Secretary
REVIEWED 10/02, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

Lee Holloway likes pain. Since early childhood, apparently. Keeping a small shiney sewing kit of various household instruments of torture closely hidden for those occasions when she's needed to submit her scarred flesh to this dark urge. Outwardly, she's like any other awkwardly introverted young woman. Inwardly, she seems to have always been a bubbling whirlpool of self-mutilative kinkiness. It's never really explained why she's like this, though. She just likes pain.

Now, after being released from the comforting womb of a local Florida mental institution, Lee returns to the disfunctional parents who sent her there, and lands her first job as a secretary for an equally introverted E. Edward Grey (James Spader). We soon learn that this shy quiet lawyer also likes pain. Not receiving it, but administering it. First, using his power as employer to dominate his new assistant by doling out menial (and sometimes degrading) tasks. Moving on to opportunistically punishing minor typing errors by introducing Miss Holloway's gleefully quivering buttocks to the sting of his firm yet hesitant spanking hand. See, Spader's character becomes uneasy with his not-so secret saddism. To the point where he withdraws out of guilt over turning his secretary into his 'slave'. Not realizing that she aches to ache under his delicious punishments. They were made for each other.

Frankly, I wasn't satisfied that this was a good movie. Sure, it's vaguely quirky humour kept me interested. There's a deep erotic intensity matched by a load of sensual imagery that crackles just below the surface of this sometimes farcical, sometimes sombre low budget romp. However, there's not really a whole lot more to this story. What this nudity-tinged flick offers to the uninitiated isn't particularly outrageous by today's standards. Even the subplot featuring Lee's painfully wishy-washy relationship with a smitten manchild she's known since high school plays itself out as being pretty bland. 'S&M light' seems to be the best way to describe this one.

home: http://www.moviequips.ca | index: http://www.moviequips.ca/#QUIPSOGRAPHY

Serving Sara
REVIEWED 08/02, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

Feel like checking out a fluffy feel-good Summer movie that's rather short on everything other than wisecracks and innuendo? One where unimportant stuff like good acting or plot substance take a backseat to cutesy smirks from pretty faces, and where all of the antagonists chew out nauseatingly overdone accents? Then, get ready to turn off your brain and be tickled bubblegum pink, 'cause here it is.

Claims server Matthew Perry and millionaire wife Elizabeth Hurley are teamed up as the latest product from the tired Spencer Tracey/Katherine Hepburn school of 'the unlikely pair who eventually fall in love'. In other words, this offering is a fairly contrived romp that tries really hard at being a ridiculously funny screwball comedy - much like the Tracey/Hepburn pair-ups of fifty-plus years ago were.

However, this time out, pretty much the only thing they got right was the ridiculous bit. Perry more resembles a novice Eddie Albert or Billy Crystal wannabe than a charismatic Tracey stand-in, and Hurley is definitely not Hepburn or Zsa-Zsa or even a green Goldie Hawn. And, that's where this feature fails. It's leading actors don't really have the screen presence or refined comedic chops to carry the dead weight of this lumbering farce. In fact, apart from the veterinary scene, most of the gags are numbingly corny and somewhat cringe-inducing. To the point where I found myself laughing at how vaccuously stupid and clumsily paced this movie is.

home: http://www.moviequips.ca | index: http://www.moviequips.ca/#QUIPSOGRAPHY

Signs
REVIEWED 08/02, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

I cannot believe that the same guy who wrote and produced and directed 'The Sixth Sense' is the same guy who wrote and produced and directed this load of overly hyped, amateurish garbage. 'The Sixth Sense' was an absolute must-see masterpiece in my books. Haunting. Surreal. Meaty. This time out, M. Night Sham-whatever his name is gives us little more than boring, half-baked schlock.

'Signs' tries poorly to be about hefty ideals such as the shattering of personal and religious faith. About the will to go on in life, after your spirit has been grievously broken. Of how denial strips away a person's natural capacity to truly feel anything. Mel plays a small town Reverand who, after losing his wife to a horrible accident six months previous, has turned his back on God to become a farmer. Raising corn, and his two young children, with the help of his man-child kid brother. In capable hands, this alone would be enough of a foundation to construct quite an interesting and emotionally-charged film. But, no. That wasn't enough. Our boy Sham's surprisingly clumsy hands also needed to add extra-terrestrials. Mel and kin, failing to emote anything more than their characters' internalized numbing trauma - to the point where even the director has to make several cameos to nudge things along while adding to this lumbering mopefest - discover crop circles have appeared on their acreage. Other strange things start to happen, too. At home, and around the world. People start popping their corks, coming up with all sorts of crazy theories, believing that the Earth is being invaded by malevolent alien beings. This too, could likely have been enough to create a tense scfi-fi tinged human drama. A microcosm of panic-triggered nationalism, rife with goofy and deadly reactions. An updated slice of how people actually did react to Orsen Welles' radio play based on 'War of the Worlds' half a Century ago, for instance. However, this picture doesn't even manage to rise from the ashes of it's own monotonous sloth to give us that kind of satisfactory pay-off. It, like it's stars, just isn't willing to snap out of it's haze long enough to tell a worthwhile and entertaining story. Unless you really enjoy seeing a handful of stupid animatronic claws groping from the shadows. Then, you'll be happy.

Instead, our real prize for sitting through this one and really working at wanting to hook in to what's on the screen, are a few parting glimpses of a cheesy stop motion-like creature that's taken straight from the pages of a hokey bygone comic book. That's it, folks. The arduously half-hearted build up to what you expect to see is really just a lazily contrived red herring. This is the big shocking plot twist that's supposed to leave you impressed with Shammy's stumbling and superficial 'we got some fight left in us yet' turnaround of events. Like we still care by then. H. G. Wells, Ray Harryhausen, and Orson Welles must all be spinning like lathes in their graves over this incredibly disappointing waste of acting talent - as well as the audience's wasted time and money.

home: http://www.moviequips.ca | index: http://www.moviequips.ca/#QUIPSOGRAPHY

Simone
REVIEWED 08/02, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

Well, I suppose it was only a matter of time before a movie was made about a computer-generated human becoming a cinematic superstar. We have the technology. We have the capability. It's been done for years, in snippets and bytes. However, will audiences unwittingly buy in to a completely fake actor that isn't cast in the next sci-fi extravaganza? According to this unflinchingly wry tale, they do. So do the inherantly synthetic real life personalities who feed and drive Hollywood. Eat your heart out, Jar-Jar Binks.

Al Pacino plays Victor Taransky - a film director of dramatically artsy pastiches whose teetering career takes an unexpected turn when he inherits the life's work of a programming genius and enthusiastic fan. This work being the perfect simulation of the so-called perfect woman. A digital Galatea, which Taransky resculpts like a contemporary Pygmalion to bypass the legal roadblocks threatening the release of his latest picture after his temperamental leading lady (beautifully portrayed by Winona Ryder) storms off the set. Consequently, his offering is a box office smash. And, the media and the paparazzi kick in to high gear on the hunt for any piece of his captivating new starlet. Y'know, Simone - who doesn't really exist in the flesh. The sizzling hot big screen diva who this director decides to keep the truth about to himself. Leading to some fairly amazing yet bizarrely comedic results.

This is a cleverly accerbic and intelligently humourous jab at the business of film making, as well as the fickle cult of popularity that surrounds it on many different levels. Some of the near-future props used to suspend your (and their) disbelief that such a dubious illusion could be so seamlessly created are wonderfully underplayed, leaving you to laugh at the utterly manic reactions of the characters and the series of subsequently nutty situations that ensue.

home: http://www.moviequips.ca | index: http://www.moviequips.ca/#QUIPSOGRAPHY

Solaris
REVIEWED 12/02, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

Wow. A science fiction movie from Hollywood that doesn't rely on trigger-happy astronauts blasting laserguns at monstrous hordes of aliens to tell a captivating and entertaining story. In other words, depending on your temperament, you'll either absolutely love or vehemently loathe Steven Soderbergh's cinematic version of Stanislaw Lem's famous 1961 sci-fi novel about a psychologist who has been sent to investigate the weird behaviour of a scientific team studying the mysterious oceanic planet Solaris.

Still emotionally destroyed by the suicide of his wife (Rheya, played by Natascha McElhone) seven years earlier, Chris Kelvin (George Clooney) finds himself aboard the virtually lifeless and blood-stained orbiting space station Prometheus, trying to understand why it's captain apparently took his own life, while facing the unexplained fears of the two remaining crew members - who seem to have given up all interest in their mission, but refuse to return to Earth. All very puzzling. Until Kelvin drifts off to sleep; His mind awash in dreams of happier times with his still-beloved better half. Shocked and confused to discover her snuggling beside him when he awakes. High above this swirling plasma ball-like, mystical blue world, Rheya has returned to him. Real to his touch. As loving and lovely as he remembers her. Offering no clear answers about why or how this cruel miracle has occured here and now. Leaving him torn between feelings of guilt-riddled elation at possibly getting a redemptive second chance with her, and uneasy skepticism that she may not be the woman she appears to be.

