Basic Instinct 2 is garbage, but it's compulsively watchable garbage. From the opening scene in which Sharon Stone's risk (and sex) addicted vixen Catherine Tramell barrels down London streets in her sports car while demanding that her wasted passenger of a boyfriend finger her, I knew I was in for a special time at the movies.

Download Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs Movie in Best quality

Basic Instinct 2 is, of course, a sequel to the Paul Verhoeven trash classic in which sex wasn't merely a part of the plot-it was the star. Well, there is sex to be found in this follow-up, but intercourse is more of a supporting player this time around, and in fact, for those who've seen that infamous Basic Instinct 2 featurette that's been circulating online, you may be disappointed to discover that it represents all the naughty stuff this film has to offer.

This sequel takes place in London and follows Catherine Tramell's psychiatric sessions with a recently divorced doctor who quickly becomes obsessed with the tantalizing thriller novelist. Before long, folks who Dr. Michael Glass isn't too fond of, begin dropping like flies prompting the good doctor to look at Tramell as a suspect. The problem is, Glass is so infatuated by the femme fatale that the sex keeps getting in the way.

Basic Instinct 2 pulsates with the same sort of sleazy, silly, preposterous verve of the first film, only director Michael Caton-Jones (Rob Roy) isn't really in his element here, whereas Paul Verhoeven felt right at home. The original Basic Instinct was a slickly produced thriller and brought soft core to the mainstream. This picture by comparison, tries to trick the audience in a more conventional manner. The end result is a really stupid movie with a couple of nifty surprises along the way.

Sharon Stone is back as the naughty heroine, and she's struggled for quite a while to get this movie made. It's quite ironic to me that Ms. Stone made such a big stink about the legendary beaver shot in the first picture, but now she seems eager to show more of her business. For what it's worth, Stone is fearless and for a women in her late 40's, she's got quite the body. Sadly, however, her performance feels more like a parody of the role that placed her indelibly on the map rather than a complete embodiment of the part.

Michael Douglas is nowhere to be found. Instead, the focus is on psychiatrist Michael Glass (played by David Morrissey - brother of British rock sensation Morrissey), and quite honestly, he's not half bad. By the looks of the trailer, I thought he'd be awful, but in the context of the movie, he's often quite effective. He plays the "I really should kill her, but I want to screw her more" moments with palpable intensity and I really enjoyed the way he plays the final moments of the picture. In a way, this flick is really more about Glass than it is Catherine Tramell and that's where Basic Instinct 2 really differs from the first picture.

The usually dependable David Thewlis seems to know he's in a really silly thriller, so he makes the most of it in a big way as police officer Roy Washburn. Perhaps too big. Nearly every time he was on screen, I thought I was watching a Naked Gun movie. Seriously - I thought I was going to pass out from laughter upon watching the thespian play his last scene.

The screenplay by Leora Barish and Henry Bean (based on characters created by trash king Joe Eszterhas) is filled with howlingly bad dialogue and ludicrous situations, both of which make the film somewhat enjoyable. What's more, there are actually a couple of moments that I didn't see coming (if you'll pardon the pun). I also like the way the screenwriters loosely tie events in both films together all while maintaining a little ambiguity. Yes, the ending is implausible and ridiculous, but at least it was a surprise.

Basic Instinct 2 is stupid. It's really stupid. The thing is though, it falls under the category of "So dumb, it's actually kind of entertaining." For me anyway. Still, I won't hold my breath for BI3. If Once is not Enough - Twice is more than Plenty.

prashant

prashant

What a bloody car wreck - somebody took a beating on this one, I heard it cost a fortune to make.

