Thriller

Too Quiet

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: The Quiet
  • IMDb: link

the-quietThrillers work on keeping the audience on the edge of your seat.  This film isn’t a thriller.  Character studies work by examining individuals and relationships, bringing truths and secrets out, and making resolutions.  This isn’t a character study.  In fact, I’m not sure what it is.  I know what it wants to be, but it just doesn’t know how to get there.

Dot (Camilla Belle) is a miserable and lonely young deaf high school student.  After the death of her father she moves in with a family whose own troubles make hers seem bearable.  Nina (Elisha Cuthbert) is the spoiled cheerleader who doesn’t appreciate being associated with a school outcast.  Paul Deer (Martin Donovan) is a successful father who loves his daughter a little too much, and his wife Olivia (Edie Falco) is a pill-popping addict that was last sober sometime in the 90’s.

…

Too QuietRead More »

Too Quiet Read More »

So Dark, the Con of Man

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: The Da Vinci Code
  • IMDb: link

The Da Vinci Code

Ron Howard probably wasn’t the best director for a vast conspiracy/thriller picture; off the top of my head Oliver Stone seems to be the more natural choice.  Neither was Akiva Goldsman (I, Robot, A Beautiful Mind) the right man to try and adapt Dan Brown’s novel to screen.  The final look of the film feels very much like a book stuffed into a movie.  The film really is a confusing jumble of odd choices and missed opportunities.

In case your one of twelve people who hasn’t read the novel the premise runs like this:  Scholar Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) is on a book tour in Paris where he is summoned to the Louvre where a man (Jean_Pierre Marielle) who was scheduled to meet that afternoon has been murdered.  Captain Fache (Jean Reno) is certain Langdon is the killer while cryptographer (Audrey Tautou), who is also granddaughter of the murdered man, is certain he is innocent.  Neither one of their certainties is satisfactorily explained.

…

So Dark, the Con of ManRead More »

So Dark, the Con of Man Read More »

Disaster of a Film

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Poseidon (2006)
  • IMDb: link

rogue wave – relatively large and spontaneous ocean surface waves which can sink even large ships and ocean liners; they are more concisely defined as waves that are more than double the significant wave heigh, which is itself defined as the mean of the largest third of waves in a wave record.  Once thought to be only legendary, they are now known to be a natural (although relatively rare – except in Hollywood) ocean phenomenon.  (Wikipedia)

Poseidon is a tepid, detached, derivative, boring, silly, banal, unimaginative, stupid little film.  It will probably make $160 million by the end of the summer.  The movie feels more like a made-for-TV Sci-fi Channel disaster flick like Deep Shock or Descent than an actual theatrical film.

…

Disaster of a FilmRead More »

Disaster of a Film Read More »

Hard Candy

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Hard Candy
  • IMDb: link

Hard Candy

A two actor performance piece about a a deranged and vindictive 14 year-old girl and a pedophile. Yeah…you might say this isn’t exactly for everybody. I saw the film in a mostly empty theater during a press screening and I’m pretty sure I would not want to view it in a crowded one. It’s an intensely uncomfortable experience that never quite justifies what it puts the audience through, but there are points to, well not exactly enjoy, but at least appreciate.

…

Hard CandyRead More »

Hard Candy Read More »

The Ninth Gate

/ / Home Video
  • Title: The Ninth Gate
  • IMDb: link

The Ninth Gate

Roman Polanski at his best gave us Chinatown and at his worst gave us Pirates.  The Ninth Gate is a great suspenseful mystery as Johnny Depp is thrust into the world of the occult and dark knowledge.  One of Polanski’s, and Depp’s, best films.

The film opens with an older gentleman, Andrew Telfer (Willy Holt), just finishing his affairs one evening.  He then gets up from his desk and very matter of fact manner hangs himself from the chandelier of his study.  The camera pans to the books of his study for in this film knowledge can bring both power and death.

…

The Ninth GateRead More »

The Ninth Gate Read More »