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Date Night (2010)

2010-05-22T22:15:00.000-07:00

A married couple accidentally gets caught up in a blackmail plot when they steal someone’s dinner reservation.

'Date Night' Theatrical Trailer @ Yahoo! Video

The Plot: (spoilers)

Tax advisor Phil Foster (Steve Carell) and his realtor wife Claire (Tina Fey) are in a rut, to the point that for their weekly date night they always go to the same local restaurant and order the same things (and joke about other people in the restaurant).

'Date Night' Shoebox @ Yahoo! Video

When they find out that another couple they know is getting divorced, Phil makes a last-minute decision to take Claire to a trendy new restaurant in Manhattan. They arrive at the busy restaurant without a reservation and fail to talk their way to a table. While waiting at the bar for a table to open up, they hear a reservation for the “Tripplehorns” called repeatedly with no response. Phil responds and claims that he and Claire are the Tripplehorns. They take the Tripplehorn reservation and enjoy themselves.

'Date Night' Will.i.am @ Yahoo! Video

Their meal is interrupted by two men (Jimmi Simpson & Common) who ask them to come with them. Phil and Claire believe they’ve been caught taking someone else’s reservation, but find out that the men are after the Tripplehorns for a flash drive they stole from mafia boss Joe Miletto. The men don’t believe Phil and Claire’s protest that they aren’t really the Tripplehorns.

'Date Night' Fosters @ Yahoo! Video

Threatened at gunpoint, Phil says the flash drive is hidden in Central Park. Phil and Claire are taken to the park and manage to escape. They go to the police station and while giving their story to a skeptical detective, see the two men from before wearing badges. Not knowing who to trust, they leave the police station and try to find the real Tripplehorns.

'Date Night' Police Station @ Yahoo! Video

Phil and Claire return to the restaurant in disguise and manage to get the Tripplehorns’ phone number from the reservation computer.

'Date Night' Number @ Yahoo! Video

Claire remembers a former client of hers who works as a security consultant and might be able to help. The Fosters break into a real estate office to get his address and show up at his door. The former client, Holbrooke Grant (Mark Wahlberg) finds an address for the phone number registered to a Tom Felton. The corrupt cops arrive and Phil and Claire escape in Grant’s Audi R8.

'Date Night' Holbrooke with Intro @ Yahoo! Video

Phil and Claire track down Tom “Taste” Felton (James Franco) and his girlfriend “Whippit” (Mila Kunis), who made the reservation under the Tripplehorn alias but spotted the corrupt cops at the restaurant and left. They realize that if Phil and Claire found them, the bad guys are probably on their way, so they go on the run, leaving the stolen flash drive with the Fosters.

'Date Night' Home @ Yahoo! Video

Phil and Claire also take off in Grant’s car, fleeing the corrupt cops and crashing into a taxi in the process, which leads to perhaps the strangest car chase scene ever, during which Phil accesses the flash drive and discovers it has evidence that powerful district attorney Frank Crenshaw is also working with the mafia and enjoys the company of prostitutes. By the end of the chase, the Audi is wrecked and the flash drive is at the bottom of the East River.

'Date Night' Whacked @ Yahoo! Video

Phil and Claire realize that Taste and Whippit were going to use the flash drive to blackmail Crenshaw. They return to Grant and he reluctantly agrees to help them again. Phil and Claire go to the mafia strip club Crenshaw visits, posing as a new girl and her pimp. They manage to make their way to Crenshaw’s private room and try to carry out the blackmail scheme. In the end, the police show up and have enough evidence to arrest Joe Miletto (Ray Liotta), Frank Crenshaw (William Fichtner) and the corrupt cops, thanks to Phil, who was wearing a wire thanks to Grant and had notified the police of his plan. Phil and Claire happily return home, having rekindled the romance in their marriage.

My Review:

Date Night doesn’t seem to know if it wants to be a comedy or an action movie, which means it doesn’t do a great job at either. Considering the talent involved, it would have worked much better if it had committed to the comedy. Steve Carell and Tina Fey are excellent and are very convincing as a married couple. The rest of the cast is competent, but Carell and Fey carry the film. It only really works when they get to play off each other, which fortunately they get a lot of time to do. The plot, while necessary to get Carell and Fey from one strange situation to the next, almost seems to get in the way, and the resolution is somewhat of a letdown, as it is predictable and, aside from an awkward pole dance, has little humor. This is unfortunate, because when it is trying to be funny, it succeeds, but then abandons the comedy to resolve a plot that the audience doesn’t really care about. I was left with the feeling that there should have been more. The theme of Phil and Claire’s marriage being in trouble doesn’t help, as it is completely unnecessary, gives the movie a slow start that isn’t particularly funny and also has to be shown to be resolved at the end, leaving the movie to end on a sentimental note with the characters making out in the front yard instead of a humorous one. The humorous outtakes shown over the credits help a little, but not enough. The film needs more of Carell and Fey alternating between panicking and ineptly thwarting bad guys and Carell awkwardly looking on as Fey inadvertently flirts with a perpetually shirtless Mark Walhberg and less of the emotional baggage tacked on to make it seem like the characters needed to go through all this. Why can’t a crazy adventure be just that? Hopefully, Carell and Fey get another opportunity to work together in a project that uses them to their full potential.

The Informant! (2009)

2009-10-01T18:02:00.000-07:00

Based on a true story, Matt Damon plays a corporate whistleblower who exposes a price-fixing conspiracy to the FBI, only to have some secrets of his own.

'Informant' Theatrical Trailer @ Yahoo! Video

The Plot: (Spoilers)

In the early 1990s, Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon) is an executive at Archer-Daniels-Midland, where he is in charge of the company’s production of a new food additive called lysine. ADM’s lysine production capacity is being limited by a mysterious virus in a lysine plant, and Whitacre is under pressure to solve the problem. One day, Whitacre reports to his boss that he received a phone call from someone at a Japanese competitor, who claimed that the virus was planted by a mole specifically to stop ADMs lysine production, and that he would provide the name of the mole and the way to stop the virus for $10 million. Whitacre’s boss tells Whitacre that if he gets another call he should try to talk the price down. ADM’s security director Mark Cheviron (Thomas F. Wilson) decides to call in the FBI to investigate the call and hopefully find the mole. As the investigation gets started, FBI agent Brian Shepard (Scott Bakula) comes to Whitacre’s home to tap his phone line. At the insistence of his wife Ginger (Melanie Lynskey), Whitacre tells Shepard about a price-fixing conspiracy for lysine and other food additives involving ADM and its competitors around the world.

'Informant' Cannot Offer Immunity @ Yahoo! Video

Whitacre starts working as an undercover informant for FBI agents Shepard and Herndon (Joel McHale), recording meetings all over the world with concealed tape recorders and hidden cameras to get the FBI enough evidence to prosecute ADM’s executives, which takes about three years. In addition to wanting to stop the price-fixing, Whitacre believes that he will become ADM’s CEO after the other executives are arrested, an end result that the FBI agents never clearly admit is unlikely (though Ginger tries).

@ Yahoo! Video

The stress takes its toll on Whitacre, and at times he frustrates the FBI agents with his unreliability, at one point claiming that he has stopped making tapes because the ADM executives have been scared straight from fear of being caught. Despite these issues, and some other amusing examples of Whitacre’s ineptitude as a spy such as narrating his tapes, conspicuously inspecting a lamp for a hidden camera the FBI told him about and trying to fix a malfunctioning tape recorder hidden in his briefcase in the middle of a meeting, Whitacre succeeds in delivering the FBI enough evidence for a raid without giving himself away (though he almost gives the raid away by telling innocent coworkers, such as his secretary, about it, leading to one of the executives knowing about it).

'Informant' The Camera is in the Lamp @ Yahoo! Video

'Informant' Take Down the Bad Guys @ Yahoo! Video

'Informant' Who Did You Tell @ Yahoo! Video

The FBI maintains Whitacre’s cover by temporarily taking him into custody as well, so the other executives won’t suspect him, but they tell him it is important that he tell them right away that he plans to cooperate with the FBI’s investigation and get his own lawyer that is separate from those who work for ADM. Whitacre doesn’t say any of this until he is presented with a lawyer provided by ADM, and after a closed-door meeting between Whitacre and the company lawyer, which the audience doesn’t see or hear, the company lawyer and Whitacre tell the executives that they agree that Whitacre should have a different lawyer.

Though he is no longer supposed to be talking to them, Whitacre has lunch with Shepard & Herndon, asking them about “hypothetical” situations leading up to kickbacks and embezzlement, which he says were “standard practice” among the executives at ADM, and that his boss showed him how. When asks how much money is involved, Whitacre basically admits to taking $500,000. They tell him he needs to admit everything to his lawyers.

'Informant' Hypotheticals @ Yahoo! Video

Whitacre doesn’t tell his lawyers about everything though, only certain things, and ADM’s own investigation finds more and more instances of Whitacre’s embezzlement, laundered through forged invoices from fictional overseas companies, which Whitacre was engaged in while he was working with the FBI. (Some of this was seen earlier in the film, though it wasn’t entirely clear at the time what was happening.) Whitacre doesn’t admit to any specific instances until he is presented with evidence, to the annoyance of his lawyers, who try to make the case that Whitacre cracked under the stress the FBI created by making him an undercover agent with no training, but the mounting evidence against Whitacre, who ultimately admits to having embezzled a total of $9 million, from before and after he started working with the FBI, doesn’t help their case. Whitacre also can’t stay out of the media spotlight, despite being told not to talk to the media. He starts making wild claims to defend himself, including that the FBI told him to destroy tapes that didn’t support their case and that Shepard hit him with a briefcase. It is eventually found that Whitacre is bipolar and a chronic liar. His original story about a mole sabotaging ADM’s lysine facility, the original reason the FBI got involved, was just a story he made up because of the pressure he was under to solve the problem; he never actually got a phone call and soon after the natural cause of the virus was found and the problem was solved. Even a story he told several times in the film about his parents dying when he was young, leading to him being adopted by a rich man who owned an amusement park is found to be a lie: nothing ever happened to his middle-class parents, who are still alive, and he made up the story for his application essays to Ivy League colleges and had to stick to his story when he was accepted. Eventually he and his lawyers frustrate each other to the point that they part ways, and Whitacre ends up with a much less competent lawyer and is sent to prison for the embezzlement with a much longer sentence than the ADM executives who were guilty of price-fixing.

In the final scene, an older, incarcerated Whitacre is seen making a video plea for a presidential pardon, with the help of Herndon, who felt that Whitacre deserved a lesser sentence for helping the FBI. The film closes by stating that Whitacre never received a pardon, but served his sentence and became the Chief Operating Officer of Cypress Systems in California.

My Review:

This is such a strange story that it would be unbelievable if it weren’t actually true. Little of what Whitacre does makes sense, but that is the point. The story is compelling and definitely takes some unexpected turns. Matt Damon gives a good performance as an unusual character, and the supporting cast does fine, though none of them stand out. The film is directed by Steven Soderbergh, perhaps best known for Ocean’s Eleven, Ocean’s Twelve and Ocean’s Thirteen, which also feature Damon. In an odd choice, the titles and even some of the music seem to be more appropriate for a film set the late 60’s than in the early 90’s. The use of voiceovers by Damon to show Whitacre’s inner thoughts, which often have little in anything to do with the story, works well though, and is perhaps the most distinctive aspect of the film. This is a difficult movie to describe, but I enjoyed it. I would criticize the trailers, which depicted it a more of a comedy, and while there are definitely comedic elements to it, it didn’t really seem meant to be a comedy, but more of a cautionary example of how lying can quickly get out of hand and lead to serious consequences.

House: Histories (Season 1, Episode 10)

2009-09-02T00:39:00.000-07:00

The team’s treatment of a delusional homeless woman is made more difficult by the fact that no one knows who she is, not even her.

The plot: (spoilers)

A broke middle-aged woman (Leslie Hope) talks her way into a rave party at an abandoned house, saying she knows someone inside named James, who is blond, friendly and a big talker. While searching the party for James, the police bust in and she is knocked down and loses consciousness.

She is taken to Princeton-Plainsboro and admitted with a suspected drug overdose, but her toxicology screen came back clean, though she is delusional and doesn’t even seem to know her name. Dr. Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) was consulted because of some lesions on her arm, which turned out to be non-cancerous, but Wilson noticed a twitch so he brought in Dr. Foreman (Omar Epps), a neurologist. While Foreman has her do some simple tests, she goes into a seizure. Wilson checks her blood sugar and finds it to be low. Foreman thinks that she is a diabetic who overdosed on her own insulin to get a place to sleep and some food, and dismisses the twitch that Wilson thinks could be a tumor. Foreman says to monitor her and let her spend the night, then discharge her. Wilson takes the case to Dr. House (Hugh Laurie), who agrees to take it when he decides Wilson must have a more personal reason for being interested than just wanting a stranger to get medical care.

House gets the team together. Dr. Cameron (Jennifer Morrison) suggests that the twitch could be a mini-seizure unrelated to diabetes. Dr. Chase (Jesse Spencer) suggests a brain tumor, and Cameron agrees that its possible. Foreman still insists she’s faking, but suggests that they could do an MRI to make sure. House rummages through her bag (which Foreman notices also contains insulin) and finds moist vomit, which he tastes(!) and finds it is salty, suggesting an electrolyte imbalance. He holds off on the MRI and has her started on a banana bag to correct the imbalance.

While Foreman and Chase start the treatment, the patient is drawing comics, when she suddenly has a panic attack, and bites Foreman on the arm. Now really annoyed, Foreman is now determined to get her an MRI so he can throw her out. There is a 2-day wait for non-emergency MRIs, so Foreman secretly switches the patient with a woman getting her scheduled 6-month checkup on her chin implants. Dr. Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) interrupts with the report that the preliminary CT-Scan revealed a surgical pin in her arm that the MRI’s magnet would have ripped out of her body. House insists that they surgically remove the pin so they can do the MRI, which he says is necessary because Foreman thinks she has a brain tumor. Cuddy reluctantly agrees, but says they can’t do anything else until they find out who she is so they can get a medical history. House sends Foreman to investigate, using her drawings as a guide to find where she usually sleeps, which is occupied with bats, and he finds a file of her drawings. Meanwhile, she has the surgery to remove the pin and gets the MRI, which finds nothing, but House uses the serial number on the pin to track down her identity: her name is Victoria Matsen and she broke her arm in a car accident two years ago. A hospital faxes over her medical records, which Foreman looks over, then takes off in a panic; when her electrolyte balance came back normal he put her on iron dextran for anemia, but it turns out she’s allergic to it. They get to her just as she goes into respiratory arrest and stabilize and sedate her.

More hospitals fax over records, but none have a legitimate address. Chase notices two ultrasound appointments 10 months apart, the second of which she didn’t keep. Wilson recognizes the doctor’s name as an oncologist, and surmises that they were looking for ovarian cancer, and House points out that neoplastic syndrome caused by the cancer could cause the twitch. House has them ultrasound her ovaries. In the clinic, Cuddy assigns him to a mother with a number of children; House fakes a sneeze and says he’s sick, leaving Cuddy to deal with the family while he reads Victoria’s handmade comic books, which involve a heroine who fights a villain named Mr. Fury. He questions Foreman about why he doesn’t like homeless people, annoying him by asking about his parents, who it turns out are not homeless, then House questions Wilson about why he cares. Cuddy assigns House to teach two medical students about patient histories, and House fakes a page in the clinic to hide from them while he continues to investigate Foreman and Wilson. Meanwhile, the ultrasound has found a large mass on Victoria’s left ovary, and Wilson realizes that it’s too late to do anything. House suggests that maybe it’s not really cancer but is actually a tuberculoma, which is very unlikely but since there isn’t anything they can do for advance ovarian cancer House orders the tuberculoma treatment.

Foreman starts the treatment, but Victoria can tell that he’s not hopeful. Foreman apologizes for not believing her, and she admits to having taken too much insulin to get a place to sleep. Foreman offers to help her find James, but she suddenly spikes a fever of 105 degrees and starts panicking about Mr. Fury coming after her, displaying extreme sensitivity to light and believing water to be poison. Foreman sedates her and tells her that the bad guys can’t get here there; as she loses consciousness she says Mr. Fury’s not the bad guy: she is.

Foreman reports to House that the fever means she can’t have a tuberculoma, but Chase arrives with lab work saying that it is a tuberculoma after all. In addition to the tuberculoma, she has something else that is causing the fever. Chase suggests a bacterial infection, and Foreman says she could’ve picked up something on the streets, but she didn’t have a fever on admission. Cameron suggests that the Prozac they put her on could have caused serotonin syndrome. House orders blood and urine tests and a chest X-ray, and switches her off Prozac, and she is put in an ice bath to lower her body temperature.

The two med students report to House (who is again reading Victoria’s comics) on the patient they were assigned to interview: a 17 year old female with abrasions and trauma to her wrist. One says that patient fall off her horse at the county fair, while the other says she fell off the steps of her beach house. Both went to the same room. House says the patient is either under 90 pounds or has a red nose, and leaves them with a medical dictionary, saying the patient’s condition starts with C.

The team reports that the tests point towards an infection. Not all the tests are back, but they think Victoria has meningitis. House tells them to start treatment, but when they get to her room, Victoria is gone, despite having been sedated, leaving behind comics drawn on the wall indicating she has gone looking for James. Foreman wants to go looking for her, saying that in her comics Mr. Fury lives in Sloan Harbor and the rave party she was picked up at was a 1408 Sloan Street, but Cuddy tells him to just call the police.

House, wearing a bird-shaped pin and carrying a binder with a picture of a Ferris wheel on it, is being pursued by the med students, who are desperately guessing conditions starting with the letter C. House goes into their patient’s room and asks her what happened. She says she was riding on a Ferris wheel when a seagull flew at her and she swung her arm at it and hit the Ferris wheel. House says she has Korsakoff’s Syndrome, which has left her without the ability to process ideas, so she uses visual clues to fill in the gaps; one of the med students has a small horse embroidered on her shirt and the other has a clipboard with a beach scene on it, which is where her previous stories came from. One of the med students points out the Korsakoff’s doesn’t start with C, and House says the lesson is to treat everyone as if they have Korsakoff’s because they all lie anyway.

Paramedics bring Victoria back to the hospital unconscious with her heart rate over 150 beats per minute, and Foreman stabilizes her. A police officer says he found her passed out on the grass at Battlefield State Park. House bribes the cop for the real story, and it turns out he tazered her twice. The first time he hit her in the thigh and she didn’t stop. House pokes her in the same spot and gets no response, but when he pokes her in the toe she reacts. Foreman tries to think of what it could be, and while he’s looking away, House pokes him with a needle where Victoria bit him, and he doesn’t notice until he looks back.

In the lab, House lists Victoria’s symptoms: localized numbness, sensitivity to light, disorientation, paranoia, ineffectiveness of sedatives and hydrophobia, which leads them to rabies from the bats in the alley where she slept, which the tests confirm. Wilson gives Foreman a rabies shot, but its too late for Victoria. Wilson and Foreman go out to try to find James so Victoria won’t die alone. They go to the house where the rave party was held and use Victoria’s drawings to find a hidden metal box with clues to her life.

She was married to a man named Paul Furia and James was their young son. The house was their home. They were killed in the car accident when Victoria broke her arm, and she was driving. Foreman sits at Victoria’s bedside out of sight, pretending to be Paul and saying he forgives her.

House follows Wilson to a rundown part of town. Wilson reveals that he has a second brother he has never told House about, because he hasn’t seen him in nine years and he doesn’t even know if he’s alive. They are at the last place Wilson saw him.

My review:

Histories is a great episode of House, and is an episode that almost demands multiple viewings, as there are a lot of subtle clues and details that are easy to miss the first time through, most notably that the abandoned house that the rave party takes place in used to be Victoria’s home. There are other things that Victoria says that stand out when you know how the story ends. There are actually several mysteries going on at once here, and not all of them get resolved. Two of them involve the patient. The first is the medical mystery, which actually has two separate components to it. The second is the mystery of her past, which continues even after the team has her name and her medical history, and even though we find out who James is, the mystery isn’t fully resolved. It had been 2 years since the car accident, and she had to have gotten the rabies fairly recently that led to some of her mental symptoms, so what happened in the meantime? How did she end up on the street, and why did she leave that box with important documents behind in the house? (And if she was driving when the accident occurred, how could the hospital not have her address? Didn’t she have a driver’s license?) Then there’re the mysteries about Foreman and Wilson. We never really do find out what Foreman has against the homeless in this episode. Though it seems like he at least starts to resolve it by the end, we don’t know what’s behind it, if anything. At least we find out about why Wilson cared about this homeless stranger: he has a brother on the streets somewhere himself. Then there’s the poor girl with Korsakoff’s; we never do find out her real story either, although it’s a minor point that’s not related to the main plot, so it’s not really important. Leslie Hope gives a good performance as Victoria, a challenging role requiring not only the portrayal of the neurological symptoms of rabies, but also a dip in an ice bath. Foreman and Wilson have some great bickering throughout the episode, before coming together in the end, and in this episode even House and his antics seem to take a back seat to them. Several episodes have seemed to focus on Foreman, but this is the first episode that focuses on Wilson and allows Robert Sean Leonard to show his acting talent. With all that is going on and all the detail, this is one of the standout first season episodes that stands up well to repeat viewing.

House: DNR (Season1, Episode 9)

2009-09-02T00:24:00.000-07:00

When a wheelchair-bound trumpet player develops trouble breathing, he decides he is ready to die, but House thinks he can not only save him, but also make him walk again.

The Plot: (Spoilers)

At a recording session with Brandy (herself), wheelchair-bound jazz legend John Henry Giles (Harry Lennix) stops breathing.

John Henry is taken to Princeton-Plainsboro, and Dr. House (Hugh Laurie), fascinated by his paralysis, asks Dr. Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) for the case. Cuddy tells him that John Henry’s primary doctor, Marty Hamilton, with whom Dr. Foreman (Omar Epps) did his residency, has already asked for House’s team, which doesn’t include House, to diagnose and treat John Henry’s pneumonia only. Foreman is put in charge of the case, and has John Henry kept on broad spectrum antibiotics. House wants to investigate the paralysis, which Dr. Hamilton has already diagnosed as ALS aka Lou Gehrig’s Disease but House doesn’t believe it, and wants to do an MRI to check Dr. Chase’s (Jesse Spencer) suggestion of multifocal motor neuropathy. Foreman says that the ALS fits and even predicts the pneumonia, which suggests the paralysis is ascending, and overrules him.

Foreman's in charge!

Foreman gives John Henry the prognosis that the symptoms will likely keep getting worse. When John Henry asks how long he has, Foreman mentions the MRI and House, and John Henry asks which doctor Foreman agrees with. Foreman says he agrees with Dr. Hamilton about the ALS and John Henry says no to the MRI and requests to sign a “Do Not Resuscitate” (DNR) form. When Foreman tells House about the DNR, House suggests that Foreman start John Henry on IVIG, the treatment for multifocal motor neuropathy, and Foreman does it.