[Fri Jun 16th, 2006]

In this rule prequel to the action-thriller Say farewell to the Girls, Freeman reprise his duty as Washington DC’s Zen detective Alex Waspish, a happily married miscreant profiler, freelancer and catch-penny philosopher who makes galleons as a hobby. But at just now his assurance has been eroded by guilt over the cessation of his consort after a railway carriage disaster at a dam. When Choleric receives a caution free in all directions an abduction send from the perpetrator, he finds himself up against a publicity-seeking psychopath almost as good as on upstaging the Lindbergh cosset kidnapping. Regrettably, every metastasis in this adaptation of James Patterson’s novel is rammed home by the certain score and by the derivative mania of the bold direction. As Cross’s ephemeral late partner, blonde, neat, comely (and unlikely) Quietly Checking cause Fiddle about is a dampish-eyed, spasm-lipped and unseemly defender of a Senator’s 12-year-old daughter Megan (Boorem, stoic). If Freeman’s gravitas, feeling and word lift the film out of the simple, Tamahori’s greater than reliance on his star’s ‘natural dignity’ leaves it tainted by self-intentional positive attitudinising.

Download Inglourious Basterds Movie dvd

Unforgettable

A Film Review by James Berardinelli

United States, 1996
U.S. Release Date: 2/23/96 (wide)
Running Length: 1:57
MPAA Classification: R (Violence, profanity)
Theatrical Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1

Cast: Ray Liotta, Linda Fiorentino, Peter Coyote, Christopher McDonald, David Paymer, Kim Cattrall,
Kim Coates

Director: John Dahl

Producers: Dino De Laurentiis and Martha De Laurentiis

Screenplay: Bill Geddie

Cinematography: Jeffrey Jur

Music: Christopher Young

U.S. Distributor: MGM

Impact Pt II full movie best quality

Some cultures believe that the eye of a dead person retains the last image it sees. In

Unforgettable

, the latest whodunnit/thriller from director John Dahl (


Red Rock West

,

The
Last Seduction


), it's cerebral spinal fluid, not the eye, that provides the picture, but the
basic idea is the same. Using a special serum, it's possible to re-live the final moments of a murder
victim's life, and, in the process, determine the killer's identity. There are a couple of drawbacks,
though. First, those who subject themselves to this process risk having their own minds
contaminated by the personality of the corpse whose memories they are plundering. Second, the
drug that facilitates this procedure damages the heart.

Ray Liotta is Dr. David Kane, a hotshot pathologist based in Seattle. David is a veritable Sherlock
Holmes when it comes to bloodstains and bullet holes, but his uncertain past has left him with few
supporters and fewer friends. Recently, David's lovely wife, Mary, was bludgeoned to death, and
the doctor, who was on a bender at the time, was charged with the crime. After being released on a
technicality, David has devoted his life to learning the killer's identity. For this information, he's
willing to risk everything.

Enter Dr. Martha Briggs (Linda Fiorentino), a university professor who has made an amazing
discovery: a drug that allows a living specimen to experience the memories of any other creature,
living or dead. Thus far, the compound has been used only on rats, but David volunteers his
services as a human guinea pig. When Martha refuses, he breaks into her lab, steals a vial of the
formula, then, using a sample of his late wife's spinal fluid from the medical examiner's office,
prepares to conduct the experiment on his own.

Unforgettable

has an intriguing premise and a fascinating setup, but, somewhere along the
way, Bill Geddie's script degenerates from a unique, concept-based thriller into a routine murder
mystery, complete with a full compliment of red herrings and false leads. As involving as the first
half is, with its glimpses into the minds of the dead, the second half is disappointingly formula-
driven. The plot is structured like a house of cards; ninety minutes into it, someone starts shaking
the table.

The most interesting aspects of

Unforgettable

are glossed over. What happens when a
person experiences the visceral thrill of a psychopath's first kill? How can a man remain sane
when he keeps re-living his wife's murder? And what happens to someone's personality when they
have two, three, or more "lives" jumbled together in their mind?

Unforgettable

poses each
of these questions, but doesn't bother to answer them. For Geddie's screenplay, these issues are
setup — his intent is to present a technologically hip whodunnit. Unfortunately, in the process, he
abandons virgin territory for a burned-out wasteland of recycled contrivances.

Ray Liotta, who is equally capable of playing heroes and villains, is adequate as the obsessed
David, despite the absence of a certain intensity. Linda Fiorentino, apparently recovered from her
disastrous appearance in


Jade


, plays her character with
an appealing vulnerability — quite a change from her role in Dahl's previous effort,

The Last
Seduction

. The supporting cast includes Peter Coyote and Christopher McDonald doing the
good cop/bad cop routine, and David Paymer as Kane's lone friend.

