Deception: Movie Review (2008)

Sexy time? If only.

Directed by Marcel Langenegger, written by Mark Bomback, 107 minutes, rated R.

The dead-on-arrival sex-thriller “Deception” comes from first-time director Marcel Langenegger, and his inexperience shows.

The movie is a mess and, worse, it manages to be a mostly dull mess at that, with screenwriter Mark Bomback’s script piling on so many heated (and telegraphed) twists that the movie might as well be the cinematic equivalent of a stripped-down version of the Kama Sutra--one without the surprises, the promised peaks, and the necessary thrills to make this tangled effort worth it.

The film stars Ewan McGregor as Jonathan McQuarry, a glum, lonely New York accountant who is brick stupid when it comes to life beyond the calculator and especially to the ways of the bedroom.

In the latter department, things look up for him when he meets Hugh Jackman’s Wyatt Bose, a striking man who has the sort of charisma Jonathan always wanted but couldn’t achieve for himself. When Wyatt greases up to him one evening at work with the offer of sharing an after-hours’ joint, they do so and, predictably, the smoke Wyatt blows Jonathan’s way is as toxic as it comes.

Essentially, Wyatt is a devil in a blue suit, and the dark corridors he leads Jonathan down might initially have the glimmer of glamour--they enjoy tennis, they share drinks at swank clubs, they cruise and carouse--but which quickly falls apart through the damaging vehicle of one ugly cell phone deception.

Without giving too much way, Wyatt swaps out his cell phone for Jonathan’s. And so now, with Jonathan answering Wyatt’s calls, he is ushered into the brave new world of sex clubs, where crafty, hirsute Wyatt apparently thrives, and where Jonathan meets all sorts of women on “The List,” not the least of whom is Charlotte Rampling, of all people, as well as Maggie Q, Natasha Henstridge, and one woman Jonathan is convinced is the love of his life.

That person would be a gorgeous blonde named S (Michelle Williams), just S, who in typical femme fatale form turns out to be a lot of trouble for poor, misguided Jonathan. Watching him fall into her clutches, you want to scream at him, “Deception!” But why bother? At this point, all is lost, save for a kidnapping, a wealth of double-crosses and more than a few sniggers from the audience, who are then treated to one of the most ridiculous, over-explained endings to his theaters this year.

Grade: D+

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street DVD Review (2008)

“Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street”

Bloody, yes--and also bloody excellent.

Based on Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's long-running musical, Tim Burton’s excellent film thrums with menace, mischief and malice.

In the title role is Johnny Depp, who gives a meaty performance (sorry) as Todd, the gifted, 19th-century barber who begins the movie armed with revenge against the evil Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman, wonderful), who wanted Barker's wife for himself and who set about getting her by devising a plan that sent Barker to prison.

Fifteen years later, Barker has escaped, assumed the name Sweeney Todd and now is in London, where he meets the not-so-lovely Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter), a glowering frump famous for her meat pies. Together, they make a mutually beneficial pact.

Mrs. Lovett will allow Todd his revenge on Turpin so long as he provides her with a steady supply of meat for her increasingly popular pies. Since Todd has gone mad, let the slicing and dicing begin.

Not to mention the singing, which is good, as is the energy that comes from the film's darkly funny musical numbers. Supporting turns from Timothy Spall, Sacha Baron Cohen, Jamie Campbell Bower and Jayne Wisener are superb, but the movie's real magic is sparked by Depp and Carter, who create something of a bruise onscreen, and whose performances are so intoxicating, they encourage you to enjoy all the sins ground within.

Read the full, unedited review here.

Rated R. Grade: A

View of video review of the movie below:

The 6th Day: Movie, DVD, Blu-ray Review (2008)

The second man

Directed by Roger Spottiswoode, written by Cormac Wibberley and Marianne Wibberley, 124 minutes, PG-13.

In this futuristic thriller about human cloning, Arnold Schwarzenegger is Adam Gibson, a family man who lives in a world where parents regularly clone their children’s dead pets so nobody ever has to suffer the hardship of finding Fluffy doubling as a hassock in the living room.

But when Gibson returns home one evening to find a clone of himself seated at the dinner table with his family, it becomes clear that this whole cloning business has gotten out of hand. Now under siege by a bunch of clone-happy operatives led by Tony Goldwyn and Robert Duvall, Gibson predictably hits the road running in an effort to stay alive while trying to find out why he was targeted for cloning.

Cormac and Marianne Wibberley’s script distills the ethical and moral issues surrounding human cloning into neat soundbites, some of which are intentionally funny, but most of which, in their amusing effort to be profound, only manage to bear the combined intellectual weight of the Doublemint twins.

