Movie Review: The Weather Man

The Weather Man (2005) 

Directed by Gore Verbinski 

Written by Steve Conrad 

Starring Nicolas Cage, Michael Caine, Hope Davis, Michael Rispoli 

Release Date October 28th, 2005 

Published October 28th, 2005 

It is only very recently that I have become a big Nicolas Cage fan. I loved his Oscar winning work in Leaving Las Vegas but his subsequent descent into action stardom was marred by some seriously awful work in Con Air, The Rock, 8mm and Gone In 60 Seconds. He won me back a little with his extraordinary work in Scorsese's Bringing Out The Dead but that was almost forgotten in the midst of Cage's weepy period with City of Angels, Family Man and Captain Corelli's Mandolin.

Right now, however, Cage has hit a stride that is remarkable. Pushing aside the subpar blockbuster National Treasure, Cage's run of Adaptation, Matchstick Men, Lord of War and now The Weather Man is one of the greatest series of performances by one actor in movie history. Forget the bad box office, when Cage is teamed with great people and great material there may not be a better actor working today.

Dave Spritz (Nicolas Cage) is Chicago's number one weather man. His 'Spritz nipper' has fans across the windy city stopping him on the street to ask him which will be the chilliest day of the week. Of course not everyone is a fan of Dave's. On more than one occasion Dave has found himself on the wrong side of some flying food items including a shake, a box of McNuggets, even a burrito.

Dave attributes the food throwing to the fact that he is paid a lot of money to do a job that is not that difficult. He is paid high six figures plus appearance fees, works two hours a day and did not even have to get a degree in meteorology. The food items are essentially karmic payback for a way too easy path through life, and, more to the point, a reaction to how often Dave simply gets it wrong weatherwise.

Dave is a serious case of arrested development. He has never really accomplished anything. His father, Robert (Michael Caine), on the other hand, is a Pulitzer prize winning novelist and a wonderful father to boot despite the fact that his son is a very obvious disappointment. Dave also wrote a novel although, like most everything else in his life, he never followed through with it.

Most disappointing about Dave is his family situation. Dave is divorced from his wife, Noreen (Hope Davis), and cannot seem to connect with his two children, sixteen year-old Mike (Nicholas Hoult) and eleven year-old daugter Shelly (Gemmenne de la Pena). Mike has recently been busted for smoking pot and Shelly has taken up cigarrettes. 

Dave is convinced he can turn the whole thing around with a new job on a national morning television show in New York. He had better act quickly, however, because his father is dying and his wife is preparing to marry another man. His kids' problems are even more disturbing but best left to your discovery in watching the movie.

If Dave Spritz's life sounds depressing, well that's because it really is depressing. The Weather Man, directed by Gore Verbinski, makes no pretense about the level of sadness in its story. Dave is a pathetic character, a wretched failure as a husband and father and a son. He is a narcissus cloaked in his own misery. Still, as played by Cage, Dave Spritz is fascinating to watch.

Cage's chameleonesque ability to melt into his characters is perfectly on display in The Weather Man. Even minor touches like his ease in front of a green screen doing the weather are really convincing. His near meltdowns are a tour de force of wonderfully acted inner turmoil. Dave's plastic surface seems ready to melt from the heat of his inner conflict and that is Nicolas Cage at his absolute best.

Gore Verbinski intrigues me. While I found both Mousehunt and The Mexican to be underwhelming, The Ring was visually accomplished and Pirates of The Carribean showed the potential of a mainstream movie to exceed the limitations of its genre and be both entertaining and artistically crafted.

The Weather Man is yet another step forward in Gore Verbinski's evolution into maybe becoming a very rare kind of director, a mainstream 'auteur'. Watch the way in which his camera observes Dave without engaging him. The audience, like rubberneckers at a crash site, seem to watch Dave's sad life unfold in a slow motion drive by and we cannot turn away. Here's hoping Verbinski does not get too caught up in the Pirates sequels and forgets to make more films as engrossing as The Weather Man.

The film's trailer might give people the impression that The Weather Man is a drama with comedy. There are laughs in the film but they come from a very dark place. They come from failure, humiliation and pain, and the sorrowful ways that Cage's character deals with what happens to him and around him. Dave Spritz is a sad sack character who invites indignity and cannot seem to escape it.

So if the film is as dark as I describe, it begs the question; why did I like it so much? Because it sets out to create a portrait of a particular character and no matter how dark things get the film stays true to that character and tells his story in a most compelling fashion. I liked it because Nicolas Cage is so amazing, to simplify things.

