"Underworld: Evolution" Review

Blood, bullets and crowd-pleasing special effects fill the screen from beginning to end in Underworld: Evolution, the second film of a trilogy about a war between vampires and werewolves, who are known in the Underworld mythos as Lycans.

Fans of the original Underworld will be pleased to discover that this song remains the same, with the intensity turned up a notch. There are sexier costumes, bloodier deaths, and a generally higher decibel level as Selene the Death Dealer hurtles violently toward another cataclysmic showdown with a vampiric Elder, this time with the newly hybrid Marcus.

Famed actor Sir Derek Jacobi, he formerly of the Royal Shakespeare Company, joins fellow British actors Kate Beckinsale and Bill Nighy to play Corvinus, the sire of two preternatural races, the Vampire and the Lycan. The vampires Viktor and Kraven also appear early on in the story. Unfortunately missing is the vampire Erika played by Sophia Myles, the actress currently starring in Ridley Scott's Tristan and Isolde.

Evolution begins splendidly in a flashback to centuries past, with the lordly vampires Viktor and Amelia clad in armor astride Friesian war horses, leading the battle against the Lycans, who are particularly vicious and feral in the early stages of their bloodline.

After a brief review in voiceover as Selene recounts the events of the previous film, Evolution takes up the story immediately following the deaths of Viktor and Lucian. The traitorous Kraven returns to deal with Marcus, who still sleeps in his sunken chamber in the vampires' mansion. Selene and Michael have fled, hiding in the woods of Eastern Europe, a step ahead of pursuing forces.

In a rare moment of respite, Selene finally strips out of her skin-tight cat-suit for a sexual interlude with Michael. Her nakedness gives her a shocking vulnerability and an uncharacteristic humanity that's diametrically opposed to her heretofore icy personna.

Selene soon discovers that she possesses a long forgotten secret, hidden in her blood-memory, a secret forgotten to her, but accessible to the vampire Marcus if he should drink from her veins. So begins a new journey to find the progenitors of the Immortals, and to uncover new layers of truth behind their centuries of conflict.

The story of that conflict is increasingly convoluted, often illogical and somewhat silly, but it's all presented with deadly seriousness by actors who bring an irresistible intensity to their performances. That intensity is the delicious lure of Underworld, where the beauties are exquisite, the betrayals are neverending, and the clothes are to die for.

"V For Vendetta" Movie Review

V for Vendetta is a fascinating, often exciting movie. It may even be an important movie. The screenwriters Andy and Larry Wachowski, seem to have intended it to be. V for Vendetta is based on a British graphic novel of the same name, and the film treads a fine line balancing harsh realism and stylized art direction.

The story itself can be seen as a retelling of The Phantom of the Opera (a surpassingly effective one) as integrated with the sense of George Orwell's 1984. (The original comic book anthology was indeed written between 1982 and 1985.)

In the England of the year 2020, fascism with a fundamentalist Christian influence has taken hold in the wake of biological terrorism. The United States has been devastated by plague and years of war. One man, a charismatic, masked freedom fighter known only as 'V,' plans to avenge his abuse at the hands of the regime, exact revenge for thousands of other victims, and destroy the ruling power.

As in The Matrix, excitingly choreographed fight scenes display the hero's seemingly invincible stealth and martial art, as well as an uncanny skill with his signature weapon, the throwing knife.

V hides his identity behind a mask made in the image of Guy Fawkes, a real-life historical figure of the 17th century. Fawkes was a central figure in a conspiracy to assassinate the King of England and the members of both Houses of Parliament for their persecution of Catholics. He was captured, interrogated with the use of torture and violently executed by being publicly hanged, drawn and quartered.

The use of Guy Fawkes as an archetype for V as self-appointed liberator adds layers of moral ambiguity to his apparent role as freedom fighter and savior. Fawkes, despite his aim of ending persecution, was practicing the kind of religiously motivated terrorism that spawned 9/11, and V is certainly an anarchist bent on wiping the political slate clean, not on re-writing it.

Alan Moore, the original creator of V for Vendetta in graphic novel form, intended not to provide answers for his protagonist's moral ambiguity, but rather to inspire questions and thought. "Is this guy right? Or is he mad?" Or perhaps both?

It should be mentioned that Moore is not a fan of this filmed version, and feels it dilutes the message of his original story. The graphic novel explains much more of V's world and contains several differences in the story line. Moore was also the creator of the graphic novel From Hell which was made into the motion picture starring Johnny Depp.

Hugo Weaving (Agent Smith of The Matrix and Elrond of The Lord of the Rings) invests the character of V with astonishing magnetism and sympathy, despite the initial strangeness of his masked visage. Natalie Portman, as V's protégé, has several outstanding scenes in which her talent for expressing vulnerability and strength is displayed. John Hurt is cast as Adam Sutler, a cross between Orwell's Big Brother and Adolph Hitler.

After the promise of The Matrix and Bound, and the comparative disappointment of parts two and three of the Matrix Trilogy, V for Vendetta represents another step forward in the evolution of the Wachowski's as must-see film makers.

