Femme Fatale

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

An unbelievable (not that incidents such as those depicted in the
pic don’t happen) horror/thriller, in the same vein as “God Told Me To
Do It,” that’s almost convincing until it self-destructs by getting too
cute. It smacks of large dollops of film school screenwriting techniques
offering many heavy-handed plot twists and trying too hard to outsmart
the viewer with its supposed cleverness. It’s about a twisted way of seeing
the Christian personal God, and the self-righteous holy rage that makes
one insane enough to commit murder in the name of God and still think you
are absolutely right (Remember 9/11!). It’s set in the dusty small West
Texas town of Thurman, where an ordinary auto mechanic (Bill Paxton-the
successful actor also makes his directorial debut here) lives on an isolated
piece of farm property in a frame house that you get to by passing the
town’s rose garden. The affable single-parent dad lives with his two young
sons, the 12-year-old Fenton (O’Leary) and the 9-year-old Adam (Sumpter),
and provides them with a happy and secure household. The boys’ mother died
after Adam was delivered, so the boys grew up without a mother. But things
change dramatically when dad wigs out after having an Old Testament vision
of God, and becomes nuttier than a fruit cake to the detriment of the family
and the state of Texas and to cinephiles who hunger after films with ideas
that can pass a certain litmus test for sensibility.

The filmmaker uses the familiar chestnut of the flashback technique
to spin his bizarre horror story as a scruffy, troubled man from Thurman,
calling himself Fenton Meiks (Matthew McConaughey), comes in out of the
rain expressly to see only Dallas FBI agent Wesley Doyle (Powers Boothe)
and tell him that he knows who the serial killer is in the agent’s old
unsolved case of the “God’s Hand Killer.” He says that it’s his brother
Adam. When asked by the agent how he knows this, Fenton traces the story
back to his childhood years in which he had happy memories until on one
occasion his dad woke both kids up in the middle of the night and told
them of a vision he had from God –  where an angel revealed God’s
special purpose for their family — to rid the world of demons. Demons
must be killed, they are not people according to dad, therefore he’s not
committing murder. He swears the kids to secrecy and tells them they might
be the only ones who know Judgment Day has come, and it’s their job to
be like superheroes to save the world from destruction. Soon a list of
demon names is revealed to the potty dad, and three weapons to destroy
the demons are also sent to use on the demons. The reluctant and fearful
Fenton doesn’t know how to stop his dad, while Adam is impressed with dad’s
visions and is quite willing to go along with ridding the world of evil.
The voice-over to the flashbacks are provided by McConaughey in a hushed
and serious tone.

Warning: spoiler in the next paragraph.

The killings begin when a Cynthia Harbridge
is abducted and left tied up in the shed and her mouth has duct tape placed
over it. In front of his children dad lays his hands on the woman and feels
the presence of the devil inside her, and therefore feels reassured to
give her the old ax and then buries her in the rose garden. Since there
are more demons to get, he punishes his godless son Fenton for being a
disbeliever and makes him dig a hole for 6 days (Dig the heavy biblical
symbolism from Genesis!). When dad knocks off number two on the list, an
old man pedophile, Fenton reports him to the incredulous town sheriff (Luke
Askew). When the sheriff scoffs at Fenton’s tale
in front of his dad, he nevertheless is killed because he knew too much.
Dad owns up to that being a murder, but blames Fenton for causing the sheriff’s
death and reasons God forgives him of murder because of the urgency of
his special mission. For Fenton’s lack of faith in God he’s forced to be
locked in the hole, now covered by the shed, and is given only water for
seven days until he too can see God and get with dad’s program. When he
wearily comes up from the hole and is treated to a macaroni dinner and
tells his beaming dad he saw God, it’s back to doing God’s business in
a few days for this family that prays together. This time a Dallas thug,
Brad White, is given the ax by Fenton. But instead Fenton gives his dad
the ax, while Adam finishes off Mr. White. The children report their father
missing, and life goes on until they are now both adults. Into this rose
garden sacred burial grounds arrive the FBI agent and the hand-cuffed Fenton,
and first-time screenwriter Brent Hanley creates a wild scenario that is
meant to keep the audience guessing at the weird tale’s payoff and even
the identity of the man with the fed agent.

This is one ham-fisted story about losing one’s grip on reality by
taking religious dogma too literally and fanatically. It’s all surface
psychodramatics built around a creepy rural gothic mystery story, and all
that spookiness gets in the way of a real story about human frailty somehow
hidden away in the symbolic hole where the dead are buried.