Not that anyone will be renting this film to decide whether it’s morally right to resurrect grandpa from the grave. They’ll be expecting action, which “The 6th Day” has, but it’s never as thrilling or as ingeniously conceived as the action scenes in Schwarzenegger’s best films, “The Terminator” and “Terminator 2.”

Indeed, a good part of “The 6th Day” is so caught up in ethics, it forgets it’s supposed to be an action film. Throughout much of it, audiences might be better off closing their eyes and counting the offspring of Dolly the sheep.

Grade: C+

Unbreakable: Movie, DVD, Blu-ray Review (2008)

Unshakable (the similarities)

Written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, 107 minutes, PG-13.

(Originally published 2000)

The similarities between M. Night Shyamalan’s “Unbreakable” and his critically acclaimed blockbuster “The Sixth Sense” are all too clear--each film features Bruce Willis in the lead, each features a young boy (Spencer Treat Clark) whose life is changed by something otherworldly, each sucks the color out of Philadelphia in an effort to strike a solemn tone of gravity, each builds to a surprise ending.

So, what’s the problem? “Unbreakable” isn’t a step forward for the gifted writer and director, but a regression, a film that finds him casting his lens not into new territory, but within the safer realm of what he knows.

The film follows David Dunn (Willis), a security guard who comes to understand things about himself with the help of Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), a collector of rare comic books who, by all counts, is Dunn’s polar opposite.

Whereas Dunn hasn’t been sick a day in his life, Price suffers from a disease that makes his bones as fragile as glass. It’s a condition that has led him to an intriguing hypotheses: If there are people in the world as fragile as he, then certainly there are people at the opposite end of the spectrum, men and women who--much like the comic book superheroes he covets--possess unbreakable bones and superhuman strength.

On paper, this sounds like rousing stuff, but Shyamalan’s script rarely rises to the level of his enormous skills behind the camera.

The film’s opening moments of a runaway train are the exception--they’re gripping, absolutely terrific--and throughout Shyamalan’s minimalistic approach is to be admired in this overblown era of movies. But movies are more than personal style; if you’re going to lose the flash, you’d better beef up the substance.

Shyamalan doesn’t. As “Unbreakable” pushes forward and it becomes clear where the director is taking us, the level to which audiences must rise to suspend disbelief becomes too high with notions so silly.

Indeed, seeing Bruce Willis tear a door off a car or bench press hundreds of pounds may seem fitting given Willis’ career as an action superhero, but in this context, it’s as unbelievable as the film’s ridiculous “surprise” ending.

Grade: C+

Dragonfly: Movie, DVD Review (2002)

He should have read the script

Directed by Tom Shadyac, ritten by David Seltzer, Brandon Camp and Mike Thompson, 105 minutes, rated PG-13.

(Originally published 2002)

Following close on the wings of Mark Pellington's "The Mothman Prophecies" is Tom Shadyac's supernatural drama "Dragonfly," which is the story of a burned-out emergency room doctor whose pregnant wife, Emily (Susanna Thompson), leaves for Venezuela on a Red Cross missionary mission only to die in a freak bus accident when a mudslide overcomes the vehicle and swallows it whole.

Lucky her.

The film stars Kevin Costner, always a shaky prospect these days, and also Linda Hunt as a creepy nun fascinated with the near-death experiences of pediatric oncology patients, Kathy Bates as a mannish lawyer who "just deals in facts" and who doesn't "know about any dealings with the afterlife," and an ill-looking parrot named Big Bird, who collapses midway through the film in a terrible fit of seizures.

One can't blame the poor bird for nearly dropping dead. Just as when "Mothman" was released, there are undoubtedly going to be those who will want to pull off "Dragonfly's" wings.

In the film, Costner is Joe Darrow, a man consumed with the idea that his wife is trying to communicate with him from beyond the grave.

And who can blame him? Emily's personal totem was a dragonfly, which Joe now sees everywhere. They tap against his windows in the middle of the night, reveal themselves in birthmarks and in paperweights, and even come to him in the mail attached to a child's decorative mobile.

More confusing to Joe is that two of Emily's oncology patients are convinced Emily is speaking to them each time they have near-death experiences. Initially, Joe doesn’t believe them, but when a cadaver’s bloated, pendulous belly starts bubbling up the wispy sounds of Emily’s voice, well, Joe becomes a believer--and fast.

Launching into action, something the laconic Costner can barely do these days, he flies to Venezuela in a prop plane piloted by a man who wields a gun and who "ah speeka like dees."