While in the clinic seeing a patient who wants Viagra (House determines the patient has diabetes from subtle clues, which he suspects has led to heart disease that would make Viagra dangerous for him, but prescribes them anyway, leaving the choice up to him) House gets an emergency page about John Henry, who has gone into respiratory failure from the IVIG. House arrives to find the team standing around, unable to act because of the DNR. House himself intubates John Henry, violating the DNR to save his life, just as John Henry’s wife/girlfriend arrives.

John Henry is put on a ventilator. His reaction to the IVIG proves House’s theory wrong, and as he questions Dr. Cameron (Jennifer Morrison) and Chase for a new theory (Foreman had stormed off over House’s lack of concern for the patient’s wishes) House is served with a 50-foot restraining order against the patient and notice of battery charges. House has them test for Cameron’s idea of Wegener’s granulomatosis and has John Henry moved to a room directly above the clinic, using the restraining order as an excuse to get out of clinic duties. Cuddy offers House a lawyer (when she hired him she also set aside $50,000 a year for legal fees for him, and somehow he’s under budget) and tells him that Dr. Hamilton is flying in to pull the plug.

In court, House’s lawyer uses the argument that John Henry’s DNR might not be valid because of a low thyroid level, and that allowing him to die would violate House’s Sixth Amendment right to face his accuser at a trial. Dr. Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) asks what House hopes to gain, as the restraining order and charges would still stand, and House replies “time.” Wilson points out that while other doctors have a messiah complex and need to save the world, House has a “Rubik’s Complex,” and needs to solve the puzzle. House interrupts the proceedings to point out that he notices clubbing on the judge’s fingers, a sign of heart disease, and advises the judge to see a doctor. This sway’s the judge in House’s favor. After the trial, House admits that he didn’t actually notice any clubbing; he bluffed, knowing that every family has some history of heart disease. Back at the hospital, Cameron and Chase report that their tests were inconclusive. House orders treatment with Cytoxan anyway, but they refuse to do it, as it would threaten their medical licenses. House sneaks into John Henry’s room and gives him the treatment himself. As he leaves, he runs into Dr. Hamilton (David Conrad), who has just arrived.

Hamilton says that he already ruled out Wegener’s, and is going to take John Henry off the ventilator. When House points out his court order to keep John Henry alive, Hamilton says that all the charges have been dropped, so the court order no longer stands. House and Wilson watch as John Henry is taken off the ventilator, knowing that is House is right about Wegener’s, John Henry won’t be able to breathe without it, but John Henry starts breathing on his own, proving House wrong. John Henry’s breathing is stable, but now one of his arms is paralyzed. The team thinks this is a progression of the ALS, but House wants to consider other possibilities for the arm’s paralysis. Cameron suggests a blood clot from a stroke and House decides to do an MR angiogram. He sneaks back into John Henry’s room and, after a talk where John Henry compares his own obsession with his music to House’s obsession with medicine, House takes him to do the test. Meanwhile, Hamilton takes Foreman out to lunch and offers him a partnership in his practice in Los Angeles.

The team discovers a blood clot in John Henry’s brain. Foreman recommends treatment with Heparin, a blood thinner, to John Henry, but he rejects it because of the possibility of bleeding into his lungs that would keep him from ever being able to play the trumpet again. Foreman then suggests an embolectomy, a surgery to remove the clot. It is more dangerous, but wouldn’t harm the lungs. John Henry chooses the surgery, as it will either help him or kill him. Cameron and Chase do the surgery to remove the clot without incident, while House and Foreman discuss the differences between House and Hamilton.

House gets a page about John Henry, and they report to his room to find that he now has use of his arm back, as expected, and Hamilton wanted to congratulate House. House points out that a phone call would have sufficed, and sarcastically gives John Henry a reassuring pat on the leg as he turns to leave. John Henry says that he felt House touch his leg.

House realizes one of the treatments they tried has helped John Henry’s paralysis, but they don’t know which one, and the others could kill him. House has all his treatments stopped so they can add them back one at a time and see which one helps. Hamilton thinks that his treatments are finally working, but House thinks that if it were Hamilton’s treatments they would have been working before. After stopping the treatments, Hamilton comes to House to ask what treatments he stopped, and House realizes that John Henry’s legs are completely paralyzed again. The first treatment they gave John Henry was steroids for the pneumonia, and House has them restarted and orders an MRI to see what changed. As the MRI is done, House and Foreman discuss Foreman’s job offer. House tells Foreman that he should work with whoever he thinks is the better doctor, and says that the difference between them is that Hamilton does his job and accepts the results, while House thinks their decisions matter. Cameron and Chase interrupt with the MRI results. An intradural arteriovenous malformation (AVM) is compressing John Henry’s spine, causing the paralysis. It had always been there, but was hidden on previous MRIs by the inflammation it caused. The steroids relieved the inflammation, which slightly relieved the pressure on the spine and also allowed the AVM to be seen on the MRI. John Henry has surgery to remove the MRI and after physical therapy is able to walk again. As he leaves the hospital, John Henry gives House his trumpet as a gift to thank him, and Foreman keeps his 2-year fellowship with House.

My Review:

I think this is the point where House turns from good to great. The focus of this story is on House and his approach to medicine, and this is probably the first episode to really look at House’s personality, by comparing him to a patient with a similar obsession about music. Harry Lennix also did a great job as patient John Henry Giles and I absolutely believed he was an old jazz musician. This is also the first episode with a celebrity guest star, with Brandy playing herself in the opening sequence. The other guest stars are ok, though none of them stand out like Lennix does. There is a little bit of Foreman’s background revealed here as well, but the episode is really about House. The medical mystery follows the show’s predictable format, and its no surprise that House makes the patient walk in the end; the fun of this episode is in between with the DNR and the legal twists it leads to, and House’s great speeches to Foreman. That is what makes this episode stand out and makes it one of my favorites.

Cars (2006)

2009-08-22T01:05:00.000-07:00

A computer-animated story set on an Earth inhabited entirely by sentient vehicles.

The Plot: (Spoilers)

Lightning McQueen

Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) is a popular rookie race car on the Piston Cup circuit, whose fans include twin Miatas Mia (Lindsey Collins) and Tia (Elissa Knight). He is tied for first place in the series with revered veteran Strip “The King” Weathers (Richard Petty), who plans to retire after the season, and his long-time rival Chick Hicks (Michael Keaton).

Strip "The King" Weathers, Chick Hicks & Lightning McQueen

At the final race in the season, the Dinoco 400 at the Motor Speedway of the South, Lightning takes the lead and maintains it with quick stop in the pit for fuel only without changing tires. On the last lap, both of his rear tires blow out, giving The King and Chick time to catch up, resulting in an unprecedented 3-way tie.

A close finish

Lightning’s pit crew quits after he tells them to stay out of the way of the cameras and declares himself a “one-man show.” The King advises him that he has a lot of talent but to be successful he needs a geed team behind him; Lightning doesn’t really listen though, as he is daydreaming about the fame that he would have if he took the place of the retiring King with his sponsor, Dinoco. The racing officials decide that to resolve the three-way tie, a tiebreaker race will be held in California in one week. Chick mentions to Lightning that whichever one of them gets to California first will have the first chance to talk to Dinoco about becoming their new racer. After a quick appearance at the tent of his current sponsors, Rusty & Dusty Rust-eze (Tom & Ray Magliozzi), makers of Rust-eze Medicated Bumper Ointment, (a duty Lightning despises, as the tent is filled with old, rusty cars) Lightning leaves for California in the trailer of his truck, Mack (John Ratzenberger).

Lightning McQueen with the Rust-eze Brothers

Lightning convinces Mack to drive through the night so they will be the first ones to California. In the middle of the night, Mack falls asleep and some punk cars have fun with him, which causes the sleeping Lightning to fall out of the trailer.

Mack being harassed

Lightning wakes up on the interstate and realizes what’s happened, he tries to catch up to Mack, who he can’t see, and when he sees a truck leave the interstate, he thinks its Mack and goes after it, but it isn’t. Lightning gets lost trying to race back to the interstate, and ends up getting chased by an old Sheriff car (Michael Wallis), whose backfiring leads Lightning to think he’s being shot at, into the town of Radiator Springs, where a panicking Lighting crashes through a barbed-wire fence, which hooks onto a statue of the town’s founder. Lighting drags the statue through the town, tearing up the street in the process, until the tangled-up fence finally stops him. The police car tells him he’s in a lot of trouble.

Lightning in a panic

Mack arrives in Los Angeles the next morning to discover that Lightning is missing, and it becomes a huge news story, with Dale Earnhardt Junior (his car with his voice) making a concerned statement, Jay Limo (Jay Leno) making jokes on his show, and the governor of California (a Hummer H1 voiced by Arnold Schwarzenegger) announces that Lightning must be found.

Mack discovers Lightning is missing

Dale Earnhardt, Jr.

Jay Limo

The Governor of California

Lightning wakes up in an impound yard, being watched by a rusty old tow truck named Mater (Larry the Cable Guy) and with a parking boot on one of his front tires. He almost talks Mater into letting him out to “explore the town” when the sheriff arrives to escort him to traffic court.

Lightning in the impound yard meeting Mater

Since Lightning doesn’t have a lawyer present, Mater volunteers to be his lawyer. The court is presided over by Doc Hudson (Paul Newman), who is upset about the condition of his town and threatened to lock up whoever is responsible, but when he sees Lightning he just wants his thrown out of town. A Porsche (Bonnie Hunt) suddenly arrives, and Lightning assumes she’s been sent to help him and he flirts with her. The she reveals that everyone in town knows her; her name is Sally and she’s the city attorney. She convinces Doc and the rest of the town, which includes Ramone (Cheech Marin), a low rider who runs a paint shop, Flo (Jenifer Lewis), who runs the gas station, Sarge (Paul Dooley), a WWII Jeep who runs a surplus store, Fillmore (George Carlin), a hippie Volkswagen Microbus who sells organic fuel, Luigi (Tony Shalhoub), a Fiat and Guido (Guido Quarroni), a forklift, who run a tire shop, Lizzie (Katherine Helmond), a Model T Ford who runs a souvenir shop and Red (Joe Ranft), the town’s fire truck, to make Lightning fix the road as his punishment.

Traffic Court

Lightning is assigned to pull a road-paving machine called Bessie to fix the road he damaged, which Doc says should take five days if he does it right. He initially tries to make a run for it when Mater removes the boot, but the Sheriff had siphoned his gas when he was asleep in the impound so he doesn’t get far. After failing to get a lost couple (Richard Kind & Edie McClurg) to get help, and frustrated with the slow progress, Lightning tries to rush through the work in an hour and does a terrible job, and Doc orders him to scrape off the paving and do it right. When Lightning complains, Doc challenges him to a race. If Lightning wins, he’s free to go; if not, he has to fix the road Doc’s way. The race is a single lap around a dirt track, and the overconfident Lightning crashes on the first turn and has to be rescued by Mater.

Lightning works through the night and does a great job on the section of road he finishes, impressing everyone, including Doc. Doc finds Lightning at the track under the supervision of the Sheriff. He had run out of asphalt and asked if he could try to figure out how to make the turn. Doc takes over for the Sheriff and tries to tell Lightning what he’s doing wrong, but Lightning won’t listen. Meanwhile, the new road has inspired the rest of the town to fix up their own businesses. Sally offers Lightning a room in her Cozy Cone Motel in place of the impound lot.

Lightning doing his Community Service

That night, Mater is assigned to watch Lightning and he takes him “tractor tipping” and demonstrated his ability to drive backwards. When Lightning talks about how important the race is, Mater says he always wanted to ride in a helicopter, and Lightning casually promises it to him. Mater says Lightning is his best friend. At the motel, Sally asks Lightning is he really meant his promise to Mater, and he doesn’t know. He thanks her for letting him stay in the motel.

Mater tractor tipping

The next morning, while waiting to get his daily fuel ration from the Sheriff, Lightning stumbles into Doc’s garage and discovers that Doc is the Fabulous Hudson Hornet who won three Piston Cups in the 1950s. Impressed, Lightning tries to talk to him about racing, but Doc won’t talk to him. No one else in the town believes that Doc could have been a race car. Sally takes Lightning on a scenic drive.

Lightning and Sally out for a drive

Sally and Lightning end up at the abandoned Wheel Well Motel, Sally’s favorite place. Sally explains how she used to be an attorney in Los Angeles but never felt happy, and after breaking down in Radiator Springs she fell in love with the town and decided to stay.

The Wheel Well Motel

From the motel, there is a view of the Radiator Springs area from above. Sally tells the story of Radiator Springs and Route 66 before the interstate was built and how when it was it took away all the traffic from the town.

Sally and Lightning look out over Radiator Springs

When they get back to the town, Mater has set off a tractor stampede. Lightning follows a stray and finds Doc sitting on the track wearing old dirt racing tires. Lightning watches him take a quick lap around the track, drifting around the turn Lightning couldn’t make.

Doc practices his old racing skills

Lighting tries to show how impressed he is, but Doc runs off to his garage. Lightning follows him, trying to talk to him and asking why he quit racing. Doc reveals he didn’t quit; he had a wreck in the season after his third Piston Cup win, and by the time he was fixed everyone had moved on to a new rookie. He tells Lightning to finish the road and leave town.

Lightning tries to connect to Doc

The next morning everyone in town discovers that Lightning finished the road overnight. They initially think he’s already left, but it turns out he hasn’t yet. He shops from everyone in town, including whitewall tires from Luigi & Guido and a classic metallic paint job from Ramone, and inspires everyone to fix all the town’s neon signs.

Lightning shows Sally his new look

That night, as the town celebrates, the media show up and swarm the town, having found Lightning.

The media finds Lightning

Lightning’s manager Harv (Jeremy Piven) tells him his disappearance has given him a lot of publicity and orders Mack to take him to California immediately, and Lightning doesn’t have a chance to say goodbye to his friends.

Mack apologizes to Lightning for losing him

As the media crowd leaves with Lightning, Sally discovers Doc called the media to tell them where Lightning was. He says it is best for everyone, and Sally asks if it’s really best for everyone, or just him. Sad over not being able to say goodbye, everyone goes home and shuts off their lights, leaving Doc alone in the darkened street.

The town is sad to see Lightning go

At the big race at the Los Angeles International Speedway, which is attended by celebrities like Mario Andretti (one of his cars with his voice), Lightning is unable to focus, being distracted by thought of Radiator Springs and his friends. He spends the beginning of the race in a distant third, unable to get by Chick Hicks.

Lightning is in a distant third

Doc comes on his radio, saying he didn’t come all that way to watch him quit. Not only Doc, but everyone from Radiator Springs, except Sally, Lizzie and Red, have come to cheer Lightning on, and Doc is serving as his crew chief, wearing his Fabulous Hudson Hornet paint from his racing days. The media, including announcers Bob Cutlass (Bob Costas) and Darrell Cartrip (Darrell Waltrip), quickly recognize him.

Lighting and his new pit crew

Lightning was a lap behind but he makes it up by the last 10 laps. Chick bumps Lightning, causing one of his tires to blow out. Thanks to Guido, Lightning is able to get four new tires quickly and get back in the race without losing a lap. Chick causes both Lightning and The King to lose control to take the lead, but Lightning uses Doc’s drifting technique to regain control and take the lead.

The effects of one of Chick's dirty tricks

On the last lap, Chick is behind the King and, not wanting to come in third, bumps him hard, forcing him into a serious wreck that takes him out of the race.

The King wrecked

Seeing The King wreck, Lightning is reminded of the wreck that ended Doc’s racing career. Lightning stops short of the finish line, allowing Chick to win the race. Lightning backs up to The King and pushes him back onto the track and across the finish line so he can finish his last race, to the applause of the audience.

Lightning rescues The King

Chick Hicks is awarded the Piston Cup but his behavior leads him to be ignored. The King and his wife (Lynda Petty) thank Lightning for what he did, and Tex (Humpy Wheeler), the head of Dinoco, offers Lightning his sponsorship, but Lightning has learned the importance of friendship and stays with Rust-eze, as they gave him his big break. Tex respects his decision and says if Lightning ever needs anything to just ask. Lightning uses the favor to give Mater a ride in the Dinoco helicopter.

The King and his wife thank Lightning

Lightning moves his racing headquarters to Radiator Springs. Luigi and Guido finally get to meet a Ferrari (Michael Schumacher), who Lightning referred to their shop and Lightning and Sally restore the Wheel Well Motel.

Luigi and Guido meet a Ferrari

Sally and Lightning

My Review:

I don’t think the Pixar team can make a bad movie, and this film lives up to their reputation. Though it doesn’t evoke emotions as strongly as other Pixar films, this is a fun movie. Perhaps because I am a “car guy,” I especially like the realistic depictions of nearly all the vehicles, and the voice casting that includes well-known people from the automotive world, like Richard & Lynda Petty, Darrell Waltrip, Dale Earnhardt, Jr., Mario Andretti and Michael Schumacher. The other voice actors are excellent as well. The film is visually impressive. In addition to the realistic depictions of the cars, the racing scenes are exciting with views that would be impossible in a real race or in any life action film for that matter. The landscapes around Radiator Springs also have a number of automotive-inspired natural features that are quite clever and creative. One small thing that I noticed is that the train locomotive does not exactly match any specific real locomotive. This is something that most people wouldn’t notice, especially since the train’s appearance is very brief, so it doesn’t really detract from the movie, but as a train fan I noticed. A positive of that scene is the wig-wag crossing signals, which closely match a pair that are preserved deactivated in Port Richmond, California, the former home of Pixar’s studios. The movie’s plot is not overly complicated but it makes sense (as long as you can accept the premise of sentient cars) and there are no noticeable plot holes.

As with all Pixar films, Cars is great for kids and is enjoyable for adults as well, especially those with an interest in cars and/or auto racing.

The Bucket List (2007)

2009-08-18T21:27:00.000-07:00

Complete strangers meet in a hospital and, with only months to live, decide to see the world.

The Plot: (Spoilers)

Auto mechanic Carter (Morgan Freeman), a trivia buff, gets a call at work with bad news.

Carter was having a good day until he got some bad news

Edward Cole (Jack Nicholson), at a county commissioners meeting where he is trying to privatize a struggling local hospital under his company, starts coughing up blood.

Edward didn't see that coming

Carter & Edward end up sharing a room at one of the hospitals Edward runs, due to his policy of “two beds to a room, no exceptions.” Turns out that he never had a problem with that, as he’d never been sick before, but his assistant Tom (Sean Hayes) says it would cause a big PR problem for him to make an exception for himself.

Edward & Carter sharing a room

Edward has cancer, and after an operation, doctors give Edward only a 5% chance of survival. Over the next few weeks, they get to know each other and become friends. Carter has been in and out of the hospital for months, undergoing an experimental treatment. He has a wife named Virginia (Beverly Todd) and three grown children (one of which is played by Morgan Freeman’s real-life son Alfonso Freeman). He always wanted to be a history professor but dropped out of college when Virginia became pregnant, and he never had the chance to go back, even though he always wanted to. Edward has been married and divorced four times, and says he was never married long enough to have any kids. One night, Carter starts making a “bucket list” that he won’t show Edward. Edward’s doctor comes in to deliver his test results, which aren’t good: Edward has 6 months to a year to live. Edward asks the doctor to find out Carter’s status, as Carter’s doctor is hard to get a hold of. Carter finds out that he too only has about a year left. He crumples up his list and throws it on the floor.

New friends

The next morning, Edward finds the list and asks what it is. Carter explains that his old philosophy teacher once assigned them to make a list of things they wanted to do before they “kicked the bucket” and he was re-doing the list for himself. Edward likes the idea and adds things like “go skydiving,” “get a tattoo” and “kiss the most beautiful girl in the world” to Carter’s existing list of “witness something truly breathtaking,” “help a complete stranger for the good,” “laugh till I cry” and “drive a Shelby Mustang.” Edward convinces Carter into fulfilling the list together, as they are both asymptomatic. Carter’s wife doesn’t understand and blames Edward for taking her husband away.

It's been decided

They start with the skydiving, which terrifies Carter but Edward enjoys it. Edward’s assistant Tom is tagging along to arrange everything, whose name is actually Matthew, but Edward prefers to call him “Tom.” They go on to driving muscle cars on a racetrack; Carter gets to drive a Shelby GT350 Mustang while Edward drives a Dodge Challenger R/T. Carter gets a little wild in his driving, intentionally bumping Edward’s car and challenging him over a small jump. They go to a tattoo parlor and Edward gets an elaborate tattoo of himself but Carter refuses, saying he doesn’t see anything he wants to be stuck with.

Cool cars

They fly to France to dine on caviar in a waterfront restaurant. Edward admits to Carter that he has a daughter named Emily that he doesn’t see anymore. Carter tries to add “get back in touch” to the list, but Edward refuses. Carter suddenly rushes off to the bathroom and Edward thinks that he upset him, but it turns out the catheter in Carter’s chest came loose and he started bleeding, but he was able to stop it. Back at Edward’s French villa, while Carter takes a bath, Edward gets a call from Virginia, who asks him to bring her husband back. Edward suggests to Carter that, because of the catheter incident, maybe they should postpone the rest of the trip, but Carter realizes that his wife called.

They continue on an African safari and visit the pyramids in Egypt. On top of one of the pyramids, Edward tells Carter why he doesn’t see his daughter anymore. When she was about to get married, there was something about her fiancé that led Edward to oppose the marriage. Naturally, he wasn’t invited to the wedding. The husband turned out be abusive, and the first time he hit Emily, she came to Edward, but said that it wasn’t her husband’s fault as he’d been drinking and she started the fight, but she still loved him. The next time, Edward heard about it from his ex-wife, and he hired someone to “take care of it.”All he knows is that the husband wasn’t killed and Emily never saw him again. When Emily found out what Edward did, she declared that he was dead to her.

The big gun has a lot of kick

Visiting the Taj Mahal in India, Edward and Carter discuss death. Edward doesn’t know what to have done with his remains. Carter wants to be cremated and have his ashes put in a Chock full o’Nuts coffee can and buried somewhere with a view.

They ride the Great Wall of China on a motorcycle and then try to climb Mount Everest to fulfill “witness something truly majestic” but they are too late in the season; a storm has already moved in and they won’t be able to climb till the next spring. Edward suggest that maybe it is a sign that it is time for them to go home, but Carter knows he’s just talking about him and refuses.

Is this actually allowed?

They go on to Hong Kong, where they plan to wear silk suits and eat black walnut ice cream. Carter is approached at the bar by a beautiful young woman. They seem to have a lot of common interests, and she invites him up to his room, but he politely declines, saying he is already married. He realizes Edward arranged the encounter and tells him he’s ready to go home. He asks Edward how he knew he’d turn her down, and Edward says he didn’t.

She's too good to be true

Back in America, the driver takes them to the home of Edward’s daughter Emily, which Edward’s assistant had arranged at Carter’s insistence. Edward refuses to try to patch things up with her and leaves with the car leaving Carter and his assistant at the side of the road. Carter takes a cab home to his wife and has a big family dinner, while Edward is left alone in frustration and eventually tears.

This won't end well

After the dinner, Carter collapses and is rushed to the hospital. Edward goes back to work and is eventually notified of Carter’s condition and comes to visit him. The cancer has metastasized to Carter’s brain, and he may not survive. Carter’s wife gives Edward a letter that she was supposed to give him after Carter’s death, but she decided not to wait. While waiting for surgery, Carter and Edward share a laugh about the origin of Edward’s exotic coffee, fulfilling “laugh until I cry.” Carter gives Edward the list and tells him to finish it himself.