"Ultraviolet" Movie Review

The makers of Ultraviolet thought that computer generated environments and a lot of frenetic martial arts sequences could replace a good story and involving characters. They were so wrong.

Ultraviolet's shred of a story involves a society in which an oppressed underclass of diseased humans must fight for their survival against a government bent on eliminating them. Their disease, known as hemophagia, genetically changes them into a very untraditional race of vampires.

The failure of Ultraviolet is particularly sad for several reasons. Its writer/director Kurt Wimmer created the highly regarded film Equilibrium, which is also based on the premise of a dystopian future. A lot of time, toil, money and talent went into the creation of this maddening misfire (though obviously not quite enough). And Milla Jovovich is an extraordinary visual presence in front of the camera, who has made a career of playing ass-kicking superwomen since her role as Leeloo in The Fifth Element.

On paper, these must have appeared to add up to a winning combination, but the result is sterile and stillborn, for all of the fuss being played out on the screen. A ninety minute film of Jovovich as Violet simply sitting in front of the camera, talking about her life as a hemophage would have been more involving and infinitely less expensive.

The curse of overdone CG and underdone story line dooms this silly, sterile, would-be action pic to the bottom of its class.

You've been warned.

"Slither" Movie Review

The Return of the Living Dead did it in the 1980's. In the 1990's came The Faculty. Both combined comedy and horror for a perfect blend in which neither was compromised, with each complimenting the other.

Slither may well be the horror-comedy gem for its decade. It's an old school tribute to half-forgotten treasures like The Hidden with the gross-out sight gags and wry humor of Sean of the Dead.

In director / writer James Gunn's film, an ancient alien parasite that invades and inhabits living creatures has come to earth in a meteorite. When two unfortunate denizens of the small town of Wheelsy discover the creepy, slug-like creature in the nearby woods, they are quickly transformed into a pair of symbotic mutations, each with a different role to fill in the grotesque reproductive cycle of the monstrous being.

No comedy horror film should lack a sexual element, as Linnea Quigley and Famke Janssen proved in 'Return' and 'Faculty,' respectively. Slither provides female eye candy in the persons of Elizabeth Banks and Tanya Saulnier, although the sex in Slither is far more restrained than the gore.

Elaborate make up and mechanical special effects share screen time with very effective and well used CGI to bring the slithering horrors to life. The wriggling crawlies of the invading parasites, that look like a cross between slugs and tadpoles engorged with blood are particularly convincing.

Director Gunn's previous credits include screenwriting for 2004's Dawn of the Dead remake and Scooby Doo 2, as well as directorial work on Tromeo and Juliet and TV's Tromaville Cafe. Actor Nathan Fillion (Captain Reynolds from Firefly and Serenity) plays the town's chief of police who enlists the help of a comical group of deputies in a hunt for the creature.

Too many films have clever hype and deceptive trailers that lure the unfortunate into the theaters to see disappointing trash. Slither is a film that delivers on its promises of laughs, frights and giddy suspense.

"The Notorious Bettie Page"

The Notorious Bettie Page is a curious, mostly charming and entertaining, but ultimately unsatisfying film about the ultimate pin-up icon of contemporary times.

Actress Gretchen Mol plays Bettie, capturing the playfulness and free-spiritedness that was such a large part of Bettie Page's appeal. Mol gamely and fetchingly shows us the Bettie who frolicked naked for 'nudist' photographers and who so memorably posed as both Dominatrix and submissive in fetish pictorials.

Gretchen Mol is undeniably endearing in the role, at times disappearing into the character so completely that one could forget that we're not actually watching the real Bettie Page. Unfortunately, Gretchen Mol is not known as a performer of great depth, and her Bettie seems to lack depth as well. Ironically, Mol is the actress who was unfortunately and short-sightedly dubbed the 'It' girl of the 90's in Vanity Fair, here playing an undisputed and genuine It Girl of the 50's. One is left wondering whether the dominant sense of sweet-natured naïveté and near vacuousness in Mol's portrayal is entirely intentional or a reflection of the actress' lack of focus.

Director Mary Harron makes creative use of black and white photography intermixed with 50's era color to present an authentic seeming environment for her story to unfold within. Often, the movie actually feels as if it was made in the 50's, not only for its visual style, but also for its rather stilted dialogue and its editing and directorial style which recalls Kennedy era television.

What will frustrate some audiences is the manner in which screenwriter Guinevere Turner tells (or fails to tell) Bettie's story. Turner's last screenplay was for the Uwe Boll vampire film BloodRayne, but her most successful script was co-written with Mary Harron for the film version of American Psycho. Ms Turner's scripts are filled with half-realized characters. In American Psycho, this failing passed unchallenged, because the murdering anti-hero is such a cipher, a shark of a human being. With Turner's story of Bettie Page, one hopes for revelations that are merely hinted at.

At the end of The Notorious Bettie Page, we're left with some measure of disappointment: disappointment at the shooting-star quality of her brief career, frozen in time by her retirement from it and disappointment that in the course of this film, we had a chance do more than just skim the moments of her life and touch the surface of her world. The events of her life are passed over all too quickly, like pages in a scrapbook turned too fast.

