Reviews

This is one of those shows (like another Netflix disaster, "The OA,") which makes you a.) want to make loud noises and throw things at your TV, and b.) wonder how you can get those nine wasted hours of your life back. The beginning pulls you right in with a whole lot to be interested in - there's the promise of a story that will be both an intriguing mystery and a nice creep-fest, the characters are all interesting with some nice implied backstory for each of them, and the house used for Bly Manor is like another character itself. But almost immediately the story shifts into low gear and just... stays there, transforming itself instantly from "haunted house thriller" into "soap-opera-ish melodrama." For the first four episodes there's enough remaining intrigue and secrets-to-be-revealed dangled in front of you (along with some seriously-muted frights,) to keep it interesting. But calling the pace "glacial" is kind of an insult to ice. You watch this and it's like glaciers are flying past you in the fast lane, just bluish, snowy blurs. And the scares in this are half-hearted and minor, almost as afterthoughts.

Episode five was a serious head-scratcher, mostly having to do with Hannah's backstory. For some weird, artsy-fartsy reason the writers and/or directors decided to do that particular episode (and the first half of episode 6,) as a game of Logical 52 Pickup. Hannah suddenly starts...'don't know what... teleporting? Time-traveling? Interdimensional sliding? No idea. It's never explained, by the end credits of episode 9 we still do not know, and we never will. So I got roughly halfway through episode 5 and realized that none of this temporal/spatial weirdness was ever going to make sense and maybe was not intended to make sense - from the perspective of linear time, logic or causality. Klunky and pretentious as it was, it did have a useful purpose however, in that the whole episode was to provide exposition about Hannah - a key character. The bizarre style of jumping around, of repeated - and repeated and repeated - scenes and dialog, was, again, pretentious and needlessly confusing, but once I realized it was just an information-dump, I was able to "wing it" and absorb what it had to tell me about Hannah and about the things she had learned about others in the house. Weirdly, the one thing it and the episodes to follow weren't able to convey was Hannah's fate. I'm pretty sure she's dead by the end of the series - a shame, because she was one of the most interesting and likable of these people - but it's all a little hazy and I'm still not real sure how she ended up that way. Miles-possessed-by-Peter might have pushed her, or she might have slipped. In either case, no adult (or even kid) with a functioning cognitive apparatus would be careless enough to end up swan-diving into the bottom of a dry well. The sense of self-preservation that every normal person on this planet possesses virtually from birth, is always the first necessary casualty of American "horror" screenwriting, apparently.

So once we've suffered through Hannah's trip through the Twilight Zone, from episode six to the end we're basically yanked violently out of the whole "haunted house thriller" thing altogether and plopped headlong into "Jamie and Dani's romance." And lest I get tarred as anti-whatever, I grew up surrounded by people of varied orientations so a pairing of two people of the same gender is not ordinarily a big deal... until it starts taking on that familiar, eyeroll-inducing patina of a self-conscious, preachy political "message," shoehorned into a story in a way that's as implausible as it is superfluous in its utter irrelevancy. So Bly Manor is: Five episodes of "haunted house thriller" followed by a jarring one-way side-trip into "Dani and Jamie hooking up and submerging us all in their romantic angst." Which is about as scary as my fishbowl. This now-obligatory "activism" thing has become almost as intrusive and obnoxious as a street-corner preacher, and it's invariably done at the expense of the story. As it was in this one.

And then there are the loose ends. Ohhhboy. Just pick any metaphor from a hat: 52-Pickup, Humpty-Dumpty reassembly, a cat-herd attack on a yarn factory:

