Far From Heaven
REVIEWED 11/02, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

Cathy Witaker's (Julianne Moore) dreamy Eisenhower-era socialite life is irreversably shattered when she discovers that Frank (Dennis Quaid), her industrious ex-naval commander and Magnatech executive sales manager husband, has been cheating on her. At first, this Connecticut housewife and gorgeous poster girl for her hubby's television manufacturing company thinks nothing of his regular absences from her family's evening dinner table. It's only after he becomes overly defensive about being arrested for disorderly conduct, and she realizes that their sex life doesn't measure up to that of her gossipy friends, that Cathy quite unintentionally walks in on Frank's enraptured infidelity in his downtown office one fateful night. She's thoughtfully brought him a home-cooked meal out of adoration, leaving emotionally destroyed by finding him passionately lip-locked with another fella.

Confused, distraught, and unable to confide in anyone close to her, Cathy ends up rocking the prevailing racial chasm by befriending her intelligently empathetic and ruggedly handsome Black gardener (Raymond Deagan, brilliantly underplayed by Dennis Haysbert). Ultimately sending this staunchly White community's intitially bemused blabbermouth brigade into a wild tizzy, once Mrs. Witaker and Mr. Deagan are spotted going for lunch at a segregated out of town diner together. So, in a well-meaning attempt to mend their marriage and social pretenses, and as an inconspicuous celebration of Frank's apparent 'conversion back to heterosexual norms' under the quiet medical treatment of a local therapist, the Witakers leave their two young children in the trusted care of their prerequisite Black maid and welcome in the New Year of 1958 on a romantic Miami vacation. Unfortunately, as our naively deluded Cathy freckles beneath that sultry Florida sun, Frank's flesh burns to dabble with his new-found lover.

As pretty much a first serious attempt by Hollywood to address these two historically defining and contemptuously contemporary issues, this film truly is a breath of fresh air offering up an impressive wealth of talent from it's ensemble cast of stars. Quaid is magnificent as a self-hating Gay man who honestly believes there's something wrong with him, desperate to do right by his family and mainstream values. Where the major flaws lie in it's clumsily handled character-obsessed directing are that this otherwise courageous flick has an ensemble cast of stars. Moore's character is obviously at the centre of turmoil and upheaval, but because she's allowed to annoyingly coddle her unspoken anguish throughout, with Quaid and Haysbert sharing equal screen time with their riveting performances, they all tend to cancel each other out here. Plus, the weaknesses of the two main stories almost teasingly citing these newly presented plot points without including any necessary embellishment, sends an exiting audience disappointed with the realistic ending and aching for a re-edited Director's Cut to fill in the blanks. Most critics will probably love this one, but how many of them paid to see it like I did? They may have gotten their money's worth, but I sure didn't.

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Fear Dot Com
REVIEWED 09/02, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

What if the worldwide web was haunted? That, just as many believe some buildings and landmarks contain the sentient paranormal energy of the long-dead, the electronic network linking a vast collection of personal computers could also host malevolent ghosts and evil things that go bump in the night? A kind of 'Tron' for the undead.

That's the basic premise behind 'Fear Dot Com', a rather brooding and gruesome flick that clicks onto the sick world of a nortoriously popular snuff fetish website hosted by a curiously elusive murderer. One would think that a call to his web host by the F.B.I. would garner enough leads to have this particularly ruthless nutcase slapped in a straightjacket post haste. However, not wanting to let logic get in the way of telling a twisted tale of horror, yet another unsuspecting buxom doe is lured in, stripped and strapped to an operating table, and is cruelly tortured for the all-seeing webcams. When the site's voyeuristic subscribers start oozing blood before dying in a series of excruciatingly violent ways, a rogue cop and a disease pathologist begin to suspect that it's the work of an unsolved murder victim meting out vengeful justice from beyond the grave.

I had a mixed reaction while sitting through this one. Over-all, it's a well paced scary movie that successfully nails it's prerequistie spooky atmosphere while featuring some pretty incredible special effects. Even the acting and dialogue throughout is forgivably cheesy at times. However, the relentless intensity of sex and sadism was so tastelessly overdone that I found those cuts to be way too disturbing for me to completely enjoy this latest frightfest.

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Formula 51
REVIEWED 10/02, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

What was Samuel L. Jackson thinking, getting himself roped in to this lame mind-addled pastiche (originally entitled 'The 51st State') about a pothead honours grad turned foul-mouthed master chemist? It might have been the dubious plot: Elmo McElroy (Jackson) hits a parting jackpot making a deal with a UK druglord for his powerful new narcotic, only to have an impish hired gun (amateurishly portrayed by Emily Mortimer) dispatched after him by his idiotic former US druglord boss (Meat Loaf). However, I suspect he was just slumming between jobs.

Granted, Jackson's reasons for taking this turkey on might have had something to do with the film's embarassing wealth of expletive-drenched dialogue and disgusting childish humour. It might have been his character's wildly contrived partnership with Felix DeSouza (Robert Carlyle), a weasely soccer fanatic with a dented heart of gold who's hired as McElroy's Liverpool-based escort. Maybe he simply wanted to follow in Mel Gibson's and Liam Neeson's footsteps by wearing a kilt on the big screen. Whatever. Fact is, his emmensely proven talent fails miserably at elevating this nauseatingly vapid, overwhelmingly un-funny romp through Britain's seedy underworld.

Clearly, this offering wants desperately to be a obnoxious farce for disenfranchised punks. Loaded up like a half-baked comicbook with stupid mobsters, vile skinheads, crooked cops, and relentless self-loathing jabs at the tirelessly crumbling Mersey culture. Half of the movie is bloated with clumsily edited, endless scenes of what I guess are supposed to be attempts at dramatically quirky character development. The rest of it is simply a humourless collection of slapped-together gunplay and car stunts all leading to a furiously pathetic 'feel good' finale, ending with Jackson pretty well mooning his paying audience for their troubles. What an incredibly disappointing rip-off.

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The Four Feathers
REVIEWED 10/02, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

This was almost a good movie. Great cinematography. Some pretty exceptional acting by the supporting cast. And, a potentially compelling story (that's apparently been adapted for the big screen from the same novel at least three times before). Where the problems lie in this version were in it's unnecessarily slow pacing, and primarily in the choppy editing and poorly written script that only served to whittle away at the main character's most profound scenes.

During the mid-1920's, the British Empire was still very much the dominant Superpower nation, maintaining a rather tenuous control over it's Middle Eastern conquests through military presence. And, like most young men, Harry Faversham (Heath Ledger) had followed the wishes of his distant father - a distinguished yet strict General - by enlisting and serving his nation as a bright officer amongst his boyish friends, while courting his waifish dubutant fiancee (played by Kate Hudson). All within a private school-like world entrenched in aristocratic pomp and ceremony, safe in the heart of London. That is, until Harry's regiment was due to be shipped off to war torn Sudan. Then, things got too real for our naive soldier. So, he resigned his commission, provoking his reciept of three white feathers as symbols of cowardice, sent by his embittered and battle-ready chums.

Thanks to the choppy editing and poor script I'd referred to, we never really know how Harry received the fourth feather from his disillusioned lady love. Nor, do we actually see much of what went on with Harry afterwards, to know exactly why he eventually decided to follow his mates overseas. Was it to save face? Did he go out of shame-laden duty? Did he just miss hanging out with his buddies? We're never quite sure, since Ledger's protagonist never seemed to know himself. Just as his reason for walking away from his uniformed life was never the same, when asked several times. It's almost as if these key elements were considered unimportant by the director. Making this visually stunning picture annoyingly convoluted for a paying audience trying to figure out what Faversham's motivations were, and whether or not it was really worthwhile caring about his tumultuous adventures in the desert. My advice would be to rent this one for the great scenery and secondary performances throughout, but to forget about trying to find life in it's mirage-like main plot.

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Frida
REVIEWED 11/02, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

As notoriously explosive Mexican cult figure Frida Kahlo, Salma Hayek does little more than strike Latino-costumed, unibrowed poses between flashing her yummy boobies for the camera throughout this slothfully tiring cinematic ode. Which is really too bad, considering the wealth of potential dramatic material that could have been culled from this vanguard painter's torturous real-life battles and tumultuous marriage to famed muralist and infamous womanizer Diego Rivera. It's as if Hayek was looking to use Kahlo's vibrant life as a titilating backdrop to prop up her own questionable acting career here (with the help of a few cameos by high-profile celebrities), as opposed to presenting a truly rich bio-pic of this scandalously provocative wild child.

Kahlo was about angry sentimental passion. Fuelled and inspired by agonizing pain. Expressed through her often gruesome and shocking artwork, featuring herself glaring defiantly from the canvass or brutally split open and surrounded by the bloodied fetuses of her several miscarriages. She was reknowned for her portraits of violent angst, suicide, and murder. This was a strong-willed yet damaged woman who had survived the ravages of polio in childhood, only to face a life struggling against a physique shattered by a debilitating bus collision at fifteen. It was while convalescing under her parents' care from that tragic accident, bed-ridden within a restrictive body cast coccoon, that Frida taught herself to paint. Eventually forcing herself to walk again. Going on to seek out like-minded bohemians such as Rivera, embracing the fervor of Communist revolution gripping 1920's Mexico, and releasing herself to pretty well every hedonistic vice at her disposal. From 1927 until her flambouyant cremation thirty years later, she was an undisputable powerhouse of brittle energy, consuming herself and any man or woman caught in her seductive and sometimes vexaceous light. Her edgy artistic talent postumously receiving monumental admiration, after decades of modest recognition during her short lifetime. However, this movie clumsily skims over most of these facts, while systematically relying on cheap visual gimmicks and a dreadfully pedantic romantic script, as it attempts to depict Kahlo as an artsy-fartsy eccentric with a bruised heart of matronly gold who banged Trotsky and just wanted to have a big hometown exhibit of her work.