What an incredibly powerful grown up story, that just so happens to be set within a futuristic framework. Clooney is magnificent as an intelligent, empathetic man whose deep personal sadness has left him shattered and numb. Just going through the motions in his professional life. Existing. Lost. Ready to throw everything away for one more taste of inner peace. And, his main supporting cast is so convincingly fluid in their individual roles that it's like you're watching ordinary real people stuck in an extraordinarily fantastic situation. Trembling in their boots over uncertainties they've unintentionally brought on themselves for the most part, yet have no control over. Sure, Soderbergh's tightly claustrophobic and metaphysically-tinged script takes a few liberties with Lem's original book, and the melanchollic pacing does take it's sweet time letting you in on what the heck is going on, but this amazing offering has such a comparably fresh and realistic edge that's seldom seen in this genre, that it's definitely well worth seeing. It pulls you in, encouraging you to be smart and engaged enough to follow along. I personally left afterwards feeling as though I had thoroughly enjoyed a thought-provoking masterpiece that, in some ways, easily surpasses the Grand Daddy of intellectual offworld flicks: '2001 A Space Odyssey'. By all rights, 'Solaris' is a contemporary classic. Awesome.

home: http://www.moviequips.ca | index: http://www.moviequips.ca/#QUIPSOGRAPHY

Standing in The Shadows of Motown
REVIEWED 01/03, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

Just as the title of this thoroughly enjoyable documentary suggests, the stars of Hitsville U.S.A. (Berry Gordy's recording studio and birthplace of the hugely popular Motown sound, formed in 1958) were obstensively unknown to the world at large. They weren't singers, like Elvis Presley. They weren't reknowned as a main act group, like The Beatles. These were back-up musicians. Mostly Black men from the South. Initially lured North by Detroit's economic boom and the promise of steady jobs at one of the local car manufacturing plants, whose talent for playing Jazz and Blues led them to performing on more chart toppers than most of their world famous contemporaries combined - including Elvis, and The Beatles. They called themselves 'The Funk Brothers'. If you've listened to any of the dozens of Motown hits released from the early 1960's until Gordy's mid-1970's shift to the East Coast (and 'Psychadellic Funk'), such as 'My Girl', 'Heard it Through the Grapevine', 'Do You Love Me', 'Shotgun' and 'What's Goin' On', you've heard them and probably weren't aware of who they were. I wasn't, and I love this stuff.

'Standing in The Shadows of Motown' takes you back to the very beginning. Reuniting the remaining members of that remarkable group, editing in older interview footage and a number of re-enactments, and letting the Brothers tell their story in their own off the cuff ways. Marveling at their bandmates' abilities. Laughing at some of the crazy post-session and road trip stunts they'd pulled. Celebrating the few times when a beam of stardom did briefly glimmer over them. And, giving us rare glimpses into how they almost magically built up their sound - usually during one-take three-hour daily sessions - in Hitsville's basement Studio A known as 'the snakepit', all those years ago. All of it highlighted with them coming together on stage at Michigan's Royal Oak Theater, as The Funk Brothers for the first time in decades, to perform some of their better known classics. Fronted by Joan Osborne, Bootsy Collins, Chaka Khan (yeah, she's still around), and others. Displayed photos of their lost comrades looking on with spirited pride. In every respect except siblinghood, they were brothers. Tight.

Probably the most satisfying aspect of this picture was in seeing these guys back at Studio A. Talking about how being there brought them back to their youthful roots, cutting tracks for the likes of Marvin Gaye and Aretha Franklin, avoiding spies hired to stop them from freelancing for other studios, and taking turns mentoring an enthusiastic blind kid named Stevie Wonder. They were the kings and scoundrels of their craft. Watching them on the big screen, you can't help but feel that Americans aren't the only tune lovers who owe them a lot for the legacy of music they've given us. This is definitely one movie that's well worth checking out.

home: http://www.moviequips.ca | index: http://www.moviequips.ca/#QUIPSOGRAPHY

Star Trek: Nemesis
REVIEWED 12/02, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

Well, it's been four long years since we last saw Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and his post Kirk/Spock crew navigating the USS Enterprise (now Model NCC 1701-E, for those keeping track) through Gene Roddenberry's predominantly optimism-tinged big screen Universe. Twenty years, since those of us who were around piled into the theatres to see 'The Wrath of Khan' - still the most entertaining Star Trek movie of the bunch. This time, in the Next Generation cast's fourth effort to maintain this tenuous franchise, Starfleet's finest find themselves on the brink of peace. With their last remaining original nemesis: The Romulans. See, the alien planet's Senate has been unceremoniously, uh, dissolved in a takeover spearheaded by a mysterious young figure calling himself Praetor Shinzon (Tom Hardy), who returns from the shadowy depths of Romulus' barren twin world, Remus, beckoning to the Federation from beyond the infamous Neutral Zone.

Ordered to detour from delivering his newly-promoted and soon to be married second in command, Captain William T. Riker (Jonathan Frakes), to the home planet of ship's counselor and blushing bride Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis), Picard eventually becomes suspicious of Shinzon's motives. Somewhere during being kidnapped, strapped to a laboratory table, and used as a pin cushion within the gloomy bowels of this madman's Earth-killing spaceship, I guess. However, since Shinzon has shared an even more diabolical secret, our baldy soulful hero can't easily bring himself to puncturing this guy full of phaser holes before tea time.

What a huge disappointment. I suppose I should've known better, before going in to this boring stinker. It's tag line is "A Generation's Final Journey... Begins", after-all. And, boy does it show. Not with a rip-roaring celebratory send off, but with a load of whimpering disjointed nonsense and clichés. Apart from the vaccuous script (that does feel like a cheap 'Khan' ripoff at times), amateurishly life-draining editing, and it's sluggishly drawn out pacing, this crew looks and acts as though they're just slumming it for the pay cheque. Sure, there are a couple of pretty good action sequences here. Fans will likely get a chuckle out of the few familiar faces dusted off from previous sequels and various TV incarnations, too. And, Ron Perlman literally steals the show with his nasty, bat-like Reman gear and growl, urging on the destruction of these pesky uniformed do-gooders. But, so what? This relentlessly droopy story even seems to know it's bad, stooping so low as to yet again kill off one of the main characters. Who cares, though? They sure don't, so why should a paying audience care? Looking back, the original series of Trek flicks did have it's share of flops as well. So much so, that the joke was every odd numbered movie was cursed to be bad. Well, if that's supposed to be the case, 'Star Trek: Nemesis' sure has managed to accomplish one thing: It's number ten in this series, and is definitely one of the wimpiest and most forgetable. So, the curse has been lifted. Sadly, it wasn't worth the trouble.

home: http://www.moviequips.ca | index: http://www.moviequips.ca/#QUIPSOGRAPHY

Stuart Little 2
REVIEWED 07/02, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

What a delightfully sweet, uh, little movie. And, for once, I'm not being facetious. I found this film to be delightful, because it's consistantly bright and up-beat. From the welcoming opening shot of the current Manhattan skyline, right through to the closing shot of a breathtaking sunset over that happy metropolis, this flick rejoices in it's refreshing naivety. It's sweet, because all of the characters that make up the Little family and their circle of light-hearted friends are instantly likable and charming. You can't help but leave the theatre afterwards feeling as though you've just received a warm group hug. And, since I can't remember the last time I'd gone to see a full-ticket feature that played for less than ninety minutes on the big screen (after inititally sitting through the ads, and the trailers, and the well-animated but somewhat corny cartoon), I had to mention that this is indeed a pint-sized movie. However, this is a complete story. Containing drama, suspense, action, and humour. For young kids, as well as for those who are still kids at heart.

Without my giving too much away, Micheal J. Fox returns as the squeaky clean voice of this anthropomorphic white mouse with moxy, who's brought to amazingly detailed life through top notch CGI wizardry that's seamlessly merged with his real world human co-stars, feline counterpart, and Rube Goldberg-like world. Gone are the days of voice-overs unevenly slapped onto cheesy scenes of live nibbling rodents, thankfully.

This time 'round, Stuart befriends a street wise yet misguided canary (voiced by Meg Ryan) whose sudden introduction to the fold leads our hero on a semi-romantic and imaginatively contrived big city adventure by land and air, drainpipe and garbage barge. James Woods lends his mildly dangerous New York drawl as Falcon, the tepidly scary killer falcon. And, apart from some overly chirpy, slightly nerve-grating emoting by Geena Davis and Hugh Laurie as the circa 1950's-like doting parents, this morality-tinged wonder is truly a harmless yet quite satisfying Summer escape that I'd definitely recommend checking out on the small screen.

home: http://www.moviequips.ca | index: http://www.moviequips.ca/#QUIPSOGRAPHY

Spirited Away
REVIEWED 04/03, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

Inspired by pre-WWII American, French and German animation styles, now-legendary artist Osamu Tezuka is credited for creating a distinct genre that has slowly grown over almost half a Century to dominate the industry, introducing characters with simplified facial features and huge Disney-esque heads and eyes that are synonymous with Japanese Animation (called 'Anime' - pronounced 'ani-may' - for the past couple of decades). Tezuka had already produced his first film in the late 1940's when he was twenty, before working on 'Tale of the White Serpent' (1958), the Toei movie company's first full-length International success and the cinematic feature that sparked the interest of a talented teenaged Tokyo boy named Hayao Miyazaki. Miyazaki would cut his teeth as an animator for the same company (renamed Toei Douga) starting in 1963, moving on to drawing, writing and directing for two other studios during the Seventies and early Eighties, until his animated adaptation of his hugely popular graphic novel (read: comic book, or Japanese 'Manga' - pronounced 'man-gah'), 'Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind' (1984) gave rise to his own production company, Studio Ghibli. Since then, two of the highest grossing anime's in Japan to date have come from this studio: 'Mononoke Hime' ('Princess Mononoke', $15.7 million US) in 1997, and 'Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi' ('Spirited Away', $15.8 million US) in 2001. That's just the box office earnings in Japan. So, it's no wonder that Disney Studios signed a contract with Studio Ghibli in the late 1990's to redub (through Pixar) and distribute (through Buena Vista) these and other Miyazaki masterpieces in North America. Fulfilling their agreement by expanding the release of the latter from the original seven theatres to over seven hundred in the US and Canada, in the two weeks between winning the 2002 Oscar and becoming available on DVD. Which is lucky for me, since I missed the first Los Angeles screenings last year...

