Reviews

• but not much else. I suspect one reason it leans so heavily on its well-publicized make-up gimmick is that the mystery itself is so mediocre, and makes little to no sense. Indeed, why a man with just moments to live and desperate to communicate details about a recent string of homicides would talk about them in cryptic, allusive terms is the REAL mystery of the story (and one no one even addresses in the movie!)

Again, Scott is great as the principal investigator and some of the other performances are very good also ... and Joe MacDonald's photography is characteristically wonderful ... but the game isn't worth the candle. The mystery runs out of steam around the one-hour mark, with 35 minutes still to go. And there are seemingly endless (and somewhat unsettling) scenes of fox hunts. In fact, I'm guessing that the fox hunting stuff is what drew director Huston to the project in the first place.

He should have been hunting for a better story. My score: 6/10.

The bartender's recipe for this particular cocktail: Take three parts REAR WINDOW, two parts WAIT UNTIL DARK, one part A BEAUTIFUL MIND, and one part ... I don't know, HALLOWEEN or something. Shake vigorously and pour. Serves millions. Satisfies no one.

One problem (among many) with this movie is that the heroine doesn't solve the case! She doesn't do much of anything, in fact. She notices one important clue (a photo of Julianne Moore reflected in a wine glass, proving Moore was over her house one night) and that's pretty much it. She doesn't figure out who the culprit is. The maniac just appears at the end and starts yammering to her about how guilty he is. Pretty convenient.

Bottom line: Excellent actors trapped in an abysmally plotted movie.

My score: 4/10.

A solid noir set-up, terrific cinematography, ahead-of-its-time use of sound, and a few first-rate scenes - all undone by a weak-as-water last act.

My understanding is that this movie's ending was rewritten by other hands, and it certainly feels like a patch job. Since so much of the first three-quarters unfolds logically, it is incredibly frustrating to arrive at the finale and see our framed gunshoe hero casting about the villain's office with no clear reason to suspect he's a villain, and no earthly reason to suspect that the villain's WIFE might be part of the puzzle, too ... and yet somehow, intuitively (and mainly because we are already near the 90 minute mark), these are exactly the conclusions that he jumps to. And he's right! Absurd.

I'd love to know how the original ending played out. Was it really more frustrating than the one that they filmed? Hard to imagine.

Rip Torn makes an okay bad guy who's out for revenge, and, eventually, half a million bucks, and this minor variation of THE DESPERATE HOURS does provide moments of white-knuckle tension now and then. But too much of the story makes no sense (Joe surrendering to the villains after he has Torn at gunpoint? No way). And the climax is incredibly unsatisfying. I have to believe it was the network cracking down on onscreen violence that explains why Torn dies by his own hand instead of Joe's. It would not have ended this way in season 2, that's for sure.

It's all just too watered-down and implausible to be fully satisfying. It isn't awful (MANNIX is never awful) but it isn't particularly good, either.

It's a slasher movie, is what it is. Friday the 13th? Halloween? Prom Night? Hundreds of others? This film is PRECISELY like those movies, complete with crazed, faceless killer stalking the young, good-looking cast in and around a wooded cabin (or rental house, in this case) and picking them off one by one.

Allison Brie is a good actress, and does what she can in the thankless role of an initially loyal, then confused, then hysterical young wife. But she is the movie's only saving grace. It sure isn't imaginative, or believable, or scary.

Again: It is EXACTLY like those slasher movies of yesterday, but with a lower budget, crummier photography, and more modern, millennial pretensions (e.g., the subject of racism is addressed, naturally).

This film is actually getting some pretty good notices. Now THAT'S terrifying. The only explanation I can think of is that commercial filmmaking (and audience expectations of what a good movie looks like) has degraded dramatically in the last 25 years. Literally nothing else could account for it.

I have several questions about the story...

WARNING: SPOILERS FOLLOW!!!

(Many story details are going to be given away in the next few paragraphs, so if you haven't seen the movie yet, read no further!)

1) How exactly did brothers Adrian and Tom manage to fake Adrian's suicide to the satisfaction of the authorities? Did they kill some poor stranger who happened to resemble Adrian? This is never explained.

2) Late in the movie, Tom confides to Cecilia that her legal problems will disappear if she agrees to carry her pregnancy to term and return to Adrian - but why, exactly, would the District Attorney agree to drop all charges against Cecilia when it looks as though she killed her sister?

3) And even if Cecelia DID return to Adrian, how was Adrian planning to explain to the public that he was still alive? Was he planning to tell the world that it was all just an elaborate practical joke? And how would he explain the person who was cremated? Who was that person, anyway? And how did they die?