One of my favourite oils from that period is Frida's 'The Little Deer', depicting this artist as an arrow-riddled fawn standing unfettered in a sunlit forest. This naive Renaissance-like, Gauguin-coloured mutation gravely wounded several times, yet giving no allusion of defeat. After sitting through this relentlessly passionless flick, it's easy to imagine Hayek's tawdry revamped version having this doe squirting an ocean of tears as it coyly fondles itself for the box office bucks. Yawn.

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Full Frontal
REVIEWED 08/02, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

Just so there's no confusion, I will start off by stating that I liked this movie. This likely makes me part of a very small minority, judging from the feedback I've read and heard to date. However, I don't really care what other people think of this movie. Just as I don't care that it was shot in three weeks, and has a speaking cameo with Brad Pitt as himself. I liked it anyways.

Sure, it has Director's Experimental Art Film written all over it. It's not your run of the mill, linear style of cinematic storytelling. It's an easily confusing, sporadically funny, and often neurotic 'behind the scenes/slice of life' offering that seemed at times as though it had been edited together backwards. That is, until the jumbled pieces surrounding a forty-one year-old birthday girl/human resources exec, a magazine columnist, two movie actors, a theatre manager, a masseuse, and a birthday boy/entertainment producer all fall neatly together near the end. As things usually do, with 20/20 hindsight, in real life. And, I'm not quite sure what Soderberg was trying to do with the film-within-a-film scenarios that are interwoven throughout the two secondary tales and what ends up being the main saga. Unless it was inserted as either crisp visual breaks from this picture's predominantly grainy self-conscious 35mm look, or as a clever device used to reflect a certain mindset regarding love. At any rate, this one is pretty heavy on the process of letting events just happen Real World-like, and is fairly light on spoon feeding a lazy audience looking for a bit of eye candy to go with their buttery popcorn tastes.

As I've alluded to, 'Full Frontal' is about love. Actually, several meaty yet subduely presented love stories about a handful of characters whose meandering, unnecessarily complicated lives intersect at various moments over a twenty-four hour time frame. Sometimes, love seems to be hiding in the background, as it is for our main married protagonists (played vulnerably well by Catherine Keeler and David Hyde Pierce). Sometimes, love is solely based on email-induced fantasy. Sometimes, love takes on a rather narcissistic flavour (this is about people in the entertainment industry, after-all). And sometimes, love just has to do with finding descreet indiscretions to maintain a tenuous sanity. Where this film slightly faulters is that these variations on this same theme get pushed aside by the director's almost insatiable need to get inside the screwed up heads of these screwed up lives. I suppose this is to make each character humanistically interesting - which it does - but, I can see how the absence of an obvious Hollywood plot to follow would put off a lot of mainstream movie-goers. Too bad for the majority. I liked it.

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Finding Nemo
REVIEWED 06/03, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

Fish hunt nets soul. On a dare from his new friends on his first day at school, and then in childish defiance of Marlin (voiced by Albert Brooks, as his neurotically overprotective father), Nemo (Alexander Gould) boldly swims out into the open waters of the South Pacific to touch the bottom of a boat moored nearby. It seems like a fairly innocuous thing for the self-minded little clownfish to do - despite the fact that the same dangers that gave him his malformed 'lucky' left fin before birth, and took his mother and all of his four hundred or so siblings in one horrifying moment are still out there. Sharks, for one thing. Although, as Marlin soon learns, three of them are working to curb their natural appetites at A.A.-like meetings in a sunken U-boat far from Australia's shores. See, Nemo's venture beyond the reef has resulted in him being scooped up by a weekend diver as an intended birthday present for a loathsome little girl, and has landed him in his captor's Dentist office aquarium in Sydney to await that perilous fate. So, in an uncharacteristically courageous attempt to find his beloved only son, Marlin sets out on the adventure of his life, aided by the rather dopey and memory-challenged Dorey (Ellen DeGeneres) and a wealth of colorful oceanic characters.

This one's a treat. Not only do the pioneering Wizards of Animation at Pixar give us an extremely captivating underwater world full of wonderfully clever anthropomorphized critters here, but they've also managed to wrap it around an incredibly rich script about the often overlooked bond between an unsure single father and his wide-eyed son. Sure, this is obviously intended to be a kid's flick. However, as has been the case with several recent big screen 'cartoons', this enormously well-crafted movie features more than enough dialogue and plot development to keep those of us who are adults but kids at heart thoroughly involved and entertained. From the brood of hilariously goofy seagulls incessantly clucking "mine-mine-mine", to those crazy self-denying sharks with their dolphin envy, to the gang of escape-minded fish tank inmates who addictively watch and discuss the procedures of each dental appointment, this picture will undoubtedly be a winner with audiences of all ages. In the theatres, and at the video stores. Awesome.

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The Favourite Game
REVIEWED 06/03, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

Aglow in the naked passion of a nubile brunette, dashing young Montreal poet Leo Breavman (JR Bourne) lives for the purity of spontaneous discovery and the rhythmically esoteric phrases that erupt from within him faster than he can scribble them down in his beat up leather bound notebook. He's an incurable self-enamored dreamer in the 1960's who suddenly realizes that there's a big ol' world out there to fling himself and his giant smile at. So, he dumps his loving yet fragile girlfriend and drives to the epicenter of his naively fickle desires: Manhattan. Problem is, Leo quickly falls for Shell (Michèle-Barbara Pelletier), a sensual married redhead who leaves her husband for him and unwittingly inspires an inner struggle between Breavman's need to feign lament for a childhood that he's never let go of and the reality that every hypnotizing little boy has to grow up at some point.

What an awful, boring flick. Based on the 1963 novel by Leonard Cohen, this clumsily bad and somewhat depraved turkey feels like an unfinished script scrambled together by a troupe of untalented actors hoping to hit the big leagues on the Beatnik film circuit. Rife with astoundingly horrible acting and incredibly amateurish camerawork and post-production, about the only thing that's good about 'The Favourite Game' is that the theatre manager had the brains to only run it for two weeks as a late show filler. Saving the majority of moviegoers from wasting their money and ninety minutes of their evening sitting through it. This is a terrible movie, folks. Quite frankly, it's an appalling embarrassment to English-language Quebec Cinema at a time when the industry is exploding in la belle province. Of course, pretty well anything related to perpetual enfant terrible Cohen has always been either triumphantly loved or vehemently loathed by the masses over the decades, but this piece of nauseatingly vacuous and pedophilic-tinged soft porn is so overwhelmingly lousy that I'm actually surprised one of our most famous singer/songwriter/poets would be dumb enough to have anything at all to do with it. Shameful.

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Freaky Friday
REVIEWED 08/03, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

Annabell 'Anna' Coleman (Lyndsay Lohan) is the typically sullen detention room regular yet good-hearted 15 year-old first-time author of the book 'Senescence in Retrograde', with a successful California psychology practice, who... um, wait a minute. Tess Coleman (Jamie Lee Curtis) is the retentively organized widowed middle-aged bride-to-be who plays her diseased Dad's red Telecaster guitar for a garage band with her Sunset Ridge High School junior classmates and... uh, hold on. Let's go back to The House of Chiang Chinese restaurant, where this continually-at-odds mother/daughter combo first came into the possession of a pair of magical fortune cookies. It was during a fairly heated argument over Anna wanting to front 'Pink Slip' - her garage band - at the House of Blues' upcoming Wango Tango on-stage and judged audition to fame, instead of attending her Mom's swanky post-wedding rehearsal reception with "thousands of hundred year-old people" from Tess' and fiancé Ryan's (Mark Harmon) out of town relatives and friends and colleagues. Unwittingly, these women simultaneously crack open and read the powerful inscription and throw each other on a manic path of switched identities that mysteriously begins at the stroke of midnight. Both awaking in the wrong beds, wide-eyed and horrified to see the wrong face staring back at them from the wrong bedroom mirror. All the same, Tess (in Anna's body) isn't about to let anything sway her big matrimonial day, and believes she can easily glide through her eldest's school day - until her teenaged eyes see a world made up of a classroom tormenter, a vendetta-filled teacher and motorcycle-ridin' hunk. On the flipside, Anna (as Tess), suddenly armed with the keys to the family Volvo and the freedom of self-employment and a Platinum credit card, initially isn't so sure that she wants her troubled young life back...

Admittedly, I barely remember seeing the original 1975 Disney live-action romp co-starring then-overworked cinema starlet Jodie Foster (who performed in four movies released that year, ironically including her infamous age-bending role in 'Taxi Driver'), nor did I get a chance to check out the made-for-TV version cranked out a few years ago. This remake is definitely more of a contemporary overhaul, though. With little more than the title and a wry nod to one of its predecessor's supporting characters, and apparently having even less of a resemblance to the Manhattan-based novel that inspired both switcheroo fantasies, to seriously make any sort of fair comparison. What 'Freaky Friday' (2003) is, is a somewhat safe and slow-starting but over-all enjoyably fun flick where Curtis' wonderful talent as both a flawless comedic actor and experienced dramatist shines through every starring and stolen scene. Her transformation from slightly staid and disconnected professional into an irreverently free-spirited woman child is absolutely priceless. Unfortunately, sometimes making Lohan's on-screen change from teen to therapist feel strained and artificial. It's pretty obvious that, of these two stars, it's the adult who's more a kid at heart and loving every minute of this reasonably well-paced script. The only real oddity here is the adolescent love-interest, Jake (Chad Murray), who seems more like faceless two-dimensional window dressing clumsily wedged into place rather than an intentionally intrinsic force throughout these women's raucous comedy of errors. And, quite frankly, the only problem I had with this one was with the ridiculously campy and sometimes disappointingly bigoted stereotypes that were surprisingly sprinkled throughout this otherwise bright and pleasantly entertaining picture's landscape. It would've been a whole lot funnier with them left on the cutting room floor and replaced with more antics from the main cast. So, if you're looking for an enjoyable family film that has a pretty decent storyline and a fairly satisfying feel-good ending to it, I'd recommend you see this one in the theatres or rent it when it comes out. It works either way.

