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Who is Sarah Cain, and why does she need saving? That’s the question posed in this Hallmark Channel-style film by Michael Landon Jr. The son of “Pa Ingalls” of Little House On the Prairie fame, Landon Jr. has started making a name for himself directing family-oriented fare that would make the Highway to Heaven star proud.

Saving Sarah Cain is an adaptation of the Beverly Lewis novel, The Redemption of Sarah Cain, in which an increasingly uninspired metro newspaper columnist attends the funeral of her Amish sister, only to find herself being granted guardianship of her sister’s five children. While being burdened the responsibilities of parenthood suddenly thrust upon her, she finds her nieces and nephews naiveté in dealing with the modern urban world charming and starts writing about her adventures raising them as they experience public school, Nike golf shoes and even videogames for the first time.

Suddenly, her career is back on the right path and just as everything seems to be going her way, it all begins falling apart. Working the faith theme in mildly in the background of the story, Saving Sarah Cain is a good-natured movie with its heart in the right place. However, it begins to fall apart in its failure to accurately portray people both in the Amish and the modern worlds.

The real trouble comes in the predictable plot, the paint-by-numbers dialog, and the black-and-white way in which the Amish (misunderstood angels) and the modern world (hardened and bitter bad guys) characters are portrayed. I mean, here are five kids who just lost their parents and they manage to be naïve, full of laughter and charm, and mostly positive throughout the piece. Does that ring true no matter how extreme the home school environment they were raised in might have been? The film’s handing of modern urban city dwellers is similarly one-dimensional.

Despite the film’s family-friendly nature and considerable charm, Saving Sarah Cain comes off as a movie with its head in the clouds and its feel floating well above real, hardened earth. It’s good for the younger set, but the patience of older, more worldly viewers might be tested by this nevertheless good-natured film. Oh, and don’t expect and DVD extras here; they’re nonexistent.

Anyone remember the NBC dramedy, Ed? It was that goofy but lovable show produced by David Lettermen’s Worldwide Pants, about a guy who moves back to his hometown after a messy divorce to try and win the heart of his secret high school crush, and bought a bowling alley, opening his law practice in the same alley? Yeah, goofy concept. Even goofier was supporting actor Michael Ian Black, who played one of Ed’s self-aggrandizing employees at the bowling alley.

Well, turns out Mr. Black isn’t just a goofball after all; he’s become a director as well and, by the look of things with Wedding Daze, not a bad one. The movie is a bit of a Dharma and Greg concept about two strangers who decide to get married before even knowing each other’s names, but Black’s direction steers clear of the ABC comedy’s obvious tread marks and attempts to take the concept down fresher, less well-trodden paths.

The result is a successful comedy of errors that excels in areas where Good Luck Chuck went blue instead of finding its funny bone. Starring American Pie alum, the appealing Jason Biggs, opposite newcomer Audra Blaser, Biggs plays a depressed guy. Why? Well, he proposed to his girlfriend in public, in a Cupid costume no less, and so surprises her that she has a heart attack and dies on the spot.

A year later, Biggs’ character (Anderson) is still depressed; he’s haunted by the memory of his fiancée-to-be, forgetting her flaws and making it impossible for him to move on. A friend if his tries to get him back on the dating field again, which he doesn’t want to do, but agrees to reluctantly to get the guy off his back. On a whim, he proposes to a waitress at the diner he’s at with his buddy, expecting her to laugh him off so he can get back to mourning. But she shocks him – and herself – by saying yes; mostly because she was considering a proposal from a boyfriend she wasn’t all that into and it provides a convenient escape.

Despite being a bit derivative, the film is good-natured PG-13 fare that stays watchable throughout. Of course, there’s the occasional out-of-nowhere punchline about CAT5e’s, snowblowers or what have you, but that seems to be Black’s style; he not only directed, but wrote the script as well.

Wedding Daze originated as a made-for-TV film, and has been known by other titles such as The Pleasure of Your Company and The Next Girl I See, but whatever its title, it came as a welcome respite in the recent storm of gross-out, sex-obsessed comedies that have been hitting shelves of late.