Once in the jungles of Venezuela, Joe has all sorts of troubles: He nearly drowns while diving into a river to see what’s left of Emily’s destroyed bus, he stumbles upon an undeveloped, spear-wielding tribe hauled straight out of central casting—and in an attempt to hear what Emily has to say to him, he tosses himself into the middle of a waterfall so he can become one with a rainbow.

None of it makes much sense, but I promise you this--the way Shadyac shoots that last little gem, you’ll think you’re watching a Skittles commercial.

Grade: D

Blood Work: Movie, DVD Review (2002)

Infusion

Directed by Clint Eastwood, written by Brian Helgeland, 115 minutes, rated R.

(Originally published 2002)

Over the last decade, Clint Eastwood has kept his film career going by shrewdly embracing his age--now 72--and by selecting films that don't just capitalize on those years, but also thrive on them.

The actor’s "Blood Work," his 24th in the director’s chair, continues that trend with an exclamation point.

The film, from a script Brian Helgeland based on Michael Connelly’s best-selling novel, stars Eastwood as Terry McCaleb, an FBI profiler who drops from a heart attack in the opening chase scene and then, two years later, undergoes a heart transplant.

This isn’t exactly the Magnum-wielding, butt-kicking Dirty Harry we remember from the 1970s--and Eastwood seems liberated by it.

He’s aware of his age and his physical limitations in ways that other maturing action stars aren’t. When he courts comparisons to the cinematic icon he created three decades ago, he does so with a wink and a sense of humor, which steers him clear of the self-delusion recently afflicting Robert De Niro’s career and, for the past five years, nearly sunk Arnold Schwarzenegger’s.

Living on a boat in an L.A. marina, Terry is recuperating under the advisement of his doctor, Bonnie Fox (Anjelica Huston), when Graciella Rivers (Wanda De Jesus) enters his life with a compelling reason why he should come out of retirement: The heart beating in his chest belonged to Graciella’s sister, who was murdered by a serial killer in a convenience-store robbery.

Would Terry be willing to help her find the murderer? Of course he would—and before you can say, "the plot just flatlined," Terry is tracking down a serial killer, Graciella is licking the scar on Terry’s chest, and Terry is making love to her with the considerable help of her sister’s heart, a bizarre twist that redefines what it means to be incestuous.

What’s great about "Blood Work" isn’t what it becomes—a preposterous television movie made by an A-list star—but its small touches, such as the scene in which Terry quietly shares a box of donuts with two detectives (Paul Rodriguez and Dylan Walsh), the way the film suggests Terry once had a fling with the black cop (Tina Lifford) who comes to help him in the investigation, and the moment Terry raises a shotgun to raise hell on a city street.

Eastwood doesn’t deny his audience the pleasure of watching him lock and load, but in this uneven movie, his weakest since "True Crime," he also doesn’t try to convince us that it’s as easy as it used to be.

Grade: B-

Secret Window: Movie, DVD Review

“Secret Window”

Written and directed by David Koepp, based Stephen King's novella "Secret Window, Secret Garden,” rated PG-13, 106 minutes.

(Originally published 2004)

In spite of what its misleading television ads suggest, “Secret Window” isn’t a horror movie and it has nothing to do with the supernatural, though it likely will leave some audience members chilled.

On the surface, the film appears to have a lot going for it. It’s based on a Stephen King novella, “Secret Window, Secret Garden”; it was written and directed by David Koepp, who wrote “Spider-Man,” “Panic Room,” and who wrote and directed “Stir of Echoes”; and it stars Johnny Depp in the lead.

Sounds good, so why is it so uninvolving?

One reason is that everyone involved has grown beyond the material. King has worked variations of this story to death in other, better works; Koepp is ready to branch away from adaptations and once again direct his own original projects; and Depp is in need of a departure, a movie that skirts his crowdpleasing quirks and shows off fresh sides of his talent.

Unlike King’s “Misery” and “The Shining,” which “Window” most closely resembles, “Secret Window” isn’t grounded in any sense of believability, which harms it, and its script, by Koepp, is mere scaffolding. The film’s seriocomic tone also doesn’t help, nor does the sense that no one here is taking the movie seriously. All involved are coasting, and as a result, the movie follows suit.

In the film, Depp is Mort Rainey, a popular novelist whose marriage to Amy (Maria Bello) collapsed long before he caught her in bed with Ted (Timothy Hutton). Still, seeing them together has left Mort in the throes of a six-month depression.