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Freddy Vs. Jason
REVIEWED 09/03, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

Former 'Springwood Slasher' Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) is unhappy that he's been forgotten. It's been decades since angry parents of that sleepy Ohio suburb - sparked by post-trial vigilantism - torched him and his house after Freddy managed to evade deserved punishment for torturously murdering several area children. And, almost as much time has passed since he began returning from the grave to mete out deadly revenge in the nightmares of his killers and their offspring and whomever else. Now, almost nine years after his final blood-crazed spree against those creators and actors connected with his previous horrors sent this razor-fingered ghoul straight to the bowels of Hell, Krueger has devised a way to remind the world of his devilish needs and return to his self-proclaimed rightful place as dreamland's gleefully terrifying dealer of death. Enter Jason Voorhees (Ken Kirzinger), a monstrously hulking hockey masked mass murderer who has viciously haunted the secluded woods of nearby Camp Crystal Lake, picking up where his psychotic mother - obsessively enraged over her physically disfigured eleven year-old son's believed drowning and actual disappearance - left off, slaughtering legions of rather hedonistic teenaged camp counselors and anyone else in his path, using a host of sharp pointy things from the cover of darkness on or around the time of his birthday: Friday, June 13th. Stabbed and shot, electrocuted and blown up, this lumbering killing machine had continued to rise again as the undead to hack and slash a horrifying swath of carnage since the early 1980's, until his true origins were discovered and, after a string of copycat homicides and a futuristic cybernetic accident in space, Jason's demonic soul was finally sent to Hades itself. From where he is revived once more, to wreck machete-wielding mayhem amongst the Children of Elm Street until their panic and fear is strong enough to bring Freddy back. However, just as the teenager body count begins, young Will (Jason Ritter) escapes from his erroneously charged and 'Hypnocil' drug-addled four-year quarantine at the Western Hills Psychiatric Hospital to save his estranged girlfriend Lori (Monica Keena) from the terrifying dreams she's been having about Freddy and the inevitable fate that awaits her at the hands of Jason.

I'm not going to ruin the heavily hyped yet unsurprisingly stupid ending for you, but anybody who's seen more than one installment from either of the ten-episode 'Friday the 13th' (1980) or seven-episode 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' (1984) big screen franchises will likely be able to figure out beforehand how this latest, fairly cheesy gorefest 'competition' concludes. For the uninitiated, the bulk of this relentlessly gooey and crude flick is pretty well made up of sex-tinged slayings that include rehashing the half-naked female victim-to-be running scared through the forest sad cliché, loads of drama queen teens convinced they must save everyone on their own because no authority figures can be trusted, and enough gallons of squirting fake blood to choke a ten ton vampire. If you love that sort of thing, I'd be more inclined to suggest you check yourself in to the nearest nuthouse than see this disgustingly silly romp. However, before you agree and have the nice men with the straight jacket come to cart your giggling slice-loving butt off to a cosy rubber room for three square meals of methadone, let me just say that 'Freddy vs. Jason' does offer up a wildly contrived yet convincing enough plotline within the confines of its vacuously nasty realm. The notion that the best way to previously defeat Krueger was to feed all of his surviving and potential targets a little blue pill that curbs dreaming is clever. So is the realization that evil unleashed is rather difficult to control, even by evil. What didn't work for me - apart from the numbingly sick and gross bits - was the number of missed opportunities to truly push this film into the macabre. It’s too simplistic throughout. Jason’s just left as the dumb strong 'Frankenstein'-like killer he's always been, without giving him any sort of imagination to make him or his rampage the least bit interesting to watch. At the same time, Freddy has always had the reputation for taunting his tortured prey with twisted humour, but very little of that is taken advantage of during the scenes where he's still not powerful enough to do any real damage. It’s as though director Ronny Yu ('Bride of Chucky' (1998)) was almost afraid to lift the script out of a twenty-year mire with anything fresh, beyond throwing a couple of spiffy CGI-enhanced visual effects into the mix. I'm not saying that I wanted to get to know these characters better, but I sure didn't feel as though this unscarey movie was over-all worth the price of admission. So, unless you're a diehard fan of this particularly tasteless genre, you'd likely still be better off renting Part One of the above-mentioned pictures - or just read the newspaper for a real fright.

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Far Side of the Moon
REVIEWED 06/04, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

Largely developed from prolific playwright, actor, director and former Artistic Director of the National Arts Centre in Ottawa Robert Lepage's acclaimed Quebec-based play first performed in 2000 and apparently on tour ever since, this Genie-winning subtitled French stage-to-screen 2003 adaptation features Lepage in the dual starring roles as failed college professor turned disgruntled newspaper telemarketer Phillippe and his successful Weather Channel personality younger brother André. Rife with amusing dialogue and truly intriguing visuals that sometimes overwhelm a paying audience, this relatively slow-paced and humourously solemn ninety-minute story of Phillippe's continued downward spiral after the recent death of his beloved housebound mother taking a quirky turn that results in him ending up being signed on for a symposium in Moscow is truly a refreshing insightful offering throughout. Lepage's clever use of highlights from the mid-20th Century's Space Race, juxtaposing his eldest character's nowhere existence and mundane surroundings with those of his imaginary world flooded with images seen on TV as a young teen following the Apollo astronaut programs, produces some the most delightfully memorable scenes here. A Laundromat dryer becoming a lunar lander. The snow swept historic Plains of Abraham seen as the Moon's cold shimmering landscape. Even the poster art for this picture is incredibly original, as is the imaginative official website. It was also fun to watch how the Ice Storm of 1998 was worked in to the plot, considering the number of chuckles heard from that real life drama still obviously lingering in the minds of most of those I experienced this small yet impressive cinematic accomplishment with. Sure, there are a few moments of clunky acting - specifically from co-star Marco Poulin as André's lover Carl - where you're left feeling as though you're stuck sitting through an experimental Art House matinee, but those minor stumbling blocks are thankfully brief and this movie does click out more worthwhile nuggets over-all. Céline Bonnier is entirely mesmerizing as the mother here, primarily shown through a series of boyhood flashbacks, in her completely non-speaking role. 'La face cachée de la lune' might be a tough title to find on the big screen or at your local video store, but consider yourself lucky if you do get the chance to check out this marvelously artistic visual gem. Good stuff.

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Fahrenheit 9/11
REVIEWED 06/04, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

Oscar-winning satirical gadfly writer/director Michael Moore's controversially damning and acknowledged personal smear campaign against Presidential incumbent George W. Bush does, unsurprisingly, smack of deliberate unabashed opportunism. This scruffy former Flint, Michigan auto plant worker turned New York-based Everyman millionaire and repetitiously vocal anti-corporate gluttony provocateur has in so many words reportedly declared that he wants his latest, heavily hyped two-hour offering to be the movie that sways the US vote against George Junior securing a second term as Commander in Chief in the up-coming election there. To that end, Moore's often-hilarious trademark manner of irreverently chipping away at what he perceives as the ignorantly smug and amorally greedy bourgeoisie of big business and corrupt bureaucracy seen previously in his 'Roger & Me' (1989) and even his 'Bowling for Columbine' (2002) is deliciously searing throughout here. And granted, this 2004 Cannes Film Festival double-winner is undoubtedly an extremely important catalyst for informed debate amongst homeland and worldwide moviegoers regarding the 'Dubya' administration's often-questioned motives and moral accountability before and after the tragically horrifying September 11th, 2001 al-Qaeda suicide terrorist assaults that subsequently - and dubiously, according to Moore - resulted in the return of additional United States-led military forces to Iraq, and swift Congressional passing of the rather Orwellian Patriot Act. I was initially offended by the title, knowing that it's a play on 'Fahrenheit 451' - the temperature at which book paper bursts into flames, used as the title of prolific Sci-Fi author Ray Bradbury's famous 1953 novel about a near-future fireman whose job is to burn literature - because I thought it tritely referred to those victims incinerated in the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks almost three years ago. It doesn't. However, after sitting through what ironically ends up becoming a fear mongering Watergate-like left-wing propagandist montage of suitably inflammatory newsreel footage edited by Kurt Engfehr and Todd Woody Richman, spiked with expected delightfully goofy asides as well as what sometimes plays out as suspiciously contrived theatrics, all strung together by Moore's clearly patriotic but 'Manchurian Candidate' (1962) reminiscent conspiracy-obsessed narratives presented in a format resembling tabloid television investigative journalism, I found it tough to ignore my lingering feelings that this visually impressive but overly long content miserly flick could have been much better. For example, Moore's almost Socialist-leaning disgust over White House approved preferential treatment of fleeing Saudis ends up inferring something far more diabolical than probably intended, upon checking his official website afterwards. And, if I've got it right, this screening seriously informs you that the historically brutal regime of Saddam Hussein never killed or threatened Americans prior to the States' Axis of... uh, Coalition of the Willing's recent Gulf War-like overthrow (via Afghanistan) of that dictatorship. An unfortunately revisionist statement, considering Saddam's rabidly anti-American Holy War has pretty well been in effect since the latter days of former Hollywood actor, the late Ronald Reagan's presidency. Similar brief gaffs, and this thoroughly captivating picture's decidedly unanswered posed questions, are relatively minor stumbling blocks, though. Over-all - and far beyond the flashpoint external media hype and the heavily fanned politicized heat - 'Fahrenheit 9/11' is an easily digestible and measurably intriguing offering that feels selectively inspired by longtime skeptical activist Noam Chomsky's comparable celluloid revelations and is definitely well worth renting as more an obviously biased yet thought-provoking piece of enjoyable entertainment rather than as a one-stop source for undecided voters and aspiring pundits.