Although it was released by LionsGate, which made its reputation in Hollywood by releasing hard R/borderline NC-17 material, the studio’s latest DVD release, Midnight Clear, based on the book by Christian author Jerry B. Jenkins is a bit of a surprise. There is no explosion of violent blood and gore being spilled, no flesh-filled scenes of passion between taboo lovers, and no endless strings of profanity, as is often the case with LionsGate material.

Instead, we are treated to a quiet human drama of the movie-of-the-week variety, a Hallmark Channel-style drama about a small ensemble of characters whose lives intersect on Christmas Eve in ways that are unexpected, minor and yet critical. The cast is headlined by Stephen Baldwin, the “born again” Baldwin brother of reality show fame, who manages to turn in a credible performance. He plays a man down on his luck, drinking his regrets and bitterness away in Riedel wine glasses and tempted with the thought of taking his anger out of the world that seems to conspire against him, imagining a shower of violence.

Other characters struggle with their own issues, like having a car break down on a night in which they absolutely need to get home, or the tale of the disheartened youth pastor, saddled with taking the teens around Christmas caroling despite believing such efforts are unwelcome and make no difference. The tale, a bit of a play on the Pay It Forward concept, shows that one simple act of being nice to a stranger can change everyone’s fate.

The positive message never gets too preachy or too religious, meaning that it’s a faith movie that even non-faith-based folks might be able to stomach, provided they don’t mind movies with a cautiously optimistic, hopeful message. While the film is entertaining, though, be warned that it is a bare-bones DVD at best. You get a basic audio commentary, a minor “making of” documentary and that’s about it. It’s not the least feature-rich DVD I’ve watched lately, but it’s certainly not that impressive.

Anyone who has a bulk cable package that includes the Cartoon Network, and knows what the words Adult Swim really mean, will be familiar with Harvey Birdman, the TV series. An Alex Toth/Space Ghost-inspired character, Birdman is a former superhero turned attorney, and through this character Capcom supplies the PS2 and Sony’s PSP with their answer to the popular Phoenix Wright games hosted on the Nintendo DS.

Like the Phoenix Wright games, you play an attorney, gathering evidence, interviewing folks and then trying to present a winning case when the trial commences. Capcom should know their stuff, too, since they make both Phoenix Wright and Harvey Birdman. You’ll find similar pacing, a similar process of getting so many times to choose the wrong argument before you lose your case, and the same story of general game flow.

That said, the two games bear little resemblance to one another in actual execution. On the one hand, while the Phoenix Wright games are extremely retro in their look, the cases you are given to solve are long, involved and challenging, but fully entertaining. By contrast, Harvey Birdman looks great on PS2 and on PSP, with smooth animation that makes it look like you’re watching an episode of the TV show, but the cases are far simpler, less complex and shorter, although still fairly entertaining.

Of course, while Phoenix Wright is a solid mix of drama and light comedy, Birdman is pure comedy with a satiristic bent. Most of the five cases included in the game may seem vaguely familiar, usually because so many elements are send-ups of certain elements of current pop culture. The humor is largely pun-oriented, with a hint of naughtiness thrown in, just like the Adult Swim toon.

Although it’s nice to have an attorney sim on a Sony platform – especially to help ease the wait between new Phoenix Wright titles – Harvey Birdman Attorney At Law is nowhere near as satisfying as one might hope. With shorter, less challenging cases, it’s a good thing this isn’t a full-priced title, or one could come away from the experience feeling perhaps a bit cheated. As it stands, Harvey Birdman performs relatively the same on both PSP and PS2, but seems a better fit to the PSP library, personally. It’s a tidy snack until the next Phoenix Wright game comes out, but don’t expect it to be a full meal.

Considerably classier than American Pie: Beta House is the latest Dane Cook comedy, Good Luck Chuck; of course, that’s like comparing some really effective, high-tech agricultural manure to plain ol’ pig droppings. Although wrapped in a far more talented cast, Good Luck Chuck is unfortunately wallowing in the same pigpen of blue, low-brow humor as Beta House.