4) And at the very end, when Adrian tied himself up and pretended to be Tom's captive, how did he know that Tom was going to be killed that night?

Given the countless comedic, horror and sci-fi variations we have seen of it, is it safe to say that GROUNDHOG DAY is hands-down THE most ripped-off movie of the last 30 years? It just might be.

And here's yet another variation of it: HAPPY DEATH DAY.

It isn't awful, as carbon copies go, but it takes major cajones to rip off an entire plotline (and even individual scenes, for God's sakes!) so brazenly. But these folks did it.

And to those who insist, "Everything's been done before!" ... nope, sorry, that just isn't true. That's just something uncreative people say to themselves to justify their stealing. And to prove my point, show me an example of GROUNDHOG DAY that was done before GROUNDHOG DAY. Good luck.

This movie does have a good surprise ending, though - one that was set up fairly cleverly at the beginning, and throughout the film. So credit where it's due.

But the first 90 minutes or so are GROUNDHOG DAY.

The most ineptly plotted "thriller" of the year - maybe the decade.

Don't believe me? Check it out:

Bad Guy loves Pretty Girl from afar, and resents the man who married her. Prior to getting married, Pretty Girl lived with her parents, so Bad Guy murders Pretty Girl's parents (What the hell for??!!) and her new husband, and is about to murder her, too, when she runs off into the night and gets struck by a speeding car and wakes up with amnesia.

And Bad Guy - somehow ANTICIPATING Pretty Girl's amnesia (Screw you, movie!) - has been visiting Pretty Girl in the hospital on a regular basis.

Pretty Girl believes Bad Guy to be her husband, and so does the hospital (he has an honest face and glasses!!), so Pretty Girl leaves the hospital in Bad Guy's custody with a brand new last name.

Meanwhile, the murdered husband, murdered parents, and the amnesiac Pretty Girl have been reported missing by no one (friends, employers, relatives, etc). It's as if they never existed.

And Bad Guy determines that an unidentified bearded man who showed up at the hospital to visit the Pretty Girl, for unexplained reasons, needs to be murdered too, for unexplained reasons. So Bad Guy kills him.

And that, near as I can tell, is the set up for SECRET OBSESSION, which plays even worse than it sounds.

This may've been the smelliest pile of dog - ah - excrement that I have ever seen, and I've seen all five DEATH WISH movies.

An always watchable 2 stars for pretty good cinematography and the always watchable Dennis Haysbert. Otherwise - beware.

At one point in DEAD WATER (a rip-off of 1989's infinitely superior DEAD CALM) one of the characters boasts that his brand new harpoon gun is, "the same kind of harpoon-gun that Quintin used on Bruce."

"Bruce?" someone asks.

"The shark from JAWS."

Fascinating. Except Robert Shaw's character in JAWS was named "Quint," not "Quintin."

The most iconic character in a truly iconic movie - a masterpiece of cinema - and the filmmakers were so sloppy that nobody - from the screenwriter, to the director, to the actors, to the editor - could be bothered to get his name right.

And that kind of sloppiness informs the whole production. A dialogue scene takes place in a stationary car because the filmmakers obviously couldn't afford to film it as the car was moving. And a short while later, characters talk on the deck of a supposedly moving yacht that is obviously standing still.

Entire scenes are not properly "covered" by the director, and numerous scenes are borderline inaudible because they didn't have enough money to fix them in post-production.

And that's just technical stuff. As for the plot and dialogue ... oh my God, where to begin ...

Here's just one example of how bad this story is: Dude A carefully arranges for the murder of Dude B because he is secretly in love with B's wife - a motive that makes perfect sense - yet A starts putting the moves on B's wife (and freaking her the hell out) before B is even reported dead, which makes ZERO sense.

The whole thing reeks of amateur hour.

Fun, witty, intricately plotted episode - very much in the spirit of the far-fetched "amnesia noirs" Hollywood was fond of in the 1940s.

My biggest problem with the episode was the notion that Joe only "lost" 24 hours. Based on the number of friendships and romances he seems to have forged during his blackout, the episode should more rightly have been called "What Happened to January?"

Also, why were the villains who were so eager to KILL Joe at the top of the episode ... content merely to FOLLOW him for the rest of it? They couldn't possibly know he had amnesia, could they? Kind of absurd, but, let's face it, also necessary if the story was going to play out.

Connors is terrific, as always, and the supporting cast is good, too. A solid and engaging "MANNIX" if one doesn't stop and ask too many questions.

What begins as a good con-man-posing-as-shrink story is undone by an incredibly stupid last 20 minutes.