Unable to write and holed up in his lakeside retreat, he’s facing divorce and on the verge of a nervous breakdown when into his life comes the mysterious John Shooter (John Turturro), an angry Mississippian with a slick Southern drawl who accuses Mort of plagiarizing one of his stories.

Not unlike Annie Wilkes in “Misery,” Shooter demands that Mort do some rewriting, with particular attention paid to the ending, which he wants Ted to fix or he’ll fix Ted and everyone else in his life.

All of this builds to a “twist” that’s telegraphed from the film’s first tracking shot. Pay attention, and Koepp reveals everything to you. If you miss it, not to worry. The film’s obvious plot elements only lead to one outcome, which in this case proves especially violent.

Grade: C

Cold Creek Manor: Movie, DVD Review

Cold Water Flat

Directed by Mike Figgis, written by Richard Jefferies, 118 minutes, rated R.

(Originally published 2003)

Tucked in the middle of the suspense thriller, “Cold Creek Manor,” is a line that neatly sums up the experience of watching the film: “I’m sorry, Cooper, but I’m having trouble relating to any of this.”

Other’s might too.

It’s the actress Sharon Stone who delivers those words, and you know what? The one nugget of truth nestled in her strained, wooden performance is that Stone isn’t joking. She really isn’t relating to any of this and neither is her character.

The movie, which Mike Figgis directed from a screenplay by Richard Jefferies, hails from Red Mullet Productions. That’s easy to believe, especially since the movie is about a deranged hillbilly with an auburn mullet who leaves prison to cause all sorts of problems at his family’s old manor house, which he lost to the bank and is now owned by some of the dumbest city slickers ever to hail from Manhattan.

The hillbilly, Dale Massie, is played by Stephen Dorff with the sort of crazy-eyed intensity that suggests his prey, the unbearably naive Tilsons—Cooper (Dennis Quaid) and Leah (Stone), and their two children, Kristen (Kristen Stewart) and Jesse (Ryan Wilson)--will soon become part of his own private gumbo called the Devil’s Throat.

Just what that is won’t be revealed here, but rest assured that it’s every bit as unpleasant as it sounds, not to mention just silly enough to be worthy of a few snorts and giggles. In fact, “Cold Creek Manor” works best as a comedy. For instance, Juliette Lewis’ over-the-top performance as Ruby, the local slut with a drinking problem who decorates Dale’s arm like a nasty case of shingles, is a hoot. Her hair-pulling, slap-and-push fight with Stone is a highlight among the lowlights.

Marketed as a haunted house movie, which it isn’t, the film deceives us by instead offering up a camp spectacle. It’s such a misfire, it’s one of those bad movies that will take its stars two good movies to recover from. Indeed, for all the utter lack of suspense and thrills “Cold Creek Manor” kicks up, a better title might have been “Cold Water Flat.”

Grade: D

Gone Baby Gone: Movie Review (2007)

Seeking the truth in the worst sort of dark

Directed by Ben Affleck, written by Affleck and Aaron Stockard, based on Dennis Lehane's novel, 115 minutes, rated R.

(Originally published 2007)

After seeing Ben Affleck's solid directorial debut in "Gone Baby Gone," maybe it's time to suggest that the actor give up his day job and turn to writing and directing full time. If this movie of his is any indication, he could have a serious go of it.

What Affleck has on his hands with "Gone" isn't at all what one would expect from the star of so many modern-day bombs--"Pearl Harbor," "Surviving Christmas," "Jersey Girl," "Paycheck," "Daredevil" and the infamous "Gigli" chief among them. Sure, "Hollywoodland" offered a brief escape from all that dreck, but then came "Smokin' Aces," and it seemed as if Affleck's career had gone up in smoke again.

Not so with "Gone Baby Gone," which is, in fact, a mature, engrossing drama that features a script that bests his Academy Award-winning screenplay for "Good Will Hunting," which he co-wrote with friend Matt Damon.

Whereas that film was shot through with sentimental overtones, "Gone" brings the world into more base, disturbing focus, with Affleck and cinematographer John Toll working hard to capture a working-class section of Boston that reeks of havoc, desperation, drug use and danger.

The film stars Affleck's brother Casey as Patrick Kenzie, a private investigator living with his girlfriend and business partner Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan) in Dorchester, Mass., when into their lives come a business opportunity in the wake of a 4-year-old girl's abduction, which has caused a local sensation.

Though the girl's cocaine- and heroin-addicted mother (Amy Ryan) has all but shut down, her brother (Titus Welliver) and sister-in-law (Amy Madigan) want that baby back, and they're willing to pay for outsiders to glean the sort of inside information they know the locals won't share with the police.