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The Fog of War
REVIEWED 07/04, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

Apparently, private investigator turned acclaimed director Errol Morris ('The Thin Blue Line' (1988), 'A Brief History of Time' (1992)) was initially inspired to interview former United States Secretary of Defense and retired president of the World Bank Robert Strange McNamara for his PBS television series 'First Person' after reading the 2001 non-fiction book 'Wilson's Ghost: Reducing the Risk of Conflict, Killing, and Catastrophe in the 21st Century' co-authored by McNamara and James G. Blight, but realized there was enough footage to warrant this recent Oscar-winning 2003 feature-length offering - its complete title being 'The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara' - when that intended one-hour session ended up totaling four days. The result is an often amazing; sharply candid behind the scenes glimpse into this undoubtedly admired yet much maligned man's tumultuous tenure within American presidents John F. Kennedy's and Lynden B. Johnson's back-to-back administrations. Strange days, indeed. What Morris accomplishes here, largely relying on archival tapes and an astounding soundtrack by Phillip Glass all overdubbed with his guest's straight forward narrative, is nothing short of jaw-dropping. Allowing eighty-five year-old McNamara virtual carte blanc freedom to openly reflect upon events that have shaped his career as well as given him pause for historic evaluation within the context of offering sometimes horrifying examples of what was and wasn't learned when it mattered; from October 16th to 28th, 1962, when he grimly recounts just how dangerously close the Cuban Missile Crisis came to plunging Kennedy's military into full out nuclear war against Khrushchev's then warhead-ready Soviet Union, to his stalemate conflicts with Johnson over what he considered the wastefully prolonged handling of the Vietnam War that would ultimately lead to his break from politics. Lesson Five: 'Proportionality should be a guideline in war', where McNamara - a US Army target damage analyst during World War II - considers Roosevelt's extensive pre-atomic fire bombings of sixty-seven Japanese cities that took an estimated one hundred thousand lives in a single night in retaliation for the approximate twenty-four hundred dead from Admiral Yamamoto's 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor as overkill tantamount to war crime, and Lesson Six: 'Get the data', where he recalls his 1956 market research team dropping human skulls wrapped in various materials down stairwells for the Ford Motor Company to collect info that would eventually lead to the never before introduction of seatbelts, are definitely the most informative points made here. However, Lesson Seven: 'Belief and seeing are both often wrong', is probably the most eye-opening of his in-depth illustrations, explaining some of the questionable reasoning on both sides in the Vietnam conflict, and appropriately demonstrating the profound (and timely) meaning behind this fascinating hundred minute picture's title. While the stylish presentation does cut through a lot of stark dry reality for a paying audience wanting to easily remain thoroughly captivated, 'The Fog of War' does cover territory that you really need to be interested in for the most part. Making this impressively chilling first-person cinematic examination well worth checking out as a must-see rental for war buffs and fans of superior documentaries, but it's not particularly entertaining in general terms and probably won't be everyone's cup of tea.

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Facing Windows
REVIEWED 09/04, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

Constantly frustrated with feeling trapped in the throes of her failing nine-year marriage, full-time poultry processing plant accountant and self-doubting yet talented amateur pastry chef Giovanna (Giovanna Mezzogiorno, 'Del perduto amore' (1998), 'Ilaria Alpi - Il più crudele dei giorni' (2002)) finds herself being the bad guy when her soft-hearted night shift worker husband Filippo can't bring himself to evict a confused and lost elderly gentleman they initially try to help by bringing into their small apartment home while the police take their time investigating his true origins. Simone (wonderfully played in his last film role by the legendary Massimo Girotti (1918-2003), 'Desiderio' (1943), 'Last Tango in Paris' (1972)) is an enigmatic, incredibly charismatic old man in his fine wool suit and camel vest, apparently crippled with the onset of Alzheimer's disease and haunted by a heroic but terrible past that stole his secret love sixty years ago. A twenty-nine year-old mother of two precocious children, Giovanna is rightfully concerned for her family's safety around Simone, but slowly becomes drawn to his wretched sadness; particularly after reading a touching love letter found with a few small mementos in his coat pocket, and ends up caring for him, as she and Lorenzo (Raoul Bova, 'Under the Tuscan Sun' (2003), 'Alien Vs. Predator' (2004)) - Giovanna's swarthy bank manager bachelor neighbour and object of her own secret affections - are pulled together by the intrigue of Simone's mysterious identity. 'La Finestra di fronte' (its original title) is an incredibly bright and compassionately introspective masterpiece that immediately welcomes a paying audience into its shadowy layered world of unspoken regret without feeling the least bit maudlin or depressing throughout. This is quite simply a stellar cast of ensemble players, with Mezzogiorno aptly carrying the majority of its approximately one hundred-minute screen time as her character develops from being a relentlessly argumentative nag into a thoroughly compelling woman reclaiming her dreams and semblance of happiness in her life. It's not that Filippo (played by Filippo Nigro) is a bad husband and neglectful father. It's just that the beauty of "Having love grow, when it's started as passion," that Simone longingly cites, isn't always easy to nurture, as Giovanna comes to realize. Wonderful. Actor Serra Yilmaz is absolutely hilarious here as Giovanna's fairly droll friend Eminè encouraging her towards infidelity with the tall and handsome Lorenzo, in this fabulously rich with intensifying emotion; subtitled 2003 Italian offering from award-winning Italy-based Turkish ex-patriot co-writer/director Ferzan Ozpetek ('Harem Suare' (1999), 'Le Fate ignoranti' (2001)). Sure, the ending does feel a bit cobbled together and tends to tilt towards becoming a kind of Chick Flick contrived melodrama at times, but this is definitely a worthwhile and memorably fresh story over-all. One that truly deserves attention from mature moviegoers aching for captivating foreign drama on a more personal scale - even if you're not trying to impress your date. I half-expected the screen to burst into flames during the scene where Giovanna and Lorenzo finally fall into each other's arms in the heat of carnal hunger. No wonder this was a homeland hit. Check out 'Facing Windows' as an immensely satisfying picture featuring some completely impressive performances throughout, all beautifully captured by cinematographer Gianfilippo Corticelli. Awesome.

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Festival Express
REVIEWED 09/04, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

"Great North Special, would you all board; You can't find a ride like that no more, The night the chariot swung down low; Ninety-nine children had a chance to go." Those are the opening lyrics of 'Might as Well', co-written and recorded by the late Guru of Psychedelic Rock, Jerry Garcia (1942-95), for his third solo album 'Reflections' (1976) and is a tune that was reportedly about The Trans Continental Pop Festival that he and the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin (1943-70) & The Full Tilt Boogie Band, and headliners The Band - among several others - took part in almost a year after those three groups performed at the original Woodstock Music and Art Festival, at Max Yasgur's six hundred-acre dairy farm in Bethel, New York, in 1969. The Buddy Guy Blues Band, Mashmakan, Sha-Na-Na, The Flying Burrito Bros, and Canada's Ian & Sylvia Tyson with The Great Speckled Bird nicely round things out. Referred to as 'Canada's Woodstock', and more commonly known as Festival Express 1970, this twelve-car three-stop, sixteen hundred and eighty-nine mile CN Rail trek, traveling jam session and non-stop party - that began with a star-studded two-day concert at Toronto's CNE Stadium starting on June 27th and ended with an equally rousing July 4-5th show at Calgary's McMahon Stadium - was the brain child of promoters Ken Walker and Thor Eaton, and is what Emmy-nominated director Bob Smeaton's ('The Beatles Anthology' (1995)) surprisingly intimate and hugely impressive ninety-minute documentary delivers with actual, never before seen footage apparently culled from a whopping seventy-five hours of archival 16mm film that Walker hired cinematographer Peter Biziou (who later won an Oscar for 'Mississippi Burning' (1988)) to shoot onboard and on site. Wow. It's easy to compare this delightfully entertaining romp to the famous Academy Award-winning 'Woodstock' (1970) and the equally electrifying 'The Last Waltz' (1978), but what truly makes 'Festival Express' an over-all captivating feature aren't so much the similarly grainy and split screen yet wonderful live performances showcased throughout. Many of them are awesome, but it's that a paying audience is essentially given a back stage pass to spend time with this host of overwhelming talent just being themselves, experimenting and growing with their peers, while; as one participant fondly recalls during the contemporary interview snippets intermittently spliced in, "Careening across the Canadian countryside" from Ontario to Alberta, with an additional planned show in Winnipeg, Manitoba and an hilarious unscheduled 'liquor run' in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Particularly noteworthy are those carefree off stage moments featuring Joplin, whose incredibly effervescent presence and soulful whiskey voice would be silenced too soon by a fatal drug overdose a short three months later that year, on October 4th. This movie is an absolute treasure. In many ways, it's probably one of the most important pictures of its kind because of what it successfully captures, how and where it was shot, and the fact that there's even more to the story left untold. Cited angry protestors storming the gates, Calgary's mayor at the time James Rodney 'Rod' Winter Sykes joining the cries demanding free entry for everyone, and a subsequent feud between twenty-two year-old Walker and his Eaton's department store chain heir business partner - and the originally intended movie's primary producer Willem Poolman - ended up making the reels of this $534,000-losing event also lose the financing needed for its planned theatrical release soon after the concerts. Leaving them either scattered or safely forgotten within the National Archives of Canada here in Ottawa over the next twenty-five years, until the long and arduous task of discovering and editing it together could begin. Lucky for fans and moviegoers, that following ten-year labour of love is over and we're all invited to join this "One long party from front to end" that Jerry sang about almost thirty years ago. Definitely make the effort to check out this incredibly important historical musical experience on the biggest screen with the best sound system you can find, when it rolls into a theatre near you.

