Starring: Halle Berry, Penelope Cruz, Robert Downey Jr and more...
Director: Matthieu Kassovitz
Genre: Thrillers
a gloomy-doomy ghost story that gets off to a creepy start and then spirals into flat-out preposterousness, french actor-director mathieu kassovitz's english-language debut features halle berry in the kind of bravura role for which actresses claw out each other's eyes. as brilliant criminal psychologist dr. miranda grey, she starts out on top of the world: she's beautiful, highly respected and happily married to her boss, dr. douglas grey (charles s. dutton). one dark-and-stormy-night fender bender later, she's a patient at her former place of employment, the spooky woodward penitentiary for women. when she asks for her husband, she is told that he's dead, then accused of having hacked him up with an axe. no one believes miranda is innocent: not her lawyer (dorian harewood); not her doctor, flirty former colleague pete graham (robert downey jr.); not sheriff ryan (john carroll lynch), her late husband's best friend since childhood; and certainly not the other patients.
miranda doesn't help her case by insisting she remembers nothing about that night three days earlier, except that the storm forced her to take a detour over a small bridge, where she nearly mowed down a bloodied, traumatized young woman standing in the middle of the road. but no one's found any sign of a girl, and when miranda identifies her as the subject of a photo belonging to dr. phil parsons (bernard hill), another former colleague, her credibility is further damaged. the picture is of his teenaged daughter, rachel (kathleen mackey), who committed suicide by jumping off that isolated bridge four years ago.
fiercely rational miranda doesn't believe in ghosts, but ghosts clearly believe in her: rachel has chosen to torment miranda with the enigmatic message "NOT ALONE," and uncovering the cause of the unquiet spirit's misery may be the only way miranda can clear herself. berry hurls herself into miranda's humiliations with the same commitment she brought to her oscar-winning performance in MONSTER'S BALL (2001), gamely enduring bad hair, ill-fitting hospital clothes and hollow-eyed make up. but as the script careens from hackneyed endangered-woman situations to loony implausibility and kassovitz piles up the scary movie cliches, it becomes increasingly difficult to remain absorbed in miranda's nightmare.
overall this is a passable thriller, and halle berry is good in her role which mostly involves lots of running around and screaming. penelope cruz and robert downey, jr aren't really necessary to the overall story and just act as filler. most of the plot takes place in the prison which is quite creepy, made more so by the constant flickering lights (someone really needs to call an electrician), and claustraphobic atmosphere. I thought that the scenes in the prison were the best parts of the movie, the ending itself was actually predictable though there are few clues given to the audience. certainly there is little insight to explain the actions of the characters eventually pegged as the killers which was a weakness. i don't think this movie is in the league of "silence of the lambs" but it is still a decent movie and worth staying up late on saturday night to watch with a bowl of popcorn.
one thing for sure, it scares the hell out of me. i don't know why. maybe because it portrays the mystical image from the stories i've heard so much from indonesia. people getting posessed by ghosts *kesurupan* and so on. the thing is, this movie is for american audience in which they don't appreciate the non logical story. and because of that, it raves a bad review left and right. well, the movie itself was fine. the story was okay. the acting was actually pretty good, but i guess when it all comes down to at the end.. it's just another cliche horror movie with darkness, screams and scary sounds. if only they don't have an ending that satisfy that logical reasoning behind ghost stories.. it woulda scared the shit outta me *well, it scares me already* with all my imaginations forward. the ending stops the ghost stories, the typical hollywood version. and i still wonder what gothika means cuz it was never mentioned in the movie at all (or so i thought).
[if you miss the last week's review, make sure to check out love actually (2003) on movies411's previous review!!!]
>> rated by :: sLesTa | [
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>> LOVE ACTUALLY
Starring: Hugh Grant, Liam Neeson, Emma Thompson and more...
