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The Eye
The Eye
Pics of The Eye
The Eye isn't a horror film as much as it is a drama with horror elements. It's not particularly scary, even though it tries to be, and it doesn't do much as far as emotionally investing us in its story or characters. But it does try harder than most of its kind, and there's something to be said of that given the reputation of the genre.
This is another one of those supernatural stories where a ghost tries to make contact with a living person in order to seek help or redemption (think The Sixth Sense or Stir of Echoes). Unfortunately, since this plot, and several variations of it, has been done so many times over, it's hard for this one to stay fresh and have much consequence.
The movie is a remake of the Hong Kong film Jian Gui (2002), about a blind girl who receives cornea transplants and finds her new organs grant her visual access to the spiritual world. She starts seeing dead people as well as visions of death, not to mention bluish, angry escorts who lead spirits away. Away to where? The movie isn't quite clear.
I've never seen the original film, but this American version stars Jessica Alba as Sidney, who was blinded at age five during a firecracker accident that her older sister, Helen (Parker Posey), blames herself for. Sidney is now a violinist living in Los Angeles, and I must say, if her work allows her to afford such a chic downtown L.A. apartment, I'm in the wrong business.
But never mind. Sidney has eye surgery and it's mostly successful, except it takes a while for her vision to come into focus. When it does, Sidney starts seeing inexplicable images that her ocularist (Alessandro Nivola) says are either hallucinations or the result of Sidney having been blind so long her mind can't quite grasp true reality. But what if Sidney really isn't "just seeing things"? What if her visions, like an exploding Chinese restaurant, or a little boy jumping out a window, or a dead man standing upright in the elevator, are real? What do they all mean? And what's with the dream she always has at 1:06 a.m.?
The Water Horse
The Water Horse
Images of The water horse
Many lonely children yearn for a pet to call their own. In “The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep,” based on a novel by Dick King-Smith, a boy, Angus (Alex Etel), finds not only that, but a best friend as well, after the mysterious egg he stumbles across hatches a creature unlike any he’s ever seen. Adorable and full of mischief, his new companion, Crusoe, who looks something like a cross between a dinosaur and a snail, immediately adds spice to his drab life.
Set in 1942 in coastal Scotland, the film consistently evokes an authentic sense of time and place and features remarkable computer-generated graphics work from Weta Workshop, the company responsible for the groundbreaking visuals of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.
When Crusoe grows into the magnificent Loch Ness Monster and must be released to sea, its survival skills are put to the test, and the aggressive pursuit of the creature by townspeople and visiting soldiers alike stirs up “King Kong”-esque feelings of dread.
Brian Cox appears briefly, serving as the film’s present-day narrator. His character’s identity offers no surprise — nor does much else in the film — but that detracts little from this family-friendly escapist fare that should enthrall, without insult, fantasy-minded viewers of any age.
“The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep” is rated PG (Parental Guidance suggested). It has mild violence.
Mission Impossible
Mission Impossible
Pics of Mission Impossible
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Review
That Lalo Schifrin score still jumps and in this version there is a propulsive shot of percussive adrenalin. The idea of super-spies who speak every language, are in superb condition, and know every aspect of spycraft from shooting to fighting to explosives to computers to physics to finding the coolest sunglasses -- that still works pretty well, too, and it's always a treat to see who the new bad guy will be. But making it more than ever-bigger explosions and chases? That's where this mission self-destructs long before it's over.
This time, it's personal -- the script tries to turn up the heat by giving the hero a love interest and the movie begins with both of them tied up and man threatening to kill her if Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) does not give him something called a rabbit's foot. She is Julia (Michelle Monaghan), a nurse. Flashback to their engagement party, where he is explaining his boring job with the state Department of Transportation monitoring traffic patterns.
The men find him snoozerific, but the women in essence, say, "Hey, he's Tom Cruise! We'd marry him even if he jumps on sofas." Hunt has given up spying for love, and now has a nice, safe, teaching job underneath that boring Transportation Department office building. But his best student ("Felicity's" Keri Russell) has been captured, so he's quickly back on board with old friends (Ving Rhames as computer whiz Luther) and new ones (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and Maggie Q).
The bad guy at the center of all this is Owen Davian ("Capote" Oscar-winner Philip Seymour Hoffman). And that rabbit's foot is some kind of end of the world device ("the anti-God") locked away in some kind of impenetrable building blah blah blah. And maybe one of the good guys isn't good all the way through. And maybe there will be some of that face-and-voice switching we always expect from the MI series.
That's the problem. It's just what we expect. It's been a long dry stretch since last summer's bang-bangs, and all those months of Oscar-bait dramas and winter doldrum leftovers have left audiences so parched for blow-em-ups that they might not notice the under-written script. Just don't try to think.
The bright spots are Hoffman, who gets more out of the word "fun" than Cruise gets out of his big dramatic reaction to seeing his fiancee at gunpoint, Laurence Fishburne, as a superspy boss-man, who dryly points out that his reference to The Invisible Man is "Welles, not Ellison, in case you want to be cute again," and the Q-equivalent, "Shaun of the Dead's" Simon Pegg. Decidedly unbright spots are Cruise, who seems to have suffered charisma-extraction, the bantering about getting married in the middle of split-second calculations, chases, and explosions and seeing a character disguised as another doing stunts that even by the low standards of probability for this genre just seem silly.
Same with all the just-miss bullet dodging. For a bunch of characters who are supposed to be the world's most accurate shots, they miss a lot. And with the "make the explosions really loud and they won't notice" plot omissions and inconsistencies. The real problem that keeps interfering with what would otherwise suffice as popcorn pleasures of the movie-as-thrill-ride is that in the midst of all the faux resolute jaw clenches and corny banter there is something genuinely troubling -- the specter of torture of prisoners and Machiavellian corruption. Intended to give the movie a jolt of "Law and Order"-style ripped-from-the-headlines electricity, instead it throws the movie fatally off-kilter.
Parents should know that this movie features extensive and explicit peril and violence with many explosions and chases, torture, and many injuries and deaths. There are some sexual references and brief, non-explicit sexual situations. Characters drink, smoke, and use brief strong language.
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