Suspects include Police Detective Randy Quaid, GF Kari Matchett and Publisher Giancarlo Esposito. Nikki DeBoer is the protagonist's sister, but her husband is a suspect! At least she wears flimsy silk.
This is divided into five chapters, each covering a one-hour segment.
In Part Two, gangster Hamish Linklater (Angus McFadyen - Braveheart and the Skeet Ulrich TV show Miracles ) appears.
This is the story of Swan Lake, adapted in the traditional manner of showing the process of adaptation itself. Naturally, the protagonist becomes emeshed in the story, and begins to live it out.
Nina the Ballerina ( Natalie Portman ) finds herself turning into a swan (like Jeff Goldblum in the David Cronenberg version of The Fly ). She is trapped in a stiffling relationship with her control-freak mother ( Barbara Hershey ), which accounts for her immaturity and anal retentive behaviour. Her director (Vincent Cassell - Brotherhood of the Wolf ) and a friendly rival ( Mila Kunis ) try to get her to loosen up and unleash her dark side ...
This, of course, leads to the predictable halucinations and tragic decline into insanity that we have seen in so many other films. Darren Aronofsky may have seemed original when he delivered Requiem for a Dream a decade ago, but there is nothing new here.
The Prosecutor, evidently a devout Atheist, constantly undermines the Defence with his use of medical science and FACTS. However, as Ms Linney gets more involved in the case she believes more and more in the magical monsters ...
One of the ghosts, an adulterous snob named Frank (Greg Kinear - Mystery Men (1999) ), persuades Pincus to help him. The job is to separate Frank's widow, Gwen ( Tea Leoni ), from her new boyfriend - a Human rights Lawyer (Billy Campbell - The 4400 ).
Pincus finds himself falling in love with Gwen. But this is not a normal rom-com, and Pincus is not the regular kind of romantic hero.
The protagonist is a writer for a film company. They do not use actors, costumes or created dialogue. They just film a narrator reading from the script, listing the proven historical facts.
Then, one day, Ricky invents the lie. He manages to say something that he wishes were true - and because nobody can even consider the possibility that he might not tell the truth, they all accept it outright.
This leads on to a wonderful parody of organised religion. Yes, when he invents the lie he also has to invent religion. This is hilarious in itself.
Jennifer Garner had Ricky as a guest-star on her show Alias , and now he returns the favour by using her as his love interest.
Keanu Reeves ( Bill and Ted - another time travel story!) and Sandra Bullock are the happy couple. It is actually quite a touching tale, if you like that kind of thing.
As they journey into the heart of darkness in Iraq, their lives get hilariously complicated. Kevin Spacey ( A Bug's life ) is a villainous counterpart to Clooney.
Directed by Grant Heslov (token Arab good guy in True Lies ), this is a hilarious comedy-adventure with an all-star cast, a great soundtrack ... And Goats!
Sebastian faces off with a school bully (Jack Black - Pick of Destiny ) in LA.
There are few sets, and the whole thing looks very cheap.
This lacks the romantic interest of Bullock's previous time travel film, The Lake House , or the thriller aspect of most other Time Travel films. It is basically a slow-moving drama, a time travel film for people who do not like sci-fi.
This is a typical Hollywood example of the supernatural suspense thriller, delivered by the producers of The Ring and the writer of Identity . They evidently wished to emulate the success of their earlier, far superior films. The Director is as much to blame as anyone, relying on the typical array of camera tricks in order to artificially generate suspense.
Psychiatrists Ben Kingsley ( Sound of Thunder ) and Max Von Sydow ( Flash Gordon, Judge Dredd ) run the place, which creates an element of suspicion and suspense throughout the film.
Martin Scorsese delivers an above-average suspense thriller based on a novel by best-selling writer Denis Lehane. However, despite the mainstream critics saying how good the twist is ... it's pretty predictable. Been done better a lot of times, in fact. P>
Melissa George is a housewife with an autistic son. She goes sailing on a yacht with a bunch of people she barely knows. The yacht is capsized in a freak storm, and the survivors board a seemingly derelict passenger liner. The protagonist gets a strange feeling of deja vu ...
A masked figure starts killing the survivors. Then the day starts to repeat itself, in an inescapable time loop. This has been done many times before, it is not exactly original, but it is a decently done piece of work.
Alice ( Caterina Scorsone ) is an American judo instructor who lives in modern-day London with her mother ( Teryl Rothery ). Her father went missing years ago, so when her boyfriend gets kidnapped she follows ...
Alice finds herself in a steampunk distopia, where humans use Wonderland nicknames and codenames. Hatter (Andrew Lee Potts - Primeval ) and the Don Quixote-looking White Knight (Matt Frewer - Max Headroom ) help her. The Queen of Hearts ( Kathy Bates ) and the King of Hearts (Colm Meaney - Star Trek: DS9 ) want to capture Alice to get her ring, which controls the magical looking glass. And Resistance leaders Dodo (Tim Curry - Rocky Horror Picture Show ) and Caterpillar (Harry Dean Stanton - Alien ) have their own agendas ...
