Reviews

If you can believe that a man who is literally bleeding from the face and head would be seated in a nice restaurant without comment, you might enjoy this.

Really, man, take a few minutes and wash up. It might make you feel better.

The pig was easily the best thing here; once gone - and that's five minutes into the film - it's just silly, pretentious and pointless. And when the reveal comes it's spit out so quickly as to be incomprehensible but by that time I didn't care anyway.

If you've seen 'Hereditary' (you probably have) or Ben Wheatley's ' Kill List' ( you probably have not, but should) then you've already seen two movies that explore the central idea of 'The Empty Man' in much more chilling and effective ways. Not a terrible film by any means but the denounment was so derivative of these superior films that it left a bad impression.

Very bad, indeed. Bad script, bad performances, bad direction, bad, bad, bad. I was expecting a lot more from a very talented cast, so I can only lay the blame with writer/director Peter Berg. This poor guy has no sense of what makes for a 'black' comedy. 'Very Bad Things' is devoid of irony or satire; instead, its' cardboard characters lurch blindly through silly moments spouting impossibly bad dialogue. 'Go', released the following year, is an example of black comedy done well: sharp dialogue, a diverse cast of characters and insane but ultimately believable scenarios. Hell, this isn't even up to the rather low bar of 'Drop Dead Gorgeous'. One reviewer here compared this to 'Dr. Strangelove'; are you kidding me?

By sheer coincidence, just two nights prior to the debut of 'Behind the Candelabra', I had the pleasure of viewing one of my favorite films, 1965's 'The Loved One', in which Liberace played 'Mr.Starker', a casket salesman. So it was with Liberace's voice, image and mannerisms fresh in my mind that I encountered Michael Douglas' portrayal of the man and boy, did he nail it.

The story itself is pretty much by the numbers with the kind of shorthand one expects from a TV movie bio; it's the performances that bring this to a certain level of greatness. Douglas all but disappears into the role, right from the start. It's truly an amazing thing to watch, and considering the subject, a brave and unapologetic performance. Matt Damon is equally impressive and while I have no idea if he does the real Scott Thorson justice, his transformation from an eager and innocent young man to a jaded, coked-up and surgically altered paranoid boy-toy is stark and convincing. Add to these chameleon-like performances an unrecognizable Debbie Reynolds and a truly unnerving Rob Lowe and you have two hours of truly compelling, master-class performances.

Highly recommended.

I decided to give this a go one slightly hung-over Saturday morning. I expected to be out by the first commercial break (and as this was on Chiller TV, that was due to be really, really early) but I found myself pleasantly surprised and quickly engaged by a charming, capable cast and first-rate direction.

The entire cast handled well the delicate balance of playing out an absurd premise with relatively straight faces, but you could tell they were having a good time. Ralph Macchio and Jeremy Sisto were a lot of fun in their smaller roles, but the leads were truly standouts. Jake Hoffman and Kris Lemche both have great timing and an easy charm while Devon Aoki, well, let's just say that when her boyfriend tells her that she's beautiful, he ain't lyin'.

As Horace the Vampire, John Ventimiglia stole every scene he was in, and I'm embarrassed to say that this 'Sopranos' fan had no idea that it was Artie Bucco who was chewing up the scenery.

Some of this brought to mind 'Repo Man' (and from me that's no small compliment)and while not a classic of that magnitude this was a lot of fun to watch. When I see it on the supermarket rack I'm gonna buy it because I look forward to seeing it again, sans commercials. I also see that writer/director Galland worked again a few years later with Ventimiglia, Lemche and quite a few others from this cast in 'Alter Egos'. I'm looking forward to seeing that as well.

My wife's a sport; she'll watch all of my odd picks. Most recently I subjected her to 'Oldboy' (a re-viewing for me, a last viewing for her) so I figured I owed her one. Hence, 'Your Sister's Sister'. Besides, a reviewer here that I respect recommended it, the premise did not sound unpalatable & I dig Emily Blunt (loved her in 'Prada').

'Unpalatable' is, however, the perfect word for this dull, obvious and totally un-charming film. It didn't ruin Emily for me, at least not irrevocably, but it did ruin a certain Mark Duplass. Beware the 'auteur' who's driven to act in his own films. He 'produced' this one which, if the result equals the effort, amounted to rounding up all his friends and saying, 'Hey kids, let's put on a show!' I understand that much of this was improvised, and it shows. The difference between brilliant improv (Woody Allen, Mike Leigh & the Second City 'Best in Show' bunch') & this slight effort is that the former feature characters with multiple dimensions and actors capable of exploring those characters. To me that sounds a lot harder than reading words from a script verbatim.

Or, a lot easier if the characters are cutouts and you have nothing much to say. Dull characters, dull dialogue, predictable results. At the end, which features a literal 'result' that should be of great import, my wife and I just looked at each other and said,'Feh'.

She did like Mark Duplass, which surprised me. She thought he was cute. As for me, I was interested in seeing 'Safety Not Guaranteed' until I saw that he was the lead. Another 90 minutes with this sad sack and I'm going to need three back-to-back viewings of 'Ichi the Killer' just to get over it.