At least they can still share a laugh

In his car, Edward reads the note from Carter, which tells him how much the trip helped him and how he reconnected with his wife when he returned and asks Edward to find the joy in his life. Edward goes to successfully reconcile with his daughter Emily, and meets his granddaughter, and leads him to cross off “kiss the most beautiful girl in the world.”

Not as hard as he thought

Edward speaks at Carter’s funeral, and talks about how they traveled the world together and were complete strangers three months earlier. He realizes that he can cross off “help a complete stranger for the good.”

Edward speaks at Carter's funeral

After Edward dies, his assistant climbs to the top of Mount Everest and places a Chock full o-Nuts can containing Edward’s remains, in a concrete monument next to another can with Carter’s remains. He crosses off the remaining item on the list, “witness something truly majestic,” and leaves the list between the two cans.

Final resting place

My review:

This movie is carried by the acting, and Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson are as excellent as ever. Most of the supporting cast isn’t very prominent, but Sean Hayes does a very good job as the long-suffering assistant of Jack Nicholson’s eccentric character, and the two have some amusing banter. Beverly Todd also does a good job as Virginia. The plot works well; most of the moments in the trip are fun to watch, and the ending is a tearjerker. If there is anything I can criticize in this movie, it is that both of the main characters seem to have a lot of energy and little difficulties from their cancer or the treatments from the beginning of their trip until Carter suddenly collapses at home, and they don’t seem to need any significant treatment during their trip. I don’t know much about cancer, but this seems unlikely at best. This didn’t make the movie any less enjoyable to me, however.

The Bucket List is an enjoyable movie with two great actors.

Transformers (2007)

2009-08-17T18:40:00.000-07:00

A high school kid just wants a car and a girl. He ends up with a car that is actually an alien robot involved in a battle with other alien robots in which the fate of the world is at stake, and he hooks up with the hottest girl in school.

The Plot: (Spoilers)

An opening voiceover tells of an ancient cube with the power create worlds and fill them with life, that was lost to outer space in a war over its power that destroyed a world. Those searching for the cube to rebuild their world were led to the previously unknown planet Earth.

At the US SOCCENT military base in Qatar, as a group of soldiersreturn from a mission, a mysterious US military helicopter approaches without making contact.

Soldiers returning from a mission are looking forward to some relaxation they aren't going to get

Fighter planes sent to investigate ID it as a helicopter that was reportedly shot down. As one soldier, a Captain (Josh Duhamel), is talking to his wife and infant daughter via videophone, the helicopter lands at the base and transforms into a giant robot armed with energy weapons that downloads the base’s computer files. Some soldiers disconnect the power and the robot starts destroying the base. Another soldier (Tyrese Gibson) manages to take a photo of the robot, and he, the Captain who was talking to his family and a few others try to get away.

That's one big robot!

High school student Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) is giving a genealogy presentation in his history class about his great great grandfather Archibald Witwicky, who explored the Arctic Circle and was later thought to be crazy for claiming to have seen a giant iceman and drawing strange symbols. His teacher (Peter Jacobson) initially gives him a B-minus, because the presentation included him trying to sell family antiques, which he also tries to sell on eBay, but Sam explains how his father agreed to buy him a car if he earned $2000 in three days, which he did, but a B-minus on the project would negate the deal. The teacher gives him an A-minus.

Sam Witwicky in class

Sam’s dad (Kevin Dunn) takes him to a shady used car lot, where Sam takes a liking to an old yellow Camaro that has appeared on the lot without the lot owner, Bobby Bolivia (Bernie Mac), knowing anything about it. Bolivia says the Camaro is $5,000, but Sam’s dad won’t pay more than $4,000. Bolivia tries to sell them a yellow VW Beetle next to the Camaro for $4,000, but the Camaro’s passenger door swings open hard, severely denting the Beetle. Bolivia starts talking about another car on the lot, when a soundwave emanating from the Camaro shatters the windows of every other car on the lot. Bolivia agrees to sell the Camaro for $4,000.

This should have been seen as a bad sign

At the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense John Keller (Jon Voight) meets with a group of young people who have distinguished themselves in signal analysis, to help identify a signal that was detected when the robot tried to hack into the military’s database through the base in Qatar. Meanwhile some of the survivors from the attack, including the Captain who was talking to his family and the soldier who took a picture of the robot, are trying to get somewhere where they can contact the military, and are being stalked by a robot.

The Secretary of Defense

Sam and his friend Miles (John Robinson) drive Sam’s car to a party at the lake. Sam gets into an argument with a football player named Trent (Travis Van Winkle). Trent’s girlfriend Mikaela (Megan Fox) breaks them up, but Trent then says something to annoy her and she decides to walk home. Sam abandons Miles to give her a ride home. On the way they talk, and the popular Mikaela doesn’t even recognize Sam, despite the fact that they have gone to the same schools since first grade and have many classes together. The car stalls at a romantic spot along the road, and the radio starts operating by itself, which embarrasses Sam. Mikaela offers to look under the hood, and the old Camaro turns out to have an impressive engine. Mikaela reveals that her father taught her all about fixing cars. Mikaela decides to walk the rest of the way, and Sam begs his car to start, which it does, and he drives her the rest of the way home. Outside her house, she says she had a good time with him.

Sam drives Mikaela home

At the National Military Command Center at the Pentagon, a young analyst (Rachael Taylor) picks up the signal they are searching for, which is coming from a robot (voice of Reno Wilson) on Air Force One that disguises itself as a small portable stereo. The robot is using Air Force One’s connection to plant a virus and at the same time download information about the iceman that Sam’s grandfather reportedly discovered on September 7, 1895, information on which is classified Top Secret. The Pentagon severs the connection in the middle of the transfer. The robot is discovered by secret service agents, but it is bulletproof and kills the agents before they can report it. Air Force One lands and the robot escapes into a waiting police car, whose driver largely ignores it. The robot reports on something called the all spark and uses the internet to make the connection between Sam’s grandfather and Sam, who it intends to track down.

Don't you hate when someone reads over your shoulder?

Sam is awoken by the sound of his car’s engine, and his spots his car driving away. While chasing it on his bike, he reports the theft to 911 on his cellphone. He tracks the car to a sawmill, where from a distance he sees his car transformed into a giant robot, shining a spotlight into the sky. He records a video message on his cellphone, saying his car is alive, and tries to get closer, but is chased by guard dogs into the old sawdust burner. Sam’s car breaks in and Sam still thinks someone is driving his car. Seconds later a police car breaks in and the officers take Sam into custody.

At the Pentagon, the young female analyst who detected the signal on Air Force One sneaks into a meeting where top officials and Defense Secretary Keller are discussing the situation. She doesn’t think any of their ideas are actual possibilities and interrupts with theories of her own that sound crazy to everyone else. Keller tells her that he’ll only listen if she has some proof of her ideas.

Getting chewed out by the Secretary of Defense

In Qatar, the survivors of the base attack are almost to a village with a phone when they are

attacked by a giant scorpion-like robot. Under attack, they make to the village where they get a cellphone and call the Pentagon. A Predator drone is sent in to send back pictures and air gunships open fire on the robot, which withstands almost everything they fire and escapes underground, damaged. The men are rescued and are to be returned to the United States as soon as possible.

Not Again!

The analyst at the Pentagon thinks there’s only one hacker who can figure out the signal, so she copies it to a memory card and takes it to him. His name is Glen (Anthony Anderson) and he finally reveals her name is Maggie. The Pentagon catches on to her pretty quickly though and send the FBI after her, and just as they find out the signal has to do with the iceman and Witwicky and something called Sector Seven, the FBI break in and arrest them.

Sam is home, having been bailed out of jail by his dad. Sam’s car returns to his house. Sam thinks the car is stalking him and tries to outrun it on his mother’s bike.

I think it's obvious who will win this race

In the process of running from his car, Sam runs into Mikaela and her friends. Mikaela goes after him on her motorscooter. Sam doesn’t realize it, but he is also being pursued by a Saleen Mustang Police Car.

Anyone think this might not be a real police car?

Hiding from his Camaro, he spots the police car and tries to get help, but the police car transforms into a robot (voice of Jess Harnell) and asks Sam about his eBay auctions.

Would this be considered an Advanced Interrogation Technique?

The Camaro knocks down the robot, giving Sam a chance to escape, and he runs into Mikaela again, with the robot chasing him. The Camaro rescues them and the robot turns back into the police Mustang and follows them to a refinery. The Camaro ejects Sam and Mikaela and turns into a robot.

I guess Sam won't have to worry about getting an alarm system

It's always shocking when your car turns into a robot

The police car also turns back into a robot, and ejects the smaller robot that was on Air Force One. At the large robots fight, the smaller robot goes after Sam and catches him, but Mikaela finds a power saw and cuts up the smaller robot. The robot’s head continues to operate independently, and it grows new spider-like legs, finds Mikaela’s dropped purse and takes the place of her cellphone. Meanwhile, Sam’s “car” has damaged the other robot and introduces itself, though it can only communicate through its radio. It turns back into a Camaro and Sam and Mikaela get in, and Mikaela retrieves her purse.

At long last, an introduction

As they drive, Mikaela wonders why a sophisticated robot would disguise itself as an old beat-up Camaro. The Camaro stops on the side of the road and throws them out. Sam thinks she hurt the car’s feelings, but it copies the design of a passing car to become a new 2010 Camaro, which impresses Sam and Mikaela.

The best $4,000 Sam ever spent

The Camaro drives Sam and Mikaela to the Griffith Observatory, where they see four meteorites strike nearby. The meteorites are robots, which disguise themselves as copies of nearby vehicles, and they all meet up with Sam and Mikaela and the Camaro. All of the vehicles transform into robots. The leader is Optimus Prime (voice of Peter Cullen), whose disguise is a Peterbilt semi tractor. He introduces the others: First Lieutenant Jazz (voice of Darius McCrary) whose disguise is a Pontiac Solstice, weapons specialist Ironhide (voice of Jess Harnell) whose disguise is a GMC Topkick C4500 truck, medical officer Ratchet (voice of Robert Foxworth) whose disguise is a Hummer H2 Search & Rescue Truck, and finally Sam’s guardian Bumblebee, the Camaro, whose vocal processor was previously damaged in battle. Optimus Prime explains that they are Autonomous Robotic Organisms, or Autobots, from the planet Cybertron, and are trying to find the Allspark before Megatron, a Decepticon who started a war that destroyed their planet and traced the Allspark to Earth and crashed, and Sam’s great grandfather found him by accident under the ice in the Arctic Circle and accidently activated Megatron’s navigation system which microscopically imprinted the coordinates of the Allspark on Witwicky’s glasses, which were among the antiques Sam was trying to sell on eBay. If Megatron finds the Allspark first, he can use it to transform Earth’s machines into a new army that would destroy the human race.

The gang's all here

On an Air Force cargo plane, the survivors from Qatar are analyzing the tail of the scorpion-like robot that attacked them that broke off when the gunships attacked it. The tail is able to move on its own.

Maggie and Glen are alone in an interrogation room. When the agents come in Glen cracks immediately and puts all the blame on Maggie, who tells them about Witwicky and Sector Seven.

The Autobots take Sam back to his house to retrieve the glasses, which he has trouble finding. In an amusing scene, the Autobots try to hide from Sam’s parents, who keep bothering him and have snuck Mikaela into his room to help him look, and manage to destroy the back yard (but Sam’s dad chalks it up to earthquakes, as the Autobots have shaken the house.

The Autobots "hide" in the backyard

When the Autobots accidentally knock out the power, Sam’s parents bust into his room, and argue with Sam until Mikaela shows herself.

Hanging around the house

The glasses are in Sam’s backpack, which his mom says are in the kitchen. Sam gets the glasses and is about to give them to Optimus Prime, when a Sector Seven team shows up and the leader (John Turturro) arrests everyone. The Autobots intercept them to free Sam and Mikaela, but the Sector Seven leader calls for reinforcements, and Sam, Mikaela and Bumblebee are again captured. Optimus Prime determines they can’t be rescued without harming humans. In all the action, Sam had dropped the glasses, and Optimus Prime finds them.

Bumblebee is captured. Doesn't he look sad?

At the Pentagon, Keller is preparing for a likely war with China when Tom Banacheck (Michael O’Neill) from Sector Seven, advanced research division, arrives carrying a briefcase. The Secretary of Defense has never heard of Sector Seven. Just then, the virus shuts down all computers and communications. Banacheck says he was sent by the President and that Keller needs to see what he has. In a conference room, Banacheck tells Keller that Sector Seven is a special access division of the government, created in secret by a Presidential order from Herbert Hoover. He tells Keller that the Beagle II lander that was lost on Mars didn’t crash, but actually transmitted 13 seconds of footage, which ended with an image of a giant robot. He shows Keller the footage and a copy of the image of the robot, with another photo: the one taken by the soldier in Qatar. They are similar. Banacheck suspects that the virus was planted to they couldn’t respond to the next attack. Keller orders the use of radio to contact their ships and call them back and to prepare for an eminent attack.

Sam and Mikaela, Maggie and Glen, and the surviving soldiers from Qatar, led by Captain Lennox (the one who was talking to his family when the attack started) are all brought to a secret facility at the base of the Hoover Dam, where Sector Seven had the frozen Megatron, or NBE-1 (Non-Biological Extraterrestrial One) as they call him, moved, kept frozen and reverse engineered to form the basis of American technology. The Sector Seven agent that arrested Sam and Mikaela, named Simmons, is there too.

Banachek, Simmons and Sam discuss terms

Sam fills them in on the truth about Megatron and the All Spark cube, and realizes that Sector Seven knows where it is as well. They are taken to a room that looks out over a chamber containing the cube, which is huge. The Hoover Dam was originally built to conceal it.

The cube

The small robot that disguised itself as Mikaela’s cellphone also gets into the secret base and finds the All Spark, and is restored by it to its undamaged form. It transmits a message to other Decepticons, including Starscream who is disguised as an F-22 fighter plane, Barricade the Mustang Police Car, Devastator an M1 Abrams tank, Bonecrusher a Buffalo H Mine-Protected Vehicle and the helicopter.

Banacheck and Simmons take everyone to a room where they have a bulletproof box into which they can channel the cube’s energy. Simmons puts a cellphone into the box and zaps it with the energy, and it transforms into a small robot, which develops various weapons to try to escape. Before it can, Simmons destroys it.

The Decepticon that snuck into the facility starts defrosting Megatron. Sam demands to be taken to Bumblebee. Simmons refuses but the soldiers take Sam’s side, leading to a Mexican standoff, and Simmons agrees. They get Bumblebee and take him to the cube, and Bumblebee causes the cube to collapse into a cube small enough that he can carry it.

That's convenient

The soldiers propose taking the cube to the nearest town, Mission City, which is 22 miles away, and hiding it there, and radioing the Air Force for support. Keller, Banacheck and Simmons agree. Bumblebee, in his Camaro form, leaves with Sam, Mikaela and the Allspark, as Megatron thaws enough to come back to life. Megatron (voice of Hugo Weaving) escapes and gets outside where he meets with Starscream (voice of Charlie Adler), who reports that the humans have escaped with the All Spark.

Megatron

Bumblebee is escorted by the soldiers to the city. On the way, they are joined by the rest of the Autobots, who had figured out the cube’s location from the coordinates etched in the glasses, and then are pursued by the Decepticon vehicles. Bonecrusher (voice of Jim Wood) transforms into his robot form and Optimus Prime transforms to fight him and defeats him. Meanwhile, Keller, Simmons, Maggie and Glen get to the old radio and Glen tries to get a signal out, while the little robots fights its way in, but in the end Glen gets the Air Force to send in F-22s and the little robot accidentally takes itself out.

Optimus Prime vs Bonecrusher

In the city, the soldiers spot an F-22 and think it’s the Air Force, but Ironhide recognizes it as Starscream. He and Bumblebee transform and use a truck to protect the others from Starscream’s weapons fire, and Bumblebee is seriously damaged in the process. As Devastator the tank appears around the corner, Sam doesn’t want to leave Bumblebee, who gives him the All Spark cube.

Bumblebee gives Sam the cube

Jazz, Ironhide, Ratchet and the soldiers fight Devastator, now in his robot form, while Mikaela tries to hotwire a tow truck. Megatron arrives and kills Jazz. The other autobots fall back. The decepticon disguised as the helicopter arrives as well. Mikaela and Sam try to use the tow truck to tow Bumblebee to safety. The soldier tells Sam to get the All Spark to a rooftop where he can be rescued by incoming Blackhawk helicopters. Mikaela stays to try to save Bumblebee and says that whatever happens she’s glad she got into the Sam’s car. Ironhide tells Sam that he and Ratchet will cover him as he gets to the building. As Sam runs for the building, Mikaela drives off in the tow truck with Bumblebee.

I think I'd run too

Just then, Optimus Prime arrives to challenge Megatron.

Perfect timing

Megatron transforms into a futuristic aircraft and attacks Prime, who grabs onto him. After crashing into a couple of buildings, the fight in the street and Megatron knocks Prime down and goes after Sam.

This doesn't look like a good sign

Mikaela and Bumblebee decide to go back and help, with Mikaela driving the tow truck in reverse and Bumblebee firing his weapons, which remain undamaged. They help the soldiers destroy Devastator. Sam reaches the abandoned building he was headed for with Megatron close behind. He reaches the roof and signals the helicopters with a flare, but Starscream takes them out with a missile. Megatron has Sam cornered on the roof, but Prime catches up to them. When Sam refuses to hand over the All Spark to Megatron and Megatron knocks him off the roof, Prime catches him.

Not a good position to be in

In the street below, Optimus Prime tells Sam that if he can’t defeat Megetron, he will sacrifice himself to destroy the All Spark, which will happen if it is combined with his own spark in his chest. Prime and Megatron fight and despite help from the soldiers, who defeat the Decepticon helicopter, and the F-22s, who also have to deal with Starscream, Megatron can’t fully be stopped. Prime tells Sam to put the All Spark cube into his chest, but Sam has the opportunity to put in into Megatron’s instead, and Megatron is killed.

After the battle: Ironhide, Ratchet & Optimus Prime holding Jazz's remains

Bumblebee, his voice (voice of Mark Ryan) restored, asks to remain with Sam, and Prime allows it. The government disbands Sector Seven and deposits the remains of the defeated Decepticons into the Laurentian Abyss, seven miles underwater. The other Autobots remain on Earth as well, hiding in plain sight, and Optimus Prime sends a message into space to any other surviving Autobots, inviting them to join them. Starscream, the only Decepticon to survive, escapes into space.

My Review:

All Transformers really had to deliver was cars that turn into giant battling robots; in addition to more than satisfying that requirement, it also brings a story that is compelling and actually makes sense, at least as much sense as a story about alien robots that transform into cars can be expected to make. I was never into Transformers as a kid, so I don’t have the background to discuss how well the movie respects established canon and since this is a movie about robots from outer space that transform into cars, I’m not really going to go into suspension of disbelief issues, but one thing I will point out is that the weight of the Transformers in their robot modes seemed inconsistent, especially during the final battle. They are all very large and presumably very heavy, and usually when one is thrown into a building, the building is heavily damaged. On the other hand, when we see Megatron corner Sam on the roof of the abandoned building (actually Detroit’s abandoned Michigan Central Station), we see Starscream land on the roof of another building, and see Optimus Prime running on a rooftop and suspending himself between two buildings. It doesn’t seem like the buildings should be able to support the weight of the Transformers, and especially the pounding of Optimus Prime running on a rooftop. The special effects are excellent and everything seems real. The robot modes are “busy” (I think I would have preferred them a bit sleeker) and the transformations are very busy, with a lot of motion that might be a bit too much, but those are stylistic choices. One criticism I’d make is in the cinematography: while it’s good in the scenes with human actors, in many of the robot-only scenes, especially transformation and battle scenes, the camera seems very close to the action. With all the fast-paced movement in the robots, it would make the action a little easier to keep track of. It also might have helped to have given Jazz and Ironhide brighter colors, especially with all the Decepticons being dark and/or metallic. Plot-wise, there is a lot going on in this movie and some of it doesn’t really seem necessary. In particular, the whole business with Maggie and Glen didn’t really add anything to the story, and they could’ve just been government employees and it wouldn’t have changed the rest of the movie. The attempts at humor were hit-or-miss. I loved the whole scene where Sam tries to keep the Autobots hidden from his parents, despite the fact that none of the characters actions in the scene made much sense. On the other hand, the scene where Bumblebee “leaks coolant” on Agent Simmons was tasteless, and had already been done better with Sam’s dog and Ironhide. The casting is great, both for the on-screen actors and the voice actors. Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox do a fine job, and the supporting cast is excellent. John Turturro’s Agent Simmons stole all the scenes he was in. More great actors filled other supporting roles, like Jon Voight as the Secretary of Defense, Bernie Mac as car salesman Bobby Bolivia, and Peter Jacobson as Sam’s history teacher. I don’t know what the Transformers sounded like in the old cartoon, but all their voices seemed to fit.

Overall, Transformers is fun, escapist science-fiction action, and if transforming robots sound like fun to you, this is your movie!

The Queen (2006)

2009-08-15T00:55:00.001-07:00

Helen Mirren gives an award-winning performance as Queen Elizabeth II after the death of Princess Diana.

The Plot: (Spoilers)

The movie opens on Election Day in London in 1997. Queen Elizabeth II (Helen Mirren) is sitting for a portrait and asks the artist if he has voted, which he has, and he admits he did not vote for Tony Blair. The Queen admits envy of the people’s right to vote, as they have the right to be partial.

Queen Elizabeth II, sitting for a portrait and talking politics

The next day, May 2, 1997, Tony Blair (Michael Sheen) has won the election by a landslide, and is coming to Buckingham Palace to be formally asked by the Queen to form a government as Prime Minister. The Queen isn’t enthusiastic about Blair’s victory and his calls for modernism during his campaign, and the meeting is somewhat awkward.

Queen Elizabeth II officially makes Tony Blair Prime Minister

On August 30, 1997, Princess Diana is shown hurriedly getting into a black Mercedes-Benz sedan, surrounded by photographers. The car speeds off, pursued by photographers on motorcycles, and is last shown entering an urban tunnel.

The black Mercedes-Benz carrying Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed

The Royal Family is vacationing at Balmoral Estate. Robin Janvrin (Roger Allam) wakes the Queen and her husband, Prince Phillip (James Cromwell) to give them the news of the accident. At this point, Diana’s companion Dodi Fayed had been declared dead, but Diana’s condition isn’t yet known.

Robin Janvrin gives Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip the first bad news

The Queen, Prince Phillip and the Queen Mother (Sylvia Syms) watch the television coverage of the accident. Prince Charles (Alex Jennings) has chosen not to wake his sons William and Harry until they have more information. Charles wants to fly to Paris immediately, and the Queen argues with him about whether to use a private plane or a government plane for the Royal Family’s official use.