Angie doesn't want to take the job--she knows it will become emotionally consuming--but one look at a photo of the kidnapped girl nevertheless finds her agreeing to do so.

Soon, each is on the case, which means working the living rooms, backrooms and sleazy bars in the surrounding area. The police aren't happy about it, but Patrick and Angie push forward, doing their best to navigate the icy head of the missing-person's unit (Morgan Freeman) and two sketchy detectives (Ed Harris, John Ashton), while also trying to obtain information from the difficult denizens of Dorchester themselves, who in this movie are as hardcore as they come.

Beyond the performances, which uniformly are excellent, and the way the movie hooks into a noirish series of twists and surprises toward the end, what's so satisfying about Affleck's film is how authentic it feels.

The director knows this neighborhood--he grew up not far from it--and he doesn't cheat it by making it something it isn't. In this way, he recalls something of a young Spike Lee. He isn't afraid to come home and tell the truth about these people in ways that nobody will mistake for flattery, particularly when he allows his characters to open their mouths and speak, which reveals, shall we say, a slightly cruder side of humanity.

Going there takes respect for a place and its people, but it also takes guts, which, when Affleck isn't spilling them on the floor as the investigation mounts, the director proves he has in spades.

Grade: B+

Eyes Wide Shut: Blu-ray disc, HD DVD Review (2007)

"Eyes Wide Shut: Blu-ray, HD DVD"

Stanley Kubrick’s last comment on the world takes place in the bedroom of “Eyes Wide Shut,” a film that stars the then-married Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise as a married couple struggling with the ramifications of sexual fantasy.

The movie is about how sexual fantasies, when revealed, have the power to alter relationships.

Structured as a thriller, it follows Dr. Bill and Alice Hartford, a glamorous Manhattan couple who seemingly have it all until Alice shares with Bill one of her sexual fantasies.

The revelation sends Bill--and this relationship--into a tailspin. Fiercely jealous, Bill takes to the streets, where his own sexual desires are fueled with the help of prostitutes and a swanky masked orgy.

The film is pointlessly too long and it features performances that are too rigid to suit, but it nevertheless has strokes of genius.

As you'd expect from Kubrick, this is a cerebral film that works on several levels--the illusory, the real, the ethereal and everything that falls in between.

It is, in fact, Kubrick’s close examination of what falls in between--and how that relates to human relationships--that makes his 13th and final feature film worth seeing.

Rated R. Grade B+

Disc Features:
• Audio commentary by Sydney Pollack and historian Peter Loewenberg
• Channel 4 documentary: "The Last Movie: Stanley Kubrick and Eyes Wide Shut"
• Featurette: "Lost Kubrick: The Unfinished Films of Stanley Kubrick"
• Kubrick's 1998 DGA D.W. Griffith Award acceptance speech
• Interview gallery featuring Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman and Steven Spielberg
• Theatrical trailer
• TV spots

HD Exclusive Content:
None

The Invisible: Movie Review, DVD Review, Blu-ray review (2007)

Disappearing act

Curiously enough, “The Invisible” isn't worth seeing.

The film follows Justin Chatwin’s Nick Powell, a high school boy beaten and left for dead who awakens to find that he might be dead.

Or almost dead. Actually, he exists on death’s periphery, able to roam and seek out those who tried to take his life while his body lies in a bloody heap waiting for someone to rescue it. Will they do so in time?

And what of his assailants, particularly the cruel Annie (Margarita Levieva), who caused this to happen to Nick in the first place? Could it be that there’s something more to her, that she and Nick are soul mates and that--good grief--he’s falling in love with her?

It would be great to report that this isn't so, but it is so, and it’s ridiculous.

Rated PG-13. Grade: C-

Disc Features:
• 2 Audio Commentaries
• Deleted Scenes
• Music Videos

HD Exclusive Content:
• Movie Showcase

Inside Man: Movie Review, DVD Review, HD DVD Review (2007)

"Inside Man: HD DVD"

An enjoyably convoluted heist movie from Spike Lee that's underscored with deliberate racial tension.

The director's mind, steeped in post-9/11 New York City, wraps around a handful of characters who never quite are who they appear to be.

For that matter, you sometimes have no idea who they are at all. For instance, to discover exactly what it is that Jodie Foster's chilly Madeline White does would indeed take somebody from the inside (her role is never fully explained), but my, how she bristles with evil.

Denzel Washington and Clive Owen co-star, with “Inside Man” glossing over its plot holes with wit and charisma.