With a budget of about $16 million US, 'Spirited Away' (or 'Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi' in phonetic Japanese, or 'bottle cap promoted pawn thousand fathoms drip-dry mysterious disappearance' according to one Japanese to English translation site I tried) follows the strange and magical story of ten-year-old Chihiro Ogino (voiced by 'The Ring' and 'Lilo and Stitch's Daveigh Chase, in English). When she and her parent's accidentally get lost relocating to their new home, discover and explore an abandoned theme park hidden in a shrine-marked forest, and are suddenly cast into a twilight world of ghoulish spirits and anthropomorphized animals, Chihiro must save her mother and father (who are turned into pigs) and release her enigmatic new friend Haku (Jason Marsden) and herself from the wicked spells of malevolent Bath House to the Gods owner Yu-Baaba (Suzanne Pleshette). That is, if young Ogino can avoid being eaten by a shadowy semi-transparent figure who's following her, and can remember her real name after giving it to Yu-Baaba in return for life in a menial job.

What a delightfully weird, vaguely 'Alice Through the Looking Glass'-like children's adventure. There is a bit of a cultural barrier to some of the simplistically translated dialogue. However, considering this offering is chock full of bizarre legend-based characters, hilariously goofy and emotionally touching scenes, as well as loads of wonderfully rich visuals, really about the only glaring problem might be if the pre-school audience this one's clearly intended for can't sit through the lofty two-hour running time. Sure, there's some violence and a couple of mildly scary things that might frighten littler eyes, but there's no doubt that kids of all ages will be entertained by this elaborately enchanting feel good flick. The enormously funny scenario featuring the big stinky mud creature is easily worth the price of admission alone.

home: http://www.moviequips.ca | index: http://www.moviequips.ca/#QUIPSOGRAPHY

Satin Rouge
REVIEWED 05/03, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

A rude awakening. Lilia (Hiyam Abbas) is a middle-aged widow and single parent in Tunisia who lives more like a maid in her own house, making ends meet as a work at home seamstress who relies on money from her out of town brother. You can tell she's bursting to break free from this self-made solitude, particularly when the rhythmic beat from her radio inspires her instincts to dance like the sensual woman hidden deep within. When she becomes suspicious of her teenaged daughter Salma's new boyfriend Chokri selling his cool blue motorcycle in the marketplace, she follows him to a nearby Cabaret where she soon discovers he works as a drummer. It's there where Lilia also quickly befriends Folla, the club's star belly dancer and fifteen-year veteran of these smoke-filled joints. At first our straight-laced mother overtly shy about being in such a den of iniquity, but is enchanted by the hedonistic music and finds herself gleefully gyrating her voluptuous figure in a skimpy gold-spangled number for a willingly seduced nightly audience - including the hot-blooded Chokri.

Playing itself out somewhat like a simplistic soap opera, 'Satin Rouge' is a fine subtitled dance flick that gives Abbas plenty of elbowroom to show us what a talented actor she is. There are problems, though. The rather shoddy camerawork and amateurish editing fail miserably at really capturing her character's truly inspiring Cinderella-like metamorphosis throughout the course of this picture. You can see her sensuality blossoming on stage, but are annoyingly kept at a distance because nobody involved seems to want to show you any of the important details of her growth and reclaimed confidence. Possibly because Western ideas of female strength might still be uncomfortably alien in that corner of the globe. At any rate, this is a good introduction into the world of belly dancing, featuring at least one fabulous performance, but I wouldn't say it's one of the best foreign films I've seen.

home: http://www.moviequips.ca | index: http://www.moviequips.ca/#QUIPSOGRAPHY

The Shape of Things
REVIEWED 06/03, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

Pygmalion play crumbles onscreen. Adam (Paul Rudd) has a problem. Over the past eighteen weeks, this rather shy and oafish English Studies major and part time campus gallery security attendant at Mercy College has gained self-confidence, jogged away twenty-one pounds, and has improved his geekish wardrobe ten fold. Even his narcissistic ex-roommate Phillip, and Jenny, the perky cute blonde Adam used to secretly pine for, have noticed and complimented him on his incredible transformation. He's a new man. Happier, handsomer, and hopelessly in love. And, that's his problem. Adam's met Evelyn (Rachel Weisz), his somewhat sociopathically exhibitionistic and curiously supportive Art student girlfriend who seems a little too evasive about her current work in progress. "It's a performance piece sculpture thingie," she coyly admits, without giving any further details to anyone who asks. Nobody knows what it is for sure, until the stark red invitations for Evelyn's spot lit presentation with accompanying installation of personal belongings and intimate videotape entitled 'She Loves Me Not' have gathered a bewildered audience during exam week, and her love-filled Galatea is forced to discover the heart-crushing truth in public.

Well, if I had to pick the worst movie I've sat through so far this year, 'The Shape of Things' would win hands down, folks. Stupefyingly lousy acting, and an horrendously awful script crammed with scene after yawn-inducing scene of half-baked dialogue all infuriatingly conspire to turn what could have been an interesting cursory exploration of emotional manipulation into a worthless pile of amateur film school junk. It might have been a good play onstage, but there's a million mile-wide canyon between it and good onscreen. What I found to be most annoying was that all of the potential dynamics were there to work with. You're given two young couples, where both of the females involved consider their guys to be ripe for renovation by a woman's touch. They could have easily followed through with that, paralleling these gals' different motivations and 'improvement' techniques, to give us even a glimmer of hope that our time and money spent sitting in the dark watching this putrid turkey was going to be remotely satisfying. As it stands, this outrageously clunky flop ends up being the kind of vacuously self-enamored waste of celluloid where you find yourself wishing that it threw in some gratuitous nudity or violence just to keep you from slipping into a vegetative state halfway through the first reel. Frankly, if I hadn't committed to enduring this overwhelmingly terrible stinker in its entirety to give a proper review, I would've walked away after twenty minutes and found more entertainment value out of watching people play with the straw dispensers in the theatre's lobby. Blechh!

home: http://www.moviequips.ca | index: http://www.moviequips.ca/#QUIPSOGRAPHY

Sinbad
REVIEWED 07/03, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

After his first attempt at stealing the all-powerful Book of Peace from a Greece-bound ship captained by his estranged boyhood friend Prince Proteus - who he then gallantly allies with to fight off a giant mythical sea creature - fails, mischievous rogue Sinbad the Sailor (voiced by Brad Pitt) is framed by Eris (Michelle Pfeiffer), the malevolent Goddess of Discourse, and held in shackles awaiting the executioner's heavy blade in this mildly enjoyable yet tepid animated feature. See, Eris has stolen that mighty tome from the glowing white tower atop the mountainous kingdom of Syracuse back to her maelstrom-like netherworld realm of Tarterus, disguised as Sinbad. Not so much to see his head roll into the churning sea at sunrise, but for a more sinister reason that puts Proteus' life in danger, paves the way for Eris to cloak the world in a stormy perpetual chaos, and inevitably sends Sinbad on a race against time to the edge of the Earth with the Prince's feisty young fiancée Marina (Catherine Zeta-Jones) in tow. They have ten days to return with this magical prize, through a gauntlet of dragon's teeth rocks whose ghostly inhabitants have wrecked many a ship with their siren songs, across a frozen canyon terrorized by a giant blood-thirsty eagle, and survive the Trickster-like interference of Eris both on this plain of existence and beyond. However, once on the open waves with the wind at his back and a full crew promised a life of rich retirement in Fiji, will our personable yet cagey hero keep his word to the King or turn sails and disappear?