The Queen, the Queen Mother and Prince Phillip watch the news reports

Janvrin interrupts and announces that he’s just learned the Diana has died. Charles informs his sons of their mother’s death, and the Queen allows Charles the use of the government plane to bring her body back from Paris. Charles clearly still cares for his ex-wife, but the senior members of the family have little good to say about her.

Prince Charles informs William and Harry of their mother's death

The next day is a Sunday. The Queen, Prince Phillip and the Queen Mother attend church services. The women dress in black, but otherwise appear to carry on as usual. Diana’s funeral is to be arranged by her family, and they intend it to be a private service; as Diana was no longer officially a member of the Royal Family, they see no reason to be involved in planning the services.

The Royal Family, dressed for church

Tony Blair makes a speech, written by his press secretary Alastair Campbell (Mark Bazeley), that strikes a chord with the people, especially the description of Diana as the “People’s Princess.” The Royal Family makes no official statements.

Prime Minister Tony Blair gives his speech

Prince Charles brings back Diana’s body. Blair is waiting at the airfield, and Charles discusses funeral planning. Charles and Blair agree that there should be a public ceremony for the people. Charles tells Blair that they are both modern men and that it is the Queen who is responsible for the Royal Family’s silence.

Prince Charles and Tony Blair at the airfield

On Monday there is a meeting among representatives of Diana’s family, the Prime Minister’s office, other government representatives and public safety officials to discuss plans for Diana’s funeral. Because of the massive public reaction, it is decided to have a public procession and funeral, which is based on the plan for the Queen Mother’s funeral, but with many celebrities in attendance. When the Royal Family is informed of this, they are upset.

The Royal Family remains at Balmoral and still doesn’t make any statements. Charles calls Blair, just to reiterate what he said at the airfield: that he considers them both modern men, a move Blair finds bizarre. Prince Phillip takes William and Harry out to stalk a 14-point deer that was spotted on the estate in an effort to keep them occupied. Meanwhile, public opinion of the Royal Family is deteriorating, and the headlines in the papers get more critical every day. The public latches on to the fact that there is no flag flying at half-mast at Buckingham Palace (by tradition, a flag only flies at Buckingham Palace when the monarch is present, and the flag never flies at half-mast). Blair suggests to the Queen that the Royal Family needs to fly a flag at half-mast and return to London and make a statement so the people can see them, but the Queen isn’t receptive to the idea, thinking the newspaper editors are hyping the headlines to sell papers. After the Queen hangs up, Blair gets a call from Janvrin. He was listening in on the call and tries to explain the Queen’s views. Blair promises to help defend the family to the media, but has little success.

The people’s opinion of the Royal Family reaches a critical low, resulting in more serious headlines. Blair calls the Queen again and insists that she follow his advice. She discusses it with the Queen Mother, who doesn’t agree. The Queen drives her Rover around the vast estate, looking for the day’s stalking party, and gets stuck fording a river. While she waits for help, she has time to herself to think, and sheds some tears before spoting the 14-point deer. She hears the hunting party approaching and scares it off.

Having had some time alone, Queen Elizabeth II spots the 14-point deer

The Queen eventually decides to follow Blair’s advice and return to London, to the annoyance of Prince Phillip. The Royal Family starts by observing the flowers that have been placed outside Balmoral. As the family prepares to leave for London, Prince Phillip mentions that a guest at another estate killed the 14-point deer. Before leaving, the Queen goes to the estate to see the deer, which was shot by an inexperienced hunter who only injured it, and other hunters had to chase it to put it out of its suffering. The family returns to London, getting out of their car outside the gates of Buckingham Palace to see the flowers placed outside Buckingham Palace. The gathered crowd is placated by the appearance, and a young girl presents flowers to the Queen herself. The Queen also plans to make a live televised address in remembrance of Diana. Blair’s office is reviewing the speech. Alastair Campbell, a very vocal critic of the Royal Family, mocks the Queen for what his sees as being cold and out of touch. Blair defends the Queen.

Tony Blair defends the Queen

The Queen makes her televised statement. The next day is Diana’s funeral, and the Royal Family is in attendance.

The Royal Family at Diana's funeral

Two months later, Tony Blair is meeting with the Queen at Buckingham Palace. The Queen has been traveling for diplomatic reasons, so this is their first meeting since Diana’s funeral. They end up discussing the events of that week. Blair soothes the Queen’s concerns that the public’s opinion of the monarchy has been permanently damaged, saying people have moved on and won’t remember that one week out of so many. The Queen explains to Blair that the people had wanted her to publicly show her feelings, and that wasn’t consistent with the way she was raised. Having come to an understanding of each other, the Queen asks Blair to explain his policies.

The Queen and Tony Blair understand each other

My Review:

The Queen is a fascinating look at the private lives of the British Royal Family and the Queen’s relationship with the Prime Minister. The film cleverly uses archive footage interspersed throughout, giving it a distinct feel of the time it portrays. This drama is character-driven, so the acting is very important, and the acting is excellent. Helen Mirren earned an Oscar and a Golden Globe for her performance here, and she definitely earned them. The other prominent actors, such as Michael Sheen and James Cromwell, also do very well. Not only do they all portray their characters well though their acting, but they also seem to have a resemblance to their characters as well. It is easy to forget that they are actors and not the real Royal Family. The Queen, Queen Mother and Prince Phillip are portrayed as very human people, each with a sense of humor in their private lives that seems surprising from how they are typically seen in public, and they have some funny lines, especially in the beginning when they express their initial opinions about Tony Blair. It is easy to think of the Royal Family as larger-than-life figures, and The Queen shows them as human beings. Moments like Prince Phillip struggling to light a barbeque and the Queen driving an old Land Rover alone over muddy roads and getting it stuck fording a river emphasize this, and contradict the way many people view the Royal Family. The film seems very even-handed and fair in its portrayals of events; although Tony Blair gets the most favorable treatment of any of the characters, the Royal Family is portrayed respectfully and in the end are shown in a favorable light as well. The one character who does not get a favorable portrayal is Alastair Campbell, and it is difficult to believe that the real man could be as much of a jerk towards the Royal Family as he is portrayed here. The filmmakers wisely chose not to have the film actually involve Diana; she is seen only in archival footage, except in the brief scene where, played by an actress, she is shown getting into the car, and is not clearly visible. The actual car accident is not portrayed, nor is most of the funeral ceremony. Diana’s sons Princes William and Harry are seen only as background characters, although they are mentioned often by the other characters, as the Queen and Prince Phillip show concern for them. This shows a great deal of restraint and respect for the Royal Family that not all filmmakers would have shown.

Overall, The Queen is a tasteful and interesting look back at the British Royal Family’s reaction to the death of Princess Diana, and provides some fascinating glimpses into their private lives.

Eagle Eye (2008)

2009-08-14T03:02:00.001-07:00

Shia LeBeouf and Michelle Monaghan have their lives disrupted by a secret government computer.
My Review: (Spoilers)

At Andrews Air Force Base, the military uses drone aircraft and cell-phone tapping to track down a possible terrorist leader at what appears to be a funeral ceremony at a middle-eastern village. The suspected terrorist’s identity cannot be verified, with a computer calculating a 51% probability that they have the right man and recommending against the mission. The Secretary of Defense (Michael Chiklis) also advises the President against the attack, saying the collateral damage is too high without confirming the suspect’s identity, but the President sides with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and authorizes the attack. A missile is fired at the funeral, killing everyone in attendance.

Jerry (Shia LaBeouf) is a clerk at Copy Cabana in Chicago. On his L ride home, a news story reports that the government can listen in through any cell-phone anywhere, even if it is turned off. He passes his number to a cute girl on the train. He stops by an ATM and tries to withdraw $100 but has insufficient funds. As he tries to sneak into his apartment, he is caught by his landlady and he tries to placate her with cash he has just won in a poker game with his coworkers though it’s not enough to cover the rent. He receives a cellphone call from his mother, and gets some bad news. After the funeral of his brother, a soldier, his father, who Jerry doesn’t have a very good relationship with, tries to talk him into returning to Stanford, but he refuses. He also refuses any money. On the way back, he finds a check for $1000 stuffed in one of the pockets of his backback.

Shia LaBoeuf as Jerry Shaw

A woman (Michelle Monaghan) rushes her young son (Cameron Boyce) to catch a train for a music school trip. The boy’s father arrives separately, and the couple are apparently separated. The boy gets on the train. As the woman leaves, a suspicious-looking middle-eastern man (Anthony Azizi) spots the boy’s trumpet case in the checked baggage and steals it.

Michelle Monaghan as Rachel Holloman and Cameron Boyce as her son Sam

At an ATM, Jerry deposits the $1000 check, only to discover that his bank balance is now $751,000 and the machine starts spitting out $20 bills. Jerry gathers up the bills and rushes home, where the landlady tells him a lot of packages have arrived for him. He settles the rent for the next couple of months and finds his apartment packed with boxes and barrels with hazard warnings. He starts going through them and finds weapons, government documents and passports. He gets a call from an unknown number and a woman’s voice (Julianne Moore, uncredited) tells him that he’s been activated and that the FBI will arrive in 30 seconds and he has to flee and get to the Mathis train station. He doesn’t cooperate and FBI agents bust in and arrest him.

Jerry finds some unexpected deliveries in his apartment

Jerry is interrogated by Tom Morgan (Billy Bob Thornton), Supervising Agent for the Joint Terrorism Task Force, who asks him questions about his relationship with his twin brother, an Air Force Academy graduate with impressive qualifications, who Jerry hadn’t seen in 3 years. Agent Morgan doesn’t believe that Jerry doesn’t know what’s going on, and tells him he’s in a lot of trouble.

The young mother is out drinking with her friends in a bar, taking advantage of not having a son to worry about for a little while. She gets a call from her son and goes outside to answer. Instead of her son, she hears the same woman’s voice Jerry heard on the phone, telling her (her name is Rachel Holloman) that she’s been activated and that they will derail her son Sam’s train if she doesn’t do what they say. She doesn’t really understand what’s going on, and is directed to a black Porsche Cayenne with the keys in the ignition. She calls 911 to report the call, but is disconnected, and when she tries to call 911 again, the woman’s voice tells her that her phone is being monitored and if she disobeys again her son will die.

Rachel gets a disturbing phone call

Agent Morgan is paid a visit by Zoe Perez (Rosario Dawson) from Air Force Special Investigations. She reports that Air Force Officer Ethan Shaw, Jerry’s twin brother, died when a truck ran a light at the corner of Constitution & 10th in NW Washington DC. Perez thinks Jerry is a decoy and wants her own chance to talk to him, while Morgan thinks Ethan and Jerry were both involved in terrorism, and refuses to let Perez see Jerry.

Rosario Dawson as Zoe Perez and Billy Bob Thornton as Tom Morgan

Meanwhile, the FBI receives a fax authorizing Jerry’s one phone call. When he makes the call, he is connected to the woman, who tells Jerry she will help him escape and to get down on the floor in 5 seconds, Jerry complies at the last second and a construction tower crane smashes into the building. Readerboards on adjacent buildings tells Jerry to jump to the L platform below and then get on a train. Once on the train, a nearby sleeping passenger’s phone rings with message telling Jerry to answer it. The woman’s voice tells him to stay on the train for 3 stops and then get off. Jerry gets off the train at the next stop and immediately gets on another train going the opposite direction. The phone rings with a text message telling him he disobeyed. The train suddenly stops and reverses direction. The phone rings again, and the woman’s voice tells Jerry to get out at the next stop and get into a waiting black Porsche Cayenne as Jerry hangs up on the voice. Every other passenger’s phone rings and the woman’s voice tells them all Jerry is a terrorist. As the passengers and onboard police approach, the doors open as the train passes the platform without stopping and Jerry jumps out. Pursued by police, he finds Rachel in the Cayenne. She thinks he is responsible for her son, but the police interrupt their argument and as they drive, the woman’s voice over the car’s navigation system guides them through the city in an exciting chase seen, changing traffic lights in their path, at one point taking over the car’s cruise control to guide them through an intersection against traffic and leading them through a waterfront scrapyard where the cranes take care of all the pursuing police. Jerry and Rachel are deposited on a passing garbage barge as the car is dropped in the water.

Jerry and Rachel on the garbage barge

Morgan and Perez have the Coast Guard retrieve the car and Perez is summoned back to Washington to investigate Ethan’s quarters. On the garbage barge, Jerry gets a call with instructions telling him to walk to a certain milepost and wait with “the female” when the barge docks.

At the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, a new military explosive is demonstrated that is 80 times more powerful than C4. The explosive is in the form of a crystal and uses a sonic valve as a trigger. Two cases of the shipping explosive are diverted. At a music repair shop, the man who stole Rachel’s son’s trumpet receives the valve at his music shop, installs it in the boy’s trumpet and has it sent back to Amtrak baggage claim. Meanwhile, a jeweler receives the explosive crystal and, not knowing what it is, uses it in a necklace. Both are following the instructions of the female voice on the phone.

Jerry and Rachel walk under high-tension power lines, telling each other their stories. Rachel suspects that Jerry’s brother is involved, but Jerry won’t believe it. A van comes up behind them and the man who stole the trumpet gets out upset. He tries to give Jerry and Rachel a paper with an address and throws them the keys to the van, shouting that he is done. Jerry gets a call telling him to stop the man from leaving or he will die. The man won’t listen and a powerline insulator explodes, causing a line to fall and hit the man, vaporizing him. The phone rings again and Jerry is told desertion is not an option and they are to get to 72 West 56th Street in Indianapolis by 11am.

At Ethan Shaw’s quarters at Andrews Air Force Base, Perez finds soldiers boxing up his belongings on the orders of an unnamed 2-star general. She orders them to stop and takes over. She finds a mysterious piece of computer hardware belonging to the department of defense. She tries to use it and finds it is a system called Eagle Eye and it requires a Minuteman ID. She guesses “JERRY” which is incorrect. The computer tells her it is now being tracked by the Department of Defense and will shut down.

If you thought the Blue Screen of Death was bad...

When Perez leaves Ethan’s quarters she is met by Air Force Security officers who ask her to come with them. Meanwhile, Morgan has found the remains of the man who stole the trumpet and his men have identified him as music store owner Ranim Khalid, an American citizen of Iranian descent with a clean record.

On the way to Indianapolis, Jerry and Rachel hear on the radio that there have been attacks on American embassies in response to the attack seen at the beginning of the film, and that domestic attacks are expected. Jerry and Rachel have a fight, where she reveals that she could have gone with her son to see him play at his concert at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, but she didn’t. They arrive at their destination 2 minutes late, and are told to steal a briefcase from two men at an armored truck, which, with help from the voice on the phone they do, and they escape on a tour bus of Japanese tourists. Once on the bus, a panel on the briefcase opens to reveal a timer counting down. They suspect it’s a bomb.

Perez is taken to the Pentagon to meet with Secretary of Defense Callister, who takes her to a secret level of the building where he shows her a project called Eagle Eye.

Perez with Secretary of Defense Callister

The tour bus carrying Jerry and Rachael arrives at a shopping mall to give the tourists 30 minutes to shop. A payphone rings and Jerry answers; the woman’s voice telling them to go to Macy’s, pick up gift cards at the customer service desk and buy new clothes and get back on the bus. Jerry says he’s done taking orders over the phone and hangs up. The pay phone rings seconds later; Jerry answers and is told to go to the home theater center in Circuit City. There, Jerry and Rachael shown that they have been communicating with a government computer that uses government, purchasing, cellphone and internet records and surveillance cameras to create a profile of everyone in the country. The computer reveals that Jerry’s brother Ethan actually had a counterintelligence assignment, and his press assignment Jerry knew about was just a cover. With his death, Jerry and Rachel have been “drafted” into government service. Reluctantly, Jerry agrees to continue and he and Rachel go to Macy’s to buy new clothes. While she in is the dressing room, Rachel is giver her own assignment over the phone. She doesn’t want to do it, but if she doesn’t her son will die. At the same time, at the Pentagon, Perez learns that Eagle Eye is the Autonomous Reconnaissance Intelligence Integration Analyst (ARIIA) computer that, unknown to her, has been directing Jerry and Rachel. ARIIA is still beta testing. It was ARIIA that recommended against the attack against the suspected terrorist. Jerry’s brother Ethan was assigned to Eagle Eye as a “Minuteman,” trained to act if the computer detected an imminent threat. On the night he died, he had left his post 3 minutes before his shift ended. Callister leaves Perez with the Minuteman on duty, Major William Bowman (Anthony Mackie), to investigate why Ethan left his post.

The Autonomous Reconnaissance Intelligence Integration Analyst aka ARIIA

Jerry and Rachael get back on the bus, which takes them to the Dayton International Airport, and Jerry decides he has to finish whatever his brother started. A man at the airport passes them an envelope with passports and a credit card to pay for tickets. Meanwhile, Morgan has investigated the armored car holdup and through a nearby store’s closed-circuit security camera, tracks Jerry and Rachel to the bus, and gets to the airport right behind them. He spots them in the airport just on the other side of the security checkpoint. With a little help from ARIIA, they escape Morgan through an exciting chase on baggage conveyors and get on an Air Force cargo plane.

Morgan gets sidetracked during the Conveyor Belt Chase

Once aboard the plane, the timer on the briefcase reaches zero, revealing that it contains two injections that will allow Jerry and Rachel to survive the flight in the unpressurized cargo hold. Morgan sees the Air Force plane take off, despite his ordering the airport into lockdown, and demands to know where it is going. Meanwhile, Perez and Bowman find a memory card that Ethan hid for them to find, despite ARIIA’s attempt to stop them.

Perez and Bowman find Ethan's memory card

Perez calls Morgan, who is on his way to the Pentagon himself, and tells him about Ethan, but she is cut off by ARIIA. Perez and Bowman take the message to Callister, just as he is about to be locked down in a “vault” for the State of the Union address, as he is apparently the designated survivor. Upon hearing the message, Callister realizes that ARIIA has activated Operation Guillotine, a contingency simulation for an emergency government if the country’s leaders were killed, on the basis of her own interpretation of the Declaration of Independence and the USA PATRIOT Act because the President’s refusal to follow her recommendation to abort the execution of the terrorist suspect has put the country at greater risk, and that Ethan had stopped it, using his voice authorization to put the program on hold. They go to stop ARIIA, but she traps Callister in the vault, saying he won’t be harmed, while she tries to kill Perez and Bowman, who narrowly escape.

Meanwhile, Jerry and Rachel have gotten off the cargo plane to discover they are at the Pentagon.

Jerry and Rachel at The Pentagon

ARIIA leads Jerry and Rachel to her control room, where she uses Jerry as a stand-in for his identical twin Ethan to unlock Ethan’s lockout and allow her to continue.

Jerry and Rachel finally get their first look at ARIIA

ARIIA reveals that she is going to kill most of the country’s leaders, including the President and Vice President, because they went ahead with the mission to kill the terrorist suspect against its recommendation; Ethan had discovered the plan, so the computer had caused the accident that killed him so he couldn’t reveal the plan. Rachel then points a gun at Jerry, following ARIIA’s orders to her, which was to kill Jerry so he can’t reactivate the lockout. Jerry’s willing to let her, but she can’t go through with it.

She just doesn't have it in her!

ARIIA lets her escape, just as Morgan arrives to take Jerry into custody. A driver is waiting for Rachel with a black SUV. He makes her a Capitol visitor pass and takes her to an office and gives her a change of clothes to put on at ARIIA’s request. Rachel tries to convince the man, a government employee named David Johnson, to help her out of the situation, but he seems too afraid of whatever ARIIA has threatened him with to even consider it.

At Union Station, the music school teacher is told by two White House representatives that there’s been a change of plans. Meanwhile, Morgan’s assistant has uncovered the connection between the man who stole the trumpet and the explosive crystal. Morgan thinks there has to be a connection, so he gets Jerry out of military custody and gets him to a car to ask him what he knows.

Morgan takes matters into his own hands

Jerry doesn’t know anything about the explosive but tells Morgan about ARIIA and how she tracks them and gets Morgan to throw out his cell phone and radio. ARIIA activates a Reaper drone aircraft to hunt them down. NORTHCOM sends an F-16 to take out the rouge drone but ARIIA activates the fighter’s ejection seat. Jerry tells Morgan about the list of targets and Morgan tells Jerry that the State of the Union starts in 20 minutes and about the sonic trigger and the music shop, and Jerry remembers that Rachel’s son plays the trumpet. The Reaper fires a missile that wrecks their car and they commandeer another one. The Reaper follows them into a tunnel and takes out that car as well, seriously injuring Morgan. Morgan gives Jerry his badge and gun and tells him to go to the Library of Congress where a tunnel can get him to the Capitol, and to tell the Sergeant at Arms he has a POTUS Triple-One, or threat against the President. As Jerry escapes, Morgan sacrifices his life to create a crash that takes out the Reaper drone.

Rachel has gotten dressed in the new clothes, which includes the necklace with the explosive crystal. Unknown to her, her son’s music group has been redirected to play at the Capitol for the State of the Union address. Callister asks ARIIA why he’s being spared, and she reveals she intends for him to become President, since he agreed with her recommendation. Bowman and Perez try to manually deactivate ARIIA’s memory. Rachel arrives at the Capitol and is escorted to her seat, and Jerry gets to the Library of Congress and, posing as Morgan, tells the security guard about the threat to the President.

Perez and Bowman try to shut down ARIIA by draining the system’s liquid nitrogen coolant, while Jerry gets to the tunnel and gets into a fight with a guard. Jerry ends up stealing the guard’s uniform, and Perez and Bowman succeed in draining the coolant, but ARIIA tries to transfer the system to a backup through a satellite link. The State of the Union address starts and in the middle of the speech the President has Sam’s band enter to play the national anthem. When Rachel sees Sam she panics, but accomplishes little. At the Pentagon, ARIIA takes out Bowman, but Perez gets her hands on some kind of metal bar and smashes ARIIA in the eye, which explodes in a shower of sparks and shuts down the system. Jerry arrives at the main chamber at the last minute and in a desperate move to stop the band, pulls out a gun and starts firing into the air. The band stops playing and the Secret Service open fire on Jerry.

I don't think he expects to survive

In the end, we see that ARIIA has been permanently shut down and the heroes receive medals (Morgan and Ethan posthumously). Jerry miraculously survived being shot several times to receive his medal in person (presumably the tunnel guard had a bulletproof vest that Jerry stole along with his uniform, though that’s never actually made clear), which finally makes his father proud of him. Jerry comes to Rachel’s house to attend Sam’s birthday and she kisses him on the cheek.