"The Omen" Movie Review

It's true that hindsight is 20/20, but can it really be so difficult to see what made a good, original movie succeed when a remake is being considered? Apparently it is, as the vastly talented Tim Burton proved with his disasterously inferior version of The Planet of the Apes.

Director John Moore has presented a new version of The Omen that is almost slavishly faithful to most of the particulars from the original, yet it badly miscalculates every time it strays.

The story of The Omen was first told in 1976, during the first wave of pop culture predictions about the 'End Times' coming to pass, and three years after the phenomenal success of The Exorcist. Its director, Richard Donner, was making his transition from a very long and successful career directing episodic television, and would soon go on to direct Superman, Ladyhawke and Lethal Weapon among many more feature films.

The Omen tells the tale of Robert Thorn, a career diplomat with family connections that place him and his potential progeny in contention for the U.S. presidency. Thorn accepts a newborn child as a surrogate son to replace his own, whom he believes died in childbirth, a secret which he withholds from his wife. As the child Damien grows, the suspicion that he is a source of darkness and death becomes inescapable. Various outsiders begin to contact Thorn with increasingly certain evidence that his adopted son is the Antichrist of Biblical prophesy. The father must make the final decision as to whether or not to kill the child, a decision that creates a suspenseful and chilling climax.

The original Omen is particularly remembered for its freakish and shocking death scenes, in which forces of nature caused various objects to impale or behead their victims as if Satan himself were improvising ghastly mousetraps. These are presented anew, perhaps too predictably, but with enough of a new, gruesome twist on each to make them memorable on their own.

Foremost of the 2006 Omen's failures is its cast. In 1976, Gregory Peck and Lee Remick were Hollywood royalty, whose stature as actors befitted their roles as political royalty in the nature of the Kennedys. In their place, the new film offers Liev Schreiber, heretofore a career co-star, and Julia Stiles, a still young and maturing actress. John Moore has said that he cast Schreiber in the role because it required an intelligent actor. Unfortunately, what the role needs more than intelligence is passion and charisma, two things that Schreiber seems incapable of offering. He and Stiles have no chemistry as lovers and lack the maturity to suggest a Clintonesque political partnership. In addition, for every bit that Schreiber is wooden in his characterization, his co-stars are laughably melodramatic and over-the-top to the point that they seem to be in two different movies.

As Damien, Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick nails 'the look.' Even in photographs, his cold stare is palpably suggestive of evil incarnate. Sadly, he's a one trick pony, speaking hardly a word in the entire film, but glowering incessantly. By the time the final confrontation takes place between good, evil and those caught in between (with laser-scoped commandoes inexplicably appearing from nowhere), this telling of The Omen feels coldly mechanical, like the springing of a mousetrap that snaps shut on thin air.

"X-Men The Last Stand" Review

X-Men: The Last Stand offers everything that the closing chapter in a blockbuster trilogy should. There are shocking turns of events, jaw-dropping special effects and an entertaining balance of deadly serious set-pieces with welcome moments of comic relief.

The story opens shortly after the events depicted in X2, with Cyclops grieving over the loss of Jean Grey and Magneto beginning his war of liberation against humanity.

While the physically powerful but emotionally sensible Beast tries to mediate a solution, forces are in play which are rapidly building to a potential holocaust with the end of either the human or the mutant race as an outcome. A mutant whose innate power is to negate the paranormal attributes of other mutants has been discovered, and his DNA is first turned into a transformative 'cure' and then weaponized in the war against Magneto's army.

The unleashing of the ultimate in destructive mutant power is depicted in gradually building scenes that culminate in a whirlwind of special effects that dwarf anything seen in the X-Men series so far.

Director Brett Ratner, best known for the Rush Hour series and for the Hannibal Lector film Red Dragon, does an impressive job of pulling off the kind of directorial sleight-of-hand in which the impossibly silly and the impossibly horrific are made to seem equally natural within a fictional universe with its own surreal logic. A times the action is so intense that to call the moments of humor 'comic relief' is perfectly appropriate.

Fans of X2 may miss Alan Cumming as Nightcrawler, but the actor was quite vocal about his dislike of the make-up process for his character and declined to return to the series. The Last Stand introduces the young Canadian actress Ellen Page (seen recently in the dark thriller Hard Candy) as Kitty, the girl who can walk through walls. Notable new roles are also given to the characters of Callisto, Angel, Juggernaut, Multiple Man and Arclight.

Of course the star power of a truly impressive ensemble cast is again on display, including Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellan, Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Famke Janssen, Rebecca Romijn, and Anna Paquin. Kelsey Grammer is outstanding (and nearly unrecognizable) as Beast.

"Lady In The Water" Review

Man overboard!
With "Lady In The Water," M. Night Shyamalan's career trajectory sank to a new low. It’s been the general consensus for years that since "The Sixth Sense," the movies of M. Night Shyamalan have been increasingly greater disappointments. The question has been, with each new film, would the director return to the level of brilliance that made his first blockbuster such a memorable benchmark, and conversely, how much worse could an M. Night movie get? "Lady in the Water" answered those questions.