Cage deserves an Oscar nomination for his extraordinary work in The Weather Man. That, however, does not mean that the film is typically entertaining. Some people will have to change the way they look at movies to find pleasure in this film. The movie is challengingly dark and uncompromising in its grim gray look and attitude.

For fans of complicated, interesting movies that ask you to invest yourself heavily in one character The Weather Man is what you are looking for. For the average moviegoer this may not be your cup of tea. The Weather Man is not an easy film to like but, if you are up for it, you will be rewarded with yet another performance by Nicolas Cage that establishes him as arguably the most uniquely talented actor working today.

Movie Review Rango

Rango (2011) 

Directed by Gore Verbinski 

Written by John Logan 

Starring Johnny Depp, Bill Nighy, Isla Fisher, Abigail Breslin, Alfred Molina, Timothy Olyphant 

Release Date March 4th, 2011

Published March 3rd, 2011 

2011 has seen very great movies. For me, the best film of the year, before the Oscar bait stuff arrives in October, November and December, is the animated Johnny Depp comedy "Rango." This endlessly inventive animated feature stunned me back in March of this year and has lingered in the back of my mind ever since.

"Rango '' stars Johnny Depp as the title character, a movie loving pet chameleon who gets lost in the desert after falling out of the back of a car. After meeting a Possum named Roadkill (Alfred Molina) Rango wanders off into the desert in search of the spirit of the west.

Eventually, after being chased by a hawk and passing out from the heat, Rango meets Beans (Isla Fisher), an iguana from a western town called Dirt. Through a series of mishaps Rango becomes the sheriff of Dirt and is tasked to stare down Rattlesnake Jake (Bill Nighy) while uncovering a scam to steal the city's water supply.

"Rango" was directed by Gore Verbinski, best known for the "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise, and written by John Logan, writer of "Gladiator" and "The Aviator." Together, Verbinski and Logan have cooked up an animated western that gathers influence not merely from the obvious sources, the westerns of Clint Eastwood and Gary Cooper, but also the HBO series "Deadwood" (Timothy Olyphant voices a mysterious character known as the Spirit of the West) and even the forgotten Lee Marvin classic "Cat Ballou" and the epic "Once Upon a Time in the West."

The references are literate and lively and will delight western fans to no end. But the mimicry in Rango doesn't end with the western. Rango includes nods to everything from "Star Wars" to "Raising Arizona" to "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End," the last two, of course, starring Johnny Depp.

The plot of Rango turns on the same premise of the film classic "Chinatown," a corrupt man taking control of a town's water supply. Most kids won't get the reference but the key to Rango's charm is the way it keeps both kids and parents wildly entertained. While parents are cataloging the numerous references to classic and newer movies, the kids will love the cleverness of the story as well as the marvelous color and the energetic voice performances from Johnny Depp, Ned Beatty, Isla Fisher, Abigail Breslin and more.

Unlike most animated films where the voice actors are recorded over several months, often one voice at a time, the cast of Rango recorded vocals all at the same time with the cast often acting out the action of the animated characters. The lively interaction of the cast and the way the animators worked to capture the emotions of the actors in their animated characters gives Rango its unique energy.

The animation of Rango is phenomenal with bright colors, visual nods to the work of Sergio Leone, the legendary Italian master of the Spaghetti Western, and an almost Dali-esque sense of the absurd, captured especially by a dream sequence involving a floating, wind-up fish.

Rango is entertaining on multiple levels from the film encyclopedia level of movie references to the extraordinary animation and the lively, boisterous, and wildly talented voice cast led by the brilliant Johnny Depp. With these elements combined, there is no question that Rango is, thus far, the best movie of 2011.

Movie Review Pirates of the Caribbean At World's End

Pirates of the Caribbean At World's End (2007) 

Directed by Gore Verbinski 

Written by Ted Elliott, Terry Rossio 

Starring Johnny Depp, Keira Knightley, Orlando Bloom, Geoffrey Rush, Naomie Harris, Chow Yun Fat, Bill Nighy

Release Date May 25th, 2007 

Published May 24th, 2007 

The first Pirates of the Caribbean looked at first blush like some Disney, corporate synergy deal. After all, we are talking about a real life theme park ride made into a movie. Thankfully, however, thanks to the brilliant, Oscar nominated performance of Johnny Depp and the lighthearted direction of Gore Verbinski, Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl was a breath of fresh air in a sea of stale blockbusters.