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The Forgotten
REVIEWED 09/04, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

Clinically diagnosed as suffering from extreme distress after her only pregnancy resulted in a miscarriage, New York editor Telly Paretta (four-time Oscar nominee Julianne Moore; 'Hannibal' (2001), 'Laws of Attraction' (2004)) is convinced she has a son. Had a son. A bright, nine year-old blue-eyed boy who she and her husband Jim (Anthony Edwards) named Sam at birth. She doesn't care what her weary spouse tells her, or what her patient psychiatrist, Dr. Munse (Gary Sinise; 'Ransom' (1996), 'The Green Mile' (1999)), helps her to realize during their slowly revealing grief therapy sessions. What Telly believes is the truth, because she can still clearly recall Sam's laughter. His playful manner. And, her devastating loss, when Sam and eight other children were reportedly killed - as headlined in newspaper clippings that mysteriously no-longer exist on record - in a Questair twin engine plane crash one year, two months and six days ago. She remembers. So, why have all of the Paretta's cherished photos and home videos of their young son disappeared? Why can't Ash Correll (Dominic West; 'Chicago' (2002), 'Mona Lisa Smile' (2003)), the single father of Sam's playground friend Lauren, remember Telly's son or anything about actually having a daughter at all? Who's powerful enough to steal or alter or erase his memories? The National Security Agents, whose unmarked black Fords are appearing with more frequency in their Eastside Manhattan neighbourhood? Or, does that unassuming man watching from the shadows with his eerie green eyes have anything to do with it? Well, this surprisingly intriguing yet extremely slow-paced abduction conspiracy flick from director Joseph Ruben ('Dreamscape' (1984), 'Sleeping with the Enemy' (1991)) definitely takes a more human approach in examining that question here. Much like 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' (1977) focused on how the arguable existence of extra-terrestrials interested in spiriting away Earth's inhabitants effected the family members left behind, 'The Forgotten' springs from a similar yet slightly more malevolent well, as Moore's and West's visibly exhausted characters inch closer to piecing together what's going on under a seemingly iron clad invisible veil of lies and subterfuge tenuously maintained by the government. In that way, this hundred and three-minute movie is an incredibly captivating offering, with a host of deeply believable performances from this capable cast of players. What's truly fresh about Gerald Di Pego's ('Phenomenon' (1996), 'Instinct' (1999)) ingeniously different screenplay is that there aren't a lot of overt special effects or the slightest glimpse of little grey aliens to divert your attention away from these fractured people wrestling with an unknown threat that has systematically eradicated any verification of what they believe. It's only when they get too close and begin convincing others of what Paretta and Correll fearfully suspect that people are violently ripped from sight - in a series of incredibly eye-popping scenes that are unbelievable unless seen on the big screen. Incredibly chilling. Yes, this picture does borrow heavily from the tensely daunting atmosphere seen in the early thrillers by director M. Night Shyamalan, and that does make it a slightly butt-numbing sit through at times, but this one's an immensely satisfying experiment in presenting science fiction in a completely new manner that's well worth the price of admission for moviegoers tired of the familiar laser blasting monster invasion force from outer space this genre has clicked out for decades. Awesome.

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First Daughter
REVIEWED 09/04, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

Samantha (Katherine Noelle 'Katie' Holmes; 'Wonder Boys' (2000), 'Pieces of April' (2003)) enters her first year at college, three thousand miles away from her overly protected life in Washington, DC as the only daughter of a fictitious incumbent US President Mackenzie (Michael Keaton; 'Batman Returns' (1992), 'Jackie Brown' (1997)) and hopeful for a new world of experiences as a normal person. A normal person who just so-happens to be instantly recognized by everyone, is continuously shadowed by paparazzi, and is under constant protection by four burly Secret Service agents. Okay, not so normal. However, Samantha is determined to stand her ground and fit in as best as she can, with the help of attention-seeking room mate Mia (newcomer Amerie Rogers) and a budding romance with dorm R.A. James Lansome (former Manchester Giants basketballer Marc Blucas; 'Pleasantville' (1998), 'The Alamo' (2004)), in this delightfully light hearted, contemporary coming of age comedy from Cannes-winning actor and award-nominated director Forest Whitaker (who also helmed 'Hope Floats' (1998) and 'Waiting to Exhale' (1995)). Holmes is marvelous here, carrying the majority of this enjoyably captivating hundred and fifteen-minute teen romp with outstanding dramatic poise and wonderfully natural comedic timing, interjecting playful moments of apparent spontaneity throughout that truly serve to give a paying audience solid reasons to care about her character. Awesome. Sure, it's a little strange that Samantha wears earrings and make up at all hours - particularly during her midnight snack attacks in the White House kitchen - but I guess that's all part of her attempting to portray this political debutante as a girlish princess habitually inculcated by the heavy handed preening of her life long gilded cage, while she begins to figure out who and what she's all about on this humourous road to freedom and self-discovery. I'm not going to ruin the fairly obvious plot twist, but the dynamics between Holmes and Blucas are absolutely spell binding at times here. Frankly, the only real problem I had with 'First Daughter' is that some of the editing during the third act felt conspicuously disjointed and lazily cobbled together compared to the rest of this over-all tightly spun 'fish out of water' tale. Thankfully, Whitaker relies more on building these characters along their individually focused and intersecting paths than attempting to pander to a younger crowd with a lot of embarrassing sight gags and formulaic frat house humour. So, when the story does stumble a bit, enthusiasm for these onscreen scholars to reach their happy endings sustains your interest 'til the hugely satisfying closing credits. The structure of 'First Daughter' does feel a lot like a Disney film from thirty years ago, but this perfectly cast troupe deftly breaths new life into a potentially pedantic screening through their enormously well-crafted performances and a lot of good clean, reasonably wholesome fun. Definitely check it out as a worthwhile family flick that wonderfully captures Holmes' astounding range of talent and undeniable screen presence.

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Friday Night Lights
REVIEWED 10/04, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

Based on a true story, and adapted from 1987 Pulitzer Prize co-winning newspaper journalist H.G. 'Buzz' Bissinger's 1991 non-fiction novel 'Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream', comes director Peter Berg's ('Very Bad Things' (1998), 'The Rundown' (2003)) often times grainy, documentary-style telling of Odessa, Texas' Permian high school football team - the real life Permian Panthers - and their fairly tough season towards the 1988 American State Championship Finals. A win not only proudly brought home to that dusty and secluded, economically stalled Northern oil town four previous times out of the team's eight appearances until then, but a trophy of all-encompassing importance that Coach Gary Gaines (Billy Bob Thornton; 'Sling Blade' (1996), 'Bad Santa' (2003)) and his strutting seventeen year-old Senior Quarterback Michael 'Boobie' Myles (Derek Luke; 'Antwone Fisher' (2002), 'Spartan' (2004)) are relentlessly reminded is the only thing that matters to most of their fairly fanatical, overbearing fans. The psychologically frail housebound mother of team mate Mike Winchell (Lucas Black; 'Ghosts of Mississippi' (1996), 'Cold Mountain' (2003)) understands, tutoring her somewhat simpleminded son on the finer points of the game whenever possible. Former State Champ Charles Billingsley (singer Tim McGraw) and thunderously abusive alcoholic father of fumbling teenaged player Don (Garrett Hedlund; 'Troy' (2004)) knows first hand just how important that win is to Odessa. So, it's no wonder that the severe knee injury Myles sustains during their second game isn't enough to stop him from wanting to suit up - much to Gaines' torn skepticism about putting his star back in versus facing being run out of town if the Panthers' current surprising winning streak falls short of taking them all the way to the Astrodome in Dallas. Admittedly, I'm not a big US Football League follower, but this two hour and eight minute offering does thump out some incredibly compelling on-field footage - reportedly edited with actual clips of that team's physically grueling games - that even I couldn't help but be completely awe-struck by. Those scenes are absolutely astounding. However, 'Friday Night Lights' desperately fails as a memorably successful movie because of Berg's and co-writer David Aaron Cohen's apparent disinterest in presenting cohesive enough secondary stories featuring these enormously stressed out characters for the most part. There's no tangible access point to this town, or these players. As though the actual lives of the key people involved really aren't important enough for a paying audience to care about, so you're never really allowed to get close enough to Gaines, Winchell or Billingsley and their individual viewpoints vaguely touched upon. Sure, there's an effort to cobble together a fairly obvious aside for Luke to eat up the screen as Boobie struggles with the obvious repercussions of likely never playing football again, but this picture feels more like an unprepared experiment whenever the camera turns away from the local Ratliff Stadium, taking you into a series of over-all aggravatingly meandering segments that might have worked with an established groundwork already in place for those snippets to follow through from, and if this was an actual documentary and not actors merely playing real people in a movie that wants to be something other than a conventional movie. It doesn't work. Except for cinematographer Tobias A. Schliessler's captured eye candy of seeing these gridiron kids pummel each other, this flick falls apart. Unless you're a big fan of those high-powered rock 'em sock 'em type sports reels seen on TV, I'd be more inclined to suggest you steer clear of this one until your local bar rents it as visually interesting background filler between real games. Disappointing.