Well, this one certainly doesn't come close to the sentimental marvel of the old live action/stop motion 'Sinbad' trilogy of epics made famous by Ray Harryhausen's menagerie of Minotaurs, killer statues, and Cyclops versus dragon battles. And, I'm not really sure if any of this character's original seven voyages cited in Scheherazade's Centuries old 'Thousand and One Nights' (aka 'Arabian Nights') escapades were even looked at while this fairly simplistic script was being cobbled together for it's obviously intended pre-pubescent audience. It's got that sort of polished, sanitized look and feel to it throughout that probably won't sit well with those who want their cartoons to be gritty and dangerous. It's also too bad that DreamWorks apparently wants us to be more impressed by what kind of operating system their computer animators used to create this star-studded comedy (Linux), than the fact that some of the scenes look like they were cranked out at the eleventh hour by people who'd been chained to their work stations since this project began two years ago. On the up-side, some of the laughs and pratfalls are pretty good, and the adventure itself doesn't glaringly lose any momentum, succeeding in keeping you involved with what's going on on-screen for the most part. Frankly, it's a tough call in a way, because I did go in expecting a rollicking fantasy more along the lines of those three wonderful pictures I'd mentioned earlier. However, this flick does deliver an enjoyably safe ride for little tykes looking for something to watch a million times and spark their imaginations.

home: http://www.moviequips.ca | index: http://www.moviequips.ca/#QUIPSOGRAPHY

Seabiscuit
REVIEWED 08/03, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

By the time New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected the 32nd President of the United States in 1932, three years had passed since the 'Black Tuesday' stock market crash had plunged that nation into The Great Depression. Over 130 million Americans were unemployed, mostly existing on soup kitchen rations in penniless squalor or turning to crime, just to eat. Bolstered by Roosevelt's slow-paced plans of relief and economic growth a few years later, self-made San Francisco bicycle repair shop owner turned Buick dealership millionaire Charles S. Howard (Jeff Bridges) - still haunted by his failed marriage and the car death of his young son - is eventually encouraged by his rather eccentric new stable master Silent Tom Smith (Chris Cooper) to purchase a belligerent five year-old lame runt named 'Seabiscuit' and train it as a winning race horse. Seabiscuit had placed in a few previous furlongs, but had been primarily used as a stable walker or workhorse due to his erratic temperament. However, Tom sees something in this undersized cast-off's eyes that could well hearken back to the bold spirit of Seabiscuit's legendary grandsire, Man o' War. In Smith's own words, "You don't throw a whole life away, just 'cause he's banged up a little". Enter Alberta-born John 'Red' Pollard (Tobey Maguire), a half-blind beaten up yet feisty young former part-time boxer and natural horse rider since the age of sixteen, who Tom happens to catch fighting off five bare-knuckled jockeys at one end of a Tijuana racetrack's paddock - while Seabiscuit wrestles against the hands' ropes at the other end. They're a perfect match, and are soon on their way to several media-hyped victories that spark the country's imagination and pave the way to 1938's Race of the Century at Pimlico, against top pedigree Triple Crown winner War Admiral.

This is how it's done, folks. This incredibly astounding Period drama richly demonstrates what a perfectly chosen ensemble cast given a strong script that immediately pulls you in can do. Eventhough you're catapulted into the adrenaline-pumping roar of thunderous hooves several times, this isn't so much a horse picture as it's a beautifully lush journey of these three outstandingly personable characters giving their all against sometimes insurmountable odds. Closely based on factual events, 'Seabiscuit' is simply the best movie I've seen so far this year. Tobey Maguire gives us everything he's got, as this chipped-hearted kid who starves himself to make a living and pretty well has to claw and fight for everything he's gotten out of life. You see it. He lets you feel it, and fills you with almost every emotion in the book, as 'Red' continually has to pick himself up and keep going. Fabulous. Bridges and Cooper also pull in immensely powerful performances here, as they both work their damnedest to deal with their ghosts and make an impossible dream become a reality. In many ways, the horse is wonderfully played as an inspiring metaphor throughout this flick. They're all misfits with the potential for greatness who, as a group, fulfill their destiny with dignity and humanity. Frankly speaking, I honestly can't say enough good things about this enormously satisfying epic. Gorgeous camerawork. Fantastic subplots. Hugely captivating dialogue and substance to every role on-screen, including the riotously quirky scenes with over-the-top radio announcer Tick Tock McLaughlin (William H. Macy). Even the running narrative by David McCullough works, as you're welcomed into this world and told the dismal story of Seabiscuit's early years. It's a cliché, but if you only see one movie on the big screen this year, this perfect piece of Cinema is the one that will absolutely give you a high return on your theatre ticket gamble. Better than awesome. Wow!

home: http://www.moviequips.ca | index: http://www.moviequips.ca/#QUIPSOGRAPHY

S.W.A.T.
REVIEWED 08/03, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

When maverick Old School Sergeant Dan 'Hondo' Harrelson (Samuel L. Jackson) is grudgingly reinstated with the Los Angeles Police Department to put together a new elite team for their Special Weapons and Tactics unit, recently demoted Jim Street (Colin Farrell) isn't initially sure if that's his chance to get out of his six-month stint in the gun cage pulling inventory duty. See, Jim was with S.W.A.T before then. That is, until he and his shoot-from-the-hip partner Brian Gamble (Jeremy Renner) disobeyed a direct order during a bank heist gone wrong. Even Hondo is wary, making proven sharpshooter Street chauffeur him around town as he takes a first-hand look at the shortlist prospects: A woo-hah macho type, a lady's man, a streetwise brawler, and a petite yet fiery policewoman. However, it's not long before our hungry former triggerman gets the tap and finds himself having to deal with every gun-crazed gangsta and greedy soldier of fortune who's determined to free a malicious French terrorist named Alex Montel (Olivier Martinez) who's offered one hundred million dollars U.S. on a live newscast to anyone who gets him out of prison. Things quickly go from bad to worse, when Dan's 'odd squad' of fierce frontline officers discover they're in the crosshairs of a heavily armed and deftly psychotic ex-S.W.A.T. member harbouring a determined vendetta who will stop at nothing - including undermining their squad from within - to break them and collect Montel's hefty reward.

I'd love to say this is a great action flick. Problem is, a surprisingly large portion of what you see is made up of Farrell and the gang going through the motions in various simulated missions that don't really seem to exist as anything other than filler. Sure, there's the one scene, where Jackson's grinning out wisecracks as each team member carefully squeezes off a clip into a row of playing cards yards away during a sort of 'sniper's blackjack' game that's fairly good. However, there are huge gaps filled with far less captivating scenarios plugged into this disappointingly over-long movie, in between the actual interesting bits about the bad S.W.A.T. guy swatting at the good S.W.A.T. guys. Even the couple of not-so inconspicuous references to its old Steve Forrest/Robert Urich one-season predecessor from the mid-1970's seem vaguely forced and unnecessary to the pacing of this picture. It's too bad, because there actually are quite a number of great sequences of bullet-riddled and/or pyrotechnic mayhem that hit like you'd expect going in after seeing the trailer. The acting's good, and so is the dialogue and over-all storyline. It's almost as though somebody decided that they didn't want to make just another formulaic shoot 'em up cop story, but didn't know how to fill up the screen with anything other than dull, almost contrived footage of these stars in full gear safely skulking around in bad lighting. We already know they're the best and are able to save the day as soon as the team is put together. It's a given. What the audience wants to be entertained by - besides the hip quips - is how they'll do it in a memorable way. Which they do. Eventually. Inevitably. Finally. I'd say 'S.W.A.T.' is a good rental, where you can easily fast forward through all of the boring pace-deflating moments, and still feel like you got your money's worth.

home: http://www.moviequips.ca | index: http://www.moviequips.ca/#QUIPSOGRAPHY

Swimming Pool
REVIEWED 09/03, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

Well-established Crime author of the popular 'Inspector Dorwell' series Sarah Morton (Charlotte Rampling) has hit a slump. Ornery, depressed, and definitely not feeling sociable, she takes the London Underground from the musty old house she shares with her ailing father to the bright Downtown offices of her blood 'n' guts-loving publisher John Bosload (Charles Dance). They've known each other for twenty years. So, after a rather blunt heart to heart, John sends his somewhat pouty star writer to his lush Summerhouse in France. To shake off the cobwebs by strolling through the small rustic village nearby, and hopefully get her creative juices flowing again. It seems to work, as the peacefulness of this countryside does wonders for Sarah and the sudden easy beginnings of her next mystery novel. However, when Bosload's free spirited daughter Julie (Ludivine Sagnier) crashes the place in the middle of the night, Morton's serene holiday surroundings are quickly turned upside-down by mademoiselle's constant slobbishness, day-long topless sunbathing sessions by the backyard pool, and midnight partying with different nameless men downstairs. A slightly pernicious dark side starts to crack through this middle-aged Englander's otherwise repressed facade, culminating in a string of progressively erotic fantasies piqued by Sarah's interest in Julie and that strange young woman's tragic history. Of course, when a tall, dark and swarthy visitor caught skinny-dipping with Ms. Bosload under the sultry Summer moonlight mysteriously disappears, life imitates art as all clues lead to murder.

The premise sure sounded good for this surprisingly unfinished and fairly plodding movie. Loosely similar to unacknowledged Mary Roberts-Rinehart's 2003 book 'The Swimming Pool', French co-screenwriter/director François Ozon's vision never really seems to congeal beyond a couple of truly wonderful camera shots of Rampling's character at work. One scene in particular, where the lens simply crawls to the left of her intense expression and then slowly pans to the right to include the crackling imagination-filled air around her as she pours prose through energized fingertips into her laptop computer, is sheer magic. Problem is, the majority of this flick dismally fails to remain at that level of superior cinematography, opting instead to heavily rely on pedantically-edited Mime-like glances off-camera and relentless close-ups of Sagnier's nubile naked body parts. To the point where it seems like virtually every cast member gets a shot at showing the world how they masturbate onscreen. Honestly, I couldn't believe how droll and pornographic this flick became by the second reel. As though nobody actually knew how to show Morton's sexual reclamation in any other way, except through this outrageous form of lowbrow exploitation. Lazy and boring. Then, there's the whole murder scenario near the end that's so clumsily thrown together that it's tough to expect an audience to really care whodunit or what happens. So, as much as I wanted to like this artsy and somewhat esoteric romp, because the majority of it completely unraveled into a mess of wagging boobies and amateurish plot development, there's no way I'd recommend it as anything other than a muddled stag party flick your leering Uncle probably won't need to enter a sex shop to rent.

home: http://www.moviequips.ca | index: http://www.moviequips.ca/#QUIPSOGRAPHY

Secondhand Lions
REVIEWED 10/03, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

Nationally syndicated cartoonist Walt Caldwell's boyhood is recalled when word reaches him that his two eccentric ninety year-old Great-Uncles have died in a biplane accident. Specifically, he thinks back on the fateful Summer when he was unceremoniously dumped on those ornery Texan relatives' rickety front step by his flaky gold digging single mother Mae, with little more than the clothes on his back. See, the story blazing through town was that Hub (Robert Duvall) and Garth Caldwell (Michael Caine) had millions of dollars stashed away somewhere on their sprawling and mostly barren farmland. As far as Mae was concerned, it was her bright yet shy young son's job to bond with this pair of shotgun-toting hermits, locate that hidden 'family' treasure, and then tell her where it was once she got back in a few days, from - she tells him - taking a court reporting course in Fort Worth. She didn't really sign up, and quickly vanishes for weeks. So, after childishly failing to escape that creepy and dilapidated old farmhouse for the open road, Walter decided to try making the best of the situation. He continued exploring the dust-coated sundries of his lantern-lit storage attic turned sleeping quarters, where he found, buried in an old steamer trunk full of Arabian sand, a faded photograph of a beautiful-looking East Asian woman wearing a white dress. Soon, he also discovered that Hub tended to sleepwalk down to the fishing pond in the moonlight, and that's where Walt asked Garth to tell him about their adventures in 1914 Europe - when they ended up as dashing fool-hearty soldiers with the French Foreign Legion. It's an incredibly unbelievable saga of daring battles against insurmountable odds under the shifting winds of the Sahara Desert and beyond. Walt's wide-eyed imagination ate up every word, but when he asked his other manly father figure about the lady in the wedding photo, that romantic tale of their earlier days took a bittersweet turn, and this boy began to understand what it's like to be real men past their prime.

This tight and enchanting movie weaves such a wonderfully captivating set of stories that there's not really a whole lot that I can tell you without ruining it, except that it's an amazing piece of family entertainment. Osment is great as the thoughtfully determined teenager abandoned to pretty well survive with these grizzled old curmudgeons who have no real clue how to care for him. Hub and Garth lead a simple life. They spend their mornings fishing with rifles, emptying barrels of ammo into the water around their boat at their underwater targets. They retire to their peeling white washed front porch in the afternoons, scaring off traveling salesmen by unloading more bullets into the fleeing cars of these terrified insurance reps and steak knife merchants. Simply hilarious. Glimpses of script-related cartoon strips drawn by Bloom County's Berkeley Breathed are a welcome touch, as we see how that one Summer positively changed Walter's life for good. Full marks also go to Caine and Duvall here, with the former deftly playing his part as the world-weary storyteller and voice of reason for us to rely on, and the latter doing an incredible job portraying a once feared and renowned blades man tenuously coming to terms with his aging years. Of course, they both still end up flying upside-down into the clear blue skies at 120 mph in a home-built World War One fighter plane like a couple of young at heart fools. However, that and the phenomenal swordsmanship shown in hugely theatrical flashbacks throughout are what make this picture a truly touching and magical wonder. Without a doubt, 'Secondhand Lions' is definitely a fresh flick well worth checking out on the big screen by adventurers of all ages. Excellent.

home: http://www.moviequips.ca | index: http://www.moviequips.ca/#QUIPSOGRAPHY

Sylvia
REVIEWED 11/03, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

The Autumn of 1955 saw Massachusetts' academic wunderkind and already prolific American poet Sylvia Plath (Gwyneth Paltrow) begin her studies in Literature at Cambridge University's Newnham College in England, on a Fulbright scholarship she had earned from Smith College the previous year. She was twenty-three, with several awards for writing and a Manhattan internship as guest editor for Mademoiselle magazine to her credit by then, but still struggled for acceptance from her chosen peers in poetry. It was a time of great change, where new writers were hungry for the dangerously dissected carnage of unbridled ideas, raw and explosive and unhindered by the flowery constricted norms of past generations. Sylvia embraced this tumultuous new style with a renewed passion for words, giving voice to the relentless shadows that she had otherwise kept hidden from the world. Of course, there were other more insidious demons - such as the slow death of her beloved father shortly after her ninth birthday, her two failed suicides, and a hospitalized stay of psychiatric electroshock therapy - that continually haunted her intensely driven yet self-conscious young mind. However, her junior year at Cambridge would be a relatively happy one, that included her meeting and quickly marrying fiery English student laureate and renowned womanizer Ted Hughes (Daniel Craig). The marriage eventually dissolved and, saddled with a then-critically-ignored compilation of her work as well as her mounting feelings of isolation in their secluded Devon countryside home, Plath moved her two small children into a tiny London apartment once occupied by Yeates, and continued writing in near poverty in 1962. There, despite her worsening emotional state and bouts of insomnia, she completed the manuscript for her first novel and a second book of much darker poems that would finally garner the recognition this tortured enigmatic soul vehemently craved and arguably deserved, but would never truly see during her lifetime.

Dreadfully easy comparisons to Nicole Kidman's portrayal of another famously bipolar-crippled writer in 'The Hours' (2002) aside, this predominantly flat biopic seems to go out its way at keeping a non-indoctrinated audience completely in the dark about who Plath was or how important her work is considered to contemporary poetry. Most of the above info is post-screening research. Fact is, she was a vanguard of her time, yet this movie gives us little more than a petulantly silly-headed girl armed with a vocabulary of million dollar words who's obsessed with living a self-fulfilling destructive life, pouting at both real and perceived humiliation, and lashing out at the world a lot over not getting what she wants fast enough. Casting Paltrow does seem to have been a big mistake here, but the far more obvious problem is writer John Brownlow's meandering and slightly insulting screenplay, which edits huge portions out of this woman's actual life and captivating back story in favour of giving us a dreary bowl of Art House fumes with victim Sylvia whirling around spouting Chaucer and baking pies. This woman wrote over four hundred poems before her mid-twenties, long before she came into her own with 'Colossus' (1960), or her loosely autobiographical novel 'The Bell Jar' (1963), as an inspiration for millions worldwide to this day. Her suicidal episode at twenty years old, subsequent therapy at Maclean Hospital, and continued tenuous duality before ever meeting Hughes would seem far more obvious sources for worthwhile script material than trying to shovel this somewhat pompous yet aggravatingly mediocre slop onto the screen. Sure, I suspect that there will be a handful of Plath fans out there who will get all of the fleeting inside nods to those incidents and the literary citings peppered throughout, and come away feeling as though this flick was made for them. Not the other 99% of paying movie goers (including her daughter, who openly snubbed this production) who sat there hoping to learn something or be encouraged to tackle her works, by this lazy and clunky star vehicle for Gwyneth to amateurishly play at acting and flash her boobies. About the only good thing that I have to say about 'Sylvia' is that I liked some of the cinematography, where the indoor lighting seems to shimmer and pool across the walls' rippled surface like it might on the skin of some ancient reptilian lab specimen. That was an interesting undertone; the rest was junk, and none of this sour turkey is hardly worth anyone's wasted time or money. Too bad.

home: http://www.moviequips.ca | index: http://www.moviequips.ca/#QUIPSOGRAPHY

School of Rock
REVIEWED 10/03, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

When outrageous guitar aficionado Dewey Finn (Jack Black) is unceremoniously kicked out of his Rock band No Vacancy, broke and discouraged, Dewey ends up taking a substitute teaching job under the name of his meek room mate and former co-rocker from Maggot Death, Ned Schneebly (Mike White), at Upstate New York's prestigious Horace Green Preparatory School. Hey, $650 a week sounded like sweet easy cash at the time, but now he's got to teach these rich kids something. So, after letting them goof off for a few hours each day while he nurses some serious hangovers and munchies, Finn discovers he's got a class full of half decent classical musicians on his hands. Since his life's goal was to win the Battle of the Bands, before getting dumped by his band mates, he decides to start a new 'secret' class project that involves these ten and eleven year-olds learning from such legends as Hendrix and The Who, so that they can 'compete against other schools' for that $20,000 prize after-all. Problem is, he eventually needs to get his students to the preliminary judging without staunchly prim Principal Rosalie Mullins (Joan Cusack) becoming any the wiser about what he really means by asking permission for an unchaperoned 'field trip'. However, Dewey's real problems start when Ned's shrewish girlfriend finds out what's going on and goes out of her way to pull the plug on his dreams.

What a great movie. This wonderfully fun romp had me laughing out loud more than once at Black's absolutely hilarious lunacy. Really, this character is just a cranked up carry-over of his delightful scene-stealing breakthrough bit part in 'High Fidelity' (2000) opposite Cusack's actor brother, but there truly isn't anyone better to fit the role. Sure, some of the dialogue skirts the fringes of corny sentimentality at times. And, for all intents and purposes, this is easily a family-aimed kid's flick. However, what director Richard Linklater does is mercifully ensure that writer/actor Mike White's script doesn't give the child stars too much screen time or too many lines to remember throughout, and simply lets Jack loose like some sort of reincarnated John Belushi (in his prime) in a bow tie and Deadhead grin. From the goofy guitar solos to his inspired bag of contortions and gurns, he really is that good here. To the point where it'll be interesting to see if Black tries to break out of this typecast as a crazy-eyed jokester or is smart enough to simply keep on playing the same great tune under different guises - unlike many of his comedic contemporaries who seem to feel the need to go serious, and then seem to forget how to tap at our funny bones with anything fresh. Either way, what you get here is definitely fresh and a thoroughly enjoyable picture with a lot of fantastic laughs well worth the ride. This one's easily the funniest movies I've seen so far this year.

home: http://www.moviequips.ca | index: http://www.moviequips.ca/#QUIPSOGRAPHY

The Singing Detective
REVIEWED 11/03, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

"All solutions and no clues," is what three-time published and full-time failed detective novelist Dan Dark (Robert Downey Jr.) believes those interested in buying the screenplay of 'The Singing Detective', his decidedly Chandleresque story of cheap sex and brutal crime set in the American mean streets of the 1950's, are looking for. They want a neat and gritty reality for popcorn chomping dummies, he thinks. Well, despite being unemployed for the past year and in financial dire straits, and now hospitalized for the last three months suffering from a gruesomely voracious bout of acute psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis, Dark doesn't care about selling out for no dirty Hollywood handout. He won't do it, see? Bedridden and trapped inside his atrophied and lesion-covered body, Dan Dark has bigger fish to fry while reliving, uh, reworking that salacious book in his frayed nerve-tortured mind. Dan Dark, the lone wolf lover of words. Dan Dark, the private eye dance club singer. Trouble is his business. Reeled in like a sucker on a meat hook, into solving the drowning death of a local prostitute by smalltime pimp Mark Binney (Jeremy Northam) - the last John seen leaving the dark and smoky Cafe Moonglow with her on the last night of her life. Before the cops dragged her lifeless, polka-dotted red dress-clad corpse from a moonlit city river. Mark Binney. The former desert gas station business partner of Dan's auto mechanic father. Binney; the man Dan caught his mother Betty (Carla Gugino) messing around with, destroying his simple boyhood life when they had to leave his cuckolded Dad for the big city and the man who indirectly made Dan's mother a street whore, because she couldn't find a job to support them there. Raymond. The weasely lover behind Dan's ex-wife Nicola (Robin Wright Penn) trying to steal his six year-old screenplay and make off with his cool forty grand cash money. It's all so confusing, this dangerous gnarl of fact and fiction balled together and ready to explode its poison into his sickly brittle flesh, but Dan's convinced of the clues and is determined to get on top of it before two murderous thugs get him next. He doesn't need any help, either. Not from Nicola, who puts up with his venomous delusional rants spat at her at Dan's quarantined bedside. Not from the whoop of monkeys in their long white coats posing as real doctors - including that nutcase Gibbons (Mel Gibson), who persists with radical therapy sessions while Dan recoils like an emotionally wounded clawed animal in his wheelchair. He'll get on top of it. Dan Dark will figure it all out. He's Dan Dark, and he's never wrong. Nor, is he ever wrong...

Rewritten from the multi-award winning six-part 1986 British mini series starring Michael Gambon (which Gibson is rumoured to have given a videotape of to Downey Jr. while the latter was in rehab for substance abuse), this second version penned by the same screenwriter, Dennis Potter (1935-1994), is a decidedly Film Noir morose yet lightheartedly campy Musical offering. Unfortunately, the lines between Dark's own troubled past and that of his detective alter ego become so blurred and indecipherable come the last reel that the story completely falls apart. I don't really know how much of Potter's reworked autobiographically-tinged script was used here (he suffered from regular flares of psoriasis - a non-contagious but incurable genetic immune disorder that accelerates skin cell growth with socially horrifying and painfully scaly results - for most of his otherwise successful show business life), but it's almost as though director Keith Gordon couldn't keep a tight enough reign on his actors and begrudgingly tacked on a ridiculously phony happy ending in frustration. Even if you've never seen the thoroughly intelligent and captivating original, these are obvious flaws in this disorganized mess. Downey Jr. seems to revel in his role, exercising every morsel of undeniable talent at his disposal while doing double duty as a tortured self-loathing writer scratching and scraping against this seemingly decomposing body that's insidiously affecting his reasoning, and playing a sneering Marlowe knock-off crooning rock 'n' roll ditties with his band when he's not dodging bullets investigating murders the police can't be bothered with. However, none of it is particularly believable or entertaining outside of a one-night self-infatuated Off-off-off Broadway stinker. Sadly, one of my main problems with his performance is that the disease his character has doesn't seem to make any sense to the actor. He doesn't get it, to the point where he may as well have had a severe case of jock itch or sunburn, with the same disappointing results. What triggered it seems vague at best. What heals it is pure malarkey. Sure, it was great to see Gibson doing a marginally good job in an uncharacteristic and almost unrecognizable supporting part, and I did enjoy revisiting the bits reminiscent of Gambon's far superior Philip E. Marlow's dialogue. It's just too bad that nobody connected with this project seemed to see the potential for a different and much more entertaining flick was clumsily snatched from the jaws of victory here, in favour of producing little more than a hackneyed Americanized independent star vehicle rip-off of a contemporary must-see classic. Unless you can't get enough of Mel Gibson or Robert Downey Jr., or are fanatical about seeing everything based on novelist Raymond Chandler's 'The Big Sleep' (1939), I can't say this 2003 version of 'The Singing Detective' is really worth your time or money. Embarrassingly awful.

home: http://www.moviequips.ca | index: http://www.moviequips.ca/#QUIPSOGRAPHY

The Station Agent
REVIEWED 12/03, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

When loner and railroad enthusiast Finbar 'Fin' McBride (Peter Dinklage) suddenly inherits an abandoned train depot, he packs his simple belongings and follows the rails on foot, leaving his former model train-building job at The Golden Spike to take up residence in that Newfoundland, New Jersey bygone rural station. He doesn't mind the solitude. At four feet tall, Fin actually enjoys being alone; content with his thoughts, quietly researching railway timetables and patiently watching the somewhat regular rail traffic that thunders past his new home. That is, until he meets Joe Oramas (Bobby Cannavale), a rather socially needy chatterbox running his ailing father's chipwagon that's parked at the sleepy intersection just outside McBride's weather-beaten front door. Joe's basically a big, socially clumsy kid and an enormously extroverted people-person who hates being alone. So, it's an uneasy friendship at first, but the two eventually grow on each other. Then there's Olivia Harris (Patricia Clarkson), a somewhat eccentric local artist who Fin finds himself bumping into (and jumping out of the way of) while he acclimatizes himself to his adopted surroundings. Their friendship is also slow to develop, but eases into its own with time. However, when Olivia's self-indulgent ex-husband re-enters the picture, the fragile dynamic between our three oddballs is shaken to its core and feelings of abandonment rise to the surface, with dramatically life-threatening consequences...

Winner of three awards at this year's Sundance Film Festival - including one for screenwriting, for director Thomas McCarthy's wonderfully personable script - this surprisingly captivating independent offering is definitely one of the delights of 2003. Sure, it does tend to feel fairly low-budget and stripped bare of dramatic ambience a lot of the time, but these characters and the quirky way they fumble through their lives is so endearingly charming to watch that those possible flaws would only matter in less capable hands. It's got a smart, well-paced story and a strong cast that's given a wealth of fresh dialogue for an audience that's looking for something more than just another ear-splitting pyrotechnic slam fest to sit through. Dinklage is superb as a very real and human little person, not so much struggling with his stature but being equal parts amused and disappointed by how people react to him. Fin is simply an ordinary guy who lives like everyone else, yet is continually interrupted from that by others making a big deal about his height. Sometimes benignly, but mostly with malevolent intent. You can see it in his face, and how it sometimes eats away at his insides. If nothing else, this movie is a breath of fresh air because of how his viewpoint is cleverly and intimately shared. Without being sentimental or preachy. However, full marks also go to Cannavale and Clarkson, as well as to most of the supporting cast, for filling out this flick and making it much more than the sum of its individual parts. It's about lonely people finding each other in friendship, and the comforting and often irreverent bond that comes from that. It's also full of in-jokes for its intended audience. Jokes such as when Olivia's ex walks in to find her in a robe, with a hunky guy (Joe) and a dwarf (Fin), the hilarious innuendo is implied but isn't overdone. This movie sneaks into your heart at times, and makes you laugh out loud. Much like life does. If you're up for a decidedly small picture that takes its time and is hugely entertaining, I'd definitely recommend that you check out 'The Station Agent' for some incredible acting and a thoroughly satisfying experience. Good stuff.

home: http://www.moviequips.ca | index: http://www.moviequips.ca/#QUIPSOGRAPHY

Something's Gotta Give
REVIEWED 12/03, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

Aging LA-born Manhattan business magnate and incorrigible ladies man Harry Sanborn (Jack Nicholson) was about to enjoy a romantic couple of days in the Hamptons with his latest twenty-nine year-old girlfriend, Christie's auctioneer Marin Barry (Amanda Peet), before two disastrous things happened. First, he was mistaken for a trouserless fridge-foraging burglar by Marin's neurotically divorced and prim playwright mother Erica (Diane Keaton) - who gave him even more grief when she discovered this sixty-three year-old "misogynist" planned some serious kanoodling with her only daughter in their spacious Long Island beachside home. And then, just as he was getting over enduring a dinner of Feminist interrogation and dissection with Aunt Zoe (Frances McDormand) making him the main course, Harry suffered a heart attack that grounded him there under Erica's grudging care at the orders of Hampton Park Medical Center's personably tall, dark and hunky Doctor Julian Mercer (Keanu Reeves). Sure, stage junkie Julian was thrilled to meet and flirt with The Erica Barry over a coffee in the hospital's waiting room, while drugged-up Harry deliriously wandered the hallways with his butt hanging out of his gown. However, that's not really the kind of unabashed nudity Sanborn had in mind. So, now he's stuck in a bedroom where he can't smoke his favourite cigars in, and she's stuck with the phone continually ringing until the wee hours of the night. It almost sounds like one of her plays. In fact, Harry turns out to become such an overwhelming influence on Erica's carefully maintained life, that she eventually rewrites her currently unfinished manuscript to include him and his antics. This eventually doesn't bode well for him either, as he realizes six months later just how much Erica has affected him, in this deliciously irreverent comedy where complete opposites sometimes do attract with hilarious results.

This one's a keeper. Sure, it's got a number of slightly lop-sided contrivances to sidestep, but writer/director Nancy Meyers truly does a wonderful job of suspending your disbelief and letting you enjoy the ride, as Nicholson and Keaton give us some of the best work of their careers here. There are so many beautiful character nuances that underpin this strongly paced and fully entertaining laughs-packed romp, that you can't really call it a farce. It is over the top at times, but it plays out naturally for the most part. This duo feel like real people, experiencing an entire range of emotions and subtle development throughout the course of its screening, that it's almost magical in the way that Jack and Dianne become Harry and Erica, simply living through all of this mayhem and heartbreak like anyone you know probably would. In an astonishingly good way, there's practically no hint of them acting from scene to captivating scene. Keaton is amazing, as a mature classy woman reclaiming her sensuality - without needing to flaunt it like a teenager. I also enjoyed Nicholson's interesting final path, that was quite similar to what's seen in 'High Fidelity' (2000). Delightfully fresh. Of course, it's easy to notice where this flick could have quickly fallen apart, because most of the supporting cast - including Peet and McDormand - do tend to overplay their roles to the hilt, but on a short leash. Alternatively, a positive surprise was Reeves, who gives us a far wider scope and fewer blank stares to his part here than what paying audiences have seen from him in recent years. Good stuff, dude. This movie is definitely a tight, perfectly-matched winner for Boomers who have grown up with its headlining stars since the 1960's and 70's, but the hilarious contemporary comedy throughout works on so many levels that it would be terribly shortsighted to suggest younger moviegoers wouldn't get just as much satisfaction from seeing it. Now, I know a lot of fuss has been made over Keaton's full-frontal split-second nude scene by some who might already be tired of this new liberation of the flesh by current actors this year, but hers is actually more subliminal and tastefully done than you might have expected. Plus, it's one of the funniest scenes, along with her later sex scene. Do yourself and your funny bone a big favour, and check out 'Something's Gotta Give' as a great new holiday gift that isn't about Christmas. Outstanding.

home: http://www.moviequips.ca | index: http://www.moviequips.ca/#QUIPSOGRAPHY

Stuck on You
REVIEWED 12/03, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

Fresh from his local crowd-pleasing one-man stage play 'Tru' at Martha's Vineyard's Oak Bluffs Theatre, Quickie Burger co-owner and starry-eyed thespian Walter Tenor (Greg Kinnear) has left that sleepy Massachusetts fishing village for the bright lights of Hollywood. Thirty-two year-old Walt isn't sure if he'll realize his dreams of becoming a movie star, but he knows he'll never forgive himself if he doesn't at least try. His more levelheaded brother Bob (Matt Damon) is at first skeptical, but soon puts his own uncertainties and stage fright behind him and sticks with his aspiring sibling. Of course, Bob really doesn't have much choice but to go along with Walt's plans. See, the Tenor Brothers are co-joined twins, sharing a liver since birth, and physically attached to each other by a nine-inch stretch of skin at their waists. At first, Tinsel town doesn't know what to do with them, until a chance meeting has international screen and music star Cher (as herself) signing on the boys as an opportunity for her to get out of her contract on a cheesy fledgling TV crime-drama called 'Honey and the Beeze'. At the same time, love shy Bob finally gets to meet May (Wen Yann Shih), his LA internet sweetheart of three years, who doesn't quite understand why Walter doesn't give them any privacy during their first face-to-face date. Bob hasn't told her. So, it's a little more than a surprise when she drops by their one room hovel at the Rising Star Apartments, and May find the guys half-naked sharing the same bed. Things go from bad to worse, when Walt's show becomes a dark horse hit and - much to the studio's chagrin - his and Bob's not so inconspicuous secret is somehow leaked to the press...

Well, this personably quirky light comedy from the Farrelly Brothers (who actually have been referred to as the Director with Two Heads) is certainly a change of pace for the flick's leading man duo. Kinnear and Damon do a wonderful job here, as two distinctly different personalities joined at the hip throughout most of their scenes, giving us a rare treat with their oddball antics spiced with impressive dramatic talent. Best of all, it's funny. Your disbelief is almost immediately suspended, as this team slaps together two dozen burgers in record time as a four-armed short order machine at the grill, or when they play off of each other in hilarious rounds of shoulder to shoulder banter, and then it all magically transforms into a kind of Japanese Bunraku puppet theater - where either Walt or Bob virtually disappear from your attention as they trade the spotlight - as this endearingly simple story spiked with outrageous laughs plays itself out. The other surprisingly good double act here is Cher - who's had a long history of self-parody that apparently began back in 1966 on the set of the 'Batman' television series and seems to delight in throwing off the gloves and ruthlessly effacing herself for the camera this time out - and Meryl Streep, whose low key walk on cameo eventually transforms into a wild theatrical production in a musical Bonnie and Clyde dance number. Good stuff. Of course, a lot of the humour does lean towards the crass at times, and there is a certain amount of sentimentality sprinkled throughout that slightly jars this picture's momentum. And sure, it sometimes feels as though most of the extras are family friends and neighbours invited onto the set to fill things out. However, 'Stuck on You' is an over-all fun ride that you don't have to think too hard about to enjoy. Check it out as a worthwhile rainy day rental, and specifically for Seymour Cassel's extraordinarily goofy part as bygone Hollywood agent Morty O'Reilly.

home: http://www.moviequips.ca | index: http://www.moviequips.ca/#QUIPSOGRAPHY

Starsky & Hutch
REVIEWED 03/04, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

When the body of hired goon Terrence Meyers mysteriously washes ashore at the Bay City marina, newly partnered Detectives David Starsky (Ben Stiller) and Ken 'Hutch' Hutchinson (Owen Wilson) quickly discover that bullet-holed corpse was employed by millionaire Reese Feldman (Vince Vaughn) through the Nearly There Foundation's program for recently released convicts. Feldman seems innocently helpful enough with their investigation, insisting BCPD's finest odd couple accept free tickets to this outwardly altruistic charity's up-coming annual benefit banquet, until Meyers is linked to convict Big Earl and a sample of white powder that forensics says is merely sweetener. Starsky and Hutch know there has to be more going on. It's the 1970's after-all. Nobody's clean these days. Besides, they have a hunch they're getting too close to something big. Hutchinson's house was bombed, and a sniper took a few shots at Starsky in broad daylight. So, they turn to Ken's reliable 'urban informer' Huggy Bear (Snoop Dog), sending this dapper yet shady character undercover to get close to Reese; finding out that two tons of 'sweetener' - the same stuff that David unwittingly put in his coffee, sending him in to the psychedelic stratosphere during a dance floor face-off at the local disco - are ready to be moved during the Nearly There gala. They still have the tickets, but the case has already fallen apart with no convincing leads strong enough to stop an infuriated Captain Doby from splitting up the team and keeping our two super cops from getting anywhere near Feldman without losing their badges. Of course, without a moment to lose, the duo hop into their white-striped tomato red Ford Gran Torino and burn mag wheel rubber once more through the mean streets before the biggest crime of their tenuous careers goes down...