The second Pirates movie, Dead Man's Chest, sadly suffered from sequelitis. Bloated to over 2 and a half hours, the film spun it\'s wheels far too often before its twist ending arrived to turn things around.

Now comes Pirates 3, At World's End which gives the series the kind of coda it deserves. Yes, it is nearly as bloated as the second film, but it is also has equal to, or even more thrills than the original and even more plot twists.

When last we saw Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) he was staring down the gullet of the Kraken, looking death in the eye and cackling like a mad man. Soon after his death his 'friends' Elizabeth (Keira Knightley), Will (Orlando Bloom) and the remaining crew of the Black Pearl realize they need Jack Sparrow back if they are going to fight the new alliance of Davy Jones (Bill Nighy) and the East India Trading Co. headed up by Lord Beckett.

With the aid of the sorceress Tia Dalma (Naomie Harris), who raises Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) from the dead for extra help, they must sail to the world's end, to Davy Jones' locker to retrieve Jack. Once they have him they must convene the nine pirate lords and decide whether to run or to fight as one for the pirate way.

There are a dozen other minor subplots in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World\ 's End, not counting the number of twists and turns and shifting character allegiances that boggle the mind. If you have recently seen the second Pirates sequel, Dead Man\'s Chest, you might want to bring some cliff\'s notes on that film so you can follow some of the twists of At World\'s End.

On one hand, the script by Terry Rossio and  Ted Elliott, the writers of all three Pirates movies, has a great deal of depth and complexity. On the other hand the long bits of expository dialogue that attempt to explain the shifting sands of this plot can tend to bog down the movie, as they did to almost deathly effect in Dead Man's Chest.

Thankfully, Director Gore Verbinski rescues At World\'s End from ponderousness by delivering a quicker, funnier film with a strong visual sense and better, more spectacular special effects than anything in either of the first two films.

The centerpiece of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End is a spectacular final battle scene set inside a swirling watery vortex. This scene features not merely a massive battle but also the tying of a few major plot strands, a couple of character twists and more than one major... well I\'ll leave you to see it for yourself. All spectacular stuff.

Even with the improved effects, more sure handed direction and all of those plot complications, Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow is once again the major draw of Pirates of the Caribbean. If you, like me, felt his Captain Jack was a little hemmed in by the plot in Dead Man's Chest, there is no such worry in At World's End. Captain Jack is now even crazier and more paranoid, even schizophrenic at times and it all works to grand comic effect.

Wait till you see Captain Jack's return to the screen in ATW. What a hoot. Trapped in purgatory aboard the Black Pearl in some desert oasis, Captain Jack goes all multiple personality and starts imagining hundreds of himself. Imagine a ship's crew worthy of Jack Sparrow's, full on Being John Malkovich, Charlie Kaufman style bizarre. Absolutely wonderful moment.

And I haven\'t even mentioned the crabs.

Not all is well in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. I am sad to report, for you Chow Yun Fat fans, the great master of Asian rock'em sock'em cinema is underutilized in what really amounts to a cameo appearance, not what were promised from trailers and commercials which seemed to give him equal billing with the other supporting characters.

The only really great moments for Chow come in his introductory scene in a steam filled underground lair in Singapore. Facing off with Elizabeth and Captain Barbossa, with Will Turner trapped in a Han Solo moment, water tortured in a barrel, this is Pirates Return of the Jedi moment and Chow Yun Fat makes for an exceptional Jabba the Hut.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End is a terrific coda for a series that began life as an ugly exercise in corporate synergy and morphed into a truly rollicking adventure series worthy of our exultation's, our huzzahs. Yo ho ho, indeed, this final Pirates film, until someone can convince Disney to spend the 200+ million necessary for another sequel, is a wonderful adventure, a high spirited comedy and most importantly, a grand stage for the great Johnny Depp.

As his Captain Jack slips into icon status, here\ 's hoping Mr. Depp is once again considered by the good people at Oscar. His At World\'s End performance is the most entertaining thing you\'ve seen on screen thus far in 2007 and likely will see all year.

Movie Review Prates of the Caribbean Dead Man's Chest

Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Man's Chest (2006) 

Directed by Gore Verbinski 

Written by Ted Elliott, Terry Rossio 

Starring Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Geoffrey Rush, Bill Nighy, Stellan Skarsgard

Release Date July 7th, 2006 

Published July 5th, 2006 

2003's Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl was a major surprise. Here is a film from the Disney formula factory, based on a theme park ride of all things, produced by mainstream dress meister Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by an unproven talent in Gore Verbinski. With all of these factors the film should have stuck to high heaven. Instead, Pirates of the Caribbean was a high spirited, high seas adventure that features arguably the best performance in the career of one of our greatest actors, Johnny Depp, and a pair of rising stars just ahead of the peak of their talents.