Straight out of the chute Dani is getting creepy Elijah Wood / Sin City reflections of her dead fiancé in pretty much every reflective surface imaginable, but by the end this ghost has just... disappeared with no explanation. The fiancé's fate and Dani's guilt about it are given a brief once-over halfway through the series, but his ghost just... stops showing up, with no explanation. 'Guess he was just a prop; Flora's weird little voodoo dolls are all over the house and grounds and are focused on from the first episode like they're significant but... they're utterly inconsequential. So... props; And her elaborate dollhouse-replica of Bly Manor seems for awhile to show whoever's looking at it where people are at and what they're doing in real time, but... it's as if the writer/director "borrowed" J. K. Rowling's idea of the Marauder's Map from Harry Potter, changed it into dollhouse form, but didn't have the attention span to stick with it or was just too lazy to actually do anything of consequence with it. So the dolls in the dollhouse kinda seem to show where people are, and then... they don't anymore. Other than that it's just a decoration; Uncle Henry doesn't seem to have any purpose at all in the production except in the first episode, where he serves as the warm body necessary to interview and hire Dani as an au pair for the two kids. Beyond that he's just a broken record on "Don't bother me unless someone's mortally wounded and screaming for help" and a weird, arbitrary and ultimately pointless thing about an "alter-ego" split personality, which also... goes nowhere at all.

I will give it a couple of stars for generally good, sometimes outstanding acting and for frequently stunning cinematography and settings. But ultimately, a whole bunch of stuff that was shoved at you as being heavy-duty-important from the first episode just fizzles into inconsequential fluff by halfway through, and then the whole thing turns an abrupt corner, becomes "Dani And Jamie In Love," and we all fall asleep.

Once again with feeling: How do I get these nine hours of my life back?

(Let me reiterate at the outset what's been amply stated here: If you have not seen this film and plan to, by all means just get out of here now! This film is heavily spoiler-sensitive.)

I think the people who show up here and get all bent out of shape on having their assumptions of "true story" dashed are missing the point: Entertainment.

Horror films are 99.9% hokum as a matter of course. We watch them because we're willing to suspend disbelief for the thrill of being frightened while sitting in the cozy safety of our living rooms. It gives us a way of contemplating both fear and death, and of essentially thumbing our noses at them in a pleasantly life-affirming way.

I would refer those with complaints about the "actual events" schtick to a film called "The Blair Witch Project." This film was several orders of magnitude more frightening - and polished - than that dreck, though you have to give the "Project" people credit for pulling a ruse that was hugely successful, regardless of how lousy was the actual film.

"The Fourth Kind" is certainly not a "great" film - in the sense of great cinematic fiction, great film-making, or great performances. Neither is it seriously deficient in any major respect. Where it excels is in spinning a yarn that is convincing enough in its patina of authenticity to scare the living hell out of people - without resorting to gratuitous gore or throwaway shocks. Or it did for me, at any rate. I actually caught myself nervously checking the windows and dark corners after the film was over. I call this "The Exorcist of Alien Encounter Films" with no reservations.

My chief criticisms of it: - First, the sudden distortion of the archival footage just as the serious strangeness is occurring - on the assumption that the alien presence was messing with the electronics - did indeed seem a shade too predictable and convenient as the film played out. My thought is that it was done to intensify the fear of the unknown rather than to save money, but I think some investment in state-of-the-art effects to throw the viewer a few more tantalizing glimpses of the "actual" events would have enhanced the end result. That having been said, leaving details to be filled in by the imagination worked effectively regardless. - Secondly, the split-screen presentation that they used in some scenes could have been done a little less jarringly. - Third, Charlotte Milchard's makeup as the "real" Abigail Tyler during the Chapman University interview segments went a little overboard on "cadaverous." Her appearance was visually shocking - doubtlessly what the producers were aiming at, but she was so striking in her wrung-out appearance that it actually hinted at contrivance on a subconscious level. I was still sucked in by the authenticity ruse, until a little fact-checking later, but a little less on makeup overkill would've eliminated even the subconscious reaction of "what's wrong with her," making the illusion of reality even more powerful than it was.

In short, a compelling fright-fest that surprised me with how thoroughly unnerving was its creepiness. I think the best description of myself as I watched would have to be: "Wigged out." And I stayed that way literally for hours afterward.