I’ve fancy thought that modern obscure isn’t visual ample supply. I’m often very excited whenever anyproject comes to the majuscule wall promising to do something really interesting with its visual style. I judgement this stems from a country love of sheer fantasy in movies, which is essentially what we expectfrom films; to be taken to another arrange. The Cell is arguably the most visually daringproject mainstream cinema has launched since The Fifth Foundations. When a film over augmentsitself with elaborate and irrational visual label, this is a good thing; when a film is sort of keptafloat by the visuals, that’s a bad thing. In scads respects, The Cell fits into the lattercategory.

The film introduces us to child psychologist Catharine Deane (Jennifer Lopez) who is taking partin an speculative medical program. The program uses a complex technology that allowssomeone to enter the position of another person. Deane is using it to help a child who is in aself-induced coma, trying to interact with his subliminal facade. Meanwhile, a serial killer, CarlStargher (Vincent D’Onofrio), goes everywhere drowning women reversed a sealed, barometer cell and thenbleaching their bodies. He starts to get unkempt and the FBI begins to close in on him. AgentPeter Novak (Vince Vaughn) leads the team vexing to corral him and eventually they upon out who and where Carl Stargher is: unfortunately when they find him he has gone into acoma from a oppressive mental illness. The FBI eventually seeks the help of Catharine and her teamto go inside Carl’s attitude in order to find out where his latest gull is located, formerly she isdrowned by the automated lorgnette cell. Deane agrees, but discovers a twisted and complex worldinside the head of the triggerman that she has to maneuver in, in order to draw forth the information.

The basic business that extraordinarily stands alibi in The Cell is the visual style. Cinematography issuperb, with the global tone and design of the film applied in a very striking way. That’s actuallyjust the basic film; the trips into Stargher’s attend to push the envelope unbiased further. In the dreamsequences, elaborate sets, costumes, and lighting schemes were utilized to create vivid if notdisturbing worlds. These sequences are really cast nothing that conventional cinema has quite yetexperienced until minute, but at the changeless time they’re from A to Z too short and staged, and perhapshere is the core fault of the film.

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The movie relies far too much on the delusion sequences to propel it, yet these portionsare surprisingly tongue-lash compared to what the film builds up to. Though the serial Bluebeard patch is fairlywell written, it also succumbs to awful clichés. Jennifer Lopez really isn’t at all convincing as someone who’s had any well-meaning of forensic training in psychology. Much of the sphere is style of half-assed and not they chose not to make it an stem, but uncountable of the ’scientists’ in the film spout troublesome explanationsfor a lot of what goes on in the bent of Stargher and it solely sounds fake. He’s a psychopathickiller, I think we can accept the really his mind would be pretty twisted.

TheCell makes tons, uncomfortable jumps out of the dream sequences as spectacularly. Once Lopezgoes secret Stargher, we sort of expect her to stay there, at least appropriate for a enthusiastic serving of the vapour.That fall down, we’re totally immersed in this radical world. Instead, there are many breach cuts to realworld activities which constantly break the mood and sign of the film. So, I guess I’d haveto estimate that despite all the lavish visuals, I was disappointed with how narrow-minded they’re actually employed incontinuous shots. For all the money and effects spent on these sequences, they comprise asurprising minority of the film.

Underneath the requisite flaws, The Chamber at least never commits the sin of being boring. It’s certainly an entertaining layer, it just relies too much on a awfully likely and stiff plot to getto the expiration. If anything, the visual flair is well worth the consequence of admission. I’d love to see awhole silver screen done SOLELY in this conjure up-style. The movie also boasts a substantial and effectivemusical hordes by composer Howard Shore collaborating with The Master Musicians of Joujoka, one of the best things down the movie. The Cell is unmatched, it simply isn’t terriblyrefined.

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Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Peter Lorre is superb as the skilled craftsman Hungarian immigrant
newly arrived in America, Janos Szabo, in this first-rate and rather classy
low-budget B-film horror/gangster tale that back in the 1960s had a cult
following among film buffs. It’s directed with flair by the prolific Parisian
born Robert Florey (”The Cocoanuts”/”Murders in the Rue Morgue”/”The Beast
With Five Fingers”) and adapted from the story by Arthur Levinson that’s
based on a radio play by Thomas Edward O’Connell. The adequate screenplay
(the dialogue is not so hot) is by Allen Vincent and Paul Jarrico. Florey
shot it in only 12 days, and was saddled with working with the alcoholic
Lorre who would drink Pernod for a long breakfast and by the afternoon
was too drunk to act.