This film was much-awaited, with fans clamouring for cult director Tim Burton to do a 3-D rehash of Lewis Carroll's classic (i.e. Public Domain!) childrens' novel. However, the biggest fans seem quite disappointed. The Film seems to be making its money based on the visuals - the CGI and 3-D effects are magnificent, but expensive - and thus a ticket for this will add more to Box Office Takings than a ticket of a 2-D film would. The problem is that the story is quite simplistic. Earth-person goes to alien landscape and helps local rebels overthrow dictatorial usurper. Sound familiar?
Alice is pursued by the Creepy Thin Man (Crispin Glover) from Charlie's Angels . He serves the Red Queen ( Helena Bonham Carter ), who seems to be channelling Miranda Richardson 's portrayal of Elizabeth Tudor in Blackadder 2.
The Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp - Pirates of the Caribbean ) is a leader of the Resistance, with flashes of Braveheart emerging sporadically through his OTT insanity. He wants Alice to help restore the White Queen ( Anne Hathaway ).
Unfortunately the shipping company is owned by Alice's ex-fiance, the poor (well, unfortunate) fool that she spurned at the altar. She sees the blue butterfly, and follows him through a looking glass ...
The White Queen ( Anne Hathaway ) wants Alice to help restore the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp - Pirates of the Caribbean ), whose OTT insanity has been driven into overdrive. He thinks that Alica can save his family, even though they were killed by the Jabberwocky many years previously.
Alice descends into the Underland, steals a time-machine from Sasha Baron Cohen and travels back to meet the younger Hatter and his family. Can she save them?
This is a typical 1970s family comedy from Disney. The climax has tons of slapstick, with the work done by the actresses' stunt doubles.
This came out around the same time as Vice Versa , the Judge Reinhold flick with a similar concept. Hanks worked hard to change his screen persona, choosing supporting roles in dramatic films like A League of Their Own, while Reinhold kept going for comedic roles.
In a lightweight thriller subplot, Swoosie Kurtz is hunting for the magic skull. If she steals it, the protagonists will be unable to change back.
There are a few familiar faces. The boy's mother is a young-looking Lois from Malcolm in the Middle, and his teacher is a young Jane Lynch .
The hero's nerdy sidekick prevents genre blindness by identifying the hero's journey as a magical spirit quest. Luckily the school's headmistress ( Melora Hardin ) is a big fan of Lord of the Rings .
The teenage schoolgirls include Jamie ( Kat Graham ) and Samantha ( Tiya Sircar ), who both went on to bigger and better things.
Our heroine, now trapped in a man's body, calls on her best buddy ( Anna Farris ) to help her.
The young Jordan ( Marsai Martin ) is forced to attend school. The good news is that she likes the teacher (Justin Hartley - Smallville ), The bad news is that, despite her attempts to be one of the cool kids, she ends up with the outcasts in a safe-space called the Friend-Zone.
As always in this kind of thing, the victim of the curse must become a better person in order to have it removed.
Ali Davis ( Tarajia P Henson ) is a sports agent - a professional middle-man (oops, middle-person) between athletes and their commercial sponsors. As the only black woman in an all-male firm - which is majority white even though it is set in Atlanta, Georgia - she seems to have the odds stacked against her. Then, one night she and her gal-pals have a party with a voodoo priestess. The morning after, she has been cursed with the ability to read mens' surface thoughts. Later she starts to treat it as a superpower.
The company's next big fish is a young athlete. Ali and her team-mates compete against each other to win favour with Joe 'Dolla' Barry (Tracy Morgan - 30 Rock ), the athlete's manager and over-protective father.
Ali also tries to sort out her private life. Her problem with Will the barman (Aldis Hodge - Die Hard 3 ) is that she is obsessed with being in control all the time. However, when she hooks up with Captain Fucktastic (Kellan Lutz - Hercules ) she is turned off by the fact that he is a sexual submissive.
This is a comedy, so things tend to go terribly wrong for the protagonist. That said, she manages to use her other superpower to prevent herself being fired when she screws up - her privileged status as a Woman of Colour.
The preacher is basically Homer Simpson, living with his son (Rory Culkin - Scream 4 ) and daughter ( Abigail Breslin ). His wife is dead, and his brother (Joaquin Phoenix - Gladiator ) stays at their farmhouse to complete the family.
The farmhouse is amid acres of cornfields. And at night, person or persons unknown create mysterious crop circles. Just like in England, although English corn is wheat and American corn is maize.