Rated R. Grade: B+

Disc Features:
• Audio Commentary with Director Spike Lee
• Featurettes: "The Making of 'Inside Man,'" "Number 4"
• Deleted Scenes

HD Exclusive Content:
None

Michael Clayton: Movie Review (2007)

The truth hurts

Written and directed by Tony Gilroy, 120 minutes, rated R.

(Originally published 2007)

The new Tony Gilroy movie, "Michael Clayton," suffers from a regrettable title (it hardly screams "cerebral thriller"), but here's the thing--since not much about this tightly wound thriller plays by the rules, why should the title follow suit?

Gilroy wrote every one of the "Bourne" movies and he makes his directorial debut here. What he showcases behind the lens is an assurance that bears to mind the early work of Christopher Nolan, whose "Memento" also dealt with a difficult narrative and which saw through it in ways that made for a challenging movie first, a deeply satisfying movie second.

While "Michael Clayton" isn’t played in reverse as “Memento” was, its storyline nevertheless is dense and fractured. And yet the way it ultimately maneuvers through its narrative makes for one of the year's smarter movies.

George Clooney is Michael Clayton, a corporate lawyer and "fixer" for the New York law firm of Kenner, Bach & Leeden, who is their go-to guy when it comes to freeing the firm's clients out of a pinch. Though he can't solve every problem--he admits he's no miracle worker--Clayton can rub away most "issues" that come his way, with the exception being those mushrooming in his personal life.

Over the course of the movie, we learn that Michael is divorced, that he has gambling and family problems, and that he is in debt to some unseemly types who want their investment money back for a restaurant Michael failed to turn into a succeeds. If they don't see their money soon, Michael will pay his debt in other, less-pleasant ways.

This is the periphery that surrounds "Clayton," darkening its mood while lies and deception rot the core from within. The central story involves the fallout that unravels when the firm's chief litigator, a manic depressive named Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson), starts to question his moral involvement in defending a company called U/North from a $3 billion class action lawsuit.

Through a private memorandum, Edens learns that the company knowingly distributed a product that killed hundreds. And by defending them, Edens now knows that he also is throwing dirt on the graves of all those who died. Considering that he's fallen off his meds, it sends him into a massive tailspin, which the gifted Wilkinson makes for something splendid to behold.

Charged by the firm's co-founder Marty Bach (Sydney Pollack, excellent) to clean up the mess, Clayton finds himself taking on U/North's formidable attorney Karen Crowder (Tilda Swinton), who has plenty to lose herself should that memorandum go public.

Her character is one of the movie's harshest, most pointed jabs at corporate America. To the high-powered world in which she moves, Crowder is polished to perfection, but one of the film's chief pleasures comes from watching her in private. She's a nervous wreck, constantly rehearsing speeches in ways that reveal what some authority figures don't want you to know--they're way out of their league, they know it, and they hoping like hell that nobody figures it out along the way.

As Clayton comes to see through Crowder, the movie begins its slow burn, with all of its fractured elements falling into place and Clooney delivering a performance that demands what only a few in the industry can deliver--a critical, grounded turn that allows the film to savor its well-earned commercial overtones.

Grade: A-

The Contender: Movie Review, DVD Review (2000)

Breaking her silence

Written and directed by Rod Lurie, 130 minutes, rated R.

(Originally published 2000)

Sex, lies and politics--they all boil together beautifully in Rod Lurie’s “The Contender,” a surprisingly strong political drama that understands the rhetoric of Washington, knows the dirty secrets of its players, and uses its excellent cast to infuse the action and quick-fire pace with the sleaze of a proposed youthful indiscretion.

Obviously taking its cues from President Clinton’s relationship with Monica Lewinsky and his ensuing impeachment, the film asks an important question--is a politician’s sex life the public’s business?

Wisely removing itself from real life, “The Contender” poses that question not around its president, Jackson Evens (Jeff Bridges), but around Laine Hanson (Joan Allen), a senator from Ohio asked by Evens to be his vice president after the former vice president dies in office.

Smart, savvy and the daughter of a governor, Laine seems to have it all to become the United States’ first female vice president-- respect from her colleagues, admiration from the nation, a solid marriage, a cute 6-year-old son, and a firm stand on the issues.

But when an old political foe of Evens, the indefatigable right-wing congressman Shelly Runyon (Gary Oldman), learns of an orgy Laine may have participated in while in college, he decides to go after her in a brutal effort to further his career, destroy Laine’s life, and with it, the president’s legacy.

But as Laine is grilled under oath by Runyon before the House Judiciary Committee hearings, it becomes clear that she’s not going to talk about the alleged orgy. Time and again, she refuses to discuss her private life, making the point that if she were a man, no one would care how many people she’d slept with while in college.