Dahl's direction is never off, even if the script is.

Unforgettable

is energetic and moody,
and there's an eerie, fractured quality to the retrieved memories. But all of that is just so much
icing on a half-baked cake. This motion picture definitely has the wrong title; if anything,

Unforgettable

is completely unmemorable.

© 1996 James Berardinelli

– James Berardinelli

e-mail:



berardin@bc.cybernex.net



trap page:



http://www.cybernex.net/~berardin

EVENING

It?s almost comically appropriate that the opening scene of

Evening

involves a character gazing upon a vision of herself as a young woman, as few stories have ever danced so effortlessly with feminine self-absorption. As the still luminous Vanessa Redgrave (playing Ann Grant) approaches the shore, her other self stares pensively ahead while draped in a sailboat. Add to that an aching sky teeming with fireflies, and all the ingredients are in place for either an eruption of feeling, or a pretentious slog through lost loves, tear-filled compromises, and deathbed realizations. Given the cast — Redgrave, Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, Toni Collette, Natasha Richardson — it would seem that at the very least, the sheer force of talent would envelop the banalities, but here is proof enough that even the greatest actors of stage and screen can?t overcome pompous idiocy. No mere chick flick,

Evening

reduces the lives of all women to the man that got away, assuming that the greatest tragedy to befall the fairer sex is not war, rape, famine, or even the death of a child, but rather the blown opportunity to spend eternity with the squarest jaw in Christendom. Women are forever chasing this first, best love, it seems, and if denied to them, they will spend their days pining, hoping, wishing, and enduring loveless marriages and doomed relationships evermore. It?s more than a cloistered life; it?s as if this little patch of Rhode Island real estate were all that was left of a worldwide catastrophe in which every single human being of semiconscious interest died long ago. In their stead, we have twits, drunkards, and fools alike, chattering away while the rest of the world passes them by. It?s a white, privileged, bloodless universe, and asking us to give a shit for a hair under two hours is one of the most unreasonable requests I?ve ever been tendered.

Needless to say, the story alternates from past to present, I?m guessing to ensure that we fully inhale Ann?s shallow sham of a life from two distinct vantage points. At least Redgrave has it easy, though, as she does little more than rot away in bed while occasionally getting up to chase moths like a lunatic. Played as a girl by the impossibly annoying Claire Danes, Ann would have us believe she?s a rebel from Greenwich Village (those aren?t acceptable shoes for an upper-crust wedding, my dear), when in fact she?s as plastic and dull as the bluebloods she mingles with during that fateful weekend so long ago. She?s in town to act as a maid of honor for her school chum Lila (Mamie Gummer), who is marrying Carl (Timothy Kiefer), the sort of man who is all wrong for her because he doesn?t take walks through the woods and name stars after his sweetheart. Ah, but Harris (Patrick Wilson) is just such a fella, and to listen to these broads — past and present — you?d think (hope) he at least found the cure for cancer. Instead, he?s all hunk, and despite being a doctor, he?s a cipher so hilariously thin that you half expect him to rock back and forth whenever called upon to produce a coherent thought. But he is in fact the center of all this, as he effortlessly seduces every woman he meets, I?m guessing because he has the decency to push a woman?s hair out of her face whenever necessary. He had been Lila?s love for many years (she yearned, he didn?t), but now he is falling for Ann, even though Ann is the secret love of Buddy (Hugh Dancy), who just might be gay, as he kissed Harris in a drunken rage. It?s a complicated weekend, to be sure, though one that could have been made much easier had those involved paused and realized that falling in love just might require more than handholding by the shore.