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Finding Neverland
REVIEWED 11/04, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

Renowned London-based Scottish playwright James Matthew Barrie (1860-1937) (Johnny Depp; 'Don Juan DeMarco' (1995), 'Pirates of the Caribbean' (2003)) needs a new play on the heels of disastrous reviews for his current, 1903 production, 'Little Mary'. Partly to appease his producer, American-born Charles Frohman (Dustin Hoffman; 'Rain Man' (1988), 'Runaway Jury' (2003)), but more as a way of articulating Barrie's newfound and whimsically playful relationship with George, Jack, Peter and Michael - the four rather precocious young sons of recently widowed Sylvia Llewelyn-Davies (Kate Winslet; 'Titanic' (1997), 'The Life of David Gale' (2003)) - since first meeting them in Kensington Gardens that same summer. Quietly jotting down their wildly imagined adventures on the Wild West plains and the vast high seas of Sylvia's small backyard as inspirational notes in his leather-bound journal, much to chagrin of former stage actress and his steadily drifting wife Mary (Radha Mitchell; 'Pitch Black' (2000), 'Man on Fire' (2004)), and to the simmering disapproval of the Llewelyn-Davies' rich socialite matriarch, Madam Emma du Maurier (Julie Christie; 'Heaven Can Wait' (1978), 'Troy' (2004)). Nevertheless, James quite enjoys his visits with the boys and their encouraging mother. It lets him escape. Become a boy himself again. And, results in him enthusiastically presenting a somewhat skeptical Frohman with the idea for his new play about a boy who never grows old, named Peter Pan. However, an unresolved illness and growing talk of scandal soon unsettle Barrie's enjoyable time with his adopted family, and surmounting pressures force him to withdraw towards preparing for 'Peter Pan's opening night at the Duke of York's Theatre. Wow. This delightfully retooled, relatively low key pseudo-biographical slice of life based on Manhattan's Workshop Theater Company's 1998 play 'The Man Who Was Peter Pan', written by playwright Allan Knee and adapted for the screen by colleague David Magee, truly is a marvel. Sure, a wild amount of creative license has been taken with the facts surrounding former magazine writer, novelist, dramatist and Chancellor of Edinburgh University J.M. Barrie and the Llewelyn-Davies clan throughout. Sylvia's husband Arthur actually died of cancer in 1908 - the same year that Mary apparently divorced James, and two years before Sylvia passed away - and Barrie had already cited Peter Pan in his twenty-four chapter book, 'The Little White Bird', published in 1902, for instance. However, these glaring inconsistencies with reality do nothing to diminish a paying audience's enjoyment of German-born director Marc Forster's ('Loungers' (1995), 'Monster's Ball' (2001)) simple yet absolutely captivating tale here. Simply because this superior fantasy is undeniably entertaining, giving you clear insight into these deeply intriguing people throughout. Depp is perfectly cast in the lead role as this slightly mischievous man-child injured by loss and failure yet relentlessly playful and charming. You can easily imagine the real Barrie, who reportedly told longtime friend H.G. Wells, "It is all very well to be able to write books, but can you waggle your ears?", saying and doing a lot of the things presented by this hundred and fourteen minute feature's extremely well-crafted script. In fact, this entire cast pulls in incredibly heartfelt performances, including Winslet and Christie, and particularly Freddie Highmore (as Peter - the boy, not Peter Pan, first played by actress Nina Boucicault (Kelly Macdonald) in 1904). Being given glimpses of pre-WWI stage production is definitely a fun addition, completely sidestepping any familiar shades of the famous 1953 Disney animated musical or its cinematic contemporaries. And, it's hilarious seeing Hoffman; who played Pan's maniacal pirate captain nemesis in 'Hook' (1991), wrestle with this play's absurdities as a slowly cash-strapped producer. Absolutely check out this completely satisfying family flick on the big screen or as a truly inspired and worthwhile, albeit historically inaccurate, escapist rental worth keeping.

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Flight of the Phoenix
REVIEWED 12/04, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

Mere hours after the sudden and unceremonious Amacore headquarters closing of their remote Gobi Desert test oil station, a small crew of grunts and their equipment are airborne and homeward bound in Captain Frank Towns' (Dennis Quaid; 'Dreamscape' (1984), 'Frequency' (2000)) sluggish twin engine C-119 cargo plane. Heading over the vast, wind swept dunes; over the scorched tail of the Himalayas towards a refueling rig in the outskirts of Mongolia, and directly into a massive hurricane storm field that ends up brutally slamming Towns' silver bird to the ground two hundred miles off course. Possibly into the outskirts of China. With no radio, and precious few supplies of usable food and water, their initial consensus is to hunker down and wait for the corporation to send an eventual rescue party. Even after one of them - a socially challenged aircraft designer stranded at the station while on sabbatical, named Elliott (Giovanni Ribisi; 'That Thing You Do!' (1996), 'Cold Mountain' (2003)) - suggests they cobble together a new plane from the wreckage and rescue themselves. Frank just isn't convinced. That is, until he unwittingly discovers horrifying evidence that trigger happy nomadic smugglers might be roving nearby, and he realizes that it's too early to give up trying to escape their plight and too late to do anything else. Predominantly based on the famous Jimmy Stewart (1908-1997), Sir Richard Attenborough 1965 classic than adapted directly from Brit author Trevor Dudley Smith's (aka Elleston Trevor) original 1964 novel, 'The Flight of the Phoenix', this decidedly updated survival adventure serves up some incredibly intense, crowd pleasing action scenes throughout. Don Zimmerman's editing is simply outstanding, with the sometimes eye-popping special effects and clever sound mixing truly enhancing every nail biting moment of sheer chaos that thunders over this motley band of lost souls. Unfortunately, director John Moore ('Behind Enemy Lines' (2001)) ends up giving a paying audience little more than a formulaic pastiche of underwhelming caricatures facing vaguely insurmountable odds that feel familiar and contrived for the most part. Sure, Quaid and his co-stars do obviously try to pull off reasonably compelling performances from Scott Frank's and Edward Burns' apparently unfinished screenplay here, but their luke warm tensions under the blazing Sun play out more like those of precocious school children abandoned at a Grand Canyon tourist spot without enough apple juice and colouring books. Failing to instill any lasting or compelling emotional interest between the explosions and gunplay that ensues. Giving you little reason to care whether these characters live or die, or if they actually manage to salvage a workable mode of escape. You're never brought in to this movie's world, or told why they didn't just steal those nasty nomads' camels and gear. Sure, Ribisi's version of Asperger's Syndrome is probably the only dramatically captivating highlight throughout this hundred and thirty-minute disaster, but even he betrays your interest in knowing more about the big picture involving their cannibalized invention during its tenuous construction, once he's done waving a sketch in the air and rubbing everyone the wrong way. Simply bask in awe of the sparkling craft that is natural screen presence, for that should truly suffice, I guess. It doesn't. Yawn.

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Fat Albert
REVIEWED 12/04, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

Just as ever-jovial teen Fat Albert (voiced by Kenan Thompson; 'D3: The Mighty Ducks' (1996), 'Barbershop 2' (2004)) is called in to help his fun-lovin' gang of friends topple some rivals during a pile-on game of buck-buck, they're sent running from their North Philadelphia Junkyard playground with the more serious problem of trying to convince young Danielle (voiced by Raven-Symone) to stay in school. It's an episode from the famous animated TV series for kids that Ardsley High School student Doris Henderson (Kyla Pratt; 'The Baby-Sitters Club' (1995), 'Dr. Dolittle 2' (2001)) has probably already seen a hundred times on the TV Land Channel, but she doesn't care. Doris is too upset over how bad her days have gone, ever since... well, nevermind. Not being invited to the team's head cheerleader Heather's birthday block party tonight, except as an apparent tag along charity case by her popular adopted sister Lauri (Dania Ramirez; 'Little Black Book' (2004)), was today's rotten news. Watching that cheery old cartoon doesn't help Doris stop crying - even when her tears hit the TV remote control in her hand. Even when a teardrop then falls from the pale orange sky over Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids' cartoon inner-city neighbourhood, magically causing a ripple to appear in their two dimensional world. Opening a portal, through which these animated characters can see that Doris is in trouble in the real world. And so, true to his spirit, where ever there's a problem to be solved, Fat Albert can't stand by and do nothing. He jumps through that strange window, into the Henderson's comfortable North Philadelphia home's livingroom. Just as quickly followed by his pals Rudy (Shedrack Anderson III; 'Warriors of Virtue 2' (2002)), Mushmouth (Jermaine Williams; 'Bulworth' (1998)), Dumb Donald (Marques Houston), Bucky (Alphonso McAuley), Old Weird Harold (Aaron Frazier) and Bill (Keith Robinson). All materializing as real life teenagers who look and act and - hey, hey, hey - talk just like they do on the TV show. Leaving Bill's younger brother Russell (voiced by Jeremy Suarez) behind to watch the junk yard a little longer than they'd planned, when they mistakenly become trapped here - and end up following Doris to school, the Mall, and Heather's party - until another episode of their cartoon is rebroadcast and the portal back to a lovestruck and increasingly hesitant Fat Albert's (Thompson) cartoon home reopens. Based on the iconic Filmation/Bill Cosby Productions 1972-1989 animated series that first aired on CBS - reportedly originally adapted from actor/author/funnyman William Henry 'Bill' Cosby Jr.'s early comedy albums and stand up routines, and spawning two seasonal TV specials, a litany of collectable merchandise, and a now-defunct string of fast food franchises here in Canada that many jokingly mispronounced as "Fatal Bert's" - this surprisingly entertaining yet vaguely corny flick intended for young moviegoers and (maybe) their parents is a purely enjoyable romp from start to finish. While slight changes have been made to Fat Albert's trademark robust girth, and the Cosby Kids don't playfully squabble as much amongst themselves as they did, the spirit of that fondly memorable episodal morality series is clearly obvious throughout. My only lasting problem with co-writers Cosby's and Charles Kipps' thoroughly light hearted screenplay is that they didn't find a way to work in The Brown Hornet - the space hero cartoon that they religiously watched, as kids from my generation religiously watched them every week - as more than just one of several recognizably chuckle-making props. Yeah, I was a big fan. So, I was hugely relieved when all of the usual dreads and expected aggravations felt before checking out a new remake of one of my childhood favourites were proved completely unfounded while sitting through director Joel Zwick's offering here. When you leave the theatre, as I did afterwards, hearing grown ups and kids sing, "Na na na, gonna have a good time," all arguements against it become moot. The real critics have spoken, the magic is still contageous. This live action ensemble cast truly does an incredible job of bringing the gang to life as a believable foundation from which each of them can in some way be affected by our alternate contemporary world. Sure, there are soft shades of 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit' (1988) and 'Pleasantville' (1998) evident in the story arc, but this one's definitely a far less edgy fish out of water fable. It's actually quite fascinating how the view point of this hundred-minute film seamlessly shifts from a simple Toon version of reality to a slightly formulaic Teen sitcom version, and then eventually transforms into a more maturely dramatic representation of life - related to Doris' actual source of sadness - that wonderfully unfolds for a paying audience during the final reel. Fabulous. Definitely check out this enjoyably light hearted, wonderfully crafted blast from the past that's been tenderly updated to thoroughly delight viewers of all ages.