Marked by its outstanding performances and its intelligent script, “The Contender” is stirring entertainment that only falters toward the end, when Lurie, a former film critic who should have known better, hauls in the violins to punctuate emotions that would have resonated clearly without swelling musical accompaniment.

Further, since Lurie stacks so much of his film on Laine’s right to privacy, it’s odd that he’d reveal the truth about what she did that night in college. Whether or not she participated in the orgy won’t be revealed here, but it’s a shame Lurie felt compelled to answer after making such a strong case for Laine’s silence.

Grade: A-

1408: Movie Review, DVD Review

"1408"

From Mikael Hafstrom, a horror film that eschews today's penchant for torture porn and gets back to the basics.

In this case, that means shrieking ghosts reliving their deaths by leaping from hotel windows, scratchy sounds coming from behind bleeding walls, and a sense of claustrophobia that nibbles away at the screen like one of the rats in "Ratatouille."

From Stephen King's 2002 short story, the film stars John Cusack as Mike Enslin, a trash writer of kitschy guide books that seek out presumably haunted locales for those interested in visiting them.

Though Enslin himself doesn't believe in ghosts, he changes his tune soon enough after a stay at New York City's dusty Dolphin Hotel, where 56 people have died tragic deaths over the years in room 1408 and where the manager (Samuel L. Jackson) tells him he won't live to see the next hour.

Enslin scoffs at the idea. Besides, if there is a satanic hellfire burning in that room--and he seriously doubts it--it's nothing he can't handle.

Those who believe he's wrong should raise up their Bibles now and turn up their Christian rock.

With its disarming sense of humor, its effective use of ghosts and its willingness to depend on suspense rather than gore to give its audience a jolt, "1408" might suffer from lapses in logic, but with Cusack believable within the unbelievable, those lapses are easy to overlook.

Rated PG-13. Grade: B

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The Day After Tomorrow: Movie Review, DVD Review, Blu-ray disc Review

"The Day After Tomorrow: Blu-ray"

If ever there was a movie designed to land at the top of Al Gore’s Netflix list, this is it.

Just out on Blu-ray disc, this global-warming thriller finds mother nature huffing and puffing and blowing the world down. Tokyo is slammed with hail stones, New York City is overcome by a tidal wave, Los Angeles is riddled with tornados.

Folks, Dorothy never had it this bad and she was saddled with a gingham dress, a yapping dog and a wicked witch.

The film’s first 20 minutes are a blast, literally, with director Roland Emmerich having a grand time playing Mother Nature.

Released in 2004, the film was ahead of its time, taking the position that thanks to the atmosphere being littered with greenhouse gases, major climate shifts would alter the earth. In this case, that means plunging it into a new ice age, with the movie focusing on a handful of characters trying to survive the ensuing devastation until the worst is over--you know, the day after tomorrow.

Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal, Emmy Rossum and Sela Ward star. All are fine. Better is that while the movie is trash, it isn’t a cheat. It’s fast-paced and entertaining, particularly in its first hour, a film with good window dressing and an ecological heart that makes up for the so-so script grinding away with stock B-movie characters.

Several scenes pack a punch, such as when wolves, newly escaped from a zoo, go on the prowl and then on the attack.

Or the scene that follows, when a deadly blast of sub-arctic air leeches into the city, freezing everything in sight.

Or, best yet, when Americans are shown fleeing illegally across the border into Mexico in an effort to beat the looming deep freeze. It’s the film’s most outrageous, wittiest twist, with our administration promising to forgive all Latin American debt should that country allow us in.

Genius.

Rated PG-13. Grade: B

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Gothika: Movie Review, DVD Review, HD DVD Review, Blu-ray Review

"Gothika: HD DVD, Blu-ray"

Halle Berry, looking increasingly frazzled and gaunt.

In this supernatural drama cum women’s prison film, she goes nuts, with her overheated performance as a wrongfully imprisoned psychologist fitting in perfectly with the movie's incoherent direction and dialogue.

About the dialogue. It's so bad, it’s the one element of this cliché-ridden film that gives you goosebumps--and sometimes the snorts and giggles. Indeed, when Berry’s character shrieks at one point that “I’m not deluded--I’m possessed,” you lean back in your seat and you think that yes, she must be.

The actress did, after all, make this movie after winning the Academy Award win for “Monster’s Ball."

Rated R. Grade: D.

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Murder by Numbers: Movie Review, DVD Review (2002)

Dazed and shooting

(Originally published 2002)

Directed by Barbet Schroeder, written by Tony Gayton, 119 minutes, rated R.

