Lucien Maisel Movies

Upon realizing that their two young children are inherently evil, a pair of desperate suburban parents resign themselves to the fact that all they can do is document the youngsters' cruelty on camera for all the world to see. A first-person shocker shot in the pseudo-documentary style of The Blair Witch Project and Diary of the Dead, Home Movie tells the chilling story of the Poe family, a middle class, suburban clan living in upstate New York. Clare Poe (Cady McClain) is a psychiatrist, and her husband David (Adrian Pasdar) is a Lutheran minister. Clare recently purchased a video camera to document her sessions, but when children Jack and Emily (real-life brother and sister Austin and Amber Williams) begin displaying some seriously disturbing behavior, the concerned mother can't resist the temptation to make some home movies. At first the footage seems fairly benign, but then young Jack hurls a rock at his father's face. Later, after Emily interrupts a tender moment by slaughtering a frog, a conversation between the parents reveals that the children have always been violent, and their anti-social behavior is getting worse by the day. When religion and medicine fail, the situation turns critical, prompting Clare to try some home counseling with her children as the patients. But it's already too late for Jack and Emily, and now the most that Clare and David can hope to accomplish is to document every moment of the madness so others can understand the true extent of their suffering. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Acclaimed music-video director Jesse Peretz made his third feature with this comedy starring Zach Braff and Jason Bateman. Tom (Braff) is an aspiring chef whose wife Sofia (Amanda Peet) has just quit her high-paying job to stay home with their new baby. When it becomes abundantly clear that they can no longer maintain their New York City lifestyle, the family picks up and moves to Sofia's hometown in Ohio, where Tom is hired to work at her father's ad agency. It is there that Tom meets Chip (Bateman), the agency's wheelchair-bound golden boy, who also happened to have a one-night stand with Sofia while the two were cheerleaders in high school. Suddenly, Tom finds himself sabotaged by Chip at every step as the nefarious paraplegic schemes to steal Sofia from him and destroy any chance he might have of success at the agency. Released briefly in 2006 under the title Fast Track, the film was retitled The Ex before receiving a wide release in the Spring of 2007. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide