Reviews

Like "Hide and Seek", from what I can tell of the reviews and other user comments, there are the people who treat the movie as a straight-forward horror/thriller (and therefore find fault with it), and those who see the twist that calls so much of what the audience sees into question.

I saw the film at a Boston Fantasy film festival at the Brattle Theater in Cambridge. The fact was included under the genre of "fantasy" clued me in early that things that might otherwise seem odd or illogical might be fine in a less literal framework (i.e. the waitress at the diner discussing "headless calves", Sam's questions about how Harlan could go from being a coma for over a year to someone out of the hospital and physically fit, the failure of three desperate people believing they are about to be killed (including Sam's husband who was in perfect position behind) to even attempt to overcome a single person of less physical strength whose gun-toting skills seemed quite ineffective.) In combination with flashbacks in which various details were modified, clearly the director and scriptwriter had much more in mind than a psycho-puts-family-through-sadistic-games scenario.

This is not a movie for the weak of stomach (my 16-year-old daughter, who has been in theater all her life and works for an indie film theater not only could not watch several of the scenes, but became physically ill with what she did see.) I did take points off from my rating here and at the festival for violence that seemed over-the-top on the screen and which might have been more frightening and psychologically involving if left more suggestive than graphic, but I can also see why the filmmakers may have made that choice.

All in all, this is a very worthwhile movie for anyone willing to think a lot, gather clues, and put them all together. For example, the title itself which on first blush seems fairly generic may have a very specific meaning that opens up the entire thrust of the film.

As with so many films in the thriller/science fiction, "The Island" does a great job setting up its premise, but loses credibility when the scriptwriters allow plot discrepancies to get out of hand to the point of absurdity.

SPOILER - SPOILER - SPOILER - SPOILER - SPOILER - SPOILER 1. Mccord gives Lincoln and Jordan his credit card, then tells them not to use it after the first 24 hours because he will have to report it stolen. He dies before they've even left, so presumably he hasn't yet contacted the credit card company. Yet at his death, the card has that status.

2. The Information Services booth has no trouble figuring out from all the people in the U.S. named Tom Lincoln or (Whatever) Jordan exactly which ones the clones are trying to contact.

3. The police car stops in the middle of the intersection for no particular purpose other than to make sure it is in the way of the monster vehicle that will momentarily be barreling down on it.

4. Even though the clones are in L.A., it never occurs to anyone to put Tom Lincoln's residence under surveillance to see if that might be their destination.

5. Somehow Lincoln and Jordan figure out what a taxi is for and how to use one, even to the point of tipping, because there's no indication the driver pulled away angry after dropping them off.

6. No one seems to react to the news that Jordan has left the state in search of her sponsor, when one would expect them to move the whole team across country.

7. A trained Army seal doesn't search an arrestee for weapons before sitting down next to her in a car. Of course, considering Jordan was wearing only a tight tee shirt, it should have been readily apparent she was carrying a gun. Otherwise, where did she get it? I was also bothered by the gratuitous waste of a "valuable product." Surely considering the way they controlled everything else, they could have brainwashed the "breeders" into willingly surrendering their babies rather than killing the mothers after they gave birth. Why wouldn't the original woman want the clone kept around for the same purpose as the other clones in case she needed a spare part? Or what if the couple wanted to have another child? They'd have to wait another year and put up another $5 million. Clearly this scene existed just to give Lincoln something horrible to discover and/or make the corporation seem even more terrible than a smart business would actually be.

Finally, instead of the ridiculous notion that adult human bodies wouldn't seek out sexual activity just because they hadn't been "taught" it exists, wouldn't it have been more credible to program the clones that such activity was terrible and that violations of the "proximity" thing could jeopardize their chance of getting to the Island? Undoubtedly some of these problems exist because of the massive rewriting the script went through since its original incarnation. For example, I got the feeling there was supposed to be a whole lot more behind Jordan's reaction to the little boy mistaking her for his mother, rather than just simply eliminating the question whether Jordan or the mother should survive by announcing the mother was brain dead and couldn't be saved.

Someday perhaps Hollywood will learn the difference between an okay film and a great one is having someone watch the thing with a critical eye so that logic and common sense can be used to identify and eliminate all the "no, that wouldn't happen" moments.

Much in the same way "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless" mind reveled in the supposed novelty of memory erasure plots, "The Jacket" takes on time travel, specifically the ever popular if-you-knew-the-future-could-you-prevent-it question. The set-up is an interesting one -- Jack, a Gulf war vet suffering from previously diagnosed amnesia gets the supposed leniency of an insanity ruling when he's charged with murdering a police officer and blocks out the memories that could have established his innocence. The court confines him to an insane asylum where the doctors treat the inmates as criminals requiring drastic, life-threatening treatments in an effort to cure them of their violent tendencies.

During one of these treatments when confined in the straight "Jacket" of the title, like Billy Pilgrim, Jack finds his mind unstuck in time. After seeing terrifying images of past events, he finds himself able to focus on a future -- but one in which he has been dead for years, having expired mere days into the future. With the help of a now grown-up girl he befriended in the past, he plays detective to try to learn the circumstances of his death with the hope of preventing it or otherwise bettering the future.

For those of us who have seen this plot unfold many times (actually there was an "Outer Limits" episode on the other night where a scientist travels into the future, learns his wife has been murdered, and then tries to prevent it by similar leaps back and forth in time), I had hoped this film would say something new about time paradoxes -- or perhaps turn out not to be about time travel at all, but I was disappointed. Although the film is well-acted and deals fairly realistically and consistently with Jack's interactions with the future versions of the present-day characters, the art house pace also severely reduces the feeling of urgency that should at least have characterized the last part where Jack's death is imminent. Because of the creepiness of its setting, the emotional horror the films invokes at someone being pinned down, shot up with drugs, and stuffed in a box in the morgue, there could have been a very intense build-up followed by a huge payoff at the end in terms of emotional intensity, but instead the film glides to a happy ending that completely ignores the time paradox. It also leaves the audience having to figure out for itself exactly how that ending could have come about.

All in all, I could think of a number of better endings accepting time travel as real, though most would have required eliminating the sudden romance between Jack and Jackie (which as another person pointed out, seems out of place anyway considering in Jack's time, Jackie is still a child.) Even better would have been one using a completely different (and perhaps not supernatural) explanation for the events a la "Jacob's Ladder". The apparent coincidence of Jack and Jackie having virtually the same name made me think she might be merely a projection of himself in his mind whom he needed to "save", and that everything that seemed to happen took place in his mind during one of the horrendous treatments as a means for him to hold onto his sanity.

Despite all these problems, I would recommend this movie to anyone who likes time travel/supernatural puzzle films, but recommend to the director and scriptwriter that the next time they want to deal with science fiction concepts, they should go out and discover what ground has already been covered many times before.

I'd really been looking forward to this one, so I was rather disappointed when my favorite critic roasted it as have others as well. (Of course these are some of the same people who thought "The Ring" and "The Grudge" were masterpieces.) Although I would like to see the movie a second time to see if in fact the pieces do fit once the viewer knows the secret, my initial impression is that they do.

SPOILER - SPOILER - SPOILER - SPOILER - SPOILER - SPOILER - SPOILER This is one of those films that contains all sorts of elements that seem inconsistent or not quite right initially, but when viewed from a different perspective in fact prove to be the foreshadowing for the twist (i.e. very "Sixth Sense"). I was bothered at first by little things -- David (Robert DeNiro) tells everyone he wants to be a full-time dad to Emily (Dakota Fanning), but then leaves her by herself for seemingly hours as he retires to his study, puts on his earphones and goes to work, although he no longer appears to be a practicing psychologist. He also seems to be the most inept psychologist around in dealing with his daughter's grief by insisting on carrying out the dead mother's rituals, inviting an attractive woman to dinner much too soon, and otherwise showing an incredible lack of empathy as either a psychologist or a father.

I would have to see the movie a second time to see if it cheats in anyway. The problem is that when a twist changes an entire perspective on a film, the point-of-view itself becomes unreliable, so things that might otherwise seem unbelievable may simply not have occurred. I keep wrestling with the problem that Emily is presented as an intelligent, sensitive child who at a much earlier point might have reacted to her father's aberrant behavior by reaching out to her psychiatrist, neighbors, or even the "love interest", Elizabeth (Elizabeth Shue), and would certainly not herself have become creepy. But I give the film the benefit of the doubt in that it may have given us the clues that Emily's behavior is no more being portrayed accurately than is David's. For example, the handling of Emily's alleged attack on Amy's doll seemed incredible to me in that neither Elizabeth nor David ever indicated Amy was upset, suggesting the incident never happened but that perhaps Emily did not want to play with Amy again because she perceived her as being in harm's way.

One thing I can't fit together is the story of the neighbors, which feels like it was meant to be longer or more developed. Certainly it makes sense that the husband out of his own grief in having lost a daughter might have picked up on something when Emily talked to him in the yard, thereby justifying his coming over to David's house and insisting on seeing her to make certain she was all right. But the scene between David and the wife didn't ring true (of course again, if presented via David's perspective, it didn't have to be true.)

All in all, I did enjoy the movie, especially as it gave Dakota Fanning a chance to stretch her skills to play both a truly creepy and utterly sympathetic child.

The first 2/3 of the movie is wonderful -- quirky, warm and often funny -- and the acting is outstanding. But then it turns into a completely different film where it loses most of its credibility, and most of all just doesn't deliver the emotional payoff it is trying so hard to do. Two days after seeing it, I keep finding more annoying elements.

SPOILER -- SPOILER - SPOILER - SPOILER - SPOILER - SPOILER - SPOILER I agree with the other person who mentioned in a comment that the ending just doesn't flow from the rest of the movie. It's true that in real life, things sometimes happen out of nowhere, but in films we expect there to be a connection -- that events transpire not just because they can, but because they must, given what went before. In MDB, the central notion of "protecting oneself" gets an inordinate amount of screen time, yet for the "twist" to occur, the main characters have to completely forget it. Thus we have Frank (Clint Eastwood) zigzagging from not being able to protect his fighter (Morgan Freeman), overprotecting his fighter (Big Willy), and then both over- and under-protecting his fighter(Hilary Swank). Here Maggie is in a ring with a boxer known for fighting dirty, and neither she nor Frank seem to be particularly on the alert. The film also leaves dangling the whole concept as to whether Frank was wrong or right to be protective.

VERY BIG SPOILER - VERY BIG SPOILER - VERY BIG SPOILER My biggest problem with the film (and the reason I can't imagine the Holleywood community voting for it as best film come Oscars night) is that I couldn't accept Maggie's decision, nor Frank's decision to help her, in a world that just lost Christopher Reeve, who showed that even people in Maggie's condition can still do meaningful things with their lives. As a personal matter, I am sure that if I were in that position, I might also long to commit suicide, but knowing that people like Christopher Reeve have chosen to live life to the fullest despite extreme limitations, it's hard for me to emotionally get behind a character who isn't even willing to try (I'm certain I would view "Whose Life is it Anyway" less sympathetically if I saw it today.)

Not only was this major emotional component lacking for me, but some of the rest of the stuff was absolutely ludicrous. I almost laughed at the last scene with the family, given that under the circumstances, no attorney would fail to bring a notary along to ascertain the "mark" to be made was genuine. The whole scene was also completely over-the-top, in that it had already been established her family was selfish and uncaring.

This is definitely a movie that would have had a stronger and more honest emotional impact if it had stayed in its original vein and figured out a more subtle way to show the connection between Frank and Maggie than lapsing into melodrama.

I loved the first 3/4 of this movie for its emotional depth as well as creepiness, which showed it had the potential be another "The Sixth Sense" in terms of a film that could both scary and moving. However as happens with so many horror/suspense films, especially those involving supernatural elements, the scriptwriter and/or director eventually abandoned the rules by which they were playing in favor of a conventional "anything goes" Hollywood ending, thereby robbing the film of its credibility and emotional depth.

(SPOILER ALERT -- SPOILER -- SPOILER -- SPOILER -- SPOILER -- SPOILER) In the part of the movie that works, the concept is established that people who have died can communicate with the living through electronic means, ranging from simple things and ambiguous such as turning electronic devices on or off to actual aural messages and visuals. The film nicely develops Jonathan (Michael Keaton's) passage from disbeliever to someone who has had his grief assuaged by learning his loved one still exists, then takes the further turn to show how someone could become obsessed with these communications, even to the point of ignoring the emotional needs of his child. It also raises the concept that the person receiving the messages may be so eager to hear them that they do not recognize the possibility the messages are being manipulated by someone with less benign intentions.

(SPOILER -- SPOILER -- SPOILER -- SPOILER -- SPOILER -- SPOILER) Eventually the movie veers away from the central concept (dead people communicating with loved ones) to include live people near death sending help messages about real-time occurrences, then further to include messages about future occurrences, which may or may not be avoidable. While some of this was definitely chilling, the film lost me when it broke the central rule (dead people can only communicate through electronic means) to allow the forces of evil to take on corporal forms.

(SPOILER -- SPOILER -- SPOILER -- SPOILER -- SPOILER - SPOILER) What is particularly irksome is that the film could have stayed within its rules and still put its main characters in physical jeopardy. For example, instead of having Sarah threatened by a dark form somehow sneaking into her bedroom and either psychically or actually physically causing her jump from the window, why couldn't she have been threatened by electronic means (i.e. having the electrical system in her cut off while driving on the freeway.) Or causing an accident by spooking her. In the form of the very much alive workman who was abducting the women, they had a way to explain all the non-electrical damage that occurred (such as the vandalism of Jonathan's equipment) including a reasonable motive (the villain had allowed his obsession with the subject matter to carry him over into evil) without resorting to supernatural creatures. As it was, I didn't find the ending one bit believable, and when a movie fails to make me feel as though a threat could be real, it also ceases to be frightening.

My husband and I stumbled across this one while channel surfing, and stayed tuned because we wanted to watch Mandy Patinkin and James Spader at work. Later on we were rewarded when other interesting joined them including M. Emmet Walsh, Charles Durning, and Joel Grey.

Normally about now I put in a "Spoiler" because of my problems with the specific elements of a film's plot, but I don't have to this time because the entire thing made no sense. At every point the characters either acted without any motivation or ignored reasonable alternatives in favor of completely illogical choices. As it went along, I kept coming up with ideas that might explain all the oddities (taking into consideration its apparent "Twilight Zone" sensibility), but the ending provided no resolution whatsoever.

I recognize Paul Auster is considered an excellent contemporary writer, and perhaps because of its nature, his book on which the movie is based makes more sense. But a film director's job is to convey meaning independent of whether the audience is familiar with the underlying work. When a film could literally be found to mean anything by viewers desperate to defend its artistic value, it has no meaning at all.

This was better than "The Ring" (both Japanese and American versions) in terms of being genuinely frightening, but the inconsistencies bothered me terribly and significantly detracted from the movie's potential impact. In particular, even though ghosts and other supernatural elements obviously require the audience to suspend its disbelief, that gets harder when there are apparently no limitations as to what the "ghoulies" can do. When they break those rules and become seemingly all powerful, it's the functional equivalent of the shark in "Jaws" abandoning the water to go wander the land and chomp people.

SPOILER - SPOILER - SPOILER - SPOILER - SPOILER - SPOILER - SPOILER In particular, this movie is centered establishes itself as your basic haunted house flick. Within the house, there is some consistency in what the ghosts can do -- they appear with images resembling themselves in life, but can distort those images in terrifying ways. On the other hand, they act inconsistently, sometimes attacking those who see them, sometimes just scaring them, and sometimes (such as the encounter between SMG and the little boy) acting just slightly off-kilter. But get them outside the house and their powers actually grow: they can imitate other people's voices and take on their appearance (or even in the case of Bill Pullman, get into his head and cause him to commit suicide). Not only does this fly in the face of any type of logic (why would the ghosts get stronger and more flexible away from their base?), but it raises the disturbing question as to why such all-powerful beings seem to have problems killing particular folks other than to entertain the audience by drawing out the suspense (i.e. if you can cause someone to throw himself off a balcony, it should have been a simple matter to force the sister to throw herself down the stairwell or out of the cab, instead of letting her get home to her apartment.)

Anyway, I would still recommend the film just because of the extremely disturbing images and overall tension, but the difference between cheap shocks and true terror always comes down to a work's believability, and this one lost me whenever the ghosts took their campaign to the greater Tokyo area.

I'd been looking forward to the adaptation of Dennis LeHane's novel ever since I heard of the superb director/cast lineup. But it missed for me in capturing the spirit of the book. Sean Penn was excellent and deserves an Oscar nod; Kevin Bacon, Laura Linney and Marcia Gay Harden also turned in fine work (as did Laurence Fishburne although he had far less to do.)

****SPOILER ALERT***

My real problem was with Tim Robbins' portrayal of Dave. In the book, although the character is tormented by his past, on the surface at least at the beginning he seems to have pulled it together enough to get married and have a child. His disintegration as the result of confronting that past is much more powerful on paper because the reader is in the character's head. While a good actor (which Tim Robbins certainly is most times) can externalize those changes, from the first time the adult Dave appeared onscreen, he appeared burned out and twitchy, so much so that you can't imagine his wife ever marrying him. Furthermore I don't think the movie did much with the true horrific twist of the book in exploring Dave's motivations to attack the child molester, which made more believable (in the novel) his later failure to save himself in the confrontation with Jimmy (instead accepting blame for something he didn't in fact do).

Much of the strength of the movie comes from the original writing. I just wish the film had done justice to all of it.

I adored "El Mariachi" and found "Desperado" quite watchable, so I had high hopes for this one. My boyfriend and I saw it projected on an Imax screen which makes any movie a more intense visual experience.

At first I thought it was going to turn out to be a classic, what with Johnny Depp delivering many black humor and simply strange remarks in his unique way. However after a while, I couldn't follow the plot (until the Depp character helpfully provides a summary of the exposition, complete with visual reminders).

Even after I figured out what was going on, the lapses in logic got me. Many times things seemed to be happening because Rodriguez thought it would be interesting, not because they were the natural consequences of other events. For example, , after Depp's character (Sands) sees the bad guy is getting plastic surgery to change his identity (but sees only the bandages, not the results), the guy and his team gouge out Sands' eyes -- but then release him. Wouldn't he have been able to tell people "Hey, this guy has changed his appearance?" And why blind him in the first place except to be gratuitously nasty? Sands then goes to great links to return to "the center of town" and ends up gunning down two guards. What was the point other that to have a blind man get into gunplay with two sighted opponents? There's no indication that his action saved anyone or otherwise advanced the plot.

With a little more attention to plot points and consistency, this could have been a very good movie. As is, it has individual laugh-out-loud scenes, but the confusing changes of mood and direction detract a lot from the experience. I give it a 5 out of 10.

I went to the theater prepared to enjoy the film, but severe plot problems quickly destroyed the experience. (WARNING -- SPOILERS COMING UP). First, although it could have been sent anywhere, the League's assignment is to go to Venice, which always looks amazingly like Prague (where it was actually filmed). Aside from thinking the Nautilus could navigate the canals, who believed an automobile could race about in a city linked by water rather than roads? Why didn't they pick a place with water access which wouldn't be so obviously "not Venice".