The new Sandra Bullock movie, "Murder by Numbers," features Miss Congeniality herself as a glum San Benito, California policewoman out to solve a murder mystery with no mystery—at least not for audiences, who are handed the answer to the film’s crime right from the start.

As directed by Barbet Schroeder ("Single White Female," "Our Lady of the Assassins") from a screenplay by Tony Gayton, the film is inspired by the real-life Leopold-Loeb case of 1924 and, in turn, by Alfred Hitchcock's "Rope," Richard Fleischer's "Compulsion" and Tom Kalin's "Swoon": It follows two young men trying to outwit the law with a cunning murder.

But that’s where the comparisons end. Unlike those films, "Murder by Numbers" is strictly standard issue, a film whose title not only speaks volumes for its predictable storytelling, but also for Hollywood’s growing cynicism toward those paying its bills. Indeed, if a studio’s sneer could be heard, it would sound an awful lot like "Murder by Numbers."

In the film, Bullock is Cassie Mayweather, a pepperbox-wielding emotional wreck who enjoys her booze and tears almost as much as she enjoys her men. Weighted down with enough emotional baggage to confound even the likes of Oprah's Dr. Phil, Cassie is a woman facing a troubled past—and her own looming psychological collapse.

But when two teen-age boys--the bookish Justin (Michael Pitt) and the wealthy high school stud Richard (Ryan Gosling)--decide to spice up their lives with a little strangulation, amputation, absinthe and murder, Cassie's grimmer-than-grim life gets the unexpected lift it needs.

Along with her new partner, Sam Kennedy (Ben Chaplin), whom she immediately seduces in an awkward yet successful bedroom tumble, Cassie quickly finds herself in the thick of a murder investigation that actually builds to her being mauled by a baboon.

For whatever reason, Schroeder coasts in "Numbers," but he’s too talented to let the film slip entirely away without first delivering a handful of moments that speak for what the film could have been if its script didn’t play it so safely and, yes, by the numbers.

Bullock and Chaplin have no chemistry, but Pitt and Gosling do. What Schroeder gets right are the homosexual undertones between the two--and how one boy’s seduction has the power to lead both into a senseless, irrevocable crime.

Grade: C

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The Ring: Movie Review, DVD Review (2002)

Ring a bell?

(Originally published 2002)

Directed by Gore Verbinski, written by Ehren Kruger, based on the novel by Koji Suzuki, 115 minutes, rated PG-13.

Gore Verbinski's "The Ring" asks audiences to imagine a video tape whose contents are so terrifying, viewing the footage will kill you within seven days of watching it.

Ring a bell?

It might. "The Ring" is based on Hideo Nakata's hugely popular 1998 Japanese film, "Ringu," which follows the same premise--death by video within seven days--and which has since generated a sequel, a prequel, a comic book, a television series and a Korean remake by Dong-bin Kim entitled "Ring Virus."

Initially, Verbinski's remake is engaging and fun, but by the time the last reel has unraveled, so has the film, whose endless puzzles keep accumulating until the ideas that once fueled them have turned on themselves.

In the movie, Naomi Watts is Rachel Keller, a Seattle-based newspaper reporter whose niece and three friends die after viewing a disturbing video tape, which Rachel finds (too easily) at a lodge in the Washington woods (don't ask) and watches herself.

The video tape, a surrealist's dream, is a scratchy, black-and-white nightmare of freaked-out horses, creeping centipedes and ladders that climb to nowhere. After receiving a telephone call from a stranger telling her she has a week to live, Rachel is off and sleuthing, employing her former boyfriend (Martin Henderson) to help her solve the mounting mystery.

What ensues has its moments, but not enough to give the film a sustained series of jolts. Worse, the movie doesn’t adequately explain the video tape and its contents, which unhinges it.

Watts has screen presence to spare, but for a woman whose death is imminent, she plays the part awfully coolly. So does David Dorfman as Rachel's psychic son, Aidan, an anemic six-year-old boy who comes off like the life-size, windup version of Haley Joel Osment. Unfortunately, his vivid drawings of dark rings and dead people are never as effective as the fierce scribblings that brought superior horror movies like "The Changeling" to life.

Grade: C

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Eyes Wide Shut: Movie Review, DVD Review (1999)

“Eyes Wide Shut”

(Originally pubished 1999)

Directed by Stanley Kubrick, written by Kubrick and Frederic Raphael, 159 minutes, rated R.

The much talked about opening shot of Stanley Kubrick’s 13th and final feature film, ̶