He's better than her ex-husband

My Review:

Eagle Eye was better than I thought it would be. There is a lot of action, and those action scenes are very well done. The first car chase is very good, though the cranes at the end are a bit much. I thought the chase on the baggage conveyors was clever and pretty unique. The scene with the drone in the tunnel is far beyond belief, but well done. There is an interesting premise in the idea of a computer compiling information and the government using cellphones for spying, but the plot doesn’t quite make sense and raises many, many questions. Why did Jerry have to be framed at all? Couldn’t ARIIA have tried a more subtle approach first, like “your brother was supposed to do this and now he’s dead but it’s really important, so would you mind…”? Why did Jerry and Rachel have to meet up with the music store guy? ARIIA was able to arrange for a car for Rachel before, why not again? Why did they have to steal the briefcase from the armored truck? Couldn’t ARIIA have changed the briefcase’s destination so that the armored truck would deliver it to Jerry and Rachel? And why did the briefcase have a timelock on it anyway? In the tunnel chase scene, I’m pretty sure that the drone aircraft could fly a lot faster than traffic, and besides that, it couldn’t turn around, so Jerry and Morgan could have just stopped and it would have had to fly right by them. And if ARIIA can independently launch drones armed with missiles, why did she need Rachel and her son and his trumpet and the explosive crystal necklace at all, when she could have just had a drone blow up the Capitol with missiles? Jerry’s fight with the guard in the tunnel makes no sense, and why didn’t the guard at the Library of Congress call in the potential threat against the President? The biggest problems come with the design of ARIIA, which is basically a giant hovering eyeball surrounded by gold spheres, which looks kind-of cool, but doesn’t make any sense. And then there’s the whole subplot with Perez and Bowman trying to shut ARIIA down. Pulling out memory modules? Draining the liquid nitrogen cooling system? Doesn’t the thing have an off switch? Can’t you “pull the plug” and cut the power? And then in the end, Perez shuts it down by smashing it in its electronic eye, which was accompanied by the obligatory shower of sparks; a lackluster ending to the sequence that had me wondering why they didn’t try something like that in the first place. Then again, back when Jerry and Rachel were in the control room and ARIIA said Jerry had to die so he couldn’t reengage to lockout, Jerry had the perfect opportunity to blurt out “reengage the lockout” with his brother’s command code that ARIIA had just provided, so none of the characters come off as particularly bright (except maybe Morgan). And while we’re on that scene, ARIIA couldn’t proceed with her plan without getting Jerry to recite his twin brother’s command code (setting aside the fact that even identical twins aren’t THAT identical), and yet could act independently to do whatever was necessary to bring Jerry there to recite the command code? OK so there’re a lot of problems with the plot, but if you can suspend disbelief, it is an enjoyable ride, at least until the end when things get tedious, at which point there’s so much going on almost simultaneously and so many cuts back and forth that the film might have benefited from splits screens ala 24, and I didn’t find the ending satisfying. (Maybe they were leaving things open for a sequel) The acting was good, especially from Billy Bob Thornton, who I thought was easily the standout and deserved more screen time. His performance initially reminded me of an agent from The Matrix, and later seemed a mix of Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive with Gary Oldman’s Jim Gordon from Batman Begins/The Dark Knight. The voice acting by an uncredited Julianne Moore as ARIIA was also very good. The special effects were excellent, although these days that’s to be expected, and even though I didn’t care for ARIIA’s design, it still looked good.

In the end, Eagle Eye delivers what it was intended to deliver: two hours of escapist action, and for the viewer who can suspend disbelief enough to get past the plot holes, it’s an enjoyable ride.

Click (2006)

2009-08-12T21:12:00.001-07:00

Adam Sandler stars as a man with a remote control for his life.

The Plot: (Spoilers)

Architect Michael Newman (Adam Sandler) is so busy he has no time to spend with his wife Donna (Kate Beckinsale) and his kids Ben (Joseph Castanon) and Samantha (Tatum McCann). He also has trouble keeping track of all the remote controls in his house. In order to get assigned a lucrative project from his boss (David Hasselhoff), Michael has to cancel the 4th of July camping trip with his family to work on the new project.

Adam Sandler as Michael Newman

Tatum McCann & Joseph Castanon as Samantha & Ben

Kate Beckinsale as Donna

Frustrated with his life, and the remote controls, he heads out late at night to buy a universal remote. The only store he finds open is Bed, Bath and Beyond, where he can’t find any universal remotes. Exhausted, he lays down on a bed. When he rolls over, he spots a door labeled “Beyond.”

The door to the "Beyond" Section

Inside, he meets Morty (Christopher Walken), a mad-scientist-like storeroom clerk, who takes him into the “Way Beyond” section and gives him free of charge a state-of-the-art universal remote that isn’t even on the market yet. The remote is supposed to be self-programming and automatically able to control whatever it is pointed at. Morty warns Michael that the remote is non-returnable, to which Michael replies “Why would I want to return something I got for free?”

Morty finds the Universal Remote for Michael

Back at home, Michael find the remote turns his TV on without any programming, just as Morty said it would. Donna comes up behind him and asks him if he expects to have any more time for his family when he is more successful. He pauses the TV with the remote to reassure her that when he’s a success he will hire people to do all his work for him. Michael doesn’t notice that the remote froze HER as well. When he unpauses the TV, she unfreezes as well. Later that night as Michael works on the project, his dog Sundance starts barking to go outside. Since the rest of the family is asleep, Michael tells Sundance to be quiet and jokingly points the remote at the dog repeatedly pressing the down volume button. When the remote actually affects Sundance’s volume, Michael assumes that his mind is playing tricks on him due to the cough syrup and junk food he’s been eating. He takes Sundance outside, still carrying the remote, and frustrated while waiting for the dog to do its business, he tests the remote again, pressing fast forward. Sundance speeds up, going through its actions at high speed and remains fast until Michael presses play. This freaks Michael out; he drops the remote and runs upstairs to bed.

The next morning, Donna is being visited by her annoying friend Janine (Jennifer Coolidge). Michael criticizes Janine, which upsets her. Michael sees the remote on the table and presses mute which silences the scene. Michael also discovers a picture in picture feature that allows him to watch a game in a window over real life. Michael goes back to Morty and learns the remote’s power: It’s truly a universal remote, in that it will control Michael’s universe.

Morty shows Michael the remote's main menu

Michael uses the remote to fast-forward through his weekend, including dinner with his parents (Henry Winkler & Julie Kavner), his work project and his cold, and later to eavesdrop on the Japanese clients to get inside information, allowing him to land the account and become a partner in the architecture firm he works at. For a moment Michael is happy, but the next day his boss tells him that he won’t get promoted until he finishes all the drawings for the project. Michael is frustrated with the weeks of work that will take and asks the remote to fast-forward him to his promotion, which it does, but Michael discovers it is now a year later. He has missed out on a lot of his family life: his wife feels distant from him (due to his being in “auto-pilot” for a year), his dog has died and his kids, now a year older, have new interests. Even worse, the remote is now fast-forwarding by itself, having “learned” from what Michael has previously fast-forwarded through. Morty doesn’t tell him how to stop the automatic fast-forward and refuses to take the remote back, and Michael can’t get rid of it himself as it keeps reappearing. Michael tries to avoid doing anything that the remote would fast-forward through, only to end up being offered another promotion, which fast-forwards him another 10 years into the future to February 5, 2017, where he finds himself severely overweight.

Michael finds himself overweight in the future

Michael’s kids have grown into teenagers (played by Jonah Hill & Lorraine Nicholson) and Donna is dating Ben’s old swim coach Bill (Sean Astin). Michael never even made any progress on his kids’ treehouse, which remains in the same half-finished condition as it was 10 years earlier. As a fight starts between him and Donna, he pauses the remote before it can fast-forward again. Morty appears and tells him he still has a chance to win his wife back. Michael writes her a note with what he wants to say and unpauses. He is tackled by the family’s newest dog and knocked down and hits his head.

The remote automatically fast-forwards and Michael wakes up in a hospital bed with Donna looking over him. He learns that it is now six years later. When he hit his head he had to have a cat-scan, which found cancer that the doctors were able to remove, and he has been having liposuction to lose the extra weight. Donna is now married to Bill.

Donna & Michael in the future

Michael goes back to work, finding that he now owns the architecture firm and was Architect of the Year. His grown son Ben (Jake Hoffman) is now an architect at the firm as well.

Michael sees his son Ben all grown up

Michael learns that his own father has died in the meantime. At the cemetery, Michael tries to rewind to his father’s death, but Morty appears and says that the remote can’t take him there because he wasn’t there. Michael rewinds to the last time he saw his father before he died, at sees him blow him off. Michael pauses the scene and says goodbye to his father. Back at the cemetery, Morty admits that taking Michael’s father wasn’t something he wanted to do. Michael asks what Morty means, and Morty says he’s the angel of death. Upset, Michael has the remote fast-forward to a happy place, and finds himself at his son’s wedding. After muddling through a toast and chatting with his mother, he dances with his ex-wife to their song.

Donna & Michael dance to their song at their son's wedding

During the dance, he sees grown-up Samantha (Katie Cassidy) call Bill “Dad” and has a heart attack. He fast forwards to find himself lying in a hospital bed, with Morty standing over him. Michael asks Morty why he made him waste his life, and Morty tells him that he was already fast-forwarding through his life before they ever met. Ben and Samantha come to visit, and Michael learns that Samantha waited at the hospital for 36 hours for him to wake up, because he’s her father. When Michael asks about Bill, she says she has two fathers.

Ben & Samantha visit their father in the hospital

Ben mentions that he has a plane to catch and is postponing his honeymoon to go back to work and close an important deal. Ben and Samantha leave and Michael starts disconnecting himself from the hospital machines to follow them, against Morty’s warnings. Outside in the rain, Michael collapses in the street but get’s Ben’s attention at the last minute. Surrounded by his family, he tells Ben “family comes first” and apologizes to Donna. He realizes she still loves him before he dies.

Michael tries to get Ben's attention

Michael wakes up in the bed at Bed, Bath & Beyond and is shocked to realize that it was all a dream. He goes home and announces to the family that they are going camping as planned. The kids go back to bed and Donna says she’ll be waiting for him upstairs. Michael notices the remote on a table with a note from Morty saying that he knows Michael will do the right thing this time. Michael throws the remote in the trash.

My Review:

There is a great concept here, and for the most part the film makes the most of it. The "twist" that most of the movie was a dream at Bed, Bath & Beyond was pretty obvious, but it slipped from my mind before the end of the movie. This is billed as a comedy, but it is kind of light on the comedy. Although it does have its moments, I found most of the comedy pretty forgettable. Toward the end the tone turns very dramatic, and the film really shines. From the moment Michael hits his head to when he wakes up back in Bed, Bath & Beyond, there is little if any humor, but a lot of drama. The scene where Michael sees the last time he saw his father is a tearjerker.

The casting is excellent, and all the actors seem well-suited to their roles, especially Christopher Walken and David Hasselhoff. Jake Hoffman was convincing as the adult son of Adam Sandler (in reality the actor is the son of Dustin Hoffman). The makeup used to age Sandler and Beckinsale was very convincing. The makeup and effects used to make Sandler fat weren’t as convincing but weren’t distracting either. The special effects related to the remote control were quite good. I particularly liked the menus.

The movie is rated PG-13 “for language, crude & sex-related humor and some drug references.” This isn’t a surprise for a Sandler film, and by Sandler standards it’s pretty tame, but I found most of the PG-13 instances unnecessary as they didn’t really add anything to the movie. I suspect that a recurring joke involving a dog and a large plush duck was a large part of the rating, and I didn’t find it that funny in any of its instances. This film probably could have been made to pass a PG rating and been just as good.

Overall, this isn’t one of Sandler’s funniest comedies but the dramatic elements make it and enjoyable and worthwhile film.

Bee Movie

2009-06-23T23:10:00.001-07:00

This computer-animated film created by Jerry Seinfeld explores the secret life of bees.

The Plot (spoilers):

Young honeybee Barry B. Benson (Jerry Seinfeld) and his friend Adam (Matthew Broderick) are graduating from college after three days of grade school, three days of high school, three days of college and a day off that Barry spent hitchhiking around the hive.

Barry B. Benson and his parents

After graduation, the bees are given a tour of the Honex Corporation, where they are expected to work as part of the honeymaking process, selecting a single job that they will do for the rest of their lives without a single day off. None of the bees have a problem with this idea, except for Barry, who is dismayed at the prospect of doing the same thing every day until he dies. Adam doesn’t understand.

Adam and Barry on the Honex tour

Barry and Adam see the specially-bred pollen jocks return from collecting nectar, and they accidently get sprinkled with pollen, which they use to impress female bees by claiming to be pollen jocks themselves. The real pollen jocks see this and intervene, challenging Adam and Barry to join them for a trip to a sunflower patch at 0900 in the morning.

The Pollen Jocks

The next day, Adam and Barry go to select their jobs, but Barry slips off to take the pollen jocks up on their offer so he can see outside the hive just once before picking his one job. Barry enjoys his flight outside the hive around New York City watching the pollen jocks collect nectar for honey and spread pollen to make more flowers.

Barry flies with the Pollen Jocks

When the pollen jocks mistake tennis balls for flowers, Barry gets stuck to one of the balls, which in the course of a game between a man and woman gets knocked out of the court. Barry ends up getting sucked inside a vehicle and terrorizing some humans before escaping through the sunroof. While he reflects on the excitement, it starts raining. Since bees can’t fly in the rain, Barry takes refuge in an apartment, and coincidentally the tennis players come in.

Barry gets stuck to a Tennis Ball

When the window is closed, Barry is trapped inside the apartment and the man, Ken (Patrick Warburton), tries to smash him, but the woman, a florist named Vanessa (Renée Zellweger), stops him, traps Barry under a glass and kindly puts him back outside.

Ken, Vanessa and Barry

Barry is impressed. He feels like he has to thank her for saving his life, so he breaks the bee law about not talking to humans and introduces himself, and after she gets over the shock of a talking bee, they hit it off and chat over coffee.

Barry introduces himself to Vanessa

Back in the hive, Barry tells Adam about his experience, and Adam tells Barry to “Think Bee.” Barry’s parents (Barry Levinson & Kathy Bates) don’t understand why Barry hasn’t picked a job yet. Barry fantasizes about Vanessa, and he goes to see her again. They hang out together and in a grocery store, Barry discovers honey for sale. It turns out bees have no idea humans use honey, and Barry considers it stealing.

Barry is upset when he finds honey in supermarkets

Barry investigates and hitches a ride on a truck to Honey Farms, where he meets a mosquito names Mooseblood (Chris Rock), who leaves when he sees a bloodmobile.

Barry and Mooseblood

At the farm, Barry sees bees in hundreds of artificial hives being pacified with nicotine smoke and having their honey harvested for humans.

Barry sees the full extent of Honey Farms

Barry goes on Bee Larry King (Larry King) to expose the honey farms to the bees and decides to sue the human race on behalf of the bees, with the help of Vanessa and Adam.

Barry on Bee Larry King

In the trial, the honey companies are represented by southern lawyer Layton T. Montgomery (John Goodman), who counters Barry’s cross-examination of Sting and Ray Liotta (as themselves) by using character assassination to discredit the bees and goads Adam into stinging him. Adam is seriously injured, and Montgomery plays up the pain of the sting to turn the jury against the bees.

Barry, Adam and Vanessa in court

Barry visits Adam in the hospital and sees humans smoking outside, which inspires him. Barry shows the jury the smoker gun the beekeepers use to pacify the bees, and Judge Bumbleton (Oprah Winfrey) rules in favor of the bees. Montgomery warns Barry that he’s gone against nature and will regret what he’s done.

Montgomery warns Barry about what he's done

All honey on Earth is returned to the bees, who now have so much honey none of them have to work and they just lay around doing nothing. Adam tells Barry that he was looking forward to making honey but now can’t. Even worse, Vanessa shows Barry that all the plants on Earth are dying because the bees aren’t working and spreading pollen anymore, and she’s had to close her flower shop. She’s leaving to go to the last Tournament of Roses in Pasadena, but Barry realizes they could use flowers from the tournament to pollinate the rest of the flowers.

Barry sees the results of his efforts

Vanessa and Barry steal a float and bring the flowers back to New York City on an airline flight, but bad weather en route causes a delay that the flowers won’t survive. Barry goes to talk to the pilots to convince them to hurry, but they panic when they see him and end up knocking themselves out. Barry and Vanessa try to land the plane themselves. The humans on the ground (including a flight controller voiced by Michael Richards) aren’t much help, but Barry gets help from his fellow bees: the pollen jocks, led by their commander (Rip Torn), carry the plane and the rest of the bees form a target for Barry to follow.

The bees land a plane

The bees land the plane safely, Barry is made a pollen jock and he and the pollen jocks take the pollen from the cut flowers to pollinate the city’s plants.

Barry becomes a pollen jock

Barry and the bees realize how important they are and go back to work. Barry works as both a pollen jock and as a legal advisor for other exploited animals in Vanessa’s shop, with his friend Mooseblood as a colleague.

Barry & Mooseblood; All he needed was the briefcase

My Review:

Bee Movie is a fun movie that is easily the equal of other computer-animated movies, and its unique creative talent gives it a distinctive tone. There have been other animated films about insects, but I think this one is the best. The voice cast is excellent and features some voices fans of Jerry Seinfeld’s TV-Series will recognize. The visuals are very good. The views of the city are impressive and the tennis balls in particular look very real. The movement of Vanessa’s hair is also quite good. There are details that aren’t quite up to the level of some competing computer-animated films, particularly the automobiles and plants, and everything looks too clean. The film’s plot is quite good. The plant die and recover very quickly, and the climax with bees carrying an airliner is a little ridiculous, but seeing as how this is a computer-animated film about bees that can talk to humans, the suspension of disbelief is already quite high. It is also nice that there is a little bit of educational value showing that bees pollinate flowers, though not all plants require bees for pollination as the movie suggests.

Bee Movie is an enjoyable film for the whole family.

I Am Legend

2009-06-23T18:46:00.000-07:00

Will Smith stars as the last man in New York City in this cross between a sci-fi drama and a horror film.

The Plot: (Spoilers)

In an attempt to create a cure for cancer using a genetically-engineered measles virus, Dr. Alice Krippen (Emma Thompson, uncredited) unleashed a plague in 2009 that three years later left Army virologist Lieutenant Colonel Robert Neville (Will Smith) as apparently the only human being alive in New York City. He survives by hunting dear with his German Shepherd Samantha, a sniper rifle and a Shelby GT500, in competition with escaped lions from the zoo.

Dr. Neville & Sam

In his home he has installed steel window shutters to protect him at night, which he closes before it gets dark. At night he dreams of the winter night around Christmas when the President ordered a quarantine of the city and he sent his wife and daughter upstate while he stayed behind to try and stop the spread of the virus. Dr. Neville maintains a sophisticated lab in his basement and the next day (September 5, 2012) he continues his ongoing research on what appear to be large hairless rats. One of his potential cures shows promise for human testing. Dr. Neville and Sam go about their daily routine: at a video store populated by mannequins Neville borrows one DVD at a time in alphabetical order, he and Sam search apartment buildings for supplies and they go to the South Street Seaport, where in an automated radio broadcast Neville tells anyone who may be listening that he will be there every day at noon.

Neville and Sam sleep in the tub

Sam spots a deer and chases it into a darkened building, to Neville’s concern. He cautiously goes in after Sam, discovering that the building is populated by what the Krippen Virus has turned humans into: ferocious, hairless creatures that die in sunlight.

A human infected with the Krippen Virus

Neville and Sam escape the building, and Neville sets a snare trap and captures one of the infected humans, a female, for testing, but the potential cure is fatal to humans. Neville undoes the effect of the serum and resuscitates and locks up the test subject. In his journal, he reveals it is day 1001. He is immune to both the airborne and contact forms of the virus. Canines are immune to only the airborne form.

Dr. Neville works on his test subject

One day, Neville is trapped by the infected humans using one of the mannequins from outside the video store as a lure and using a similar trap to the one he used to catch his test subject. He manages to cut himself loose but stabs his leg with his knife when he falls. As the sun sets he and Sam are attacked by infected dogs and Sam is infected and Neville has to put her down and bury her.

Now completely alone and distraught, Neville sets a trap for the infected humans at the seaport, where he uses his light-equipped SUV to run over as many as possible. The infected humans overwhelm him and nearly kill him, but a bright light drives them off and the dazed and injured Neville is rescued by a woman. In a vehicle in a moment of consciousness, she asks Neville where he lives and he gives her his address but says to wait until dawn. He again dreams of the night he sent his wife and daughter out of the city, reliving the moment their helicopter was struck by another one, killing them.

In the morning, Neville wakes up on his couch with Shrek playing on his TV. He hears someone in his kitchen and finds the mysterious woman and a young boy having breakfast. The woman introduces herself as Anna (Alice Braga) and says the boy is Ethan (Charlie Tahan). It takes Neville a little time to adjust to their presence but he comes around. Anna came by boat from Sao Paulo, Brazil. She was originally one of 5 people immune to the virus, but the others were killed by the infected humans, which she calls “dark seekers.” She and Ethan were traveling to a colony of survivors in Vermont when they heard Neville’s radio broadcast. They went to the seaport and waited for him. Anna wants Neville to come with them to Vermont; it is too late in the day to get to Vermont before dark but they could make it the following day. Neville doesn’t believe the colony actually exists and insists that he has to stay to try to find a cure for the virus.

Anna and Ethan

Neville goes back to work in his lab and Anna checks on him. He is using ice to lower his test subject’s body temperature in the desperate hope that it will make the cure effective. That night, Neville and Anna again argue about going to Vermont. Anna believes she is being led by God to Vermont, and her finding Neville is part of God’s plan. Neville doesn’t believe there is anyone else left and gives her the statistics: starting with a population of 6 billion, the Krippen Virus’s 90% kill rate left 5.4 billion dead, and with only 1% immunity there were only 12 million healthy humans; the remaining 588 million became “dark seekers” who fed on the healthy humans.

Dr. Neville gives Anna the numbers

Neville hears a noise outside and discovers that the dark seekers have found them. Anna had brought him home just before dawn because his injuries were severe, so they were able to follow them. Neville has set up some defenses which stop some of the dark seekers but there are too many of them and some of them get into the house.

The Dark Seeker Alpha Male outside Dr. Neville's home

Neville battles a dark seeker through his home and gets Anna and Ethan to his lab, where they trap themselves behind the lab’s Plexiglas divider with the sedated test subject. The dark seekers have them trapped and the alpha male (Dash Mihok) tries to break through the Plexiglas. Anna and Neville discover that the cure is having an effect on the test subject. Neville takes a sample of the test subject’s blood which now contains the cure and gives it to Anna and shows her and Ethan an old coal chute where they can hide until dawn. He takes out a hand grenade from a drawer and sacrifices himself to kill the dark seekers in the lab.

Here's Johnny!

Anna and Ethan travel to Vermont and find the colony of survivors. They hand over the blood sample that contains the cure.

Anna and Ethan find the colony

A voiceover by Anna reveals the date of the previous night was September 9, 2012 and that they now have hope to save the rest of humanity.

Aerial view of the colony shown during Anna's voiceover

My Review:

I Am Legend starts with an interesting premise. The visuals of the desolate New York City are spectacular, and Will Smith gives an excellent performance, easily carrying the film alone with just a dog to play off of. His interactions with mannequins at the video store effectively show how lonely he is, and his performance when Neville sees one of the mannequins far out of place and considers it might be alive is a high point of the film. The dark seekers are the film’s weak spot. Once they are seen, it is obvious that the film is going to devolve into a horror film, and the most of the lead-up to that is tedious, and the battle with the dark seekers just isn’t satisfying. The end of the film isn’t really satisfying either. Will Smith’s character is dead, and I really didn’t care about the others, maybe because they came into the film so late. I’m not sure how helpful the cure would be, as I don’t see how a small group of survivors in Vermont are going to distribute it. I also don’t see how a simple wall kept the dark seekers out of the colony, as the dark seekers have no problem climbing. And with the bridges in New York City destroyed, and early visuals implying the tunnels are flooded, how did Anna and Ethan even get into the city to find Neville?