"Lady in the Water" is meant to be a depiction of how a myth or a fairy tale could intrude on everyday reality and change the lives of those caught up in it. Unfortunately the fairy tale tapestry at the heart of "Lady in the Water" is so poorly woven, so full of holes and frayed around the edges, that it plays out like a tattered mess. It feels like a story invented by an amateur comedian on the first night of a beginner’s improv class. Apparently, Shyamalan’s formerly supportive producers at Disney Studios felt the same way when they dragged their heels on the greenlighting of this project. Rather than accepting a negative critique, the director not only turned his back on Disney to be embraced by Warners, but he wrote a scathing book about how his vision was so narrow-mindedly unappreciated.

The problem with Shyamalan’s later works is his inability to recognize the point at which boredom or incredulity shatter a viewer’s suspension of disbelief, and both of those destructive features drench "Lady in the Water" like a suffocating wave. In addition, Shyamalan has finally given up his trademark “twist ending” and replaced it with what must have been intended as twists to its meandering plot. Unfortunately these twists play out like interruptions in a badly related story, like when a would-be raconteur peppers a tale with “oh, I forgot to mention…,” or “except for the fact that…” Rather than providing imaginative surprises, these endless complications and contradictions are eye-rolling rather than eye-popping.

Lady in the Water begins with a leaden recitation of a myth in which a race of prescient and wise sea-dwellers (called narfs) become alienated from Mankind. In our time, they seek to renew their benevolent influence by quickening a unique power to impart history-changing knowledge in one pre-ordained human. The narfs’ emissary is a girl named Story (Dallas Bryce Howard), who splashes around in the swimming pool of a middle-class apartment complex until she decides to save the life of the sad-sack manager / custodian, a world-weary man named Cleveland Heep (Paul Giamatti). Shyamalan laboriously dribbles out the complexities of narf legend through an irritatingly cranky Asian neighbor-lady who conveniently learned it as a bedtime story in her childhood.

M. Night has explained that the story told in Lady in the Water was indeed a bedtime story, one that he invented to tell his own children. The mistake Shyamalan made in creating his screenplay was to present this naive, awkward tale as anything more than a story improvised for children by a loving father. To have framed the tale in the style of The Princess Bride would have covered a multitude of sins.

The actors in Lady in the Water perform adequately in shallowly written roles, but special praise must be given to Paul Giamatti who makes Cleveland Heep a sympathetic and believable character, even when the script makes him do and say unbelievable things.

No doubt this bedtime story as told to the Shyamalan children served it's purpose in putting them to sleep. Unfortunately, it retains that power over movie audiences as well.

"The Descent" Movie Review

"The Descent" is one of the most effective horror thrillers in many years. The film concerns a group of women who share a passion for extreme sports who undertake a spelunking expedition into a dangerous, unmapped network of caves and caverns in a remote part of Appalachia.


Director Neil Marshall has layered the film with several sources of horror and suspense and the abiguity of the title's meaning reflects the many shades of terror that lay hidden within, open to many interpretations.

The most obvious reference in the title is to the literal descent into the pitch blackness of a cave so frought with geological dangers that it seems to have a malevolent nature of its own, but that is only the beginning of what The Descent is about. It is also about a descent into the darkest, most primal emotions of desolation, fear and rage. It's about the evolutionary descent of a lost branch of homo sapiens into a race of vicious, mutated cavern-dwellers. Most of all, it's about one woman's descent into madness.

The story begins as a trio of friends are ending a whitewater rafting expedition. What seems like an idyllic life quickly endures a series of brutally shocking events, which after the passage of time, lead to a new gathering of friends for an adventure that promises a way to heal emotional wounds and rebuild a life. The six women who meet for the descent are long-time friends with differing personalities and varying athletic skills. Juno is the planner of the adventure, a woman with the kind of ego that leads her to make her own rules. Holly is a wild-child with the greatest taste for thrills, whose greatest passion is for base-jumping. Beth is the quiet academic and Rebecca and Sam are sisters with a love of rock climbing. Lastly, there is Sarah, the emotionally damaged friend for whom the gathering of friends has been planned.

Once the descent into darkness begins, the fear and suspense are ratcheted up moment by moment. There's never been a movie in which the sensation of claustrophobia is so vividly evoked. The darkness of the movie theatre becomes an extension of the darkness onscreen, until the audience is as one with the women underground, sharing their increasing fear of the unknown, eventually lost and threatened by the fearful dangers of unforseen hazards.

The visual experience of the underground world constantly changes through the filmmakers' masterful use color cast by different sources of light: the red of a torch, the green of glow-sticks or the harsh white of flashlights. The tension from the dangers of falling rock, sheer cliffs and suffocating entrapment alone would satisfy a viewer's hunger for thrills, but the nightmare hasn't really begun until Sarah catches a glimpse of something inhuman awaiting in the shadows.

What follows is a terrifying race to escape, with violent bloodletting and brutal death as the gauntlet to be forced in order to survive. The flesh eating crawlers look exactly as one might expect such creatures to have evolved, and their appearance is unforgettably creepy.

The film's ending is sudden but satisfying. The conclusion has been altered slightly from the original, European version of the film, and it will be up to viewers who experience both to decide which they prefer. Both endings are dark, but in different ways.