It turns out that the crop circles are a signal from aliens. The aliens intend to invade Earth. Luckily, Bart and Lisa have what it takes to save the world. Bart goes to the local library where, out of every book in the paranormal phenomenon category, he manages to find the exact book that perfectly predicts the aliens' strategy. If this is not enough of a miracle, wait until you find out what Lisa's superpower is!
The movie's theme is one of faith. However, it could also be one of intolerance. Perhaps the aliens do not use weapons or clothes because they do not have them. Instead of invaders, they might be harmless refugees like in Alien Nation .
The Village is a remote, isolated cluster of wooden houses. Its inhabitants are Amish-style folks led by the Elders - Edward Walker (William Hurt - Incredible Hulk ), Alice Hunt ( Sigourney Weaver ) and August Nicholson (Brendan Gleeson - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire ). It is unclear what century this is set in, but the Villagers live in perpetual fear of Monsters that live in the woods.
Ivy Walker ( Bryce Dallas Howard ) is a blind girl who is in love with Lucius Hunt (Joaquin Phoenix - Gladiator ). Unfortunately, Noah Percy (Adrien Brody - Predators ) has other ideas.
A man discovers a young woman ( Bryce Dallas Howard ) in his community's swimming pool. She cannot speak English, so he deduces she is a mermaid like in Splash .
The director has described this as a story about story-telling. The protagonist discovers he is living out a fairytale story, so he has to discover the tropes and play along with them. To this end he asks advice from one of his neighbours - a film critic (Bob Balaban - ). Unfortunately this turns out to be a mistake of sorts. The critic is portrayed as a villain, or at best a cynical asshole, so we can take it that this is the director's view of people who review his films. And since a critic is merely a professional audience member, the director is thus taking umbridge against his own audience.
The director's hitchcockian cameo in Sixth Sense grew into the first man to defeat an alien invader in Signs . In this film he is literally John the Baptist, the man who inspires a messiah but gets himself martyred in the process. It seems that we can take it that this is the director's view of himself. He sees himself as a genius of biblical proportions who is being crucified by an audience who are blinded by their own ignorance. Okay, John was beheaded instead of crucified but the biblical mataphor still holds true.
Anyhow, the twist is never articulated on-screen but it turns out that the critic was right all along. The protagonist merely mis-interpreted the tropes that were laid out for him.
The story starts in Central Park, New York City. The young woman from Zoo is talking to a friend, when everyone starts to commit suicide. Since this film was made a few years after the WTC attacks, the instant suspicion is of a poison gas attack by terrorists. However, the truth is a lot more terrifying.
The story moves to a High School in Philadelphia. Principal Alan Ruck ( Star Trek: Generations ) orders the teachers to evacuate the pupils. A science teacher (Mark Wahlberg - The Big Hit ), his girlfriend ( Zooey Deschannel ) and best buddy (John Leguizamo - ) take the kids on a train to safety. Unfortunately the train crew leave everyone at a remote stop in the countryside.
One of the other survivors that they meet is a botanist, and he thinks that he knows the real cause of the toxin. This is the kind of role that Shyamalan normally reserves for himself - the John the Baptist figure who helps the hero understand how to win. The fact that the director does not do his usual Hitchcock cameo is explained by this casting.
The city folk go on the run in rural USA, heading cross-country once the roads prove impassable. They discover that, as always in survival fiction, the biggest threat is other humans. They encounter gun-toting hill-billies who are happy to murder children, but the climax involves a little old lady who seems to have wandered out of The Visit .
Five people get trapped in an elevator. It turns out that one of them is the devil himself, come to claim the souls of the unwary.
The blood is mostly off-screen. While one might laud the use of suspense instead of a reliance on gore, the reality is that in this case the film seems anti-climactic as a result.
The visit takes place in a remote farmhouse. This remoteness is part of the standard setting for suspense movies. Naturally, they cannot get cell-phone reception. Surprise, surprise. However, the old-timers actually have broadband internet so the kids can plug in a laptop and use skype to talk to their mother! This is a nice twist on what is becoming a modern cliché, and actually plays an important part in the plot. Also, it illustrates that modern thrillers tend to use 1970s plots, disregarding modern technology (with the notable exception of the 24 television series). The term Techno-Thriller cannot generally apply to most modern thrillers, which is ironic considering that Blade Runner was set only a few years from now.
M Night Shyamalan was once the master of the twist ending. However, in this effort the structure has been changed - and not for the better. The twist reveal is done at the end of the second act, merely setting up a lacklustre climax.
Kevin has to report to his psychiatrist for regular checkups. She realises that something is up, because Kevin's multiple personalities are conspiring. They are awaiting the arrrival of a new one, whom they have named The Beast.
This was directed by M Night Shayamalan , although the trailer is careful not to mention that fact. There is a lot of setup for several different amazing twist endings, but somehow the film manages to avoid all of them.