The plotline has Janos’ ocean liner approaching the Statue of Liberty
and he is bubbling over with enthusiasm for his new country, hoping to
land work as a watchmaker and raise enough bread to bring over his fiancée.
In the street, while asking for directions for a boarding house, he befriends
Lt. O’Hara (Don Beddoe) who directs him to a fleabag hotel run by his acquaintance
Finnegan. The first night that Janos sleeps there, the hotel burns down
and he’s facially disfigured with third degree burns. Looking like a monster,
he can’t get work and no one talks to him because he looks so repulsive.
Contemplating suicide on the waterfront, he meets petty thief Dinky (George
E. Stone) who talks him out of it and as the first person to act friendly
since the accident the two become pals. Dinky introduces Janos to his gangster
pals and Janos gets talked into using his mechanical skills to break into
bank vaults and the like, and soon is so gifted a thief he becomes the
mastermind of the gang. He reasons if he gets enough dough he can have
the plastic surgeon give him a new face. Instead he has to settle for an
expensive expressionless rubber-like mask, as the plastic surgeon tells
him he lost too much muscle tissue and it would take grafts every six months
for 15 years to do the complete facial job (Lorre simulated a mask by coating
his face with heavy white makeup and drawing back his skin toward the hairline
with gauze strips glued to his cheeks). Just when Janos is giving up all
hope in living, he bumps into a bubbly sweet blind girl, Helen (Evelyn
Keyes), and becomes romantically involved with her, and will eventually
quit the gang and live with the optimistic gal in the country. But the
vicious gang leader, Jeff Jeffries (James Seay), pulls a diamond heist
without Janos and in the process brings about unwanted publicity when they
also murder someone during the robbery. At the same time, Jeff finds a
letter with money in it from a guilt-ridden Lt. O’Hara in Janos’ pocket
and erroneously believe the masked man is quitting the gang with the purpose
of selling them out to the police. This causes the gang, except for the
always loyal Dinky, to turn against Janos; but their plot for revenge backfires,
as they plant a bomb in Janos’ car and accidentally kill Helen instead.
Then Janos plans his revenge on the gang as they attempt to escape to Mexico
by plane and it turns into a disaster for all, as Janos surprises them
as the pilot and they all meet their maker (ala Greed) in the remote Arizona
desert where Janos landed the plane without fuel. 

The film is a horror story in that it offers a vision of the American
Dream turning ugly and wrong. It proved to be a big box-office hit, and
a film that deserves more attention as it’s still under the radar of most
discerning viewers.

The season’s cardinal comet-targets-Earth special effects extravaganza is spectacular enough in its cataclysmic scenes of the planet being devastated by an unstoppable fireball, but proves far from thrilling in the down time after time pooped with a largely uninspiring assortment of troubled merciful beings. Hitting the trade in eight weeks before the reputedly more high-tech, outer set out-oriented “Armageddon,” “Deep Impact” order score some powerhouse B.O. as the at the outset circumstance picture of the summer, even as it leaves audiences enthusiastic for something even bigger and better.

Boasting a pedigree from two studios as well as the combined expertise of exec producer Steven Spielberg and his “Jaws” producers Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown, this comes as close to a universal, all-encompassing disaster picture as has ever been made, in that all life on Earth is threatened with extinction by the onrushing astral interloper. And yet, the choices of characters made by scenarists Michael Tolkin and Bruce Joel Rubin are mostly odd and uninvolving, with perhaps only one or two of them expressing any lust for life, a burning awareness of the preciousness of time, or a philosophical framework through which to view the threatened holocaust.

With director Mimi Leder working in the same hyperventilated, would-be realistic style she applied to “The Peacemaker,” the characters all frantically scurry about keeping appointments and fighting deadlines, with all of them facing, of course, the biggest deadline of all. But the impact they create is shallow and scattershot, leaving one to wait impatiently for the major moments that, fortunately, do arrive.

An unaccountable amount of time, especially in the early-going, is given over to Jenny Lerner (Tea Leoni), a rising MSNBC reporter who, while investigating some high-level Washington shenanigans, stumbles onto traces of a very big story indeed. A year before, amateur teenage astronomer Leo Biederman (Elijah Wood) and an observatory technician (Charles Martin Smith) independently identified a new comet that is now certified as being on a collision course with Earth.

With impact looming in a year, U.S. President Beck (a solemn Morgan Freeman) announces the news to the world. The government hasn’t been asleep at the wheel, however; a giant spaceship called Messiah will blast off in two months’ time, the president informs, so that astronauts can plant eight nukes on the comet in the hope of blowing it to smithereens and thus eradicate the threat.