Yeah, I remember the ground-breaking original Paul Michael Glaser/David Soul television series, inspired by two actual New York undercover detectives, that ran for eighty-eight episodes from 1975 'til 1979. The show won a Golden Globe for outstanding production during its 1977 season - shortly after its predominantly gritty violent plotlines began leaning more towards chummy satire due to strong viewer and executive complaints. What's ironic is that Michael Mann, who brought the equally popular and intense 'Miami Vice' to the small screen a decade later, was apparently one of many writers for 'Starsky & Hutch' back then. However, what we're given now with director Todd Phillips' big screen adaptation starring comedians Stiller and Wilson is pure camp. From the bad perms and polyester suits, to the goofy dialogue and whammy bar soundtrack sexed up as most everything was in that era, this flick is a lovingly sly send up of pretty well all things Seventies. Right down to Wilson, as Hutch, crooning a guitar-accompanied rendition of former Hutch David Soul's 1975 chart-topping single, Don't Give Up On Us Baby. Problem is, the laughs tend to get tedious fairly quickly, and you're forced to sit through this somewhat vapid crime story that's merely been cobbled together as a familiar compilation of set ups for the next rather corny gag. For instance: When Hutch suggests they go on a stake out in his beat up old pick up truck, Starsky balks at being seen in something that sticks out like a sore thumb, opting they go in his flashy muscle car: The '75 Gran Torino that pretty well everyone remembers from the TV show as 'the third star'. Sure, Stiller and Wilson do a good enough job of filling out the roles with their own brand of dry humour, and Snoop Dog does put his own spin on the part made famous by veteran actor Antonio Fargas, but neither the comedy nor the detective elements manage to pack much of a punch throughout this hour and forty minute homage.

I'd say rent this one as a reasonably enjoyable trip down memory lane with your tongue firmly planted in your cheek, but don't be surprised if you feel as though you're watching a cheesy rerun.

home: http://www.moviequips.ca | index: http://www.moviequips.ca/#QUIPSOGRAPHY

Spartan
REVIEWED 03/04, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

The last time anyone saw Laura Newton (Kristen Bell) alive, she had just broken up with her boyfriend over her spontaneously having her long auburn hair cut short and bleached platinum blonde. That was at 2100 hours; Two and a half hours before the secret service agent assigned to watch her Boston college dorm room failed to check in; Five hours before a former Marine Master Gunner and enigmatic veteran operative named Scott (Val Kilmer) was brought in on that chilling Friday night. Laura Newton, the teenaged daughter of the President of the United States, has vanished. There are few leads to go one, but Scott starts with the boyfriend. Discovering Laura might have been having an affair with one of her teachers. Professor Jerold Sloan: Found drowned, along with a young girl, off the coast a few hours later. It's a media frenzy as news of Newton's senseless death spreads across the nation on the eve of her popular father's re-election campaign. However, traces of her actual whereabouts still linger in the sharp mind of Curtis (Derek Luke), a young soldier who tagged along on Scott's apparently failed covert investigation. A strangely drawn Picasso-like emoticon that Laura was renowned for using, left on dusty windows in locations that don't quite jibe with the official report. A piece of broken earring that never should have been found near a beachside house. Curtis is convinced that she was kidnapped, and Scott quickly becomes convinced that this young girl has been snatched by White slave traders based half a world away in Dubai. If that's true, she's relatively safe until her recognizable hair colouring grows back and her captors realize who she is. There's little time to ponder that. Their White House supervisor Burch (Ed O'Neill) thinks so too, and launches a Black Ops operation that sends Scott deep undercover with only one contact - a Federal prisoner slated for transfer the next day - as his way into this treacherous criminal organization. However, the mission suddenly goes sour on all fronts, and Scott ends up finding his own way overseas, outside the normal channels that have now been closed to him. On the hunt for this woman who everyone seems to want to disappear, while he's being hunted down for not walking away from rescuing her...

Wow. Virtually everything about this amazing movie from writer/director David Mamet - who penned similarly astounding screenplays for such fresh hits as 'The Untouchables' (1987) and 'Glengarry Glen Ross' (1992) - systematically clicks into place here, as you're intelligently lowered into this shadowy cloak and dagger world without being patronized by propaganda or spoon-fed each obvious detail. 'Spartan' is a brutally cold and, well, spartan examination of a series of linked missions spiked with thoroughly captivating threads of deduction and wonderfully dry dialogue set within the sometimes enigmatic and diabolical atmosphere of military precision bordering on the robotic. Not in a contrived way, though. Kilmer and his supporting cast are brilliant here, completely immersing themselves in characters that eat and breath and sleep this often excruciating air of total discipline and unflinching - apparently undeserved - honour under the chain of command. Much like those ancient Greek soldiers led into the Battle of Thermopylae against insurmountable odds by King Leonidas of Sparta in 480 BC, where all but one of little more than three hundred were slaughtered by a Roman force of three thousand strong, and that survivor was berated and ostracized as a coward by his own people upon his return, this lone wolf sees little hope for his own life - whether he succeeds or fails - and yet continues forward towards fulfilling his orders at any cost as the walls slowly close in and he realizes the extent of malicious betrayal that has endangered this unwittingly rebellious girl. Simply awesome. Besides Kilmer's outstanding performance, full marks should also go to Luke for a role that easily surpasses his recent breakthrough lead in 'Antwone Fisher', and to relative newcomer Tia Texada as gung ho Sergeant Jackie Black. These are the frontline grunts who do their jobs without any fanfare or sentimental need for thanks, and this tight jigsaw puzzle-like flick truly gives you an overwhelming sense of just how smart these blunt and haunted heroes are. 'Spartan' is a thoughtfully superb and well-calculated espionage thriller that's definitely well worth the price of admission from beginning to end, with more than enough plot twists to keep you riveted in your theatre seat growing new brain cells as Mamet masterfully plays with your mind. Absolutely worth checking out.

home: http://www.moviequips.ca | index: http://www.moviequips.ca/#QUIPSOGRAPHY

Secret Window
REVIEWED 03/04, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

Successful writer Morton Rainey (Johnny Depp) had ruined a perfectly good ending to a short story he'd plagiarized. So claims Mississippi farmer John Shooter (John Turturro), holding his own unpublished manuscript 'The Sowing Season' that turns out to be identical to Rainey's published tale of betrayal and murder set in a forest lakeside house that's entitled 'Secret Window'. The secret window that looks down onto a roughly cordoned off garden, taken from the pages of his own life in happier times. Every paragraph, every sentence and word typed out by this creepy Southerner is exactly the same as his, except for the last chapter. That's what Shooter wants fixed. He doesn't care that Mort has been holed up for the past six months in this secluded cabin on the wooded shore of Tashmore Lake after ending his ten-year marriage to wife Amy (Maria Bello). Or, that Ted (Timothy Hutton), the guy Amy cuckolded him with, is still around and pushing for a finalized divorce. Sleeping with Mort's beautiful wife. In Mort's beautiful house. John couldn't care less that this disheveled New Yorker is currently wrestling with a major case of writer's block, staring for hours at the unfinished lines on his laptop's screen before deleting them in gleeful disgust and then collapsing into an increasingly uneasy sleep on the old banged up couch downstairs. Letting the days go by, and the litter pile up. Nor does it matter to this black-clad accuser that these two men have never met before. Shooter wants the story he wrote back in 1997 put right, bound in print with his name on it, as restitution. And, if the June 1995 copy of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine that featured a portion of Rainey's version isn't produced in three days, well, heaven help him or hell mend him. Shooter is adamant. Of course, local Sheriff Dave Newsome from the sleepy nearby town can't do much to stop this insanity. Killing Mort's dog in the middle of the night with a screwdriver to the throat, as an asserted warning might not even be illegal in these parts, Newsome ponders aloud during the statement next morning. However, the downward spiral continues into murder, and fear-riddled Rainey is forced to finally take matters into his own hands once more...

Thankfully, exhaling a huge sigh of relief, I can honestly say that this is pure King at his best. The tale itself feels like yet another winning pulse-pounding creep out torn from his astonishing 1978 'Night Shift' compilation, which has been a goldmine for Hollywood several times in the past. However, based on 'Secret Window, Secret Garden' - the second of four novellas published in Stephen King's 2001 seven hundred and forty-four paged best-selling horror collection 'Four Past Midnight', this flick is a masterfully macabre delight from beginning to grizzly end. Depp is fabulous here, pulling out all the stops in giving a paying audience a thoroughly quirky and captivating lead to follow along with on this journey into madness. It's astounding to watch, with equal parts of informal humour and foreshadowed dread materializing from this electrifying actor as though he really is this character. Without my giving away too much of the last spine-chilling half, fans will undoubtedly notice a few similarities to the late Stanley Kubrick's memorable interpretation of 'The Shining' (1980), but what screenwriter/director David Koepp does here is present a wonderfully resonating sense of unsettling isolation as this tight uncluttered story progresses. He gets out of the way, paring off all of the extraneous junk that one might expect to sit through (especially after the disastrously goofy 'Dreamcatcher' last year), and lets you step into this world with these believable characters with relative ease. Even when it's obvious that things are beginning to tilt more than you're initially led to believe, this picture keeps you involved and hungry to find out what will happen to all concerned. Again, that's primarily due to the genius of casting Depp, but full marks should also go Turturro for keeping that momentum of underlining terror going, as well as to Koepp for capably helming this truly fresh page to screen gem. Of course, a lot of it also has to do with King - who announced in a 2002 LA Times interview that he planned to stop writing books, after his (then) scheduled five next novels are completed. It's also great to see Timothy Hutton in this one as an important force, keeping in mind that his father James Hutton (1934-1979) starred in the great old Ellery Queen television series during the mid-1970's. Gotta love those esoteric connections. If I continue any longer, I'm just going to start gushing and embarrass myself, because this movie is such an incredibly entertaining dark surprise that's definitely well worth the price of admission. Awesome.

home: http://www.moviequips.ca | index: http://www.moviequips.ca/#QUIPSOGRAPHY