The Overseer (Bruce Willis - Die Hard (1987) ) is still living in Philly. He runs a private security business, and in his spare time he acts as a vigilante. Yes, he is within walking distance of the Beast's lair. Also, he has his son (Von Strucker Junior from Agents of SHIELD ) for communications and tech support.
M Night Shyamalan gets his Hitchcockian cameo over with at the start, and then gets down to giving the audience what they want. The super-hero and villain get down to their epic battle, but this is not a straight-up action-adventure film. The director is a suspense thriller specialist, and this is back in familiar territory for him.
Both hero and villain are incarcerated in a mental institution. Doctor Sarah Paulson has labelled them as delusional, and wants them to believe that they only THINK they have superpowers.
McAvoy delivers an amazing performance - well, a dozen performances. A pity that this kind of movie is rarely acknowledged by the Oscars. Okay, Heath Ledger won a posthumous Oscar for his role as a comic-book villain in The Dark Knight (2008) , but that is certainly the exception rather than the rule. Jack Nicholson won an Oscar for One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, but not for his own turn as the Joker. In other words, McAvoy may be at the mercy of Nurse Ratched but his status as a comic-book villain will prevent his recognition.
The movie's title character, supervillain Mister Glass (Samuel L Jackson - Deep Blue Sea (1999) ), is the longest-serving inmate of the asylum. He may just have been an obsessive comic-book fan when he went in, but he is now a super-genius who makes Hannibal (2003) look like a half-wit. And on that note, we must observe how security has gone downhill since Silence Of The Lambs (1992) . In that film, Hannibal Lector had two guards on each shift. Now, the three supers have one orderly per shift between them. It is only a matter of time before an escape takes place.
The tourists take a bus to a secluded beach on the other side of the island. Soon enough, they begin to realise that something is going wrong. The children start to age noticeably, so it becomes evident that time is passing at a much faster rate than usual. Can the tourists escape before they die of old age? Even worse, as in Blair Witch Project the stress starts to make the characters come apart mentally and turn on each other.
M Night Shyamalan pops up as the bus driver. A pity that he does not do that for real, because his career as a film-maker should have ended after the terrible Lady in the Water .
It is 1944 in Franco's Spain. A young girl ( Ivana Banquo ) accompanies her sick mother and her wicked stepfather (Captain of Franco's cops) to a new home at a remote village in the mountains. The girl has magical encounters with a Faun and other supernatural creatures.
Meanwhile, the Allied Armies are liberating Europe. But the Communist resistance do not want to risk their lives fighting against the Nazis, so they spend their time harrassing the Spanish police instead.
Five years later, the girls are discovered. They are nearly feral, but after a few weeks with a shrink they are suitable for suburban living again. Their uncle (Nicolai Coster-Waldaj - Game of Thrones ) gets custody of them. But they spend most of their time with his girlfriend Jessica Chastain . Yes, with a couple of exceptions (men who are quickly written off) the cast is mostly female.
This was produced by Guillermo Del Torro , and has his trademark creepiness. However, despite being spine-tingling it is actually a PG-13, due to its low body count and lack of gore. Thus it unhappily straddles two worlds (not unlike the ghost herself) - too scary for a family film, too bloodless for a full-on horror.
They move to his family home, a massive decrepit pile in rural England. She does not bother to ask what its nickname is before she moves in.
The problem is that the prologue establishes that the ghostly presence in the film is a death omen. This means that the cliched twist is not a twist, and the story is completely straightforward.
At first the monsters are not shown on-screen, instead portrayed as sinister whispers from the shadows. Later they come out as claymation-looking figures,
A young girl goes to live with her father (Guy Pearse - Prometheus ) and stepmother ( Katie Holmes ) as they renovate an old mansion. However, the basement is infested with Tooth Fairies. These are like evil versions of the Pictsies in Terry Pratchett ‘s Wee Free Men .
The protagonist is a mute girl ( Sally Hawkins ) who works as a cleaner in a secret US government lab. She and her best friend ( Octavia Spencer ) get bossed around by the manager (David Hewlett - Stargate: Atlantis ).
Strickland (Michael Shannon - Midnight Special ) delivers a new specimen to the lab. It is the fish-man, a creature he caught in South America. They have developed a mutually antagonistic relationship. In contrast, the mute girl starts to bond with the creature. To complete the triangle, Strickland has a beautiful wife ( Lauren Lee Smith ) but becomes interested in the mute girl.
Like in Splash , the mer-person's love interest teams up with a sympathetic scientist and rescues the creature from its prison. That is where the similarities end. Daryl Hannah appeared to be a perfect specimen of humanity, while the fish-man is a scaly monster that eats raw cats.
The 1950s Cold War setting turns out to be important to the plot, with the intervention of a KGB man (Nigel Bennett - Lexx ). The General (Nick Searcy - Dark Skies ) gives Strickland an ultimatum - recover the creature, or else!