Director: Richard Curtis
Genre: Romantic Comedy
love actually is unabashedly romantic and full of coincidences, big speeches and first-sight life-bonding. that's why it has such a mixed effect: our inner cynic knows that love doesn't work like that in life, while our inner romantic understands that love does work like that in movies and wishes real life would get with the program. love actually is far from everyone's cup of tea and may offer nothing unexpected for the viewer, but it left me curiously, unexpectedly happy. if you tally up a balance sheet, love actually winds up being more pleasurable than predictable and more sweet than sappy.
i was expecting love actually to be just a fluffy romantic comedy and for the most part that's what it is, but the film's also surprisingly edgy, honest and brave. this is one of those rare comedies that can elicit big belly laughs yet also manages to confront sensitive topics such as death, infidelity, mental illness, unrequited love, and the way america's leaders bully the rest of the world. the cast is stellar: bill nighy is hilarious as the bitter, aging pop star, hugh grant does his "i'm a sly chap" thing to perfection as the handsome, young, bachelor prime minister, and sam thomas is adorable as the young boy whose mother has just died yet feels guilty because all he can think about is the cute girl he's in love with. at times the film's myriad plots and dizzying musical cues can feel a bit overwhelming and a few of the storylines are inexplicably abandoned half way through, but overall this is a fun, exhilarating, mischievous, saucy, gutsy film and i highly recommend it.
the script follows a cross-section of londoners throughout the weeks leading up to christmas: a long-married couple (alan rickman and emma thompson); a recently widowed man and his stepson (liam neeson and thomas sangster); the new prime minister (hugh grant as the stammerer-in-chief); a pair of newlyweds (chiwitel ejiofor and keira knightley) and the husband's best friend (andrew lincoln); an expatriate american suffering an unrequited crush on a co-worker (laura linney) *btw, the co-worker played by rodrigo santoro is soooo cuuuteee... i love him when i saw him in the brazilian movie called "behind the sun" and he is just adorably handsome*; a faded pop star (bill nighy) with a horrible christmas comeback single; and a novelist (colin firth) whose cheating girlfriend has put him in a tailspin.
as you can see, the movie just filled with the well-known british actors who obviously have a class of their own. trying to encapsulate the film leads to run-on sentences, because love actually is essentially a run-on movie: its subplots and characters pop in and out of the film's overall arc like rambling clauses, and flashy cameos are peppered throughout like diverting, noisy adjectives that add sparkle and remove clarity.
and yet, i liked it. no, actually i really really liked it, i can even say i love the movie. it is such a feel-good movie. i guess that's what the makers want to give.. the good feeling of love around the holiday season. many reviews about this movie talk about how the movie was just flat and does not really have any punch lines. but hey, it's a christmas movie!! for all i know, it is such a nice movie, you'd only approve as to the movie first monologue says.. "love is all around us".
there are a lot of good scenes i liked so much. the best part of it has to be the 10-year old who, despite having to deal with the loss of a loved one, was more moved by love than by grief. another one is when jamie (colin firth) has this conversation with his brazillian housemaid who only speaks portuguese. they have a conversation in their own language but they fall in love nevertheless, in spite of their lack in understanding what the other was saying. but love works mysteriously because they turned out speaking about the same thing only with different language. and my favorite quote was when he said, "the happiest time of my day was to drive you home" (cuz he'd be alone with the girl in his car) and the girl answered in portuguese with translation means, "the saddest time of my day is at the end of day, leaving you." awwww... so sweet. well if you don't get the lines then you just gotta watch it to understand the whole scene.
i was moved to laughter and to tears by this film -- something which I always consider to be the mark of a truly marvellous storytelling.
a gloomy-doomy ghost story that gets off to a creepy start and then spirals into flat-out preposterousness, french actor-director mathieu kassovitz's english-language debut features halle berry in the kind of bravura role for which actresses claw out each other's eyes. as brilliant criminal psychologist dr. miranda grey, she starts out on top of the world: she's beautiful, highly respected and happily married to her boss, dr. douglas grey (charles s. dutton). one dark-and-stormy-night fender bender later, she's a patient at her former place of employment, the spooky woodward penitentiary for women. when she asks for her husband, she is told that he's dead, then accused of having hacked him up with an axe. no one believes miranda is innocent: not her lawyer (dorian harewood); not her doctor, flirty former colleague pete graham (robert downey jr.); not sheriff ryan (john carroll lynch), her late husband's best friend since childhood; and certainly not the other patients.
love actually is unabashedly romantic and full of coincidences, big speeches and first-sight life-bonding. that's why it has such a mixed effect: our inner cynic knows that love doesn't work like that in life, while our inner romantic understands that love does work like that in movies and wishes real life would get with the program. love actually is far from everyone's cup of tea and may offer nothing unexpected for the viewer, but it left me curiously, unexpectedly happy. if you tally up a balance sheet, love actually winds up being more pleasurable than predictable and more sweet than sappy.