At least the cast lifts the dreck-filled, male fantasy script to a somewhat watchable level. Of course, get out your pens and write this down: if you’re going to make a sleezy sex comedy, at least cast the talented and attractive Jessica Alba in a starring role. Alba, who started her career with the respected Fox series Dark Angel and has since burned up the silver screen in mass-appeal movies like Fantastic Four and critically acclaimed movies like Sin City, must have decided to slum it a bit this time around.

Caught in a role that seems written more for some uber-tramp party girl like Lindsey Lohan, Alba does her best to class the role up, even though much of the movie is written at a hormonal, high school sophomore level of humor. You know, where women only exist to act the way a horny teenage boy wants them to, and everyone thinks fart jokes and fat jokes are the entertainment of royalty, rather than crass, cruel and largely unfunny.

The concept is this: anyone who dates Dane Cook’s character, Charlie Logan, long enough to sleep with him, marries the next guy she meets after they break up. This ludicrous concept is not only treated far too seriously in the film, but the script has the audacity to paint Charlie as the good guy for engaging in a series of one-night stands, using women desperate to get married as sex objects. The fact that this impossible concept is carried out as a reality in the film, with possibly as many as a couple dozen women sleeping with him and ending up married shortly thereafter, is where the “male fantasy fulfillment” comes in. Never does a single woman fault him for taking advantage of them; they all tell him, “You did a good thing, Charlie.”

Yeah, right.

Charlie’s only challenge comes in the form of Alba’s character, Cam Wexler, who he meets far too early in the film to excuse all his indulgences with other women, for her to be the love of his life. All improbabilities aside, including the complete absence of real-life consequences for such behavior like paternity suits, STDs or even a few hard feelings, the movie takes on a bit of charm when Charlie and Cam are on screen together; they pull of a charm that seems genuine, and during their scenes the coarseness of the movie in general is out of sight and out of mind.

Unfortunately, it always comes back to that juvenile, sex-starved level of humor, and only manages to produce laughs because the stars in this film – unlike American Pie: Beta House – actually have talent. The DVD has a generous supply of extras, but a couple of them are cringe-inducing, focusing on the raunch content rather than the thinly drawn, but well-acted love story at the core. In the end, Good Luck Chuck is more like the original American Pie trilogy, rather than the direct-to-DVD dreck that followed.

Although crass, rude and crude at times, the original American Pie trilogy, concluding with American Wedding, had a redeeming quality to it: talented actors. Despite the scripts’ flaws, stars Jason Biggs and Alyson Hannigan ultimately proved likable and the sort of characters you want to root for. Masquerading as a crude-and-rude comedy, the original American Pie trilogy was ultimately a somewhat twisted, but ultimately good-hearted love story about how those two characters found each other.

Since then, the series has gone south. Way south. Long gone are the classic gang that included such up and coming stars as Chris Klein, Eddie Kay Thomas, Sean William Scott, Shannon Elizabeth, Menu Suvari, Tara Reid and Natasha Leonne. In fact, the only star desperate enough to still be found in each and every American Pie is Eugene Levy – Lord knows why.

Instead, the cast of American Pie: Beta House reads more like a list of one-hit wonder bands; you keep on asking, “Who?” It’s no surprise that even behind the camera, original writer Adam Herz and co-directors Paul and Chris Weitz are also long-gone. The “big star” in Beta House is supposed to be Steve Talley as Dwight Stiffler; here’s some of Talley’s co-stars… stop me if you’ve heard of any of them, or expect to in the future: John White, Jake Siegel, Meghan Heffern, Pilar Cazares, Joe Eigo, Nick Nicotera, Christine Barger, Jonathan Keltz, Angela Besharah, Tyrone Savage, Jaclyn A. Smith, and Robbie Amell.

And of course, then there’s Eugene Levy, who’s still playing “Jim’s dad” even though Jim is nowhere to be found. Someone buy the poor man a meal so he can stop flogging his career into obscurity in this sad series, OK? The man’s an SCTV alum. A relative needs power of attorney over him to choose better movies for him; did Christopher Guest stop making independent comedies where Levy could hang out with Parker Posey? The writer’s strike is over, people, rescue your fallen comrade!