Neil Marshall is truly the new Master of Horror.

"The Illusionist" Movie Review

A brilliant magician uses his startling powers to shake the foundations of an empire in this timeless story set in Vienna during the Victorian age. "The Illusionist" is a universally crowd-pleasing tale that offers mystery, suspense and romance in a uniquely eye-pleasing way. Told as a flashback narrated by the ambitious and inquisitive Chief Inspector Uhl, the film is immediately captivating in its ability to capture a sense of being witness to the 19th century, and the extraordinary events unfolding.

As the story begins, a magician known as Eisenheim the Illusionist is being arrested amidst great consternation on the stage of a shabby performance hall. As the events leading up to the moment are recounted, we discover how, as the poor son of a carpenter, The Illusionist's future was ordained by his chance encounter with a mystical old man and his love for the daughter of a nobleman. As Eisenheim's love for the Duchess von Taschen leads him into an increasingly dangerous game of cat and mouse with Inspector Uhl and with her fiancée the Crown Prince of Austria, the decisions made carry consequences of life and death.

Edward Norton's performance as Eisenheim expresses the conjurer's supreme confidence in mastery of magic, with his only weakness being his all-consuming love for the Duchess Sophie. When the irresistible force of Eiseneheim's powers confront the immovable object of the willful and cruel Crown Prince, tragedies befall which effect everything.

Rufus Sewell displays a frightening intensity as Crown Prince Leopold, a man with nearly unlimited power over his subjects. In moments when the imperious facade of the ruler cracks briefly, Sewell shows his brilliant subtlety as an actor. Jessica Biel is impressive in a role that will redefine her as an actress, confidently and effortlessly becoming a noblewoman of the times. Paul Giamatti, in a role reminiscent of police inspectors out of Dostoyevsky or Dickens, elicits respect, sympathy and humor while perfectly playing his part as the lynchpin around which all events are moving.

"The Illusionist" was beautifully filmed in Prague with new technology that lends an amazing look of luminous antiquity to every scene, with costumes by Ngila Dickson who costumed the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Philip Glass composed the mesmerizing score, mixing his signature style of kalidoscopic arpeggios with a symphonic warmth befitting the period.

The pleasure of "The Illusionist" lies in the sense of delight at so many expressions of genius on display in a work of playfully dramatic elegance.

"The Wicker Man" Review

"The Wicker Man" begins with Nicholas Cage dressed as a policeman, confidently patrolling on a motorcycle. It ends with him comically rattling around dirt pathways on rickety bicycles (at one point bike-jacking one at gunpoint) and lumbering through a forest in a bear costume. His character, Edward Malus, has lost his way in the course of leaving the familiar behind, and such is the case with the creators of "The Wicker Man," leaving the successful elements of a cult favorite movie behind and losing their way in a nonsensical revision of a potentially powerful story.

In this retelling of the 1973 thriller, Officer Edward Malus is recovering from the emotional stress caused by his witnessing the fiery death of a mother and daughter. While on medical leave, he receives a letter from a former lover begging him to assist in finding her missing child. He travels to a remote, private island off the coast of Washington state where he is reunited with Willow, the quirky young woman who had vanished without explanation years before.

Malus' investigation into the child's disappearance introduces him to the island's strange inhabitants: a proud caste of women and an underclass of mute, unkempt men who perform the menial labor. Eventually, Malus' detective work leads him to an unimagined and shocking revelation regarding the fate of the missing girl.

"The Wicker Man" was originally a tale of emotional and spiritual conflict between a rigid Christian man and a sexually liberated society of isolated celtic pagans. In the remake by writer/director Neil LaBute, the sexual and religious tensions have been removed to be replaced by a crude sort of gender conflict between the members of the matriarchal society, all portrayed as unappealing, and Malus, a clueless but well-meaning male. The entire story is shot through with gratuitous and unexplained hallucinatory fright sequences that become tiresome for their non sequiturs and needless repetitiveness.

In the lead roles, Nicholas Cage and Kate Behan have no success at turning their clunky dialog into anything resembling natural discourse, and have little or no chemistry between them.

To its credit, "The Wicker Man" assembles a very talented cast of actresses, including Ellen Burstyn (The Exorcist), Molly Parker (Deadwood), Frances Conroy (Six Feet Under) and Leelee Sobieski (Joy Ride).

Hopefully, the publicity and word-of-mouth surrounding this unsuccessful remake will instead introduce a new generation to the low-budget, high-concept pleasures of the original Wicker Man.

"The Grudge 2" Movie Review

The explosive frights of "The Grudge" are replaced by a series of disappointing misfires in the weak sequel.


Perhaps "The Grudge 2" would be a pleasing curiosity if it were a low budget offering from a fledgling director with some new ideas, but the truth is that this latest sequel to a remake from a well-worn genre is simply too tame and too lame to be recommended.

Sarah Michelle Gellar returns as Karen Davis, though all too briefly, still hospitalized after the trauma she experienced in "The Grudge." Karen's sister Aubrey (Amber Tamblyn) arrives to take the distraught girl home, but she quickly becomes involved with the deadly curse invoked by the vengeful spirit Takako.