I can't think of many things more silly than looking for historic fact in horror films, no matter what the film's claims for the sake of presenting the ruse of authenticity. Again, see "Blair Witch Project." We go to a horror flick to be entertained, not to see factual journalism. Bottom line: The producers of "The Fourth Kind" deserve congratulations for constructing that ruse in a way that served the "scare the hell out of 'em" task amply. Easily one of my Top 5 most frightening films of all time.

I left this film shaking my head in disgust at the worthless, corrupt and ethically-bankrupt sewer that Hollywood has become. I knew I was going to a violent action film, I knew its story was about assassins, and I am neither religious nor squeamish about screen violence when it serves a good story - but I did not agree to have my face rubbed in corpses of little old ladies impaled on meat hooks and used as firing range targets; in geysers of blood, bone, brains and random gore spurting in extreme close-up and slo-mo from the craniums of Morgan Freeman, Angelina Jolie and 48 for 50 minor others, then repeated in reverse.

Hollywood is sick. It is so devoid of able writers that it's reduced to serving up buckets of gratuitous, graphic gore and human atrocities sufficient to nauseate Josef Mengele, so as to fill that gaping void where a coherent story and, more importantly, a civilized code of ethics, ought to be.

In yet another of Hollywood's weird adolescent-type cries for help, this film is yet another packed with gratuitous, Beavis & Butthead-caliber profanity between every fourth or fifth word of dialog. It's that thing where teenagers think that grown-up-type "bad words" will impress all observers into "ooohs" and "aaaahs" and thereby obscure desperately-concealed deficiencies of character. Or maybe these "writers" assume their presumptive audience will be just as juvenile as they. Rather pathetic in any case, now epidemic in Hollyweird. Again, I am specifically *not* a WCTU-type religious fundamentalist - but it doesn't take much mental effort to understand the contempt for humanity and the impotent frustration with life that are implicit to gratuitous profanity. To hear actors of the caliber of Morgan Freeman agreeing to deliver that pathetic tripe is just painful.

On the plus side, there were some excellent action sequences and enjoyable spectacle - the train derailment sequence and the car chases managed to be original, even balletic. None of the action in this film was plausible in context of basic physics, of course, but the film managed to suspend disbelief adequately to compensate.

Unfortunately, along with the wall-to-wall human butchery and pottymouth dialog, the story never rose above lame and sloppy. The intrigue of a "secret order" was quickly abandoned as a mere detail of setting; the "Loom of Fate" apparently ran itself, since no explanation was given as to who or what set it in motion; the actors almost to a one were mere foils for extravagant and, again, atrocious visuals.

I won't even bother to go into the contemptible "Sling Blade" ethic of "Murder is A-OK if you have a good reason." Suffice it to stand as a stark reminder of where Hollywood's proctological worldview has inevitably taken it.

Bottom line: "Wanted" is a film that left me feeling in equal parts annoyance, disappointment, and an overpowering desire to go home and wash.

(Warning: Spoilers abound.)

I went into this as a childhood fan of F4 and a major post-Satriani fan of Surfy... and by midway I was thoroughly disgusted.

The Silver Surfer is a character ripe for the...silver screen, but in F4 II he's little more than a nifty prop. His total number of lines here is around 12 and he does little more than make a few brief cameos before he self-destructs. So much for the original "exile to Earth" storyline, and obviously for Surfy's future presence in this franchise. What a colossal waste.

As others have pointed out, the CGI rendering of the Surfer was unimaginative and wooden. When I think of this film's treatment, then recall in my mind's eye what the great Moebius did with such spare, understated artistry in "Parable," it makes me want to make loud noises and break things. How is it that simple pen-and-ink drawings can convey more grace, fluidity of motion, and intensity of action than a state-of-the-art motion picture? Amazing.

The rest of this film is an absolute mess, a combination of: tired and mind-numbingly-boring infighting among the Four; an endless stream of cheap one-liners that are astonishing in their stupidity even by one-liner standards; a couple of unintentionally-comedic left wing political potshots the juvenile writers just couldn't help themselves from throwing in; several maddening contradictions of aspects of the Four's "powers" as spelled out in the first film; capped off with an extended and laughably-implausible Dodge Ram ad (American automakers can't even do cars that run on the ground, let alone Jetsonian hovercars.)