Of course, the female members of this cast of never-will-be actresses are more than willing to go nude to extend their 15 seconds of fame to a minute or two, which is unfortunate, since their sacrifice will go mostly unnoticed in this filmed radioactive waste.

American Pie: Beta House is the latest in a series of three direct-to-DVD chapters in the destruction of this series’ reputation. The crimes began with American Pie Presents: Band Camp, continued with American Pie: The Naked Mile and, unfortunately, doesn’t seem likely to conclude with American Pie: Beta House. The series has become a brand name, much like National Lampoon, except, well… most of the National Lampoon movies were somewhat funny, at least when Chevy Chase was still starring in them.

American Pie: Beta House has plenty of DVD extras; the only downside is most of them are too embarrassing to play with your wife or girlfriend in the same room… or even alone. What started out, in the Biggs-Hannigan trilogy, as an edgy sex comedy with a good heart under a lot of filth has been transformed into a worse pile of filth, but the heart already removed and transplanted in some other poor soul who at least has a fighting chance to live. Lowest recommendation possible. Lose this one in the audio racks.

I was familiar with the movie License to Wed before it debuted on DVD; my wife and I saw it less than a year into our marriage and we were happy to get the chance to own the film on DVD. The set-up’s simple. John Krasinski of The Office and Mandy Moore play a couple who want to get married, but to do so, they have to take Rev. Frank’s marriage preparation course. The problem is, Rev. Frank is Robin Williams.

It’s as simple as that, really. While there were a couple moments that made my wife and I smile, having been through premarital counseling only a year before seeing this movie. But while amusing, the real disconnect set in when Robin Williams, as he always does, took the character way over the top and, rather than playing a somewhat boundary-pushing and eccentric pastor, he spends most of the film playing… Robin Williams.

Once a high-energy, zany comic, Williams has become increasingly politicized, opinionated and boorish in his comedy over the three decades or so since he first appeared as Mork from Ork on a Happy Days episode, launching his career to superstardom. When he left Mork and Mindy to do films, his first director on The World According to Garp had to put in a yeoman’s effort just to reign Williams in to get an accurate line delivery out of him instead of all the nonsensical ad-lib in which he specializes.

That was a long time ago, and Williams has only become harder to reign in over the years, especially when cast in a comedy rather than a dramatic role. While License to Wed has Williams delivering some laughs, it’s no Good Morning Vietnam, aside from the fact that Williams is again playing an antiestablishment type who bucks against expectations.

Of course, that kind of blunts the surprise factor of many of the films’ jokes. When Rev. Frank gets suddenly and surprisingly frank with Krasinski’s character about sex, it’s supposed to be a huge laugh as a line coming from a man of the cloth; yet given Williams’ reputation for blue comedy, the laugh was muted because such shocks are no surprise at all coming from Williams. It’s a lot like watching your local insurance agent in a play in which he plays a pastor who suddenly asks someone about their individual health insurance policy; it’s no surprise at all because of who is playing the role.

As for the DVD package, there’s not as much bonus material as one might wish; the audio commentary involves only the director, Ken Kwapis, which misses the boat; in a Robin Williams movie, you at least want to hear Robin Williams banter with the director. But no, it’s just Kwapis reminiscing, which just isn’t anywhere near enough. One minor “ask the choir boy” special feature is a novelty at best.

The selection of special features simply leaves a lot to be desired in this package. If you’ve seen it in theatres and loved the movie, grab this, unless you’re expecting more than is being offered here. The dedicated DVD-phile will find this package to be lacking in the bells and whistles department.

When it comes to playing bad guys, Pierce Brosnan – my personal favorite 007 actor and shut up all you old-fogy Sean Connery fans – is not the first name that brings to mind. Yet he slips into the mold quite well in this R-rated thriller. The story focuses around a couple who are taken hostage in their own car by a fellow whose motives for wanting to control them – and destroy their lives – are initially murky.

The couple in question, played by Maria Bello and Gerard Butler, seem like the perfect upper-middle class, affluent Chicago couple, with a seemingly idyllic life that probably includes vacationing at a Hilton Head rental. As in any good Hitchcockian thriller, however, all is not as it seems. Their abductor seems to know both of them quite well and seems to have a personal vendetta he is pursuing, but even those preconceived notions will be challenged by the end of the twist-filled plot that offers plenty of entertaining, keep-em-guessing head-fakes before the big reveal.