Too bad. The story had promise. The set-up is good. Collins is appropriately slimy as the selfish (and probably sociopathic) actor looking to cash in on an heiress's misconception that he's a psychiatrist.

The complications arrive in timely and compelling fashion: The heiress has a sister, who's lovely and attracted to our handsome faux-shrink.

And then a private detective comes a-calling to ask about a missing man ...

And that's just the first half of the story. As I said, it's interesting for a while. But the ending arrives straight out of outer space and should have been rewritten.

And the VERY end takes a page out of the PSYCHO playbook by having a real shrink show up to explain the clinical underpinnings of one of the character's psychosis.

A sort of suspenseful story, but with a huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge plot hole.

It really is ridiculous.

Stupid, even.

For his original plan to work, why did Paul have to go through the trouble of wooing - and marrying - Barbara Feldon??

This made no sense. Paul's real wife - Linda Thorson - could simply have stuck around and pretended to have the fainting spells, the dizzy spells, the blackouts, the doctor's visits, etc., and THEN, when they were good and ready, Paul could simply have abducted a lookalike and tossed her off the cliff.

She is a hero who can do anything. Conquer anyone. Defeat all enemies.

She cannot be stopped, and has no flaws save "mastering her emotions" or some such thing.

Even Superman was given Kryptonite, and often, in his movies, faced villains AT LEAST AS POWERFUL AS HE WAS.

Not here. Captain Marvel is perfect. Omnipotent. Indestructible.

And therefore boring.

Superhero movies are only exciting and suspenseful when their protagonists are flawed (at least to some degree) and occasionally overmatched and in real jeopardy.

But this woman is a friggin' God. She's invincible. Thus, there was zero tension.

Tarantino-inspired mayhem with such by-now familiar QT tropes as chapter headings ... frequent, stylized "nobody talks like that" speechifying ... an often digressive narrative ... and, on occasion, non-linear chronology too. All set to the cool soulful sounds of groovy, late sixties funk.

Good lord.

Now, leaving aside the whopper of a coincidence that gets the story going (colorful G-Man arrives at hotel looking for incriminating film-reel ON SAME NIGHT former-hold-up-man-disguised-as-priest arrives to retrieve loot hidden years before ON SAME NIGHT two Manson-family-types arrive while escaping from their homicidal cult-leader) - leaving this off-the-chart coincidence aside - did this flick REALLY need to be 2 hours and 20 minutes long?

It did not.

The same story could've been told far more effectively in one-hour and fifty minutes.

That said, there are certainly strong plot twists along the way, as well as some excellent performances from Jeff Bridges (of course), Dakota Johnson, and - perhaps surprisingly - from Chris Hemsworth as the charismatic Charles Manson-type.

This isn't a bad movie by any stretch. And it's always nice to see a well-produced, straightforward suspense picture with no IP attached (that is, one not based on a book, play, video game, graphic novel or previous film or TV show) being made for theaters. Hollywood used to turn out such "programmers" by the bushel once upon a time, but no longer.

I just wish this film wasn't so bloated - or so obviously inspired by the work of Quentin T.

• that final exchange between Rob and Laura got past the censors.

(After a passionate kiss on the giant, inflated raft): "Rob? How do we deflate this?"

"Hmm??" (Then, realizing she means the raft:) "Oh, yeah! Well, there should be a valve." (They start looking for the valve)

Wonderful stuff for the full 25 minutes, leading up to that - yes - VERY racy final colloquy!

Ridiculous thriller is compelling most of the way ... before coming undone by an unsatisfying conclusion and a plot that withers under even casual scrutiny.

One is asked to believe that not only does Gregory Peck succumb to amnesia the moment he sees his boss plunging 27 stories to his death from a skyscraper window, but that all the villains somehow KNOW he has succumbed to it, and decide to play games with him based on this fact.

So it's the behavior of the bad guys that makes the least sense here.

George Kennedy sees Peck in the basement of the building and decides to pretend he is a total stranger and send him on his way.

Diane Baker runs into Peck in the stairwell and for reasons that defy understanding, decides to flee from him and answer none of his questions.

Peck and Baker have several more scenes together, and even when she softens and asks him to love her, she provides no illumination to the mystery - zero - even though she could, easily, at a moment's notice. But she chooses not to.

Either of these two characters, and several others besides, could have cleared up the mystery for Peck in 2 1/2 minutes, but they chose not to ... simply because it served the plot ... simply because Peck HAD to be in a fog for the entire running time.

The movie plays out as if the villains somehow INDUCED Peck's amnesia in order to get him to do what they wanted, but at the end we find out this is not the case.

My score: 6