guy escapes prison at just about the same time. The two end up on the run together, chased by an obsessed detective with an agenda of his own. That chase and the accompanying danger make up the bulk of the action in Do or Die, and that action is relentless, interrupted by the occasional spirited, if overwrought, dramatic monologue. So it’s a sociopath on the run, an obsessed cop chasing him, a desperate mother struggling to save her child and her emotionally wrecked husband tending to the boy back home. Do or Die starts out big and stays that way, with frenetic camera movements, car chases and non-stop danger, rarely slowing down. Even if it lacks the minimalist craft that makes something like Run Lola Run so compelling, its eager action sequences keep things intense. — Dan Bennett I TARA ROAD Street 10/9 First Look, Drama, $26.98 DVD, NR. Stars Andie MacDowell, Olivia Williams, Stephen Rea, Brenda Fricker, Iain Glen, Jean-Marc Barr. ased on the best-selling novel by Maeve Binchy (who appears briefly in the film as a restaurant patron), Tara Road is the story of two women. They each have reached a terrible crossroads in life and escape from their respective sad B 36 realities by switching houses. MacDowell is Marilyn, bereft because she watched as her 15-year-old son was killed in a motorbike accident. She finds that she is unable to recover from the loss, and through a series of coincidences, she agrees to trade her Los Angeles home with a woman in Ireland whose husband has announced his intention to leave her and marry is pregnant girlfriend. Each woman, while ensconced in the other’s home, is able to untangle some of the messy details of the other’s life. At the same time, each begins to mend her own broken heart. Both MacDowell and, especially, Williams are very good as women trying to endure the unendurable. Rea exudes a subtle sexiness as a local Irish innkeeper. Glen is Danny, the Home Media Magazine September 2–8, 2007 http://www.homemediamagazine.com
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