So with the virtual certainty that another of these is in the works as I write this, I'm wondering where, exactly, this inept Story/Payne/Frost crew will go with the next F4. Two new hours of "Johnny, you must stop being so irresponsible and 'narcissistic!'" and "Reed, all you care about are your geeky gadgets!" and "OK, that hurt?"

The trouble with superhero flicks is that the best story is the one where the characters first discover their powers, and that was done - somewhat better - in the first film. To continue beyond that requires intelligence and integrity among the writers and directors. So far Batman (excepting the dismal "Batman Returns" and the truly horrid "Batman and Robin,") is alone among superhero film franchises in sustaining itself with good writing and direction. F4 is apparently doomed to remain a schlocky grab-bag of blatant in-film product advertising and slick but wasted visual effects, tacked onto writing, direction and acting with all the depth and subtlety of a high school play.

Stan Lee, both in endorsing and appearing in this mess, has apparently lost the ability to take himself seriously. Maybe he, Story, Payne and Frost could be ejected for a team of Frank Miller, Moebius, and perhaps Spiderman co-creator Steve Ditko, to turn Fantastic Four into something that looks like it was produced by responsible adults. Maybe I'm dreaming.

Surfy deserves a separate franchise of his own, but it would have to be full-blown Sci-fi along the lines of Lucas and Whedon, and of course it would require writers at above Junior High School level.

The only thing that kept me sitting through the mess that is "Rise (and Abrupt Fall) of the Silver Surfer" to the bitter end, was a combination of hope that the story would suddenly get better and the need to finish the humongous $6 tub of popcorn I sprung for.

'Guess I need to get a better breakfast strategy...

I'm fairly certain I saw this film in its original theatrical release in the '80s(memory is dim,) and recently found it on DVD with considerable difficulty. The transfer to DVD is rather basic - no letterbox, a bit dark and very little in the way of special features - but despite disgust at the fact that the film hasn't been digitally remastered and given more than a bargain-basement DVD presentation, I love the film itself every bit as much as I did the first time I saw it.

Philosophically, i.e. in terms of ethical theme, "A Taxing Woman" is one of those stories in which identifying a hero is difficult - no clear black and white, only greys. Ryoko (Miyamoto Nobuko) and Gondo (Yamazaki Tsutomu) are of course the dueling protagonists, but each is anti-heroic, something I ordinarily can't stand: Gondo is the operator of a chain of Japan's ubiquitous "Love Hotels," where lovers go to find short-term lodgings for their trysts, who's got a complex system in place to evade Japan's horrific taxation; Ryoko is a tax auditor, later promoted to investigator, who, though admirable in her relentless dedication and competence, is party to some of the most horrendous legal assaults on businesspeople imaginable. The film's moral doesn't crystallize until the final scene - Gondo states a defense of his right to pursue his own happiness via an oblique reference to kids happily playing in a park below, then makes a dramatic and symbolic statement about the root meaning of outrageous taxation by slicing his finger and revealing to Ryoko his long-sought hidden bank account - via an account number scrawled in his very blood. After he walks away the camera lingers on the back of Ryoko's head, signifying her sudden crisis of conscience over her chosen profession.

In terms of style alone "A Taxing Woman" is an absolute masterpiece. The mood throughout is of a delightful farce in the mold of one of Blake Edwards' "Pink Panther" films, albeit far more subtle, obviously. The music, contrary to some claims here, is truly unique, memorable and nothing short of outstanding, much like Mancini's - fleshing out the farcical cat-and-mouse mood perfectly via two brief, repeating oboe (clarinet?) melodies laid over a bouncy 5/4 time signature that reappear at key points throughout the story.