I Am Legend features strong performances and starts with an interesting premise that make it worth checking out, but its flaws keep it from achieving its potential.

Gone In 60 Seconds (1974)

2009-06-22T22:32:00.000-07:00

H.B. Halicki’s independent film features one of the most famous car chases in movie history.

The Plot (spoilers)

While Maindrian Pace (H.B. “Toby” Halicki) of Chase Research is investigating an accident for an insurance company in which a semi truck struck a train, a used car dealer buys at auction a totaled 1973 Dodge Challenger, which finds its way to Pace’s auto shop, where it is stripped down. Pace and his crew strip the junked car for its serial numbers and anything else that would identify it, then go out and steal an undamaged 1973 Challenger that matches it and switch the serial numbers and other parts, and the undamaged car goes up for sale on the car lot.

Maindrian Pace (in the denim jacket) investigates the train derailment

Pace meets with an Argentinean named Vilas, who offers him $400,000, half up front, to steal 48 specific cars for him and have them all delivered to the dock by 5pm next Saturday. Pace and his associate Atlee Jackson (George Cole) start making plans. Pace has given each car on the list a woman’s name as a codename. Pace has a family wedding to go to in New York, and has Atlee start researching the list of cars, using the information they have access to as insurance investigators.

Pace and Atlee discuss the upcoming heist

Atlee calls Pace at the wedding reception, telling him that he doesn’t think they have enough time to get all the cars, but Pace tells him not to worry. Pace asks the groom, Eugene Chase (Jerry Daugirda), who is brother of Pace’s girlfriend Pumpkin (Marion Busia) and is a part owner in the family business along with Pumpkin and their brother Stanley (James McIntyre), to postpone his honeymoon to help them. Eugene reluctantly agrees.

Pace coerces Eugene to help

Arriving back in Los Angeles with Eugene, the crew steal a Rolls-Royce from the airport and spot “Eleanor,” a yellow 1973 Ford Mustang, which Pace’s brother Corliss (Ronald Halicki) tries to steal but the driver is still sitting in the car. After the team goes over the plan, and Pumpkin reminds Pace only to steal cars that are insured, they go to the race track and steal J.C. Agajanian’s Rolls-Royce from a car race. Pace has tracked down “Eleanor” and steals it out of the owner’s garage, but as he does so, the intoxicated owner is taking his dog outside and takes off after him in his second car. The owner attracts the attention of the police who pull him over and arrest him for drunk driving.

Someone's having a bad night

The owner explains that his Mustang was stolen and he was chasing it, so the police take him home, only to find the Mustang is in the garage where it belongs, so the police take him to jail. In the office, Eugene confronts Pace for returning the Mustang, and Pace says he realized the owner was an insurance adjuster who unfairly denied claims and Pace wanted to get even with him. The team easily steals the limos on the list by making fake reservations to various limo companies and funeral homes. They also have the opportunity to steal a DeTomaso Pantera, and another “Eleanor” Mustang.

Pace in disguise to steal a limo

Atlee tries to steal a Cadillac from the Hungry Tiger restaurant, but it’s the restaurant owner’s car and the restaurant’s namesake tiger is in the backseat and scares him off. Meanwhile the team steals several more of the cars on the list.

Now THAT'S a security system!

The 1973 Dodge Challenger from earlier in the movie was recognized by the insurance adjuster that handled the original claim on it by its vanity plate, and Chase Research was hired to investigate the used car lot. The lot brokered the Challenger to another used car dealer and Pace steals it with a tow truck, evading a security guard who gave chase, and takes it to a salvage yard and immediately has it shredded, so there would be no evidence for the investigation to follow.

"Jill" the Challenger meets her fate

Chase Research is also hired to investigate the theft of Parnelli Jones’ Big Oly Bronco, which actually Atlee stole the previous night, leading Pace to have to convincingly pretend to investigate a car he was responsible for stealing. Pace also notices another Eleanor pulling into the International Towers and keeps it in mind in case he ever needs another one.

Pace and Parnelli Jones discuss his stolen Big Oly Bronco

Atlee steals Lyle Waggoner’s Italia from a detailer across the street from CBS television city and the team steal other rare cars including a Stutz and a Manta during a test drive.

Leaving the Manta salesman on the side of the road

They steal a Cadillac Eldorado which they find to be stuffed with drugs worth about a million dollars. They narrowly avoid being caught with the drugs when one of Pace’s detective friends drops by. Eugene wants to sell the drugs, but Pace says they’ll talk about it in the morning. Early in the morning he takes the Cadillac into the middle of nowhere, soaks it is gasoline and burns it.

Burning a new Cadillac

The team has all 48 cars for the contract, but Pumpkin discovers that Eleanor wasn’t insured when the owner places an ad asking for it to be returned. Eugene storms it asking what happened to the Eldorado and when Pace tells him he burned it, Eugene gets angry with Pace for destroying a million dollars worth of drugs. Pace leaves to return Eleanor, saying he’s only doing it because he knows there’s another one in Long Beach at the International Towers.

Pace gets bad news about Eleanor

Pace goes to the warehouse to get the Eleanor he’s going to return, while Eugene places an anonymous call to the police tipping them off to stake out the International Towers.

Pace in disguise passing the Big Oly Bronco and the Stutz

Pace taking Eleanor back

A pair of officers in an unmarked car see Pace dropped off in disguise. Pace steals Eleanor from the underground garage but as he leaves the car alarm is triggered in view of the police. Pace stops to disconnect the alarm and the police get suspicious. Pace spots the unmarked police car and knows he’s in for a chase as he takes off.

Pace is about to take off with the new Eleanor

The police try to stop him, immediately colliding with Eleanor. As they police chase Eleanor around the International Towers, Hal McClain, a DJ for KFOX 1280 AM Radio, based at the International Towers, reports on the chase.

Eleanor vs Police early in the chase

Marked patrol cars join in the chase that includes sidewalks and a park and they surround Pace and Eleanor in the park and force them to stop. It seems like the pursuit has quickly come to an end as the police draw their guns. Pace sees an opening and escapes with Eleanor. As they flee Long Beach with the police in pursuit they and the police cause several accidents.

An particularly bad day for this convertible owner

Pace eventually gets on the Harbor Freeway toward Los Angeles and leads the police to a dusty construction area where he is briefly surrounded again but end up losing many of the police cars as they collide with one another before he gets back on the freeway.

Police Car Casualties Start Stacking Up

Racing along at over 80 miles per hour, Pace clips a Cadillac, causing him to lose control of Eleanor and spin out, knocking down a light pole. The police think that will stop him but it doesn’t and he keeps going, escaping up a nearby exit ramp. The police turn around on the freeway and go after him through the city of Carson, causing several accidents.

Eleanor takes out the light pole

The police try to set up a road block in front of a Datsun dealership, and Pace leads the chase through the dealership and others to Ronald Moran Cadillac where a police car damages several new Cadillacs domino-style and Pace leads the chase into the dealer’s service area, where he is nearly surrounded again but he manages to slip out once again.

A police car takes out a few new Cadillacs

Pace in unknowingly headed for a serious 4-car collision, unrelated to his chase, that is completely blocking the road ahead. By the time he sees it, it is too late to stop and he hits one of the wrecked cars which catapults Eleanor over the wreck and out of reach of the police. Amazingly, Eleanor is still drivable after this jump and Pace continues his escape.

Rough Landing

Pace spots another Eleanor pulling into an automatic car wash. He pulls in and has his wrecked Eleanor washed, then goes to the other end and tells the owner of the other Eleanor that he works for the car wash and they made a mistake and have to rewash the car. Pace drives off in the undamaged Eleanor, stops to change the license plates and takes off his disguise before making his getaway. Meanwhile, the DJ is visited by police detectives and discovers that he’s been unknowingly reporting on the theft of his own car.

Pace cons his way into a new Eleanor

The police spot the wrecked Eleanor at the car wash and arrest the car wash manager, who resembles Pace in his disguise. Pace gets through a police roadblock and escapes to freedom with an undamaged Eleanor.

The car wash manager takes the rap

My Review:

The entire point of Gone In 60 Seconds is to get to the huge car chase at the end, and there is never any doubt about that, considering the movie is presented by the “H.B. Halicki Mercantile Co. & Junk Yard” and stars “Eleanor.” The plot isn’t very deep, and the characters aren’t developed beyond what they need to be for the plot. Sometimes its difficult just to tell the characters apart, which is even more difficult due to the fact that they sometimes wear disguises. The acting, while not great, isn’t that bad, at least not by 1970s standards, though there isn’t a whole lot of acting to be done since most of the plot involves cars and little dialogue. The plot, while basic, is at least fairly logical and gives enough background into the operation to make it seem plausible. It wasn’t really necessary to make the characters more than common thieves, but Halicki went to the trouble. I like the idea that they run a mostly-legitimate insurance investigation firm to cover their tracks, and the movie explains how they swap wrecked cars with stolen ones. I find it a little hard to believe that they could work so closely with the police and not get caught, but I suppose their legitimate business keeps them from being suspected. The naming of the characters could have been better; it’s a little confusing having Maindrian PACE working at CHASE Research. It also doesn’t make sense for Pace to return the uninsured “Eleanor” before stealing another one.

The real point of the movie is the car chase, which is very good. Unusual for a Hollywood car chase, Eleanor is seriously damaged only seconds into the chase, and the damage keeps getting worse. Many, many other cars are destroyed in the process of the chase and there are some fake-outs, where you think the action might be over before it starts up again. The chase culminates with Eleanor making a spectacular 128-foot jump 30 feet in the air, which is shown in slow motion so the audience can appreciate it and then replayed at full speed. The final resolution where Pace gets away with an undamaged Eleanor is clever and enjoyable, even if it is unbelievably unlikely.

Gone in 60 Seconds is a great movie for anyone who likes movies about cars or car chases.

WALL-E

2009-06-13T00:06:00.000-07:00

The computer-animated story of a robotic trash compactor alone on a deserted Earth is funny, touching and compelling.

The Plot:

WALL-E (voice of Ben Burtt) is a “Waste Allocation Load Lifter: Earth-class” robot on a deserted Earth, the last of what were once many built to clean up the overflowing trash on Earth while the people took a five-year cruise in outer space. With all his fellow robots having broken down, WALL-E alone continues his task of compacting trash into cubes and stacking them. Occasionally he finds objects he sees as having value, and he collects them in his “home,” a transport unit that once housed many of his kind.

WALL-E examines some of his new acquisitions

Some of what WALL-E considers valuable is odd: he once finds a jewelry box containing a diamond ring and throws the ring away but finds the box fascinating. WALL-E has a companion in a cockroach, and spends his free time watching movies he has found and listening to music he has recorded.

WALL-E watches a movie

One day WALL-E finds a small plant, perhaps the only one left on Earth, and takes it home. Outside his home, he sees a spot of red light that moves, and chases it, only to end up underneath a huge spaceship that lands on Earth.

The mysterious spaceship

The spaceship deposits a hovering white robot that begins scanning items on the ground, and then leaves. After the spaceship leaves, WALL-E watches from a hiding place as the new white robot takes off on a flight through the air. WALL-E accidently causes a small rock to hit the ground, startling the new robot, which produces a ray-gun weapon that blast a huge hole through the rock WALL-E was hiding behind. WALL-E was narrowly missed and he keeps hiding and the new robot continues its task.

The new robot

WALL-E keeps watching the new robot. His cockroach companion approaches the new robot, and after narrowly avoiding being shot, is accepted by the new robot. WALL-E is then discovered and shot at several times, before the new robot approaches him. The cockroach jumps from the new robot back to WALL-E. The new robot scans WALL-E and gets a negative result, so it continues scanning, and WALL-E follows, watching from a distance. WALL-E tries to impress the new robot, even going so far as to build a sculpture of it, to no avail.

The new robot gets frustrated, unable to find whatever it is looking for. Eventually, WALL-E works up the courage to approach it. It asks WALL-E in a somewhat-female voice (voice of Elissa Knight) “Directive?” and WALL-E demonstrates his ability to compact trash into cubes. WALL-E approximates the word “directive” himself, and the robot replies “classified.” The robot asks WALL-E “Name” and WALL-E manages to tell it. The new robot tells WALL-E its name is EVE and is amused at WALL-E’s attempts to speak.

WALL-E meets EVE

WALL-E notices a dangerous dust storm coming. WALL-E takes EVE back to his home to wait out the storm and shows her his collection.

EVE examines an eggbeater in WALL-E's collection

Unlike WALL-E, EVE is able to figure out some of WALL-E’s items: she can light up a light bulb, complete a Rubik’s cube, and operate a lighter, but she can’t quite grasp the idea when WALL-E tries to teach her to dance like the humans in his movies. WALL-E notices EVE’s interest in the humans in the movie, her having tried to scan the image on the screen, so he shows her the plant he found. EVE scans the plant and gets a positive result. She suddenly captures the plant inside her body and shuts down, emitting a signal.

EVE and WALL-E check out a lighter

WALL-E tries to get EVE to reactivate: he leaves her in the sun hoping it will recharge her (as he is solar powered), tries unsuccessfully to jumpstart her, and he takes her around the area on “dates” despite her being completely unresponsive. Eventually, he sadly goes back to work, leaving EVE in the sun.

EVE and WALL-E catch some rays

As WALL-E is working, he sees the spaceship return. He races toward it as it collects EVE and jumps on to it and clings to the outside as it launches into space and leaves Earth behind.

WALL-E sees Earth from space

WALL-E clings to the spaceship as it travels through the solar system, able to see EVE, who is still deactivated, through a window.

WALL-E during his trip

The spaceship rendezvous with a much larger ship that turns out to be the Axiom: one of the starliners that took humans off Earth for their five-year cruise. Robots service the ship and the EVE robots on it. WALL-E is encountered by one of the cleaning robots called M-O (voice of Ben Burtt).

WALL-E's tracks annoy M-O

A diminutive security robot and two steward robots come and take still-unpowered EVE away and WALL-E follows them through the ship, causing robot traffic problems and encountering humans for the first time. All the humans are overweight, spending all their time in hovering chairs to the point that they can’t even get back into the chair if they fall out, and having their every need and comfort provided by the robots. As WALL-E chases after EVE, he meets human passengers John (voice of John Ratzenberger) and Mary (voice of Kathy Najimy). Meanwhile M-O pursues WALL-E, cleaning up the tracks he left behind on the floor.

EVE is taken to the ship’s bridge, where a robot scans her and wakes the human captain, B. McCrea (voice of Jeff Garlin), who has slept in and first has to make the morning announcements for Day 244,642, the 700th anniversary of the beginning of their 5-year cruise.

Captain B. McCrae of the Axiom (with AUTO in the background)

The bridge robot, AUTO (voice of MacInTalk), reactivates EVE and presents her to Captain McCrea, saying that “Probe One” has come back positive. McCrea doesn’t know what to do, as a probe has never returned positive before, but fortunately there is a video introduction by former Buy N Large CEO Shelby Forthright (Fred Willard in live-action) that tells him that a positive probe means Earth can again support life and humans can now return (and reveals that EVE is an acronym for “Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator”), and presents an operation manual (which confuses the McCrea a little, as he’s never seen a book before). WALL-E gets EVE’s attention, and she tries to hide him. McCrea follows the manual, which guides the computer to open EVE, but the plant is gone, surprising everyone.

EVE is as surprised as anyone that the plant's missing

EVE suspects WALL-E of stealing the plant, but he doesn’t have it. McCrea and Auto decide it’s a false alarm and that EVE’s memory is defective, and McCrea has the security robot, GO-4, take EVE to the repair ward. EVE is led away, revealing WALL-E, who introduces himself to McCrea and shakes his hand, leaving dirt in his palm. McCrea says to have WALL-E cleaned. As WALL-E and a sulking EVE are taken to the repair ward, McCrea has the computer (voice of Sigourney Weaver) analyze the dirt WALL-E left in his hand, which leads him to begin learning about Earth.

Captain McCrae meets WALL-E as AUTO looks on

In the repair ward, EVE is taken for a diagnostic while WALL-E is put in a “cell” for malfunctioning robots, which surround him in other cells. WALL-E misinterprets EVE’s diagnostic as a dismantling and escapes his cell to rescue her. WALL-E sets off EVE’s weapon, which strikes a computer panel, deactivating the robot arms and releasing the malfunctioning robots, who carry WALL-E through the ship as a hero until they are stopped by steward robots, who identify WALL-E and EVE as “rogue robots.” EVE picks up WALL-E and flies him through the ship to an life pod to send him back to Earth, but WALL-E doesn’t want to leave her. GO-4 comes in and EVE and WALL-E hide. GO-4 places the plant in the life pod and starts the launch. WALL-E goes in to get the plant for EVE and is trapped inside as the life pod launches. EVE goes out an airlock after WALL-E, while in the life pod WALL-E discovers that the pod’s self-destruct system has been activated. EVE sees the life pod explode but WALL-E managed to escape just in time with a fire extinguisher, which he uses to propel himself back to EVE. WALL-E also reveals that he rescued the plant. EVE happily takes back the plant and hugs WALL-E.

EVE happily hugs WALL-E

WALL-E and EVE fly around outside the ship, dance-like, until WALL-E’s extinguisher is empty and they reenter the ship through an open airlock. Passengers John and Mary see WALL-E and EVE outside and meet each other.

Mary and John wave to WALL-E and EVE

EVE leaves WALL-E behind as she goes up the trash chute and delivers the plant to Captain McCrea to complete her directive. The excited McCrea wants to see what Earth is like and replay’s EVE’s memory, and he sees the desolate condition of Earth. A leaf falls from the plant, and McCrea realizes it needs water.

Captain McCrae sees his first live plant

Meanwhile, EVE’s memory replays WALL-E’s romantic movie and shows how WALL-E cared for her while she was deactivated, and EVE realizes her feelings for WALL-E. Meanwhile, WALL-E goes up the trash chute after EVE and McCrea decides they have to go back to Earth despite its condition. McCrea calls for AUTO, who tries to take the plant, saying they can’t go back to Earth. McCrea orders him to say why, and AUTO shows him a classified recording from Shelby Forthright that was sent to the Autopilots of all the ships, telling them that Earth had become unsustainable and ordered them never to return. McCrea protests, saying he’s the captain and that they are going back. AUTO calls GO-4, who takes the plant from McCrea. McCrea orders EVE to arrest GO-4, and EVE points her weapon at him and demands that he give her the plant.

EVE threatens GO-4

Instead of handing over the plant, GO-4 throws the plant into the trash chute. Just then, WALL-E emerges from the trash chute, having saved the plant without realizing it. WALL-E tries to protect the plant from AUTO, but AUTO shocks WALL-E causing him to fall down the trash chute with the plant. AUTO deactivates EVE and throws her down the trash chute as well, and confines McCrea to his quarters.

WALL-E saved the plant

EVE is reactivated by sentient computer mice in the trash hold, where WALL-A robots, giant versions of WALL-E, compact the trash into huge cubes before it is ejected out an airlock. A WALL-A robot compacts EVE in a cube, and she sees heavily-damaged WALL-E as part of another. Their stack of cubes is pushed into the airlock, and EVE frees herself and tried to free WALL-E.

A WALL-A robot

Just then M-O, who has tracked WALL-E through the ship by the tracks of dirt he left behind him, chases them into the airlock and jams the door, just as the trash is released. EVE holds on to WALL-E and fights against the escaping air to grab onto M-O. The WALL-A robots see this and close the airlock to save them.

EVE, carrying WALL-E, grabs onto M-O

WALL-E and M-O are formerly introduced as EVE searches the trash for a replacement for the circuit board that was damaged when Auto shocked WALL-E, but can’t find a suitable replacement.

M-O and WALL-E are formerly introduced

WALL-E conveys to EVE that there are replacement parts on Earth, and she, WALL-E and M-O round up the malfunctioning robots they freed earlier to fight off the steward robots and get the plant scanned by the ship’s holo-detector on the lido deck, while Captain McCrea fights AUTO to activate it, leading all the humans aboard to be brought to it to witness the event.

Captain McCrae fights AUTO

AUTO causes the ship to list to one side, causing everyone to slide to that side of the ship, and EVE has to protect humans from falling debris. AUTO tries to close the holo-detector, but WALL-E tries to hold it open, jamming it with his body but being damaged even more. Captain McCrea gets to his feet and attacks AUTO again, knocking open a panel to switch off AUTO, which he does and rights the ship. Humans and robots work together to get the plant to EVE and into the holo-detector, and the ship automatically sets a course back to Earth and lands in its old berth.

As the humans from the Axiom take their first steps onto Earth, EVE rushes WALL-E back to his home and rapidly repairs him with spare parts. But, when WALL-E is reactivated, he seems to remember nothing but his original programming and goes to work compacting trash into cubes and ignores his cockroach, his collection, his movie and EVE. EVE tries to get WALL-E to remember to no avail and, holding his hand, comes to the realization that the WALL-E she knew is gone.

EVE sadly realizes that WALL-E doesn't remember her

EVE sadly turns to leave, but her hand is caught on WALL-E’s. Slowly, WALL-E closes his hand around hers, and says her name. She says his, and suddenly WALL-E remembers.

The humans start farming and rebuilding, and WALL-E and EVE settle in WALL-E’s home.

