Despite ‘Smart’ cast, movie only marginal

“And When Did You Last See Your Father?”

••1/2

Colin Firth stars as the resentful man who finds it hard to forgive the father (Jim Broadbent) who so embarrassed him as a boy, even on the older man’s deathbed. The movies have given us dozens of films featuring father-son schisms, from 1970’s “I Never Sang for My Father” to 2003’s “Big Fish.” But in most of them the characters are more likeable than Firth’s, whose unwillingness to understand his father comes across, as the movie wears on, as mere selfishness. Maybe the problem was in the casting of Broadbent, whose stock in trade is an essential likeability. DVD includes commentary by director Anand Tucker, deleted scenes.

(1:32; rated PG-13 for brief strong language, sexual content, thematic material)

“Termination Point”

•

I can’t even remember where I saw “Termination Point.” It might have been some lazy Saturday afternoon on the Sci-Fi Channel, which specializes in churning out the worst kind of made-for-the-small-screen material – you know, the kind that keeps Dean Cain and Lorenzo Lamas working. That it stars former “Beverly Hills 90210” heart-throb Jason Priestly as a government “special agent” is bad enough. That Lou Diamond Phillips is his quarry merely adds to the production’s cheap feel. Then there’s the time-travel sequences that end up … well you have to see them to believe how bad the logical fallacies, much less the special effects, are. Or, if you are smart, not. DVD includes making-of featurette.

(1:29; rated PG-13 for violence)

Also available: “Dear Me, a Blogger’s Tale,” “Flashbacks of a Fool,” “The Good Life,” “Moscow Zoo,” “Return to Sleepaway Camp,” “Shrek the Halls,” “Swing State,” “What We Do Is Secret.”