The outrageous lengths to which the tax auditors and inspectors go to ferret out tax evaders is exaggerated (one would hope - I've never lived in Japan,) for great comedic effect. This isn't a rolling-in-the-aisles slapstick comedy and isn't intended as one, but the bureaucrats' combination of ruthlessness and obsessive yet oddly endearing personal dedication to their task, balanced by the businesspeople's often intricate and similarly humorous schemes to hang onto their property in the onslaught, is the exaggerated core conflict that pulls you into the plot and makes the film irresistibly charming.

The fairly simple plot setup in "A Taxing Woman" derives its incredible depth by the fact that it's almost entirely character-driven - Miyamoto and Yamazaki are such vivid personalities and the opposing chemistry between them so potent that you will find yourself thinking about them for weeks after the fact, as though they were your close personal friends. That is my psychological litmus test for a great film: "Do the characters stay with me long after I've seen it?" "A Taxing Woman" succeeds in spades.

A dose of gritty realism - though with a patina of humor as well - is added to the mix in the character of the violent Yakuza boss Ninagawa, played by Ashida Shinsuke. That element is underscored in the real world by the fact that director Itami was attacked on the street and had his face slashed by five Yakuza in 1992 after the release of his film "Minbo no Onna," a.k.a. "Minbo - or the Gentle Art of Japanese Extortion." He was subsequently killed when he "fell" from a hotel balcony, an apparent but suspicious suicide that was treated by the police as a possible homicide. The world lost a great artist, and "A Taxing Woman" remains a timeless masterpiece. We can only hope that whoever owns the rights to it will finally give it the digital translation and wide release it deserves.

I'm sitting here trying to think of what to say about this movie and what I'm getting is a stream of adjectives... Bewildering; brutal; heart-wrenching; astonishing; baffling; mind-bending; ingenious; perplexing; poetic...

And that's weird because when I'd finished watching (about an hour ago,) I wasn't sure if what I'd seen was something I loved or hated. Thankfully, with the vital clue given by user Eaveta (don't read her post unless you want a significant hint,) and some serious thought, I was able to unravel enough of the confusion, clear away some of the, er, cobwebs, and discard the latter option. A truly remarkable story and unexpected gem of a psychological mystery-thriller. This rental is good for the rest of the week and I will definitely be diving into a big, tasty second helping.

There are a dozen utterly perplexing paradoxes in this story, the most significant of which involves the intentional confusion of the protagonist's character with that of another, creating an inescapable time-loop - which left me shaking my head and talking aloud to the screen like a lunatic. Another such paradox involving a different major character had me pausing the movie to ponder the implications of it all. It soon became evident that these complex twists and turns were to be regular occurrences, but unlike...well, another recent Korean thriller, in "Spider Forest" the wrenching, mind-blowing plot twists had a definite, calculated, and most importantly, *logical* purpose: To weave an intricate puzzle around one solid, definite final truth whose eventual revelation unfolds with the elegance and dramatic impact of a symphony. Remember how the UFO tune "Love to Love" ends? That heady, stratospheric crescendo that finally - and abruptly - crashes to Earth with a finality that leaves you physically shaken? The ending of "Spider Forest" is a lot like that (the word "phenomenal" springs immediately to mind here.)

The mood is as relentless an emotional edge as that of Mickey Roarke's "Prayer for the Dying"; the photography is dark and atmospheric without being either contrived or openly depressing; the acting is great all around - Kang's firing scene alone is one of the most quietly horrific of the film; the supernatural tinges are understated enough to allow the film to be classified as a completely non-supernatural mystery, yet serve to tie the story threads together comfortably and seamlessly - something that would likely have been botched in the hands of a lesser writer/director.

The real star of the show is of course the story itself. It's a brilliant, circular thing that reminds me of Pink Floyd's "Wall" or maybe just that circular, intertwined knot on the cover of King Crimson's classic "Discipline." As it progresses you're kept in a constant state of agitation - that gnawing feeling that there's something vital you've missed (and in fact you will have,) something you can a-l-l-l-most get a handle on but not quite - just as the next tidbit of knowledge passes before you then quickly away, before you can get a grasp of *it*. The overall effect is to leave you in something of a daze - not of disgust at a puzzle that's insoluble by design (like... another recent Korean thriller,) but rather the healthy agitation of grappling with a worthy challenge to your intellect.