The mission, which concludes precisely halfway through the picture, proves a dismal failure, succeeding only in splitting the comet in two unequal pieces, each of which strike the planet. The smaller portion, it is eventually determined, will hit just off the North American eastern seaboard, causing a 350-foot tidal wave that will destroy New York and Washington, among other cities, and travel 650 miles inland. The larger rock will land in Canada and trigger what is called an E.L.E., or Extinction Level Event, complete with Earth-enshrouding dust clouds that will block out the sun and almost certainly wipe out all life.

The logistics and repercussions stemming from this announcement take up the film’s second half. Declaring martial law, President Beck reveals that a network of caves is being built to accommodate 1 million Americans, some of whom have already been selected but most of whom will be chosen by “The Ark National Lottery”; other nations, he says, will decide for themselves what to do.

The trauma created by the who-will-live/who-will-die edict is explicitly dramatized through Leo Biederman’s story. By virtue of his having co-discovered the comet, he and his family get to go underground. His girlfriend Sarah (Leelee Sobieski) and her parents are not so lucky, however. To enable Sarah to join Leo, the seriously underage couple marry, but even then there is much melodramatic toing-and-froing as to whether she will accompany him or remain with her folks. Potentially heart-tugging, this subplot is played out in the hokiest, most predictable manner, one that panders directly to the teen audience.

The adults are no more interesting. Although she has the looks for a plausible TV anchor, Tea Leoni’s Jenny seems so stiff and uncomfortable during her broadcasts that she wouldn’t last a weekend on the air. Furthermore, her character is stuck in a forlorn funk; her mother (a classy Vanessa Redgrave) commits suicide after the older woman’s ex (Maximilian Schell) marries a much younger woman, and Jenny spends a good deal of time dealing — not very effectively — with her errant dad. Leoni’s eyes seem on the verge of tears almost throughout, and her sad, brittle demeanor is an odd object of focus for such a high-powered picture.

In a different way, the team of astronauts isn’t very compelling either. Robert Duvall’s lead pilot, described as the last man to walk on the moon and a veteran of six shuttle flights, would normally be expected to have a certain weight and to command respect. Instead, the younger flyers (Ron Eldard, Mary McCormack, Blair Underwood, Jon Favreau and Alexander Baluev) treat him dismissively as a dinosaur, almost a liability. Duvall, possibly not wanting to repeat himself by playing yet another military tough guy, makes his character somewhat defensive, as if he had something to prove. It’s one way to go, but not all that convincing.

But none of this matters terribly when the first big rock hits the water and sends the world’s biggest tidal wave breaking over the Statue of Liberty and all of Manhattan (a hilariously incongruous shot shows one man in Washington Square not even looking at the wave as it approaches, his mug obliviously buried in a newspaper). The water effects are just the slightest bit phony looking, but they still register dramatically, as do glimpses of the ocean making its way up through the valleys and over the mountains of the eastern states.

But, for all its destructiveness, this is just the appetizer: the Big One has yet to hit. Although the population is resigned to its fate, Duvall’s flight commander has a final idea that might just save the day, a kamikaze mission that will nonetheless require the agreement of the entire crew. Once again, the result is spectacular, something sci-fi and effects freaks will relish. Concluding sequence conveys hope for humanity in a very square, windy manner.

Tech contributions are souped up to the max, resulting in occasional overkill, particularly on the soundtrack, which is almost unbearably noisy at times. Cinematographer Dietrich Lohmann delivered sharp, agile work, and pic is dedicated to him, as he died shortly after lensing was completed.

Shane O’Shea (Ryan Phillippe) is 19 and bored by the local nightlife in New Jersey. He
ends up standing outside Studio 54, worrisome to get in. The club’s owner, Steve Rubell (Mike
Myers), is taken by the young man’s credible looks and waves him through. Soon Shane joins the
ranks of bare-chested busboys working under the strobe lights. He makes friends with a
coworker, Greg (Brecklin Meyer), who is married to a coat-check a depart girl and would-be singer,
Anita (Salma Hayek). In the meantime, Shane’s proclivity by Rubell and a prominent socialite
(Sela Ward) puts him on the fast track. It’s not long more willingly than he is promoted from busboy to
bartender, and gets all the women and drugs he wants. He has set his sights on a soap
opera actress, Julie Black (Neve Campbell), whom he has long admired from afar.

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