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Category:    Home > Reviews > Drama > Sports > Family > Romance > Writing > Morality > The Last Fall (2012/Image DVD)/The Words (2012/CBS/Sony DVD)

The Last Fall (2012/Image DVD)/The Words (2012/CBS/Sony DVD)

 

Picture: C+/C     Sound: C+     Extras: D/C     Main Programs: C+/C

 

 

Two new drams come up a little short, but have their moments.

 

 

Matthew A. Cherry’s The Last Fall (2012) is actually the better of the two with football player Kyle (Lance Gross) finding himself not being able to play anymore due to politics and age (25 already!?!) so he needs to find a new place in life with nothing immediately to fall back on.  He has some friends and some family, but limited opportunities and starts a romance.  However, it is his relationship with his parents that are not helping with his father in the hospital and mother a mixed affair to deal with as he moves back home to live with her.

 

This tends to be a little predictable and even a bit cliché in parts, but I was impressed with the acting (including a nice turn by Keith David as the father) and the casting has some energy making this more convincing than it mighty otherwise have been.  Better than most sports and indie family dramas I have seen of late, it is worth a look if you are interested.

 

There are no extras.

 

 

The Words (2012) on the other hand is about a good idea that does not necessarily equal a good film.  Released in theaters by the too-safe-for-their-own-good CBS Films, Dennis Quaid plays a writer reading his book about a man (Bradley Cooper) trying to juggle a writing career, lover (Zoe Saldana) and his family in hopes of succeeding in the publishing world.  His latest work is rejected, then one day, he finds a manuscript for a novel about a man in Paris during WWII and likes it so much he rewrites it as his own and comes up with a hit book!

 

Of course, the real author is still alive and comes looking for him, but not in a way that is legal as much as it is moral.  Here in two versions, this review is based on the longer cut of the film and even that one cannot stop this from being more self-contained than it needed to be and Cooper is out of his element here.  Even joined by Olivia Wilde, Michael McKean and Ron Rifkin, it plays more like an upscale telefilm than something that can make the big statement.  Even if it was not going for that, it still does not say or do enough with its situation and ultimately becomes too talky.

 

Once again, having two directors (Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal in this case) probably held this one back too.  See it only if you are very, very curious.  Extras include Ultraviolet Copy, plus the DVD adds two featurettes: Unabridged and A Gentleman’s Agreement.

 

 

The anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 on Fall is more styled down than the softer anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image on Words, but is a little richer an image overall despite Video Black being crushed and has some decent shots throughout.  Both also have lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 mixes, but neither tend to really have consistently active surrounds as both are dialogue-based, yet they are fine for what they are.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo


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