That, folks, is great storytelling.

This is a mixed bag at best - an adaptation with generally excellent production design and some very entertaining action sequences, that's sunk by a horribly miscast Theron in the title role, a veritable grab-bag of shockingly derivative Sci-Fi story and setting elements, and a main plot utterly devoid of Peter Chung's alien, often caustic vision of a future dystopia.

Maybe you could call it a bias in that I've never been a big fan of Charlize Theron in either the sex symbol or action hero context (and I write this as a single, red-blooded hetero male,) but when I heard they were making a movie version of Aeon Flux I was jazzed; when they announced Theron's casting in the title role I was groaning inwardly.

Or maybe it's just that the horrific image of the "Monster" movie poster still haunts my aesthetic sensibilities - needless to say I didn't watch *that* thing regardless of - or perhaps because of - the raves about it. (An interesting side question: Why do actresses and the entire Hollywood clique alike seem to think it's necessary for a beautiful woman to "ugly herself down" as some sort of aesthetically-perverse admission fee onto the "Serious Actor" roster?) At any rate, I can think of half a dozen people right off the top who would have been vastly superior matches for the role of Aeon Flux:

Lara Flynn Boyle, Michelle Yeoh, Angelina Jolie (natch,) Famke Janssen, Maggie Cheung, Thandie Newton, etc.

The Aeon Flux character plays heavily off of physical appearance, and for me Theron had that feel of a square peg jammed into a round hole. She's neither thin enough, exotic enough, athletic enough, stylish enough, nor... sexy enough to fit the role convincingly. She's certainly no slouch as an actor of course - it's just that her entire personality was a gross mismatch for the role of Aeon Flux. Theron has a kind of down-to-Earth, almost girl-next-door personality - the polar opposite of the kind of edgy, exotic and cold-as-steel personality of the anime character, and the skin-tight costumes only emphasized, not hid, that clash. As a result her presence served to water down the edgy and exotic appeal of Chung's original anime from the core, which is the Aeon Flux character itself.

When combined with the hackneyed plot elements (lifted from everything from Logan's Run to MI2 and a hundred films in between,) Theron's bland persona transforms Chung's wild, often bizarre and utterly alien vision into a tepid "evils of cloning / spouses in a past life" melodrama interspersed with some admirable action sequences. Theron's stunt doubles, of course, did some great work. (Actually, the only time Theron worked for me was when she was in motion.) Utterly absent from the screenplay were the frequent philosophical musings and biting irony that Chung sprinkled liberally through his anime series - which lent it some thought-provoking depth. I wouldn't have thought it possible to make a motion picture with less depth than the cartoon on which it's based, but director Kusama and writers Hay and Manfredi seem to have accomplished it.

As a stand-alone movie - IOW for people who've never seen Chung's anime - it might work as a serviceable Joe-Average Sci-Fi flick, albeit a walk down some *very* heavily-trodden paths in storytelling. The breach in the wall at the end, for example - with the lush outside world and the amazed captive population gathering dramatically to have a look - is a scene that was done way back in 1976 in Logan's Run, though the specifics were a little different and the sets were (understandably) thirty years cheesier. Did I need to revisit that in 2005?

As for breaches of the "suspension of disbelief" requirement in details, they were many: That now-comical "endless machine-gun clip" thing where they're splattering bullets out of the same weapon in half-minute bursts without changing clips; the propensity for people to get what one would think are serious injuries that mysteriously disappear - Sithandra (Sophie Okonedo) impales her "feet" and hands on sizable lawn spikes only to act as if nothing had happened just seconds later; Aeon takes a bullet to her side during a firefight, and while she subsequently removes bullets from Goodchild we have to assume simultaneously that her own slug doesn't hurt much? Etc.

This is a mixed bag at best - if you never watched the original anime and/or you're a sucker for any and all Sci-Fi you might enjoy it; for fans of Chung's original anime series this will just be painful.