Naturally sequelization was a no-brainer, especially after the film began breaking the bank at the box office. Students of the Hollywood game are well aware that surprise hits like Pirates are once in a lifetime events. So it comes as no surprise that the sequel, subtitled Dead Man's Chest, suffers a case of sequelitis. It's the disease that strikes most, if not all attempts to recapture one time magic; see The Matrix and its sequels as the prime example.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is nowhere near as dreadful as Matrix Revolutions, but it does fail to recapture the swaggering, daggering fun of the original film by being bloated, overwrought and incomplete.

When last we saw Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) he had escaped the gallows and was back as captain of his beloved Black Pearl. Aided by the lovely young couple Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley), Jack escaped the villainous Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) and was free to return to his scalawag ways and get on with the business of pirating.

Will and Elizabeth have since returned to port to be married. Unfortunately a new man in charge of the English port, Cutler Beckett (Tom Hollander), has decided to arrest them for aiding Jack's escape. Beckett is willing to make a deal. If Will can convince Jack to give up his precious broken compass and bring it to Beckett then Will, Elizabeth and Jack himself will have their freedom.

The compass is not actually broken. Rather it is not in the hands of its rightful owner and thus will not point in the direction of its intended destination. The compass points the way to a buried treasure that is not merely gold or precious metal. It points the way to a chest containing the still beating heart of Davy Jones (Bill Nighy) an accursed pirate who sails the seas as an undead sea creature for eternity. Whomever possesses his heart controls Jones and his undead crew.

Jack will not be easily convinced to give up the compass. You see, Jack owes a debt to Davy Jones. It was Jones who gave Jack the Black Pearl some 13 years earlier in exchange for Jack's soul. With Jones now ready to collect the debt, with the help of a monstrous sea creature called 'the kraken', Jack needs to find the heart of Davy Jones to save his own life.

That is plenty of plot and yet barely enough to fill the movie's overlong two hour forty minute runtime. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest suffers from the Hollywood 'bigger is better' syndrome. The idea that because something is bigger or longer that it is somehow better is something Hollywood has practiced but never proven. Dead Man's Chest is further proof of the exact opposite.

Stuffed to the gills with filler scenes of Will's search for Jack, Jack's dalliance with native islanders and a subplot for Jonathon Pryce as Elizabeth's father are all examples of places where director Gore Verbinski might have tightened up the film's narrative.

About the native scenes, not nearly as offensive as those in King Kong, I would hate to lose the rolling cage scene featuring Will and the crew of the Black Pearl inside a giant globe made of human bones being chased downhill by angry natives. The scene is well shot, exciting and quite funny but also quite superfluous to the plot. The scene exists simply to exist. Losing the native portion of the film would cut more than a half hour out of the film's bloated 2 hour 40 minute length and narrow the plot in a more concise manner. Of course, length is not the film's only problem.

Director Gore Verbinski managed a miracle in the first Pirates film corralling a career defining performance from Johnny Depp into what is essentially a factory picture made from a very typical Disney/Bruckheimer formula. For the sequel, unfortunately, Johnny Depp seems to be doing an impression of himself as Jack Sparrow. His heart simply isn't in it this time. Depp does manage more than a few classic moments, especially in his last scene, an instant classic of grand guignol, but for the most part he is going through the motions of recapturing what we remember of Jack Sparrow. There is simply nothing new or energetic about the performance.

Orlando Bloom at least looks more the part of an action hero than he did the first time. Bloom is maturing into a fine actor whose fine features are no longer overshadowing his talent. As written however, his Will Turner does not have a great arc. His part is not nearly as juicy as Jack Sparrow which tends to leave him looking bland but worse yet writers Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott now have him fighting for the love of Elizabeth with Jack Sparrow which only further serves to expose the characters blandness.

As many issues as I have with the film as a whole, I did not truly dislike Dead Man's Chest. The film has some grand adventure wrapped up in its overlong runtime. Watch for the three way sword fight inside a giant wheel, an extended bit of action that actually has something to do with the plot. Especially good in Dead Man's Chest are the special effects that transform the brilliant Bill Nighy into the sea creature Davy Jones.