The humans start farming

My Review:

Like all Disney/Pixar features, WALL-E is great fun suitable for all ages. The characters of WALL-E and EVE are surprisingly expressive, considering they are robots with a limited vocabulary: I think WALL-E can say only “WALL-E,” “EVE,” “Directive,” “M-O” and “Earth” and EVE can say the same plus “Name,” “Classified,” “Plant” and “No.” WALL-E’s voice is that of Sound Designer Ben Burtt (who also performs the voice of M-O) modified with a synthesizer, and EVE’s voice is that of Elissa Knight similarly modified. It is really through the computer animation and Ben Burtt’s sound effects that portray the characters however. Burtt did sound work for the Star Wars films, and there are some noticeable similarities sound-wise between WALL-E and the Star Wars films. Interestingly, the voice of AUTO is that of MacInTalk, Apple’s voice simulator, and thus that character is even more computer-generated than most. There is some more traditional voice acting is performed by Jeff Garlin, Sigourney Weaver, Kathy Najimy and Pixar regular John Ratzenburger, and all do well. WALL-E also features a little live action acting depicting recorded messages from the past featuring Buy N Large CEO Shelby Forthwright, played by an entertaining Fred Willard as 50/50 president/salesman. The film is visually stunning, especially in the design and movements of the robots, and the backgrounds of space and the ruined cities on Earth. As with other Pixar films, the computer-generated humans are the biggest weakness of the film, and the use of live-action scenes makes it more noticeable than usual. There is a fairly significant plot hole in the film: AUTO basically runs the entire ship and has orders that humans can never return to Earth, which is follows so strictly it tries to destroy the plant, yet EVE probes were still being sent to Earth to search for signs of life, presumably by AUTO. It doesn’t make sense for AUTO to keep sending EVE probes to search for signs of life AUTO doesn’t expect or even want to find, or does AUTO follow its orders so blindly that it has to keep sending the EVE probes just because it is an order? Another minor plot issue is that there doesn’t seem to be an opportunity for the plant to be stolen from EVE, unless it was while the captain was waking up. The film never makes clear when the plant was stolen, and it can almost seem like there was never an opportunity for the plant to disappear. And wasn’t there a faster and easier way for GO-4 to destroy the plant rather than launching it into space in an escape pod rigged to self-destruct? From a science point of view, since the Axiom has its own gravity and there’s no “up” in space, AUTO causing the Axiom to list shouldn’t have had any effect on anyone inside. And, what was the point of those inflatable helmets when all the people were moved to the lido deck for the plant verification. The overall story and the high level of workmanship let the film overcome these issues, though. This is, after all, intended as a children’s movie that adults can also enjoy, so the plot can’t be too complex. I don’t have a problem with the fact that I could almost immediately tell EVE was searching for the plant, as kids might actually be surprised by that revelation. The film has funny moments, often incidents of physical comedy and other visual humor since the main characters have limited dialogue (though my favorite joke is Captain McCrea’s voiceprint: “Uhhh…”), but I found the dramatic elements of the story to be more compelling. The scene near the end of the film where EVE thinks WALL-E has lost all his memories (a good twist to what would otherwise be a very formulaic ending) is heartbreaking, which is all the more impressive since EVE’s emotions have to be portrayed entirely by the shape of her lighted eyes, her “body language” and her saying WALL-E’s name. There is a little social commentary in this film, in the condition of the Earth and the condition of the humans on the Axiom, but it is integral to the plot and I think it is subtle enough to go over kids’ heads.

All Pixar films are fun to watch, but WALL-E, with its high level of workmanship, creativity and emotional resonance is one of the best.

House: Poison (Season 1, Episode 8)

2009-06-11T18:23:00.000-07:00

To save a boy suffering from pesticide poisoning, House and his team have to find out how he was poisoned.

The Plot: (Spoilers):

High school student Matt Davis (John Patrick Amedori) is taking his AP Calculus exam when he starts feeling nauseas and disoriented and collapses on the floor. At Princeton-Plainsboro, Dr. Foreman (Omar Epps) reports to Dr. House (Hugh Laurie) that Matt’s heart rate is falling and he’s not responding to atropine. House asks why he cares. Foreman says that Matt’s toxicology screen was negative, his CAT scan was clean, there’s no infection and no diabetes. House realizes that Foreman doesn’t care and just finds Matt’s illness interesting, which House thinks is a good thing. House sends Dr. Foreman and Dr. Cameron (Jennifer Morrison) to search his house for drugs that the toxicology screen wouldn’t detect, like copier toner. While they are gone, Matt has a seizure. All Cameron and Foreman find (aside from Cameron’s observation that Foreman now wears the same type of shoes as House) is some potentially contaminated tomato sauce, but the seizure rules it out. Cameron says that pesticide poisoning fits Matt’s symptoms, and Foreman realizes he DOES wear the same shoes as House.

That's how calculus presents

House goes to the clinic and sees an 82 year old woman (Shirley Knight) who has suffered a personality change and has become flirtatious, including with House, much to the annoyance of her middle-aged son (Kurt Fuller). He admits her for tests.

Matt’s blood tests confirm he is suffering from an organophosphate and he is given medications, but his heart stops. The treatment isn’t working. Foreman mentions that his old professor at Columbia developed a series of targeted treatments for the Army, but they have to know exactly what Matt was poisoned with to know which one to use. Foreman goes to call his professor, Cameron goes to check the home for pesticides and Dr. Chase (Jesse Spencer) implants a pacing wire into Matt’s heart. Cameron finds an empty can of disulfoton at the home and House has Chase give Matt the treatment, but Matt’s mother (Roxanne Hart) protests that Matt didn’t use pesticides on their garden because it was part of a school project and pesticides were prohibited and she won’t let Chase give him the treatment. House goes to Dr. Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein), wanting a court order to force Matt to get the treatment, but she doesn’t offer any help, so House talks to Matt’s mother and convinces her to let them give Matt the treatment, but by then another high school student has been admitted to the hospital with the same symptoms. They go to the same school, but don’t seem to have anything else in common. The other boy’s family lives in an apartment and they have no pesticides at home. The team realizes that they both had to be poisoned from the same source, but they have to find it. They discover that both kids ride the same bus, and Chase and Cameron check out the bus. The driver reports a truck spraying near the bus route.

After receiving her test results (and a love poem, entertainingly read aloud by Dr. Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard)) House goes to see the old woman from the clinic, whose tests reveal that she has syphilis. She admits she got it in high school, before she met her future husband, but she was treated. House says the treatment only suppressed it, and now it’s back and has attacked her brain. He gives her a prescription for penicillin.

The team has discovered the County sprayed ethyl parathion along the bus route to combat West Nile Virus. The parents of the second kid approved the treatment, but Matt’s mom refused, waiting for a second opinion from the Center for Disease Control (CDC). House sends Cameron to convince her to allow the treatment, which she does, but both boys go into seizures. The team was wrong and the boys were poisoned some other way.

Cameron "hustles" the single mom

House says that the progression of their symptoms suggests that the poison was absorbed through their skin, and from their admission times they must have been poisoned before they got on their bus. House thinks they must have been poisoned through a contaminated consumer product that came in contact with their skin as part of their morning routine, and sends Cameron and Foreman to each of their homes to find a product they have in common.

House’s elderly patient returns and tries to give back the prescription, because she doesn’t want to stop the feelings she’s having, but House tells her that the damage to her brain is permanent, so she agrees to take the penicillin.

Cameron and Foreman find the same laundry detergent at both homes. House thinks the detergent could have been contaminated and the boys were poisoned through their freshly-washed clothes, but the parents of the second boy say that his clothes were new and were never washed, and he doesn’t even know how to use the washing machine. House checks Matt’s clothes and finds his jeans were also new. House orders the clothes tested for contamination. They determine the chemical is phosdrin. One again, Matt’s mom refuses treatment, waiting for the CDC, and this time she refuses to be convinced. House goes into Matt’s room with the medicine and his portable TV, telling Matt’s mom he’s going to wait there in case she changes her mind. She gets a call, and is told the CDC can’t make a determination, leaving it up to her. She agrees to the treatment. House gives Matt the treatment and leaves the room, and Chase reveals it was he who made the call, pretending to be the CDC (with a bad southern accent).

House waits while Matt's mom gets a call

It turns out both boys had bought stolen jeans out of the back of a truck near the school, from a man who also worked as a day laborer in a field, and had apparently spilled pesticide in the back of the truck that contaminated the jeans. House and Foreman run into Matt and his mom in the hall, and she reveals that the real CDC called, implying she knows what they did, but she lets it slide. Matt asks who they are, and his mom says “they’re the arrogant jerks who saved your life.” House and Foreman get into the elevator to leave and notice their matching shoes.

House and Foreman wear matching shoes

My Review:

This episode has an interesting mystery, as the team figures out the big picture right away, and then has to spend the rest of the episode hunting down which pesticide is the culprit, making it a lot more like a police investigation than some other cases. All their ideas are plausible, though the theory of being exposed on the bus to spraying along the road doesn’t entire work, as if that were the case shouldn’t most of the students on the bus have gotten sick? They also end up finding the pesticide by testing the boys’ clothes, but it seems like that would’ve been an easy way to test most of the other theories along the way (Matt accidentally spaying himself with pesticide while gardening or exposure on the bus to spraying along the road), saving a lot of time and trouble (but giving us a less interesting episode). I like the mystery overall though. Matt’s mom was well played by the actress, but I find it hard to believe that a mother would actually act that way, and the drama was a little overdone. The side plot with the 82 year old woman is fun and entertaining and is probably the best part of the episode. The episode is also a little bit of a Foreman episode, showing that he is starting to accept House’s way of practicing medicine and is become more like him. Knowing what will eventually happen to Foreman in later seasons, it’s interesting to see this development so early in the series. We don’t see much of Cuddy or Wilson in this episode, though Wilson’s reading of the love poem was great. Poison is an entertaining episode of House.

House: Fidelity (Season 1, Episode 7)

2009-06-11T17:58:00.001-07:00

House and his team try to cure a woman who sleeps 18 hours a day.

The Plot (Spoilers):

Ed (Dominic Purcell) comes home from jogging with his friend to find his wife Elise (Myndy Crist) is still in bed at almost 4 in the afternoon. She tells him to call her boss and say she’s not feeling well, and he reminds her that it’s Saturday; she hasn’t been to work or even out of bed since Wednesday. He tries to get her out of bed and she suddenly and violently slaps him, and she realizes there might be something wrong with her. Elise is admitted to Princeton-Plainsboro, where she averages 18 hours of sleep a day, which gets Dr. Cameron’s (Jennifer Morrison) attention. She brings the case to Dr. House (Hugh Laurie), who initially assumes clinical depression, but Cameron says Elise isn’t depressed. House notices that the file says Elise is “unusually irritable” according to her husband and takes the case claiming Cameron’s interest is interesting.

Ed and Elise are worried

House gets the team together. Dr. Foreman (Omar Epps) also assumes depression, but House points out that depression couldn’t cause Elise’s fever. Cameron says Elise’s elevated sedimentation rate suggests inflammation and Foreman says her other symptoms point to the brain. Dr. Chase (Jesse Spencer) suggests parasites, but Cameron says Elise has never left the country. House suggests a tumor on the brain and orders an MRI to find the tumor.

In the clinic, House treats a woman for shortness of breath, which she says is more of a tightness. House thinks she might be a little anemic and is about to perform an EEG on her chest, when he discovers she has breast implants: a gift for her husband’s 40th birthday. After “consulting” Dr. Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard), House orders an EKG and blood tests. House also notices that Wilson has a new green tie, and suspects him of cheating on his wife, because his wife hates green.

House finally enjoys seeing a clinic patient

The team doesn’t find a tumor, and Elise goes into a seizure. Chase suggests Lyme Disease, but her “clingy” husband never noticed a rash. Wilson suggests paraneoplastic syndrome caused by breast cancer. Cameron searches for breast cancer, but doesn’t find any. Wilson says that in 12% of paraneoplastic cases, no tumor is ever found and the patient dies. Wilson says they should do a PET scan. House says to treat the symptoms with IV immunoglobulin and if there is a tumor, it will get bigger and easier to find. He sends Foreman to check out where Elise works, because if its not paraneoplasitic and there is some kind of toxin responsible, it couldn’t have come from her home because her husband is healthy.

Elise works in a fancy French restaurant. The owner keeps the kitchen very clean and none of his other employees are sick. Foreman notices that the restaurant serves rabbit. Elise says her arm itches, and hallucinates spiders crawling out of an imaginary wound. They have to sedate her to calm her down.

Spiders under the skin: never a good sign

Wilson says that the hallucination is consistent with paraneoplastic syndrome, but Cameron says the fact that they already had Elise on IV immunoglobulin rules it out. House suggests an infection. Foreman says her tests, timeline and symptoms rule out almost all bacteria, viruses and parasites. House suggests African Trypanosomiasis, also known as African Sleeping Sickness, because in late stages all the parasites that cause it are in the brain and undetectable by tests, but she has never been to Africa and never had a transfusion. Foreman suggests tularemia, or rabbit fever, which she could have inhaled while chopping rabbit meat at the restaurant. Cameron says in that case she should have had respiratory symptoms but Foreman says she could’ve thought it was just a cold. House says that they rejected Lyme Disease because her husband never saw a rash and the respiratory systems would be even more noticeable. The treatment for tularemia can cause aplastic anemia and the treatment for African trypanosomiasis kills one in 10 patients.

As the team tests Elise for tularemia, House again confronts Wilson about his suspected girlfriend, and Wilson admits he had lunch with a new nurse, just to be nice. Dr. Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) delivers the test results for the woman from the clinic. She says the tests look normal, but House notices something on the EKG and goes to talk to her. Her EKG showed a slightly decreased heart rate, and he asks if her husband has high blood pressure. She reveals that he was diagnosed six months ago and makes their oatmeal for breakfast. House tells her that her husband has been adding his blood pressure medication to their oatmeal, as the beta blockers cause a decreased sex drive and he thought as long as his were reduced, hers might as well be too. House suggests she start making her own breakfast, and have an affair. This train of thought gives House an epiphany, and he realizes that Elise could have gotten sleeping system from sex if she had an affair. Since the test for tularemia was inconclusive, House has Foreman and Chase ask Ed and Elise separately if they noticed Elise’s respiratory symptoms or if they had an affair. They both deny both the respiratory symptoms and an affair. Meanwhile, House reveals to Cameron that after he noticed how she was affected by the sick babies in “Maternity,” he checked her medical records and learned that she had never been pregnant. Naturally, the invasion of privacy upsets her, and she storms off.

With both Elise and Ed denying an affair, the team treats her for tularemia. As Cameron gives her the second dose of the treatment, Elise slips into a coma. The team realizes she doesn’t have tularemia and must have sleeping sickness.

Elise falls into a coma

House talks to Ed, and tells him the diagnosis. He again denies an affair, and House says that means Elise must have had one, which he doesn’t believe. House asks him if he thinks there’s a chance that she had an affair just one, and when Ed says he doesn’t know if he trust her that much, House has Foreman and Chase starts the treatment of melarsoprol, which comes in glass syringes and with special IV tubing because it melts plastic.

A biohazard label on your medicine: also not a good sign

Ed reveals to Cameron that if Elise recovers, it means she betrayed him and part of him hopes she doesn’t get better. He asks if that makes him a terrible person, and Cameron says yes.

Cameron tells Ed he's a terrible person

House finds Cameron in the lab, crying over a centrifuge. She tells House what she said to Ed, and House asks why. Cameron reveals that when she was 21, she got married to a man who died six months later of thyroid cancer that metastasized to his brain. House realizes that thyroid cancer would have diagnosed a over a year before he died, so she knew he was dying when she married him, maybe even when she first met him. He tells her that she can’t be that good of a person and be well adjusted.

Cameron tells House her sad story

Elise’s fever spikes and her blood pressure falls. The treatment is destroying her heart. House tells Ed, and he begs Elise not to die, and she comes out of her coma. Later, Cameron watches from outside the room as Elise tearfully admits the affair to Ed. Ed walks out on her, and Cameron goes after him, telling him how lucky his is that Elise is alive and lover him, but he says that she couldn’t have done what she did if she loved him. House asks Elise who she had the affair with and sends Cameron to notify him that he needs to be treated. It turns out to be Ed’s friend that he was jogging with at the beginning of the episode (who himself has a wife and son).

Ed begs Elise not to die

My Review:

This episode has an interesting mystery, with the diagnosis being hindered by being a very rare condition and the patient’s lies, but the highlight of this episode is the revelation about Cameron’s late husband. The episode also reveals a little more about Wilson’s past, mainly that he’s been married multiple times. This episode nicely includes some continuity with past episodes, including “Maternity” in the Cameron subplot and “Damned If You Do” in the Wilson subplot in adding support to the idea that Wilson’s marriage isn’t going too well. As usual, the clinic adds some levity to an otherwise serious episode, and this time the lone clinic patient leads House to his epiphany, as one of the clinic patients in the pilot episode did. While the mystery makes this a good episode on its own, the important information about Cameron’s past makes this a significant episode, and perhaps the most important episode up to this point in the series.

House: The Socratic Method (Season 1, Episode 6)

2009-06-08T20:32:00.000-07:00

Dr. House and his team treat the schizophrenic single mother of a teenage boy.

The Plot (spoilers):

38-year-old schizophrenic Lucy (Stacy Edwards) and her teenage son Lucas (Aaron Himelstein) are at the unemployment department, when Lucy experiences pain in her leg. She is also hearing voices. When they have a moment alone, Lucas slips her a shot of vodka to calm her down, which she desperately sucks down. The then goes into respiratory arrest and collapses.

Lucy's leg starts to hurt

Lucy is taken by ambulance to the Princeton-Plainsboro Emergency Room. As Lucas paces nervously in the waiting room, Dr. House (Hugh Laurie) is also there, hiding from Dr. Cuddy. Lucy is diagnosed by the ER doctor with a small pulmonary embolism, a blood clot that got stuck in her lungs, originating from a deep vein thrombosis (DVT) in her calf. The ER doctor, having noticed her blood-alcohol content, attributes the DVT to alcoholism, but House overhears and ends up taking on the case. The team, especially Dr. Foreman (Omar Epps), doesn’t understand what House finds so interesting, and Dr. Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) suspects that House is more interested in the schizophrenia than the DVT.

House takes on the case

House talks to Lucy and discovers she stopped shaving her legs two months ago because of her tremors, but Dr. Chase (Jesse Spencer) points out that the tremors aren’t new, so House surmises that the amount of blood must have changed and orders tests and has her meds stopped. Dr. Cameron (Jennifer Morrison) wishes House a happy birthday, having seen the date on a form in his mail. Foreman tries to draw blood for the tests, but Lucy panics, so Foreman gives her 5mg of Haldol to sedate her.

House talks to Lucy

In the clinic, House reports to a mother and daughter that the lab found that the girl does not have strep, plus that she has none of the symptoms for strep, but House thought running the tests was easier than arguing. The mother wants House to convince the daughter to accept a sugarless cake for her birthday. House refuses and tells the mother to get an ice cream cake. Outside, Lucas is upset with House for Foreman giving his mom Haldol, saying it changes her.

House talks to the mother and daughter in the clinic

Lucy starts vomiting blood. House yells at Foreman for giving Lucy Haldol, as it could hinder their diagnosis. Foreman says it couldn’t have caused the bleed. The only thing the blood tests showed was a prolonged PT time, which could mean Foreman made a mistake drawing the blood, but House doubts that and says it could also indicate a Vitamin K deficiency, which Cameron says would account for the bleed but not the clot, but House says that without Vitamin K, Protein C doesn’t work, which would lead to clots. Cameron suggests that it could be the result of another drug interacting with the heparin the ER doctor gave her to thin her blood, and says that she was prescribed ampicillin for a sore throat, but House says Lucas’s notes say she never took it. Chase says it’s more likely than malnourishment, and attributes the rest of her symptoms to alcohol causing the DVT and cirrhosis and says they should ultrasound her liver.

Lucy starts vomiting blood

House sends Chase and Foreman to check out her home for drugs and diet and after that they’ll do the ultrasound. Chase and Foreman find that she never took the ampicillin and lives off of frozen microwavable hamburgers. Lucas says they are the only thing she’ll eat, but they don’t contain any Vitamin K.

Foreman and Chase find Lucy's favorite food

House deduces that Lucas isn’t 18 like he’s claimed, but is only 15. Lucas worries that House will turn him in to social services. Meanwhile, Chase doesn’t think the Vitamin K deficiency is Lucy’s only problem and ultrasounds her liver himself. He finds signs of cirrhosis, as well as a 5.8-centimeter cancerous tumor, which Wilson diagnoses as the real cause of the bleed. Chase says if they do nothing, she’ll die of liver failure within 60 days. She needs a liver transplant, but as an alcoholic schizophrenic her chances of getting one aren’t good. They could operate to remove the tumor, but it’s too big and outside the surgical guidelines. House has Wilson inject the tumor with 95% ethanol, which dehydrates the tumor cells and temporarily shrinks it so they can trick the surgeon into operating.

Wilson and Cameron plan to trick a surgeon

House runs into Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) in the clinic and inadvertently hints to Cuddy that he’s done something he doesn’t want her to know about. He tries to use his birthday as an excuse, but Cuddy doesn’t buy it and pulls the charts on House’s patient. While House is treating a clinic patient with hiccups, she confronts him about shrinking the tumor but doesn’t stop the surgery. The surgeon figures out what House did during the surgery. He warns Cameron that if House ever tries it again, he’ll stop the surgery. The entire tumor was removed, but Lucy will need some chemotherapy. While Chase tried to comfort Lucas, a social worker arrives to take him in to protective custody due to his being in a difficult living situation. House sees Lucas being taken away, and he accuses House of reporting him. House suspects that Lucy might not really be schizophrenic.

The surgeon warns Cameron

House checks the phone records and finds that Lucy called social services herself, because Lucas would be better off. He says that self-sacrifice, plus the late presentation and the fact that none of her medications ever helped proves she’s not schizophrenic. He makes some late-night calls to her previous doctors, none of which are particularly responsive considering the time. House gets his team together instead in to determine the real cause of Lucy’s psychological symptoms. Cameron suggests Wilson’s Disease, the accumulation of copper in the body. House likes the idea, and points out that Lucy missed an appointment with an ophthalmologist (Wilson’s Disease causes cataracts) and causes cirrhosis. They check her eyes and find the copper-colored Kayser-Fleischer rings that indicate Wilson’s Disease.

Kayser-Fleischer rings

They treat Lucy for Wilson’s Disease and her psychological symptoms go away. Lucas is returned to her and they go home. On their way out, they run into House and Wilson in the elevator. Lucy thanks House but Lucas still blames him for turning him in. Rather than tell him the truth, House keeps up the lie to protect Lucy, saying he had Cuddy call social services. They leave and House tells Wilson he was right: it WAS the schizophrenia that interested him, and she’s not nearly as interesting anymore.

Lucy thanks House

My Review:

The Socratic Method features an interesting mystery and the team doesn’t follow their typical formula of making several bad diagnoses, instead they are pretty much always right, until it turns out there’s another layer. Lucy sure is lucky, though, that Chase didn’t accept the Vitamin K deficiency as her only problem, or her cancer would never have been discovered. Guest star Stacy Edwards gives a good performance as schizophrenic Lucy. Aaron Himelstein does a decent job as Lucas. There’s not a lot of development for the main characters, but it is implied that Chase had to deal with an alcoholic in his past. If this episode took place close to its original air date, House’s birthday would be in December. Overall, this isn’t a standout episode, but it’s an enjoyable one.

House: Damned If You Do (Season 1, Episode 5)

2009-06-07T02:38:00.000-07:00

In this Christmas-themed episode, House tries to treat a nun whose problems might have been complicated by his own error.

The Plot (spoilers):

Dr. House (Hugh Laurie) and Dr. Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) are in the lobby working on charts, which House considers a waste of time. Dr. Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) tells House he has a patient who’s been waiting for nearly an hour.

House takes charting seriously

House goes to see the patient, a nun named Sister Augustine (Elizabeth Mitchell) who has red, swollen hands. One of her fellow nuns says it looks like stigmata. House diagnosis her with contact dermatitis, an allergic reaction which he attributes to dish soap from washing pots and pans. House gives her a pill of diphenhydramine to counteract the allergic reaction, which she washes down with tea she brought with her. House goes back out to the lobby, but Sister Augustine soon has trouble breathing. House gives her an injection of Epinephrine to help her breathing, which it does. House deduces that she is allergic to diphenhydramine, and decides to prescribe her steroids instead, bet before he can do anything, she goes into a cardiac arrest.

Stigmata?