One of the aspects of this thriller that pleased both my wife and me is that despite the R rating, there’s very little by way of course language and although there is plenty of implied and threatened violence, there’s not much in the way of actual violence. That makes for good suspense, since the threat of violence is always more tension-inducing than the actual act itself. As Hitchcock once said, you can show the audience a bomb ticking under a table that the hero is unaware of, and give them a thrill as the seconds tick down… but you can’t actually explode the bomb and kill the hero, or the audience will hate you.

Such thriller mathematics is understood and at play in Shattered, which turns out to be a surprisingly strong performance by Maria Bello. Bello, who probably will remind you of several sitcom actresses even though she’s never been in one, has been on a hot streak since appearing in A History of Violence back in 2005. Since then, she’s been toughening up her image in a real Diane Lane / Linda Fiorentino kind of way; not as young as she once was, Bello is staying relevant in a youth-obsessed Hollywood culture by taking rougher roles that highlight her pure acting ability rather than her feminine charms. She’s come a long way since her Coyote Ugly days.

Shattered is a movie that ought to cement Bello alongside Lane and Fiorentino in that regard, delivering impressive acting chops in this role that stands side-by-side with her work in A History of Violence. The film was quiet at the box office but is one of those that could flourish on DVD as word of mouth spreads about the quality of the film.

The special features are slim but substantive, providing only a couple featurettes and a slim selection of alternate and deleted scenes. There is a director and writer’s commentary track for the film, but it would have been far more intriguing if the main three actors, Brosnan, Bello and Butler, had also been involved. Still, not a bad package for a film that didn’t make a big splash on the big screen.

Clocking in at a slim 60 minutes, this documentary on players and coaches who broke down racial barriers in the NFL could be useful for a younger crowd unfamiliar with some of the steps along the way of the NFL’s 75-year history. For older viewers who can remember further back than, oh, say SuperBowl XXV, the film is a thin primer on a complex issue that can seem, at best, a bit lacking in details and, at worst, a self-congratulatory effort on the NFL’s part that at times glosses over some of the more complex and problematic issues in the league’s history.

One thing that can be said is that football’s history is nowhere near as embarrassing as, say, professional baseball’s past. There was no “Negro leagues” in the NFL and, as the documentary points out, the first black head coach was (sorry, kids,) not Tony Dungy or Dennis Green, but a fellow named Fritz Pollard, way back in 1921. Of course, in the first 40-50 years of the NFL, such things as a black head coach or a black quarterback were not common and were more of an aberration, but they did happen far earlier in football’s history than in baseball’s.

The archival footage, largely drawn from old newsreels as well as NFL Films’ stock footage library, is a treat for anyone with an appreciation for the history of the game. The film pays tribute to several remarkable figures in NFL history, which older fans and younger will appreciate for different reasons.

However, do not sit down expecting a detailed, Ken Burns-style documentary on this one. This is more of a typical, NFL Films-style treatment of the subject and at times seems more like a promotional piece than a detached and objective documentary.

While the film is not bad, the product doesn’t seem to be the beneficiary of a lot of detail work; no one needed to take out much travel insurance to complete it, based largely as it is on archival game footage and interviews. If anything, in a year after Tony Dungy coached the Indianapolis Colts to a SuperBowl championship in 2007 (which is covered in the video) and in a year when Barack Obama is a favorite candidate of a fair percentage of the electorate, pointing out the race of such players can seem a bit unnecessary to a more modern viewership.

However, despite its minor shortcomings, it is a DVD video that makes for a solid memento of the progress of racial equality over the past 75-plus years, a record in which the NFL has sometimes taken risks ahead of cultural readiness, or at least tracked along with cultural progress, although unfortunately has witnessed examples of backtracking behaviors as well. While a subject rich for mining, this video only skims the surface and could benefit from a longer, more detailed, and more detached treatment. For what it is, though, it is watchable.