Surprisingly, "The Grudge 2" offers none of the gruesome shocks that peppered the original, as if it were intentionally stripped of its horrific bite for the sake of catering to a younger and broader audience. Ironically and inexplicably, Grudge 1 and 2 each carry the same PG-13 rating.

There are a few scattered moments of creepy special effects, particularly one scene reminscent of Samara's entry from image to reality in "The Ring." But for those who have seen "The Ring," "Ringu," "The Grudge," "Ju-On," "Pulse," etc, the kind of limp, predictable scares and unconvincing acting to be found in "Grudge 2" just aren't going to satisfy.

As in the original film, the stories of several different and seemingly unrelated Americans are intermixed, though their relationship to each other is not known until the final scenes. The result is a lot of murky and disjointed plot development in service to a weak denouement.

The coy secrecy involved in the unfolding of the story ultimately reveals that "the grudge" has changed as a result of Karen's burning of the accursed house. Now one need not enter the accursed house to be victims of its ghosts, but merely to come into contact with someone who did. It's an idea that's not played out with much effectiveness at all.

Horror fans who are grudgingly lured back to theatres for this lame excercise in J-horror are likely to leave harboring a grudge of their own against director Takashi Shimizu as well as the venerated Sam Raimi for placing his Ghost House imprimatur on this near-camp retread.

Starring:
Sarah Michelle Gellar
Amber Tamblyn
Arielle Kebbel
Teresa Palmer
Jennifer Beals

Directed by: Takashi Shimizu

"The Prestige" Movie Review

"Watch closely."
The brain teasing pleasure in Christopher Nolan's film about rival magicians at the dawn of the modern age is in watching such deft and clever cinematic sleight of hand performed before your eyes.

It's a wonderful trick inside of a trick, as Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman, in league with a gifted director, play mind games with their onscreen audiences, with each other, and with the viewers of "The Prestige."

In the waning years of the 1800's, two ambitious magicians are in the employ of an aging illusionist named Milton, but they chafe at the restrictions of safe and traditional tricks and yearn to push the limits of what is possible.

When a tragic death turns them into bitter enemies and ruthless rivals, a deadly game of one-upsmanship leads each to discover how far they are willing to go to claim the prizes at stake: their own exaltation as ultimate legends of magic, and the destruction of the other.

A brilliantly placed piece of this masterful puzzle comes in the person of Nikola Tesla, the gifted and revolutionary scientist whose research into the nature and uses of electricity led to a real-life rivalry with Thomas Edison. David Bowie as Tesla is fascinatingly enigmatic in a small but key role in the story. The way in which Tesla's career and his sometimes seemingly mystical inventions parallel the crucial twists of plot lends an imaginative sense of historic possibility to the film.

The A-list cast is excellent, as expected. Scarlett Johanssen is fine as an English girl who becomes a player in the magician's dangerous game, but Rebecca Hall as the wife of Christian Bale's Alfred Borden is the female standout, returning to acting after a decade long absence.

Like "Memento," "The Sixth Sense" and other similarly woven stories of maze-like complexity, "The Prestige" will yield a new appreciation for its style and cleverness upon second viewings. But like a well performed illusion, the pleasure is first and foremost about the sense of being in the presence of magic.

Who knows which secrets? Who is tricking whom? And ultimately, what is possible in life, in magic and in the human heart? These are the multilayered and irresistible questions that lie at every turn of "The Prestige."

"The Prestige"
directed by Christopher Nolan
produced by Touchstone Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures.

Starring:
Hugh Jackman
Christian Bale
Rebecca Hall
Michael Caine
Scarlett Johansson
David Bowie
Andy Serkis
Piper Perabo
Ricky Jay as Milton the Magician

"Saw III" Movie Review

Darren Lynn Bousman, the director of "Saw III," was quoted as saying, "We don't pull punches this year. We start it with a kick in the balls, and end it with a kick in the balls." Amen to that.

"Saw III" performs the rare feat of presenting a continuing horror series’ third feature film that equals those that have gone before, while upping the shock value and revealing more about its lead characters. By the third installments of their franchises, "Halloween," "A Nightmare on Elm Street," "Alien" and "Friday the 13th," to name a few obvious examples, had already displayed a loss of their original’s potency.

As conceptualists and writers, James Wan and Leigh Whannell have been the masterminds throughout the "Saw" series, and that continuity is what weaves all three stories together with such unfailing and unflinching success.

"Saw III" begins where episode two ended, quickly placing audiences again in another room, with another tormented prisoner, with another agonizing choice to make in a game of life and death. But something is different. The games we have seen were inconceivably sadistic but were beatable by the helpless players, even though to win the passage to freedom required an iron will and a willingness to tolerate the ultimate horror and agony. Now it seems the traps and devices are rigged to be impossible to escape from.

Jigsaw is still alive, but barely. He is being kept alive in a makeshift hospital room in his warehouse workshop by his protégé Amanda. The connection between the pair of lethal killers is explored, revealing their weaknesses and obsessions, as outsiders are tested within their intimate and mutually dependent circle.