I know there are people who are willing to "work with" this movie - I too really, really wanted this to be a great movie, "a masterpiece" as so many are willing to call it, and I think a lot of people gloss over the horrible incoherence of the story precisely because they want so bad for it to be "a masterpiece." But wishing won't change the facts, or as the great lyricist and percussionist Mr. Peart put it: "You can twist perceptions / reality won't budge." And incidentally, I think a review is only as worthwhile as its honesty - I flatly refuse to sugar-coat a lame movie for the sake of "Useful" votes.

I sought this movie out specifically because I'd read a number of reviews talking about a "masterpiece" with "a stunning surprise ending." I have to say it's been a long, long time since I've been this disappointed - no, this utterly disgusted - with a film.

Yes, "Tale of Two Sisters" has a certain sense of style, the cinematography is rich and well-photographed throughout, the acting is very good, the dialog is well done - though certainly not outstanding in any of those elements. The story, unfortunately, is an incoherent, unresolved mess. "Surprise" indeed.

Along with the positive technical aspects listed above, I think the reason people are so willing to shower "Tale of Two Sisters" with the comically-undeserved label of "masterpiece," is the same reason people give historic figures like Kant, Hegel and the like the label of "great thinkers." If you say something nonsensical enough and wrap it up in a slick enough veneer, you will invariably find plenty of people who will be willing to confuse incoherence with profundity. In other words, "I don't understand it, therefore it must be deep." I say: That there emperor is buck nekkid.

An essential requirement of good storytelling is to maintain a solid logical framework no matter what plot twists, misdirections, red herrings or stylistic deceptions you may weave into it. "Tale of Two Sisters" is a game of logical 52-pick-up. It starts with a promising setup but in the midst of the plot-thickening process refuses to lock into a coherent, final set of facts underlying the intriguing questions. Instead the writer tosses half a dozen possible explanations skyward, lets them drop in a random, clattering jumble, then hastily flips out the lights and runs for the door.

Compare this with "Donnie Darko," "The Machinist," or the excellent Hong Kong thrillers "Koma" and "The Eye." In each of these the audience is led through an increasingly-confusing series of events; in each there is a surprise ending that plays off of carefully-constructed misconceptions maintained up to that point. But most importantly, each is a great film because there is one, solid, definite truth beneath all of the deceptive ruses. It is that jarring contrast between the carefully constructed false premises and the actual, final fact, that makes each story work. If instead you leave out that essential, final truth, as does "Tale of Two Sisters," what remains is a meaningless hash of arbitrary possibilities with no reality to anchor them.

It is no accident that there are dozens of "theories" as to what the hell actually happens in "Tale of Two Sisters": The writer and director didn't bother to complete the story.

Put simply, we don't know what really happened, and we never will.

Is the younger sister a ghost? Is the older sister an alter-ego of the stepmother? Why was the older sister in a mental hospital? Or was it both of them? If the younger sister is a ghost, how did she die? Did she get beat to death inside that sack or was that something the older sister imagined? If so, who did it, the older sister or the stepmother? Why? If the younger sister was beat to death in a sack, why is she later shown being killed by a wardrobe containing her mother's body falling on top of her? Is the stepmother a psycho? How much of this happened in the past and how much in the present? How did the mother die? If the stepmother did it, what is the explanation for the two of them living in the same house together? If the father did it, why? Why did the dinner guest's wife go into a violent seizure? Who was the greasy kid she saw under the sink? Why would that ghost happen to appear to someone largely irrelevant to the story? Etc., etc.

The only possible answer to any and all of these questions is: Anybody's guess.

Since there's nothing identified as the final, actual fact, they all remain arbitrary possibilities, and there is no logical thread tying any of it together. The only proper, rational response to arbitrary assertions is: Who cares? A writer bailing out on his responsibility to construct a coherent story is a phenomenon deserving designation not as a "masterpiece" but rather as: contemptible laziness in storytelling.

"Tale of Two Sisters" is a pretty building with no internal framework - it collapses into the void where a solid, logical story with a coherent resolution needed to be. -ZBG