TITLE & REVIEW
Physics Professor Timothy Hutton will be murdered.
Five days earlier, he discovers the police investigation file.
He must pre-solve the murder (like in classic film Noir D.O.A.).
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 a classic tale of how loneliness and social isolation can dead to mental illness and despair.
Just the sort of thing to watch by yourself on St Valentine's day!
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.
Catholic lawyer
Laura Linney
is hired by the local Bishop to defend a priest (Tom
), who is accused of killing a parishioner.
The young woman, Emily Rose (
Jennifer Carpenter
) died during an exorcism ...
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 ...
This is Ricky Gervase delivering an amazing film.
It is set in a parallel universe, where nobody ever says anything that is not entirely true.
They speak their minds with such blatant lack of care about what anyone thinks that ...
well, it is hilarious how the truth can be so cruel and yet so funny at the same time.
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.
This is basically science fiction for people who do not like sci-fi.
It is a romance story about two people who communicate by letters
not through distance, but through time.
Naturally, everyone who knows about time travel stories (you know, sci-fi fans)
knows all the cliches and problems that can arise - paradoxes and so on.
But since this is a romance for a mainstream audience, the little things are ignored.
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.
Ewan McGregor (
Star Wars: Phantom Menace
) is a wannabe War Correspondent who teams up with George Clooney (
Solaris
), a seemingly deranged war veteran
who claims to be a member of the elite US Army Special Forces First Earth Army unit.
Of course, Clooney makes the necessary cultural reference by calling his unit Jedi Warriors -
quite ironic, considering who his co-star is!
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!
The land is taken over by a Nasty.
Tony Robinson (Blackadder) pops up as a Gnome.
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.
Sandra Bullock
is kinda-happily married to Julian McMahon (
Fantastic Four
). She wakes up one morning and discovers she's skipped almost a week,
and that her husband has been killed in a car crash.
The next morning, she wakes up
and it is still several days before the accident ...
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.
Julianne Moore
is a psychologist who debunks multiple personality syndrome.
She is presented with a patient (Jonathan Rhys Myers -
The Tudors
) who seems to have multiple personalities.
As she investigates, she discovers a supernatural origin to his condition.
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.
Leonardo DiCaprio (
Man in the Iron Mask
) and Mark Ruffalo (
13 Going On 30
) are a pair of US Federal Marshals sent to assist in the recapture of
an inmate who escaped from a mental asylum.
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>
This is a thriller that has a number of predictable twists,
it is the new film by the guy behind
Creep
and
Severance
so you should know to expect a speculative fiction story with a certain new take on things.
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.
This is a sequel of sorts, set ten years after Alice's initial descent into Wonderland.
She is nineteen years old, about to be engaged, and has forgotten all about her childhood adventure.
But once again she sees the white rabbit, and follows him ...
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 ).
This is a sequel of sorts, set several years after Alice's second descent into Wonderland.
She has become a sea-captain,
swashbuckling aboard a sailing ship like
Keira Knightley
did in the
Pirates of the Caribbean
series.
Yes, that is now the tone for female protagonists these days.
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?
Like most of the films
Jodie Foster
appeared in during the 1970s, this hinges on her ability to act more mature than she really is.
Annabel (Foster) is 13 years old, but swops characters with her mother (
Barbara Harris
). And hilarity ensues.
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 is a Disney remake of the
Jodie Foster
remake from 1976. It's basically a generation gap comedy, starring
Lindsay Lohan
and
Jamie Lee Curtis
as mother and daughter. They are body-swopped by a magic fortune cookie,
so JLC acts immature (easy to do) and Lohan acts mature. The
Buffy S3 ep Band Candy
did this much better. But then,
one cannot really look for inspiration or originality in a remake of a mediocre film.
A thirteen year old boy makes a wish at a magical machine,
and gets transformed into Tom Hanks (
Splash
). With some help from his best friend he goes to the big city
and gets a job in a toy store run by Robert Loggia (
Lost Highway
). He falls foul of business rival John Heard (
Cat People
), and gets a girlfriend (
Elizabeth Perkins
). Ah, the 1980s were a simpler age
- today the female lead would be accused of Statutory rape!
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.
This is one of a late-1980s slew of
Freaky Friday
pastiches.
Business executive Judge Reinhold (Beverly Hills Cop)
swops minds with his schoolboy son Fred Savage (Wonder Years)
thanks to a magic skull.
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.
This is the annual offering from
M Night Shyamalan
. The central character is a preacher (Mel Gibson -
Mad Max
) who has lost his faith, and the theme is his eventual rediscovery of it.
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 .
This is the annual offering from
M Night Shyamalan
. He was already on his downward slide, but the film is watchable.
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.
This is the annual offering from
M Night Shyamalan
. It is the weakest film he has made,
based on a bedtime story he made up for his own children
and spiced with a heavy dose of self-indulgence.
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.
This is the annual offering from
M Night Shyamalan
. It lacks the twist ending that he is famous for,
and marks the beginning of his downward slide.
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 .
This is a supernatural suspense thriller written and produced by
M Night Shyamalan
, although he did not direct or act in it.
It has something of a twist in the ending, too.
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.
This is a found footage film about a pair of teenagers
who got to spend a week with their mother’s estranged parents.
However, the maternal grandparents start to behave unusually.
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.
Anna Taylor-Joy
is locked in a cell in a basement.
No, this is not a sequel of
Morgan
. Kevin (James MacAvoy -
X-Men: First Class
) has almost two dozen multiple personalities.
Two of them have conspired together to abduct a trio of teenage girls,
and she is one of them.
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.
Guillermo Del Toro
delivers a film reminiscent of his biggest mainstream success,
Hellboy
.
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.
A man goes postal, then becomes a family annihilator.
But when he takes his two daughters into the woods,
they discover a remote cabin …
haunted by the ghost of his female equivalent, a kind of La Llorona.
She wants to raise the kids as her own …
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.
This is a case of gothic style-over-substance delivered by
Guillermo Del Torro
. In the 1800s a
Mary Shelley
wannabe (
Mia Wiasakowska
) is seduced by Baronet Loki (Tom Hiddleston -
Thor
). Her father (Jim Beaver -
Supernatural
) opposes their relationship, and has a Private Investigator (Burn Gorman -
Dark Knight Rises
) investigate the Baronet.
Loki's sister (
Jessica Chastain
) does not approve of the match either, but the marriage goes ahead anyway.
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.
Kim Darby
moves into an old abandoned mansion.
The handyman, who locked the place up on the orders of her grandmother two decades previously,
refuses to help open the bricked-up fireplace.
Naturally, the Final Girl chooses to transgress ...
unleashing the predictable evil.
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,
This was produced by
Guillermo Del Toro
, and has his typically suspenseful, supernatural feel.
It is a remake of a 1970s low-budget effort that starred
Kim Darby
.
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 .
Guillermo Del Toro
is best know for his work on the
Hellboy
series.
This is a superhero story based on a comic-book series,
something that the snobbish Academy of Motion Pictures would never deem Oscar-worthy.
However, it features retro 1950s-style technology
and a fish-man character who looks like
The Creature From The Black Lagoon
. Yes, just like this film.
So one might see this film as an Oscar-winning prequel to the Hellboy series.
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!