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Fever Pitch
REVIEWED 04/05, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

When Boston-based Ryan Myerson's ambitious star number cruncher Lindsey Meeks (Drew Barrymore; 'Charlie's Angels' (2000), '50 First Date' (2004)) met High School geometry teacher Ben Wrightman (Jimmy Fallon; 'Anything Else' (2003), 'Taxi' (2004)), she had no idea how fanatical he was. No, he doesn't keep a collection of his nail and hair clippings stored in his bedroom closet. He's not an axe murderer or a celebrity stalker, or anything like that. Since childhood, thirty year-old Ben has been a Red Sox baseball fan. A big, big fan. Obsessive to the extreme. Posters and pictures, badges and memorabilia pack the walls of his small apartment. Most of his shirts are official player jerseys. His phone is a catcher's glove. Ben is fanatical about the Sox, prizing his inherited box seats behind the hometown team's Fenway Park dugout and religiously spending every March break in Florida during spring training. Unfortunately for Lindsey, she's fallen in love with him without sharing his love for the game. She's tried. Cutting into her busy work schedule to sit through the season with him, buying up books about the notoriously cursed history of American Baseball's most famous losing franchise, but she just doesn't get it. Making it all the more difficult for Meeks to understand why Wrightman would rather follow ball players he's never met than follow her to romantic Paris on a last minute business trip where she hopes to tell him some important news. Her friends don't help much, comparing Ben to their far more successful catches and pointing to Lindsey's stressfully uneasy adoption of his sports minded passions over her own rising, workaholic career. It's all so confusing...

Reportedly based on writer Nick Hornby's 1998 book about his own obsession with soccer, sibling team directors Bobby and Peter Farrelly's ('There's Something About Mary' (1998), 'Shallow Hal' (2001)) decidedly light romantic comedy is a slightly disjointed, hundred and seven-minute offering over-all. In some ways, this one feels a lot like a close cousin to 'Anger Management' (2003) - particularly in the closing scenes - but, with an unnerving strangeness that's sometimes tough to pinpoint. It's as though none of these actors are actually in character, because they barely seem to respond to each other's otherwise snappy, jokes-filled lines like people would normally do. So, you're left watching in the dark while they apparently wait for the other cast member to stop talking so that they can chew out a punch line before lunch break. 'Fever Pitch' seems at first glance to be the perfect movie for Fallon to star in, and yet he fails to bring anything to the set that might make his character likable or convince a paying audience to care what happens to Ben. Barrymore easily steals the show here on sheer familiar screen presence, but her efforts are marginalized by Lowell Ganz's and Babaloo Mandel's ludicrously mediocre screenplay, cobbling together a few notable exceptions when the Farrelly Brothers and this script seem to get out of the way. It's a shame, really. This flick can't decide if it wants to be a cinematic shrine to the Boston Red Sox - bloated with archival footage and player cameos that systematically bench these actors - or a movie that anyone can enjoy. Unlike 'Mr. 3000' (2004), you definitely need to love baseball in order to stay awake through most of it. Rent this one as a moderately funny second or third choice, but don't expect to remember much after the closing credits.

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Fantastic Four
REVIEWED 07/05, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

"I can't live like this," astronaut Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis) grumbles to himself. The ocean breeze washing over his massive hulk, and the picturesque view from that lone edge of the Brooklyn Bridge, bring little relief to his brooding turmoil. The experiment had gone wrong. It was supposed to be a ground breaking study of how irradiated cosmic particles might have affected life millions of years ago. The experiment was supposed to advance science. Cure cancer. What it did was turn Grimm into a three-fingered, six hundred pound freak. It had turned his skin to stone. He needed to be alone. Perched on that cold girder like a living gargoyle, he needed to figure out what to do. The horrified look in his girlfriend Debbie's (Laurie Holden) eyes had shattered his heart. Ben's longtime friend Professor Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd) sure had all the brilliant answers when they rocketed to Von Doom Industries' orbiting space station four days ago. Even now, after all that's happened, Reed could still probably come up with some kinda high falootin' mathematical formula to explain how that cosmic dust storm that had unexpectedly ripped through their high tech satellite had altered their DNA. The others didn't seem to be affected, but they were inside. Ben barely made it back to the air lock from outer space, taking the storm's full brunt. Leaving him like this. A big orange stone man. Brilliant scientist Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon) sat in the darkness of his opulent penthouse office, quietly tracing his finger along the narrow, disfiguring gash on his brow that Reed Richards' foolish experiment had given him. It felt cold. Like steel. The space station accident had ruined his corporate empire's plans for world domination. He was bankrupt. Victor had personally accompanied Richards and Grimm to his orbiting platform, taking along his lovely Director of Genetics Research Sue Storm (Jessica Alba) and hand picking their shuttle's pilot, Sue's brother Johnny (Chris Evans). Everything should have gone perfectly. That investment would have returned trillions of dollars for decades to come. Richards' flawed calculations were to blame. Victor could feel his skin changing, becoming powerful, mutating into organic metal from him being exposed to the cosmic storm. Nothing could stop him now. Nothing, except Reed and his superhuman freak show of do-gooders being applauded on the evening news. Reed had stolen his company, his dashing looks, and the woman he planned to marry, and had come out a hero? Vengeance pulsed through Victor's steely veins. Dr. Doom now knew what needed to be done...

Adapted from one of the longest-running super hero team franchises in comic book history, first published in 1961 and originally conceived by Marvel Comics icon turned independent institution Stan Lee ('Mallrats' (1995), 'The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement' (2004)) - who also has a cameo here - and Superman co-creator Joe Simon's former creative partner and legendary comic illustrator Jacob 'Jack Kirby' Kurtzberg (1917-1994), this enjoyably fun and moderately inspired cinematic retelling from director Tim Story ('Barbershop' (2002), 'Taxi' (2004)) is reportedly the second movie to be made. The first film, rumoured to have been produced in 1994 as a cheap ploy to primarily hold on to the movie rights and cash in on the subsequent ten-year development of this big budget 2005 version, starred Brit actor Alex Hyde-White and the 1980 Miss USA Pageant's Miss Nebraska, Rebecca Staab, and was never formally released. This time around, fans and summer moviegoers are treated to a sporadically delightful Sci-Fi actioner featuring an impressive main cast with many of these players obviously having a blast with their bizarrely mutated characters. Unlike 'X-Men' (2000) or 'Batman Begins' (2005), where the coolness factor heavily relies on hugely choreographed fight sequences thumping across a cataclysmic CGI backdrop of relentless devastation, 'Fantastic Four' takes its cue from 'Spider-Man 2' (2004) and 'Constantine' (2005), carefully attending to fleshing out some of these roles and developing their individual story arcs dramatically. They argue, and yet pull together. The best part is that this script retains the notion that not everyone wants their new found super powers, as in the comic series' beginning. Michael Chiklis ('Wired' (1989), 'Soldier' (1998)) easily steals the spotlight as lovable galoot and unceremoniously demoted astronaut Ben Grimm, playing double duty in virtually unrecognizable full-body make-up as this Four's self-loathing orangey pile of rocks enforcer The Thing. His thoroughly realized performance, along with that of Chris Evans' ('Not Another Teen Movie' (2001), 'Cellular' (2004)) hilariously arrogant hot shot Johnny Storm/The Human Torch, definitely pull an incredibly contagious abundance of personality out of Michael France's ('Cliffhanger (1993), 'The Punisher' (2004)) and Mark Frost's (who wrote for television's 'The Six Million Dollar Man' (1974-1978) and 'Twin Peaks' (1990-1991)) potentially superb screenplay. Where this flick starts to wobble a bit is with the remaining on-screen crew. Yes, I realize that Professor Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd; '102 Dalmatians' (2000); 'King Arthur' (2004)) wants to keep a low profile while he attempts to reverse the effects of the cosmic storm that altered them, but wouldn't you be playfully curious about your super stretchiness if you were Mr. Fantastic? Jessica Alba's ('Never Been Kissed' (1999), 'Sin City' (2005)) Sue Storm is intriguingly feminine for this genre where women are normally portrayed as tough boys with sexy cleavage, and it's a great touch that she's squeamish about stripping to become Invisible Girl, but those, uh, see-through scenes are surprisingly mediocre - even when compared to the Claude Rains' classic 'The Invisible Man' (1933). Lastly, sadly, their nefarious super villain counterpart, Victor Von Doom (Australia's Julian McMahon), isn't a believable enough antagonist and drags his heels throughout most of the last half. Although 'Fantastic Four' is a great summer flick full of humourous dialogue, awesome effects and thoughtful pathos, its glaring weaknesses and somewhat lazily shot importance-of-teamwork finale does tend to stifle the over-all momentum, making it more of a rental choice than something worth spending time with at the theatre.