The stakes for each fiendish game are getting higher, and the potential for death, dismemberment and mutilation is increasing exponentially. The nerves of everyone involved are frayed to the breaking point – all except those of the ever-cerebral and manipulative puppet master, Jigsaw. Flashbacks throughout "Saw III" shine a harsh light on heretofore-unseen events from the previous films, and Donnie Wahlberg, Dina Meyer and Lyriq Bent appear in their roles from "Saw II," adding to the continuity.

And then of course, there is the ending. Just as Jigsaw insists that his games be played according to his strict rules, so too do Wan and Whannell adhere to theirs. The final rule being that when the mechanical device of their carefully constructed plot snaps shut, the result is shocking and unforeseen.

In "Saw III," the edge remains sharp and the rules remain unbroken.

Saw III
Stars:
Tobin Bell...........................Jigsaw
Shawnee Smith................ Amanda
Bahar Soomekh................Dr. Lynn Denlon
Angus MacFadyen............Jeff
Dina Meyer........................ Kerry
Donnie Wahlberg.............Eric Matthews
Leigh Whannell.................Adam
Mpho Koaho......................Tim
Barry Flatman....................Judge Halden
Lyriq Bent...........................Rigg
J. Larose............................Troy
Debra Lynne McCabe......Danica

Rated R for strong grisly violence and gore, sequences of terror and torture, nudity and language

"The Fountain" Movie Review

"The Fountain" is director Darren Aronofsky's imaginative meditation on love, death and eternity. To the cynical, it may seem hopelessly romantic. To the conventional, it may seem hopelessly abstract. It's a film that was originially inspired by "The Matrix," but in reality it's a work reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey."

In fact, "The Fountain" is a beautiful, cinematic poem; a poem composed of gorgeous imagery and the interwoven strands of a distant past, an intimate present and a far-off future. Like a poem, its elements are built for artistic effect, not for a 'natural' narrative structure, and its images are symbolic, metaphorical and interpretational.

"The Fountain" tells the story of Tommy Creo and his terminally ill wife Izzi. He is a research scientist whose feverish work is to defy the inevitability of death and she is an imaginative writer, trying to gracefully accept her mortality. While Tommy has been immersed in the science of medicine with the hope of curing his wife's illness, Izzi has been writing a story entitled The Fountain, written lovingly on parchment, in which she is Queen Isabel of Spain and Tommy is her conquistador Tomás, a tale visualized onscreen. Izzi requests that Tommy write the last chapter of her story, and his resolution paves the way for some of the movie's most beautiful imagery as well as its most mysterious narrative moments, as events placed 500 years in the future are tied to the mythology of 500 years past.

The film may not be an immediately engaging one, for the fact that the past, current and future events are presented out of chronological sequence and that some of the symbolic images used may at first seem off-putting for their New Age associations. In the end however, this Rubik's cube of a film will reward patience as the pieces fit together in a dazzling visual display that's equal parts soul-food and eye candy.

Hugh Jackman offers his best work ever, displaying an extraordinary range of emotions and characterizations as the scientist Tommy, as the conquistador Tomás and as the space traveler Tom (whom the director explains was in part inspired by Major Tom of David Bowie's Space Oddity). Rachel Weisz displays her talent for expressing beautiful sadness and gentle resolve, and Ellen Burstyn is outstanding as the head of the research facility. Burstyn was nominated for an Academy Award for her role in Darren Aronofsky's previous film, "Requiem for a Dream."

Aronofsky has invited viewers to reach their own conclusions regarding this ambitious and multifaceted work. Clues as to the director's intent are woven thoughout in visual and literary forms: repeated geometric themes reoccur in the three distinct time frames of the story (triangles in the past section represent divine harmony, rectangles in the present-day story are symbolic of materialism, circles in the future scenes are associated with eternity), and character names offer insights as well, as with the lead characters' name Creo: "creo " is taken from the latin word meaning "to create" and is referential to Tommy's alter ego as the "First Father" of Mayan myth, and to Izzi's role as the creator of "The Fountain."

How much of what we see is intended to be real? Where is the dividing line between Izzi and Tommy's fable and what they experienced together as soul mates? Is immortality attainable? Is reincarnation possible? The answers to those questions will be as unique and individual as each viewer of "The Fountain."


"The Fountain" (2006)

Directed by Darren Aronofsky
Screenplay by Darren Aronofsky

Stars:
Hugh Jackman ............... Tomas - Tommy - Tom Creo
Rachel Weisz .................. Isabel - Izzi Creo
Ellen Burstyn ................... Dr. Lillian Guzetti
Mark Margolis .................. Father Avila
Stephen McHattie ........... Grand Inquisitor Silecio
Fernando Hernandez .... Lord of Xibalba

Rated PG-13 for some intense sequences of violent action, some sensuality and language.

"Eragon" Movie Review

"Eragon" is based on a novel written by a teenage boy, and falls short of even that maturity level. Sadly, "Eragon" puts the 'drag' in dragon movies.

A computer generated dragon is the only character in Eragon able to evoke an emotional connection, and with good reason. The director of this would-be epic has spent his entire career in special effects, but he shows no aptitude for inspiring very much sympathy toward his human characters.