I'm going to make this short, since all the praise has been heaped and the naysayers have also had their say. 'The Dark Knight' was fun, but good lord, folks...#1 of all time? Better than 'The Godfather?' More amazing than 'Star Wars'? Gimme a break.

Heath Ledger earns his props. A wonderful interpretation. But really, if the poor guy hadn't died would his performance be arousing all this adulation? Batman, Two-Face...great fun, but right out of the comics, both emotionally and believably. As it should be. I didn't mind that poor Harvey is laying in bed with half his face burned off and is otherwise okay; it's a comic book. But I imagine that Bale & Eckhart are kinda scratching their heads over this one...they've both been better in more emotionally resonant movies.

A bit long, a bit obvious (the creepy, white 'everyman' and the noble black criminal in the final act). A great time at the movies, yes, but this isn't 'Sunset Boulevard', it isn't "the Godfather, I or II. It isn't even the best superhero movie...I'd have to give that one to 'X-Men II' or 'Spidey II'. It isn't even the best Christopher Nolan film; 'The Prestige' gets better with every viewing; I don't know if the three hour 'Batman' is going rate a second look.

Widen your horizons...rent a few of the 'Top 250' that you haven't seen, especially the vintage ones, and see if there's something more to cinema than you expect.

'À l'intérieur' pulls off a surprising feat: it manages to take a concept that is, by its' very premise, provocative, and make it remarkably uninvolving. It performs this reverse alchemy by an unrelenting series of missteps, in both minor details and choices that the characters make, or don't make. Every time you get close to being sucked in by the action, you are suddenly ripped out of it by something that draws attention to the contrivance and implausibility.

Having said that, I still enjoyed the film due to the performance of the two leads and the remarkable, atmospheric direction. In fact, all of the actors were fine, doing their best with what they had to work with. In the end, this is a gore-fest, and at that the creators succeeded in spades.

I can't recommend this to anyone looking for an involving story or the kind of suspense that demands that you lose yourself in the film, but if you're looking for an 82 minute ride through a great looking charnel house, you could do a lot worse.

I think Sam Raimi was wearing the black suit when he made this. He and his writers performed the tricky task of having too many characters and yet having long stretches where nothing interesting happened, or something happened that had already happened. Shades of 'Pirates II'! I'm not going to go into the specific plot holes, lapses of logic, etc....I've already wasted enough time on this. Suffice to say, I was done when 'bad Peter' (we know he's bad because he has a Hitler haircut) breaks out into a Tony Montana strut on the sidewalks of Manhatten, then ends up disco dancing in a jazz club. Joel Schumacher, the man responsible for infantacizing the Batman franchise, couldn't have done a worse job. Boo, boo, hiss.

From beginning to end, an uninteresting, incomprehensible, unrewarding waste of time. Lack of sympathetic characters in itself is not always a bad thing (I'm thinking Taxi Driver, Bad Lieutenant, Goodfellas) but without some performance to draw you in, some attitude or conflict with which to identify, you're simply left in the company of dullards or cretins, both of which are in good supply here. I know Meg Ryan's character is supposed to be bland and timid, but she's also supposed to have some fire burning within, some unfulfilled desire that makes her enter into a risky affair (remember Diane Keaton in 'Looking For Mr. Goodbar?). She shows this in her sex scenes, but none in other moments. Mark Ruffalo? Wonderful performance, if being both wooden and extremely repellent at the same time was the requirement. Kevin Bacon, slumming once again (he seems determined to make 'Three Degrees of Kevin Bacon WAY to easy to play) provides the only interesting performance, but his character is such an obvious red herring that the fun of it diminishes under the formula. The worst offense, however, is the total lack of motive for the killings. 'In the Cut' is apparently (and I'm just guessing here) a skating reference, but what's the point? All the sturm and drang about the mother and father's romance on skates, and the ridiculous dream sequence...why? After nearly two hours spent with ugly characters in ugly surroundings amidst ugly circumstances, there is no payoff, no explanation, no insight. Yuchh.

Later: I read the book. Somehow I was compelled. And it made this abortion of a movie all the more egregious since the author had a hand in it. The book was honest and compelling and had an ending that was DEVESTATING and COMPLETELY in sync with the rest of the story. Why, why, why, do these filmmakers think they can't offer an honest, violent, sad ending to an American audience? This sell-out on the part of the author ranks right up there with the one inflicted by the director of both the original 'The Vanshing' and the US remake. Shame on you for selling out your vision.

I have a real soft spot for this awful movie. I had nightmares for weeks after seeing it on its release; I was 6 years old. I remember ripping the 3D glasses off my face in abject terror. I would have run screaming from the theater if I had not been in the company of a large group of friends. Years later, I still had a rather vivid memory of the images that had terrified me and I searched high and low for this movie. When I finally found a VHS copy I was astounded at how cheesy and tame the whole thing was, though when I came to the part that had originally traumatized me, I still found it rather unnerving. I can't recommend it to the average viewer, but genre fans (that bad 60's horror genre) and 3D enthusiasts might want to take a look.