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Four Brothers
REVIEWED 08/05, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

Bobby Mercer (Mark Wahlberg) had been a long time gone from these broke down Detroit City mean streets he knew like the back of his hand as a punk kid. Those grey, crumbling buildings under a heavy, solemn sky. These narrow suburban avenues, gouged into the geography of another lifetime. The snow, like ash, covering everything that lives here, like a split opened body bag of splintered bones. His drive through this decrepit graveyard of memories brought him no joy. The news that had brought Bobby back still filled him with unspoken grief. His beloved adopted mother's funeral lasted an unbearable eternity. But, there it was. Evelyn Mercer. Her name carved in flat granite. Her closed wooden coffin, cold to the touch. Gone. Taken from him and his three brothers - also adopted by her, Evelyn, Mom, when they were kids - in a senseless act of violence at the Highland Park corner store at ten fifty-eight at night. He and Angel (Tyrese Gibson) and Jeremiah (Andre Benjamin) and Jack (Garrett Hedlund) all saw the surveillance tape. She was there to buy a turkey for Thanksgiving. The two gunmen had walked in, they had taken the money from the cash register drawer, they had unloaded a rifle blast into the clerk, and then they had turned their fury upon her. Mercilessly. On Mom. Without remorse. It was an execution. Looking into each other's eyes, numb and silent, the Mercer boys vowed to avenge this crime against the only person who had taken them in and had ever given a damn about them. The first main guy to give them a name was easy enough to track down. He should be able to walk again in a couple of weeks. With crutches. The night roads were slick as Bobby's car slammed after the escaping shooters who had killed his mother in cold blood at point blank range. With every click of the rising speedometer, with every sharp crack from the barrel of Angel's gun punching another bullet into that speeding getaway car, a volcanic poison thundered through his veins, igniting a vengeful hatred so pure that standing and aiming and pulling the trigger was as easy as exhaling a breath into the frozen moon lit air. Detroit Gangster Victor Sweet (Chiwetel Ejiofor) wasn't pleased. He distinctly remembered hearing himself say that he wanted out of town shooters. Not in town shooters. Not the two in town shooters who had actually been hired for the Highland Park job. With out of town shooters, you pay for them to leave town after the job is done. With in town shooters, he patiently explains to his trembling thugs, you pay for in town police and in town trouble. With those two in town shooters now dead, you also pay to find out who killed them. You find out, and then you exact punishment, execution-style, to send a message that Sweet still owns this city.

As vigilante thrillers go, this fairly uneven offering from Oscar-nominated director John Singleton ('Boyz n the Hood' (1991), '2 Fast 2 Furious' (2003)) plays out more like a familiar yet convoluted detective story that seems far more interested in looking good against its rough and trippy backbeat than actually giving a paying audience much of a reason to care about what happens to these characters. Sure, its ensemble cast of stars - Mark Wahlberg ('Boogie Nights' (1997), 'I Heart Huckabees' (2004)), Tyrese Gibson ('Baby Boy' (2001), 'Flight of the Phoenix' (2004)), Andre Benjamin ('Hollywood Homicide' (2003), 'Be Cool' (2005)) and Garrett Hedlund ('Friday Night Lights' (2004), 'Troy' (2004)) - do attempt to cobble together a reasonably enjoyable bond amongst these adopted delinquent Mercer brothers Bobby, Angel, Jeremiah and Jack, respectively, but the screenplay from writers David Elliot and Paul Lovett really isn't about that, and doesn't particularly offer up anything fresh or intriguing enough for you to sink your amateur sleuthing teeth into here. You can easily tell who most, if not all, of the bad guys are before Singleton decides to reveal them, so you basically end up sitting through scene after scene of predominantly formulaic teeth gnashing from this crew, while awaiting the next luke warm quip of redemptive vengeance to rip across the screen under a half hearted hail of bullets until the closing credits bring sweet, sweet release from this surprisingly boring tale. I normally hate giving away the ending to a movie, but do you really need to see Wahlberg strut in from the stark horizon to fist fight the nasty hometown gangster Victor Sweet (Chiwetel Ejiofor; 'Amistad' (1997), 'Melinda and Melinda' (2004)) in the final climax? This is how grown men with criminally violent leanings who have spent the last hour and a half pointing guns of all shapes and sizes at anything with a pulse avenge the meaningless, execution-style murder of their beloved elderly mother (briefly played by Ireland's Fionnula Flanagan; 'Waking Ned' (1998), 'Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood' (2002))? Yeesh. 'Four Brothers' is rife with lazy contrivances that defy contemporary logic and a basic need for such apparently unimportant things as character development and believable reactions from its otherwise capable actors. It's got a lot going for it, but ultimately turns into one really disappointing, hundred and nine-minute screen test for life sized finger puppets collecting a pay cheque until the real offers come through. Natural presence replaces substance throughout. Everything that you might hope to see expressed and cleverly followed through with is awkwardly suppressed in favour of cliché and dim humour, to the point where you end up wondering how this flick managed to be released in theatres at all, when it probably should have gone straight to video as a forgettably sobering red flag for much of this cast to re-evaluate their career choices. Steer clear of this maudlin and simplistic live action cartoon that does look great for the most part, but is hardly worth the price of admission.

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Flightplan
REVIEWED 09/05, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

By the time Algenon propulsion engineer Kyle Pratt (Jodie Foster) had awaken, most of the other passengers on that turbulent flight from Berlin to New York had already calmed down. Nine closets had been searched. The restricted areas behind carefully sealed hatches had all been checked by the plane's crew. The bright blue signs forcing everyone to fasten their seat belts and remain in their chairs for over an hour had finally been switched off by the beleaguered Captain (Sean Bean; 'GoldenEye' (1995), 'National Treasure' (2004)). Kyle's wrists still ached from the handcuffs that Air Marshall Gene Carson (Peter Sarsgaard) had clamped on her several times throughout the course of her panic. She seemed calm now. The therapist beside her spoke in slow, carefully empathetic words to her now. Everything would be all right, once the plane was on the ground. In the meantime, the therapist had suggested, Pratt needed to realize that her delusions were a product of recent loss. It can't be easy to lose a loved one to such a tragic accident. Like Kyle had, losing her husband, and now transporting his casket back to the States for burial. Kyle had been sure there was a conspiracy going on. She couldn't figure it all out, but she was convinced that she had boarded that aircraft with her little daughter Julia (Marlene Lawston). That she had snuggled beside Kyle in that seat with her teddy bear, drawing a heart on the window as the casket was rolled into the cargo hold during de-icing. That Julia's back pack had been stowed above them with Kyle's carry on luggage, before take off. Kyle was sure that she'd had two boarding passes, not just her own. Those memories were all so real to her. Julia's touch. Her scent. Her voice. However, so were her memories of seeing her husband David reaching out to her at the subway station after his death. The therapist understood. This was traumatic time. And, sorrow is a powerful emotion that affects everyone. Julia was there, but wasn't on the passenger list. Nobody remembers seeing her. Kyle was alone. She had to calm down. She had to focus on something else. Outside, a grey landscape of clouds reached across the chilled night skies at thirty-six thousand feet. Air pressure scuffed against the plane's metallic skin, sending small droplets of condensation drizzling over her small window. Her breath slowly fogged the glass in a circular sigh of defeat... except where a small child's hand had traced the shape of a heart there. Julia's hand. It was Julia's drawing. Julia had been there. She was really there, and nothing and no one on this flight was going to change that, or stop Kyle from tearing apart this plane to find her.

A slight air of Hitchcockian suspense that sporadically energizes this surprisingly blatant star vehicle for Jodie Foster ('Contact' (1997), 'Panic Room' (2002)) from German director Robert Schwentke ('Tattoo' (2002), 'Eierdiebe' (2003)). 'Flightplan' is also the type of mystery thriller where simple logistics don't seem to matter, because all that a paying audience is supposed to care about is where little Julia Simone Pratt (debuting Marlene Lawston) has disappeared to while aboard that Berlin to New York luxury airliner carrying her dead father David's casket, her zealously panicked mother and propulsion engineer Kyle, and over four hundred other passengers and flight crew. I cite renowned director Alfred Hitchcock because this ninety-three minuter deftly toys with you, using your own amateur sleuthing against you to conjure up a whole slew of possible scenarios regarding where Julia is and why. That feeling of intensifying theatre seat clue hunting almost becomes a tangible character in and of itself, frankly. That's the fun side of this offering. There's also a certain amount of enjoyment in seeing Foster's starring return to the big screen since 'Panic Room' in a role where she truly gets to physically chew up every scene that she's in, even if 'Flightplan' does tend to be reminiscent of that memorably claustrophobic actioner at times. She's great here, as is Peter Sarsgaard ('Garden State' (2004), 'Kinsey' (2004)) as personably suspicious Air Marshall Gene Carson. The not so fun aspect is that this missing little girl could have easily been replaced by a missing suitcase of top secret files or a sponge mop attached with strong sentimental value. Peter A. Dowling's and Billy Ray's screenplay also spends so much time building up your expectations of an emotionally feverish pay-off that it paints itself into an impossible corner, turning the eventual culmination of events into a tritely cobbled together anti-climax that doesn't really fit with the other four fifths of this flick's otherwise surprisingly riveting story. You've spent the majority of the life of this movie being masterfully manipulated by Schwentke to pay excruciatingly close attention to the minutest of possibly important details that are cleverly spun into what unfolds before your eyes, and then the last act comes stumbling in like an out take reel from 'Passenger 57' (1992) without offering the same depth of background or reason to care. The suspense prematurely evaporates because of that. Disappointing. Definitely check it out as an over-all exhilarating ride worth renting, but unbuckle your brain and relax to avoid suffering major sensory whiplash from the curiously lazy ending.

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