First time director Stefan Fangmeier's previous work has been as a visual effects supervisor, often for Industrial Light and Magic, on projects like "Lemony Snicket," "Signs," "A Perfect Storm" and "Casper."

With "Eragon," he attempts the feat accomplished by Peter Jackson but the result is more reminiscent of an Ewe Boll movie, pitched for a grammar school audience. Only children of that age are likely not to notice or care about the awkward and boring exposition, the vapid cardboard characters, or about the unavoidable and unflattering comparision to Tolkien, Lucas, McCaffrey and C.S. Lewis.

The writer of Eragon's source material is Christopher Paolini, who wrote the novel during his mid to late teens. His parents' publishing company printed the book's first edition, and Paolini admirably set about selling it and raising awareness about it in every way he could. He caught lightning in a bottle when it was discovered by Knopf Publishing and reprinted with national distribution.

Whereas Tolkien and Lewis were university educated scholars with decades of studying classical mythology behind them, Paolini wrote "Eragon" as a boy with years of watching "Star Wars" and reading "Lord of the Rings" behind him. The comparison is painfully apparent, especially in the shockingly shallow film version of his tale.

Fans of the book will notice painfully how most of the narrative and many of the characters have been stripped away. For those new to the story, the realization that John Malkovich's entire performance looks and sounds like it was filmed on a soundstage in between lunch and dinner will be painful enough.

In the role of the dragon-riding hero Eragon, first time film actor Edward Speleers is made to look like a singer in a boy band rather than the peasant class farm boy he is meant to be. Jeremy Irons as Brom the mentor and Robert Carlyle as Durza the undead sorcerer do the best they can under the circumstances, while the rest of the cast are little more than unexplained extras.

As the villains, the evil king's army are a sad lot, looking like a horde of fat, balding couch potatoes and the evil King Galbatorix, played by Malkovich, never has a chance to do much except throw sibilant hissy fits.

In Eragon, the CG characters both good and evil are the most fun to watch. Eragon's dragon Saphira (who roars ferociously, but communicates telepathically in the gentle voice of actress Rachel Weisz) is an often thrilling and entertaining character, while the unhuman Ra'zac are chilling to behold though underused.

Eragon (2006)
Directed by Stefan Fangmeier
Screenplay by Peter Buchman

Stars:
Edward Speleers ....... Eragon
Jeremy Irons ........ .......Brom
John Malkovich ............King Galbatorix
Djimon Hounsou ....... Ajihad
Sienna Guillory ........... Arya
Chris Egan .................. Roran
Robert Carlyle ............. Durza
Garrett Hedlund .......... Murtagh
Rachel Weisz .............. the voice of Saphira

Rated PG for fantasy violence, intense battle sequences,
and some frightening images.

"Perfume" Movie Review

A conventional movie tells a story with sights and sounds, playing to our eyes and ears with brightness and bombast. So how does one tell a story about scent and smell, that most primitive, subtle and evocative of senses, without being able to create scents and smells in the theatre? The challenge is akin to making a silent film about Beethoven.

Tom Tykwer, the German director of Run, Lola, Run, has done it by presenting images so vivid that they challenge the viewer to recall the scents from memory. The ephemeral sense of sublime smells and putrid odors are the ghosts that haunt this film about a serial killer with a unique obsession.

In 18th Century France, a newborn baby christened Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is endowed with a preternatural sense of smell, but with no bodily scent to his skin. Orphaned in the moments after his birth in a reeking Parisian fishmarket, he is passed between oppressive homes for parentless children before being sold into slavery in a leather tannery as a young child. His only joy and recreation in life is in experiencing and perfectly remembering each and every scent in his world. His greatest anguish in life is the fleeting nature of scent. As a young man, he offers his services to the aging perfumer Giuseppi Baldini, who sets him on a course to learn the secrets to capturing the essence of every aroma possible.

Born with a conscienceless, sociopathic personality, Grenouille soon resorts to murder in order to collect the most priceless scents of all - the scents of young virgin girls. The original novel by Patrick Suskind is uninhibited in its delerious flights of bizarre imagination, creating scenes of such outrageous surreality that one can only surrender to the author's delightful sense of morbid fantasy.

Where "Perfume" the movie stumbles slightly is in trying to present the fever dream images that occur near the end of the novel as Grenouille nears and then meets his fate. Tykwer softens the nature of the events, removing some of the graphic depravity from a film that already does present perverse eroticism in a sensual, almost shocking way. While "Perfume" is certain to repel as many viewers as it delights, it's a definite treat for those dark sensualists who have an open mind for twisted fables and a taste for poisonous confections.

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006)
Directed by Tom Tykwer
Screenplay by Andrew Birkin, Bernd Eichinger, and Tom Tykwer

Stars:
Ben Whishaw ................ Jean-Baptiste Grenouille
Dustin Hoffman ............. Giuseppe Baldini
Alan Rickman ................. Antoine Richis
Rachel Hurd-Wood ....... Laura Richis
Corinna Harfouch .......... Madame Arnulfi
John Hurt ......................... Narrator
Karoline Herfurth ............ The Plum Girl

Rated R for aberrant behavior involving nudity, violence, sexuality, and disturbing images