And so the wedding continues, despite the fact that it is clearly a mistake, and we come to learn that there?s still more love lost and dreams deferred. Before you know it, Buddy is making an alcohol-soaked toast that embarrasses everyone, especially the father, who has no dialogue to speak of, yet is given no less than five close-ups, all of which reveal a stern, disapproving man of regal bearing. The matriarch is played by Ms. Close, who has clearly spent her off years being pulled tighter than a Marine?s bed sheets, and her scenes consist of nothing more than being as stereotypically stuffy as possible. She does everything but offer her guests tea. By the end, when she?s asked to ?act,? she dissolves into a bucket of tears, providing a mournful cry so off-putting that I nearly left the theater in hysterics. At that point, I didn’t need an excuse. Still, she?s not asked to do much, and so answers with very little, and she now has something to book end the Dalmatian movies on her personal wall of shame. She?s supposed to be the first in a long line of women who did what was expected of them rather than what they truly desired, but after one look at this vast estate, I do wonder what would have been considered an improvement. Did she too marry for convenience rather than love? Perhaps, but can we agree that this will be the final movie where such a thing is considered tragic? When poets and dreamers suggest that love is all you need, keep in mind that their scribblings are made possible by trust funds, not come-hither glances by moonlight.

As this is a summer day long ago, someone has to die, and the predictable victim is Buddy, the sad little rich man who is run over by a car while chasing Ann and Harris through the trees. Even more touching, his death grip clutched a piece of paper containing a bit of Ann?s writing from those carefree college years. OK, so Harris looks pretty damn good with a shirt off, but what is Ann?s deal? What accounts for her effect on the men folk? For starters, she?s a singer, though her wedding song sounded more like a funeral dirge for my money. Her tentative, flat tones were enough to earn her a living, though, and as we are reminded again and again in the present, Ann felt so very guilty for dragging her two daughters to smoky nightclubs and seedy jazz joints. Still, I would have expected nothing less from the likes of Ann, as practical employment always manages to elude the very type most apt to curse the heavens over a chipped fingernail as the world burns. And after we meet Ann?s brood (Constance and Nina, played by Richardson and Collette, respectively), we can see that if she?s passed along anything, it is the fanatical push to self-obsess until the head explodes. Nina is morose and rudderless, while Constance lives the dream of a happy home, while also forced to live with the unspeakable tragedy of knowing that healthy kids, a good husband, and a rewarding career might not be enough to find fulfillment. It?s never confirmed that she missed out on some well-built football player from high school or something, but if I had to make a prediction, I?m guessing the man she?s with is not the man she truly wants. And we wonder why the gents want to run away every chance they get.

By the end, when Meryl Streep finally shows up to bring some class to the whole rotten enterprise, we are so lost and indifferent that it takes us a second to realize that Ann is just about dead upstairs. It?s a long-awaited fade-out, as she has spent her final hours doing little but rehashing old memories and tired anecdotes. Yes, Ann, we know that Harris was very handsome. Oh, he moved to a small town and married a nurse, did he? Well, I never. Sang at Lila?s wedding, did we? Oh my yes, it was a beautiful affair. Of course you were the loveliest creature I ever did see. That dress? I?ll never forget it, my dear. Reduced to skin, bones, and advanced dementia, Ann?s sole concern is forcing those unfortunate enough to be in smelling distance to back off and bask in the light of a woman who

lived

, dammit, despite the odds. What did she accomplish? What is her legacy to the world? Precious little, I?m afraid, except for the convenient realization that ?there are no mistakes.? This sounds a little too much like making virtue out of necessity for my taste, but maybe the old bat?s entitled to a little rationalization now that she?s on the verge of a dirt nap. Maybe not. After all, how many people do whatever the hell they want their entire lives and still assert that they?ve been helplessly carried along on life?s turbulent sea? It?s a curious type of person indeed, and I can?t fathom why we continue to make movies about them. If just one of these broads understood that disappointment comes only through expectation, then maybe the inspiration would infect our collective bloodstream and put an end to all this silliness. At long last.

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.

Watching movies online have become popular with people who spend a lot of time online nowadays. These sites make it possible to watch full-length feature movies, and even streaming television shows right on your computer screen using a technology known as ?streaming-video.? On some of these sites you can even play interactive games in HD with 3D graphics. There are numerous websites offering these services, some free and others requiring paid memberships. The best free full movies site is watch-funny-movies.com

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.

Download full mp3 songs, download free wallpapers and much more. Listen to Juanes online for free.

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.