Duke/Midnight Stallion/The Seven Year Hitch (all 2012/Gaiam Vivendi DVDs)/24-Hour Love (2012/Image DVD)
Picture: C+/C+/C+/C Sound: C+ Extras: D/C-/D/C- Main Programs: D/C-/C-/C
The
latest round of feel-good dramas that fail to make anyone feel good are as flat
and dull as ever.
Michael
J. Murray’s Duke has Steven Weber as
a former Marine needing help and getting it from the title dog as we get the
Dove.org dog film of the month, but at least this one does not talk, though the
people sadly still do. Though the set-up
is welcome, the long 87 minutes drones on and on, never beginning to deal with
the severe issues military veterans are having coming back home, with their
suicide rate up to record numbers and worse.
Instead, we get this phony diatribe as a bad telefilm and it just never
works.
William
Dear’s Midnight Stallion is the
Dove.org top horse movie this month, but with very little to offer as a young
woman (Jodelle Ferland) is having life issues because of her family, but a
beautiful black horse of the title might be able to help her and very one
around them. This is a tired, played
out, oft filmed and taped scenario that we see all the time, but at least this
one was low-budget and has Kris Kristofferson, who is more interesting than
anyone here. Still, it just made me want
to watch Criterion’s nicely restored Heaven’s
Gate (1980) on Blu-ray instead. A
making of featurette is the only extra.
Bradford May’s The Seven
Year Hitch is the Dove.org movie to put professional women back in the
kitchen for the month as Natalie Hall as a college grad who helps with
charities, but really needs to just iron socks.
From the title, to the phony romance to the bad acting, bad directing
and bad teleplay, this is a dud that wastes what seems like seven years worth
of clichés at least. Yawn! Skip this one and there are no extras.
Finally
we have Fred Thomas Jr.’s 24-Hour Love
(2012) which has seven characters we meet and scenes (or is that sequences)
split up by the motif of an old analog paper date book as each segment is
supposed to add to the next to make a big statement about how love and
relationships can improve life. Despite
the presence of Lynn Whitfield, who is not here enough, this is just the sum of
its parts and never adds up to what is intended, but it is at least a little
more ambitious than the fakery above.
Deleted Scenes and a Photo Gallery are the only extras.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on all four releases are weak, poor and
soft, but Love has the most motion
blur and softness. The lossy Dolby
Digital 5.1 on all the DVDs but Love
are no better than the lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo on Love because the sound in all cases is not more than simple stereo,
but Love is the only one brave
enough to admit that.
- Nicholas Sheffo