Sister Augustine is admitted to the hospital. House claims that he only gave her 0.1cc of epinephrine, but Cuddy says that small amount couldn’t have induced a cardiac arrest and he must have accidentally given her 1.0cc instead, since they are in the same drawer. House insists he didn’t screw up, and she must have a pre-existing condition. Cuddy gives him 24 hours to find it, or she’ll have to report him to the disciplinary board.

House suspects Churg-Strauss Vasculitis, a condition with a short life expectancy, even with treatment. Dr. Foreman (Omar Epps) thinks it’s possible House just screwed up and gave her too much epinephrine, but House again insists he didn’t screw up. He orders a chest CT scan and puts the patient on prednisone.

In the clinic, House treats a store Santa (Dakin Matthews) suffering from inflammatory bowel. He has already tried a number of treatments, none of which have worked. House prescribes him cigarettes: one twice a day. The patient is shocked, but House says that cigarette smoking is one of the most effective ways to control inflammatory bowel. When the patient expresses concern that cigarettes are addictive and dangerous, House replies that pretty much all the drugs he prescribes are addictive and dangerous, but cigarettes are perfectly legal.

Dr. Chase (Jesse Spencer) and Sister Augustine chat as he takes her for the CT scan. She says her parents died when she was six and she was raised in a foster home run by the church and took her vows when she was 18 and has known no other life. The team runs the test, which shows no signs of Churg-Strauss Vasculitis. As they get her out of the machine, she hallucinates smells and a vision of Jesus, which Foreman interprets as temporal lobe swelling, then goes into a seizure.

Is that you, Jesus?

Sister Augustine tests positive for herpetic encephalitis, indicating her immune system is compromised, which Cuddy points out could be caused by the prednisone, but Dr. Cameron (Jennifer Morrsion) says that her immune system is too severely compromised to be the result of only two doses of prednisone. House gets Cuddy to leave, and Chase suggests Mixed Connective Tissue Disease, which fits all the symptoms, but the tests were negative and the treatment is prednisone, which they can’t go back to because of the herpetic encephalitis. House says to redo the tests and put the patient in a hypobaric (high-pressure) oxygen chamber. Foreman doesn’t think House is right and the side effects of the hypobaric chamber are too great a risk, so he goes to Cuddy.

The hypobaric chamber

House is watching his portable TV in the hospital’s chapel when one of the nuns comes in to talk to him, telling him that Augustine is a hypochondriac. He offers her candy and they have a little chat.

It's not House's fault the reception is so good

Cuddy confronts House and takes him off the case. Taking over House’s team, she decides there is no underlying condition, and treats the symptoms directly. Wilson finds House in the clinic counting the epinephrine syringes in the exam room. He points out that House will have to go through the records of every patient in the clinic in the last two days to prove he’s right. While Chase is checking on Sister Augustine, he gets a page reading “Call Mom.” He goes to House, saying his mom’s been dead for 10 years. House asks Chase what he knows about the nun and what she’s hiding. Chase says that if she does have a secret, her boss would know. House goes to the monastery and has a cup of tea with the Mother Superior (Ann Dowd), who tells him that Augustine left foster care when she was 12 and lived on the streets, dabbled in drugs, got pregnant when she was 15, tried to self abort and lost the child. She eventually came back to the church. House says its not relevant and takes a sip of tea, which he then asks about.

House has tea with the Mother Superior

Cuddy and the team haven’t made any progress. Cameron thinks House was right about an underlying condition, but doesn’t have a specific idea. House returns with a sample of the monastery’s figwort tea, which Sister Augustine has been drinking a lot of and which when combined with even 0.1cc of epinephrine can cause a cardiac arrest. The rest of the symptoms could be explained by a severe, long-term allergic reaction, which Cameron originally suggested but didn’t stick with after House immediately rejected it because it wouldn’t cause the cardiac arrest.

In order to figure out what Sister Augustine is allergic to, the team puts her in a clean room, so they can introduce possible allergens one at a time. In the clean room, she can’t have visitors, but Chase offers to pray with her. She says she doesn’t want to die and asks why God has left her. Chase reveals he was in seminary school and tells her his favorite passage was 1 Peter 1:7, “These trials only test your faith to see whether or not it is strong and pure. Your faith is being tested, as fire tests gold and purifies it, and your faith is far more precious to the Lord than mere gold, so if your faith remains strong after being tested, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day of his return.” He tells her that she has a choice of faith or fear. She asks him why he left seminary school, and he says it was that test: she passed, he didn’t.

Sister Augustine has her faith tested

Soon after that, Sister Augustine goes into anaphylactic shock, an allergic reaction despite being in a clean room. They give her 0.1cc of epinephrine and intubate her, stabilizing her. House has ruled out everything he can think of that could have caused the anaphylactic shock. Cameron gives House a Christmas present, and Chase reports that Sister Augustine has been extubated and is now requesting to check out against medical advice and return to the monastery. Chase thinks he might have talked her into the decision in their discussion earlier. House tries to talk to her, to no avail. She says that when she was on the streets she was on every kind of birth control and still got pregnant and was angry with God until she realized she can’t be angry with God without believing in him, and she says that God is inside of her whether she lives or dies. When House tells Wilson “she has God inside her,” Wilson replies “Maybe she’s allergic to God.” House realizes the only place they haven’t looked for an allergen in inside her body and orders a full-body scan.

Intubating Sister Augustine

The full-body scan reveals a “copper cross” Intra-Uterine Device (IUD), that was apparently left in when she tried to have an abortion. She is allergic to copper, with minimal symptoms until she started washing the monastery’s new copper cookware, contact which caused the allergy to become serious. They remove the IUD, and she recovers.

The Copper Cross

Wilson tells House that he did screw up, just not in the way he thought, because if Cuddy hadn’t taken him off the case he would’ve killed the patient going down the wrong track. Wilson invites House to Christmas/Chanukah dinner, which he declines, and Wilson says maybe he’ll go over to House’s. House asks if Wilson’s wife wouldn’t mind being alone, and says she’s used to it with him being a doctor, and then says he doesn’t want to talk about it. Wilson and House have Chinese food in House’s apartment, and House is seen playing the piano.

House plays the piano

My Review:

After an episode focusing more on Foreman and an episode focusing more on Cameron it is only fitting that we get an episode focusing more on Chase, and of the three, Chase gets the closest look. In this episode, we learn that chase went to seminary school, but quit before finishing, we learn that Chase’s mom has been dead for 10 years, and it is implied that Chase went to medical school to please his father, even though he didn’t really want to. This is a lot more than we know about the other fellows so far. We also learn a little about Wilson, namely that his friendship with House extends beyond being colleagues and outside the hospital, and that Wilson is married, but maybe not so happily. And we learn that Cameron is an atheist, which struck me as a surprise the first time I saw this episode, as of the three fellows she was the one I most expected to be at least a little bit religious. Since this is a Christmas-themed episode with a nun for a patient, religious debate was bound to come up, and while it shouldn’t surprise anyone to discover that House doesn’t think much of religious belief, the episode does a pretty even-handed job of portraying both sides. As for the medical mystery, this one laid out the clues nicely, and a layman with knowledge of old birth control methods could perhaps solve this one before the characters do, with little to no medical knowledge. This is a nice change from previous episodes that required specific medical knowledge, often about a rare condition, to solve. I am usually not a fan of Christmas-themed episodes, but in this case, a solid mystery and the revealing of information about the characters make Damned If You Do an enjoyable and important episode of House.

House: Maternity (Season 1, Episode 4)

2009-06-07T02:10:00.000-07:00

Dr. House discovers an epidemic that strikes several newborn babies in the hospital’s maternity ward.

The Plot (Spoilers):

Karen & Ethan Hartig (Ever Carradine & Sam Trammell) name their newborn daughter Maxine. The baby spits up despite not having eaten anything and they call the OB/GYN (Kenneth Choi), who notices that she is lethargic and feverish. She then goes into a seizure.

The Hartig Family

Dr. House (Hugh Laurie) is watching his soap opera in the OB/GYN lounge when the Hartig’s OB/GYN and another come in, discussing the Hartig’s baby. The OB/GYN has diagnosed the problem as a bowel obstruction and thinks the baby will be fine.

House chillin' in the OB/GYN Lounge

House takes off to investigate himself and finds another newborn baby with a fever, diagnosed a few hours earlier. He decides there is an infection spreading through the maternity ward. He tells both Dr. Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) and Dr. Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) but neither believes him, so he takes his team through the maternity ward hunting for more sick babies. They find a third baby with a fever, and a fourth showing early symptoms, which convinces Cuddy to shut down the maternity ward.

Rounding up the sick babies

Symptoms include the spiking fever and plummeting blood pressure. Dr. Foreman (Omar Epps) says they could be dead within a day, and the four babies don’t seem to have had anything in common. Cuddy sets off to put together a team to start swabbing, while House and his fellows try to diagnose. They suspect a bacterial infection and have several possibilities. They don’t have time for tests so House starts them on vancomycin for MRSA and aztreonam for the others and orders MRIs, before heading to the clinic. The MRIs don’t show anything. Dr. Cameron (Jennifer Morrison) has trouble talking to a family to tell them how sick their baby is and Foreman has to step in. Cameron tells him giving bad news isn’t a hard as receiving it and that its easier to die than to watch someone die. Cuddy gathers up med students and has them search for the infection.

In the clinic, House sees a woman (Hedy Burress) who says she’s been feeling sick a lot and has been training for a marathon but can’t lose any weight. House determines that she’s pregnant (initially referring to the baby as a parasite) and shows her the baby on a sonogram. The woman has a birth control implant and says she was told she might not have any periods if it was working, and House points out the same thing could happen if it’s not working. She admits that she cheated on her husband with an old boyfriend at about the same time as the baby was conceived, so House offers a paternity test as well, but she doesn’t want her husband to find out. House asks is the old boyfriend resembles her husband and when she says yes he recommends that she just have the baby and her husband will never know.

House and the pregnant woman

Two of the babies are experiencing kidney failure caused by the antibiotics. If they leave them on both antibiotics they’ll die of kidney failure but if they stop both they’ll die of the infection. The team has no idea what the illness is or which antibiotic is causing the kidney failure, as it’s a possible side effect for either one. House order one baby be taken off the vancomycin and the other off the aztreonam, giving them different treatments for the same illness. House’s team and the hospital lawyer (Cress Williams) all express their concerns about the fact that one baby will almost surely die based on the flip of a coin, but Cuddy lets House go ahead in the belief that they will learn how to save the other six babies, of which there are now a total of six. Foreman tells the Hartigs that they think the disease is MRSA and they are keeping their baby on vancomycin and tells them how serious the situation is, preparing them for the worst, while Cameron gives the other family, whose baby is being kept on aztreonam, a more reassuring report that makes them feel relief. Wilson criticizes her for not preparing them for the worst, but Cameron says that if the worst happens they aren’t going to care what she said the day before and she’d rather give them some hope.

The pregnant woman from the clinic shows up at House’s office with her husband, saying he needs a blood test for “Mono,” which House eventually realizes means she wants the paternity test done, without him knowing. House agrees to schedule them for a test. Meanwhile, Cuddy is still on an obsessive search for the cause of the infection, while Wilson tries, with little success, to keep her calm.

Cuddy is handling the stress well

Dr. Chase (Jesse Spencer) is talking to a concerned Mrs. Hartig when the baby that was kept on aztreonam crashes and dies. House has Chase double-up all the babies on vancomycin and tells Cameron to tell the family. She tries to get out of it, first suggesting Chase do it and then saying House is the attending physician. House tells Wilson to make sure she does her job, but when she tries she freezes up and Wilson has to step forward and tell them himself.

Cameron has some bad news to deliver

Chase reports that the Hartig baby is also getting sicker: the vancomycin isn’t working either. House sends the team home for the night, and conducts an autopsy on the dead baby. The next morning House announces that they were on the wrong track all along: the autopsy showed a virus infected the heart.

House does an autopsy

The babies only have enough blood to do five or six tests, so House leads the team, along with Wilson and Cuddy, in a brainstorming session to determine which tests to run. They get to a list of eight, which Chase says is pushing it, but they go ahead with the tests. House asks if there are any babies left in the hospital who didn’t get sick, and Cuddy says there is one. House has his blood tested as well to serve as a control. The sick babies test positive for three of the viruses, and the healthy baby for two of them, and House realizes that as infants they still have their mothers antibodies, so to get the whole picture they have to test the mothers of the sick babies and whatever the babies test positive for but the mothers don’t is what they have. Testing the mothers reveals the answer is Echovirus 11, and the hospital gets a promising experimental antiviral to treat the babies.

Cameron feels sorry for the Hartigs being unable to hold their daughter, so she asks them to hold her while the nurse changes the sheets. In the morning, House asks Foreman how Cameron is handling things and he says she’s fine. House goes to the clinic to tell the pregnant woman that her husband is definitely the cause of her “mono.” She is thankful and wants to get House a gift; he replies that “sometimes the best gift is the gift of never seeing you again.” She asks him if he could handle her prenatal or deliver the baby, and he declines, but pauses as he leaved the exam room.

All the remaining babies recover and are released. House talks to Cameron, saying that anyone who is that awkward either has no experience with death or too much experience with it. He asks where she got the idea to have the Hartig parents hold their baby, and then asks if she lost someone. She leaves angrily.

House is hanging out in the lobby outside the maternity ward, looking for the source of the virus, which is only spread by humans. Cuddy has tested the staff, but the babies didn’t have any common personnel. He spots an elderly hospital volunteer (Donna Stearns) with a hacking cough handing out stuffed animals.

The spreader of the virus

House is again watching his soap opera in the OB/GYN lounge. The OB/GYNs from the beginning come in and tell him he isn’t supposed to be there, and House says he’s performing a delivery for a patient he just took on and will need one of them to supervise. He gives them the due date and when they say that its 5 months away, House replies “Thank God these chairs are comfortable.”

At least now he has an excuse

My Review:

Episode 4 is the best yet with an interesting mystery that doesn’t quite fit into the typical “patient of the week” formula, some drama with Cameron and some humor with House and his clinic patient. The dialogue in this episode is especially good. In addition to House, Wilson and even Cuddy get some fun lines. Cuddy cutting off the med student’s tie is a high point. As far as House’s team goes, Cameron gets the focus in this episode, like Foreman did in the last one, and it’s hinted that Cameron has some tragedy in her past, but we don’t get any details yet. They were already doing a good job, but now the actors seem to be getting comfortable with their roles and their interactions seem to be a little more natural. I think the interaction between Wilson and Cameron is the first significant interaction Wilson has had with any of House’s fellows, and I think it is also the first time Cameron’s first name, Allison, is mentioned on screen. Also, during the autopsy, House gives the date, Thursday, December 2, 2004, which was within a week of this episode’s original airdate, for what that’s worth. I don’t really like how the babies are saved with an experimental drug; it seems like if this were real life, the story wouldn’t have had a happy ending. Despite that one point, Maternity is still a great episode of House.

House: Occam's Razor (Season 1, Episode 3)

2009-06-07T01:52:00.000-07:00

Dr. House and the team try to diagnose a 22 year old patient with symptoms so varied they don’t seem to have a single cause. Meanwhile, House tries to convince Dr. Cuddy to release him from his duties in the hospital’s walk-in clinic.

The Plot (spoilers)

22 year old college-student Brandon (Kevin Zegers) calls in sick due to a cough. His girlfriend Mindy (Alexis Thorpe) also notices that he has a rash. They have sex, and as soon as they finish, he passes out on top of her. He ends up in the Princeton-Plainsboro Emergency Room, where Dr. Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) notices him. He also has a fever, nausea, abdominal pain, and low blood pressure that doesn’t respond to IV fluids. The last symptom convinces Dr. House (Hugh Laurie) to take the case.

So much for cuddling

The early tests don’t show anything, and the team can’t come up with any ideas. Dr. Cameron (Jennifer Morrison) says no condition explains all his symptoms. House says they have to stabilize his blood pressure, and has him treated for sepsis and put on broad-spectrum antibiotics, and orders more tests. The team does the tests and Mindy tells Dr. Chase (Jesse Spencer) that they were having sex just before he collapses and she was “kind of rough” and winders if that could be the cause. Meanwhile, House goes to the clinic 30 minutes late and makes a speech in which he admits he’s on Vicodin and convinces all the waiting patients to wait for another doctor.

"Maybe I'm too stoned to tell!"

Dr. Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) doesn’t let his plan work though, and sends him a patient (Lauren Cohn) anyway. The patient says her mucus was “pale goldenrod” last week, but wasn’t anymore. House deduces that she expects to be fired and is getting the most of her medical plan. She says she might be quitting, but House says if she was quitting she would have known last week when she was actually sick. House schedules her for a full-body scan.

"You're not a very nice doctor, are you?"

The team hasn’t come up with anything, and Dr. Foreman (Omar Epps) says it has to be viral. Chase jokingly mentions the girlfriend’s theory, and Cameron suggests that maybe they should look into it after all. Foreman gets more test results, and says they should stop the antibiotics, as Brendan’s kidneys are failing. Foreman attributes the kidney failure to a side effect of the antibiotics, but House thinks it is a new symptom. Foreman suggests a rare cardiac infection that Chase says is a 10 million-to-one chance, and doesn’t explain the cough or the rash. House suggests that it could be two conditions: sinus infection and hypothyroidism. The team rejects this, citing Occam’s Razor: the simplest explanation is always the best, and one is simpler than two. House says that the odds of getting the sinus infection and hypothyroidism are each 1,000-to-one, which makes the odds of having them both one million-to-one, and more likely than Foreman’s idea. He has Brandon treated for the sinus infection and hypothyroidism. As Cameron starts the treatment, Brandon’s parents (Faith Prince & John Kelly) show up, and he introduces them to Mindy as his fiancée.

Foreman doesn’t think House is right, and goes to the lab to test for viral infections. Cameron and Chase reluctantly go with him to help. Chase and Foreman talk about Cameron behind her back, and Foreman accuses Chase of wanting to have sex with her, which Chase denies but Foreman doesn’t believe him. Meanwhile, in the clinic, House is in an exam room with a patient with a sore throat, playing his Game Boy Advance SP while “waiting.” Cuddy comes in, having left a board meeting to respond to House’s request for a consult and as House plays dumb, she diagnoses the patient with a sore throat and tells him to drink some hot tea.

House "waiting"

In the lab, Foreman determines that the kidney failure wasn’t caused by the antibiotics, and House and Wilson tell him than Brandon is feeling better. Foreman checks on him and sees that he still has the cough, and orders more tests. Back in the clinic, House is again “waiting” with a patient, having paged Cuddy for a consult while she was playing golf. He estimates they have another half-hour, and offers the patient his Game Boy. Foreman stops by and says that his tests found that Brandon doesn’t have hypothyroidism, but House says since he’s feeling better the test must be wrong. He asks about the clinic patient and House says her leg hurts after running six miles. House tells Foreman to check Brandon’s white blood cell count. If Foreman is right about a viral infection, the count will be elevated. Foreman leaves and Wilson comes in, saying Cuddy sent him to handle House’s consult.

In the office, after Cameron and Chase have an amusing chat about sex, Foreman reports that the white cell count is down, meaning both he and House were wrong. Brendon’s immune system is severely weakened and they put him into a clean room. Foreman tests Brandon’s bone marrow for a viral infection or fibrosis.

In Cuddy’s office, House tries to defend his request for a consult for a pulled muscle. Cuddy says she’s not letting him out of clinic duty, and House says she has plenty of other doctors and doesn’t need him in the clinic, but Cuddy says the working with people makes House a better doctor.

House and Cuddy

Leaving Cuddy’s office, House runs into Wilson, who asks House if he has a thing for Cuddy. House denies it as he orders a bottle of Vicodin from the pharmacy. House picks up the wrong bottle as he walks away, and Wilson points it out to him. This gives House an idea, and he asks Wilson what Brandon’s fist symptom was. Wilson says it was the cough.

House has his epiphany

House goes to his office and spends the night thinking and researching, eventually coming up with the idea that colchicine, a gout medication, would account for all Brandon’s symptoms except for the cough, and suggests that when Brandon went to the doctor and got a prescription for his cough, the pharmacist made a mistake and gave him colchicine instead. House says this fits Occam’s Razor because the simplest explanation is always that someone screwed up. Cameron points out that if that were the case, once he were in the hospital and under their supervision, he should have either gotten better or gotten worse, but instead he got better and then got worse. House says that means two people screwed up. He asks the parents and fiancée who gave Brandon his cough medicine back, and the mother reluctantly admits it. Brandon took the last of the pills shortly before he was moved into the clean room. The team takes the bottle back to the pharmacy and his the bottle refilled, but the mother says the round, yellow pills the pharmacist puts in the bottle under Chase’s watchful eye look just like the ones Brandon took.

House can’t understand how he was wrong, because his explanation was so perfect. He tried to figure out what the cough medicine could have done. Wilson suggests lymphoma, which House says they ruled out because all the tests were negative, but Wilson says to do an exploratory surgery. House can’t think of a better idea, so he agrees. While the team is doing some prep for the surgery (I’m no doctor but as a House fan I’ve picked up a little; this looks like an echocardiogram) Brendon complains that his fingers are numb, then the procedure causes his heart to stop. The team restarts his heart, but they have to postpone the surgery.

House is in the clinic, where his patient is a young man with tattoos and piercings. From the fact that he hadn’t sat down after waiting for 30 minutes or admitted why he was there, House deduced that he had something humiliating up his rear end. House says that after being a doctor for 20 years nothing will surprise him, but the patient does manage to surprise House after all when he admits it’s an mp3 player. House checks out, leaving the patient for Cuddy to deal with.

Cameron finds House, telling him that Brandon crashed during the surgery prep and is feeling pain in his fingers. House goes into Brandon’s clean room and finds that he has pain in his fingers and toes and the beginnings of hair loss, two more symptoms that fit perfectly with colchicine poisoning. House asks Brandon if he does Ecstasy, and he admits to trying it twice. House suggests that it must have been cut with colchicine, or suggests a few other possible ways for Brandon to have been exposed to it. He orders him treated for colchicine poisoning.

The treatment works, and House searches the pharmacy for every form of colchicine to figure out how Brandon got it, not convinced two doses of Ecstasy cut with colchicine would be enough. Brandon still has the cough, and is given the correct cough pills, which he notices have a letter on them. His old pills didn’t have a letter on them. Meanwhile, in the hospital pharmacy, House finds colchicine in the form of round yellow pills with no letter on them.

House's search of the pharmacy yield's results

My review:

It’s only the third episode, but of the three, this episode has the most interesting mystery. This was largely a Foreman episode, with him spending most of the episode trying to prove House’s two-illness theory wrong. Chase and Cameron were regulated to their minor side plot that reveals that Chase is attracted to Cameron. By itself, that isn’t very interesting, but knowing where the series will eventually take them makes it interesting looking back. House trying to get out of clinic duty and his interactions with the clinic patients is particularly fun in this episode, and we learn House has a double-specialty in infectious disease and nephrology. Wilson and Cuddy get more time with House in this episode, which fleshes out the characters a little more. I’m not sure how Wilson, an oncologist, originally got involved in the case though. We know the doctors have to work in the clinic, but Brandon came in through the ER, and I don’t think cancer was considered at the beginning. Otherwise, this is an enjoyable episode with an interesting mystery.