(SPOILERS) Second, why go to such lengths to bring all these people together? The villain could have accomplished his goal by meeting individually with each participant, and there was no reason to recruit Sean Connery at all because nothing was taken from him.

(SPOILERS) Third, the character of Mr. Hyde made no sense. Apparently despite the whole plot set-up that Jekyll lost control of himself when he changed, when he really wanted to, Hyde could be an all-right guy who just happened to be big and strong. This completely undercut the first scenes with him.

(SPOILERS) Finally, the picture of Dorian Gray made no sense. If he couldn't look at it himself, surely it would have been taken down from his wall many years before and the pictures rearranged rather than leaving an obvious space. Besides, how on earth could he have learned that he couldn't look at it (or what it showed)? Why would he be concerned if the villain had stolen it? After all, if it were some place he would never lay eyes on it, it would seem a lot safer. The whole thing would have made more sense if he could look on it, but needed to keep it safe because its destruction would have caused him to take on its attributes. (Plus you would have thought DR would at least have closed his eyes when Mina was taking off the wrapper.)

The literary allusions were fun -- would that we'd had a lot more instead of the standard plot device: blow more things up.

This was one of the most disappointing movies I've seen in a while. Although the premise is excellent and the images creepy, the total lack of logic both in the overall storyline and individual scenes made it so unbelievable that I stopped being scared long before the ending.

SPOILERS - SPOILERS - SPOILERS - SPOILERS - SPOILERS - SPOILERS SPOILERS - SPOILERS - SPOILERS - SPOILERS - SPOILERS - SPOILERS

The niece Katie's attitude towards the tape seems inconsistent. She doesn't tell her best friend until the witching hour is upon them (and then makes fun of the idea), yet she tells her much younger cousin she doesn't have much time left. Also how did the rumor of the tape get started? Supposedly the tape got made by Katie and her friends trying to record a football game. If so, she and her friends were the first victims, and there shouldn't be any rumor that the tape actually killed people.

Katie's mother asks her sister Rachel to look into the death because she doesn't understand why a 16-year-old's heart would stop suddenly. Um - wasn't anyone concerned with the way Katie's body looked in those horrifying flashes? (Especially given someone mentioned that "seeing the body" had been one of the things pushing the friend into madness). I'd think any competent coroner would have some questions on how this girl looked drowned, bloated or worse. The movie would have been a lot stronger if the victims had simply dropped dead of fright leaving beautiful corpses.

The tape itself is fine - truly creepy. And it makes sense that Samara broadcasting from the well could impose the images on the videotape being recorded near by. But apparently she wasn't exactly limited to geographical proximity, because long before the taping, she'd been out killing her mother and the horses. As a matter of fact, this kid can use telephones, move objects at will at long distances, control electricity, and pretty much everything else even before she's `helped' out of the well. (I'm still wondering how she killed the kids in the car given they likely weren't near a television set).

The horse scene was extremely well done, tho it made no sense for Naomi to keep messing with the horse despite its rising agitation. But then she does lots of inexplicable things, such as her penchant for leaving dead bodies unreported (except for Samara's). Apparently she not only walked away from the father of her child, but she left Samara's father to be discovered by someone else after his extremely elaborate suicide. (Still wondering why someone would go so far out of his way to electrocute himself especially with someone else in the house).

A lot of the things that affect the characters don't have any explanation. My boyfriend suggested the scribbling over faces was meant to convey Samara's head had been put in the black plastic bag. That might be, but what explanation was there for the distorted faces in pictures and videos? Or the nosebleeds for that matter. A lot of times I felt the only motivation behind the things happening was that it would make the audience jump.

All in all, a movie that should have gone straight to video where at least they could have gotten some real impact out of the self-referential stuff at the end about making a copy and showing it to someone else.