Essentially a man with a giant squid on his head, Davy Jones is a remarkable feat of CGI creature creation. Nighy's entire face, including the very expressive eyes, is the creation of CGI. This is cutting edge stuff used to very gross but also grand effect. It is not only Nighy's Davy Jones but a whole crew of CGI sea creatures including a pirate with the head of a hammerhead shark and an unrecognizable Stellan Skarsgard as a pirate covered in barnacles and with a secret that becomes an important plot point for Dead Man's Chest and likely for the third installment of Pirates, subtitled At World's End, due in 2007.

Yes, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is the middle child of this major franchise and yes it does feel like it. Though plenty is resolved a lot of unanswered questions are necessarily left open for the next sequel. The unanswered questions aren't quite as annoying as those of the second Lord of The Rings or Matrix films but still irritating.

By the standards of a movie sequel based on a theme park ride, from the Disney/Bruckheimer film factory, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is a fun picture. By the standards of great movie making? The film suffers from Superman-itis on top of its sequelitis. Superman-itis is an affliction that affects films expected to be culture defining moments of pop history that turn out to be less memorable than the hype that surrounds them.

I am recommending Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest for the special effects and occasional flourish of it's grand action scenes but lower your expectations Pirates fans this is not the Curse of the Black Pearl just a pale photocopy.

Movie Review Pirates of the Caribbean Curse of the Black Pearl

Pirates of the Caribbean The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) 

Directed by Gore Verbinski 

Written by Ted Elliott, Terry Rossio

Starring Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, Keira Knightley, Orlando Bloom, Jonathan Pryce 

Release Date July 9th, 2003 

Published July 8th, 2003 

It's quite clear that Disney has run out of original movie ideas. Forget the sequels on their slate (The Santa Clause 3 et al). Forget the remakes of the rich Disney backlog (Freaky Friday). Disney is now down making movies of their theme park rides. Last year, they quietly dumped The Country Bears into theaters to critical and audience indifference. Later this year, it's Haunted Mansion with Eddie Murphy. Surely it can't be much longer before we see the Hall of Presidents and Epcot Center on the big screen, provided they can find a star to put on the poster.

That said, Disney has mined one of their theme park rides into a quite successful film. Pirates of The Caribbean may be a super lame theme park ride, but as a movie it's a rollicking adventure story made all the more interesting by awesome performances of two of the industry's best, Johnny Depp and Geoffrey Rush.

While the thrust of Pirates of The Caribbean is set in motion by the love story between blacksmith Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Governor's daughter Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightly), the story doesn't really kick off until the appearance of the rapscallion pirate Jack Sparrow (Depp). The former captain of the Black Pearl, Sparrow floats into this British Caribbean seaport on a sinking ship with hope that he can steal a ship to chase down the Pearl and its mutinous crew. Sparrow is unable to capture a ship on his own and is captured but not before he discovers Elizabeth in possession of a legendary piece of pirate booty.

Once Jack is aware of the gold medallion that Elizabeth has, somehow so is the crew of the Black Pearl who is led by Captain Barbossa (Rush). They steam to the British port to recapture the gold which legend says can lift the curse that afflicts the crew. After plundering the British, the crew takes Elizabeth and the gold and retreat to their hidden pirate island to lift the curse with the gold piece and Elizabeth’s blood.

While the British military plots its course of action to rescue the Governor's daughter, Will Turner hatches a plan of his own. Spring Jack Sparrow, steal a boat and save the woman he loves. With the help of Sparrow's daring swordplay and cunning piracy, they capture a military boat and set off to find a crew and capture the Black Pearl.

There are a number of twists and turns from there that I won't spoil, but you already know from commercials that the curse on the crew of the Black Pearl is that they are dead but cannot die. Nor can they feel anything, pleasure or pain, rendering them unable to enjoy their plunder unless they can lift the curse. The skeletal pirates, only seen while bathed in moonlight, are a spectacular special effect, well choreographed by Director Gore Verbinski. The effects are done with amazing precision and no doubt will be honored come awards season.

Of course, as impressive as the effects are, they are nothing compared to the performance of Johnny Depp, who is his own special effect. Topped with scraggly dreads, beads and an unruly goatee, Depp minces, preens, and manages to evoke rock star attitude in an 1800's pirate. That according to Depp was exactly what he was going for. In interviews, he claimed to have modeled some of Jack Sparrow on Keith Richards. Actually, it was Keith Richards and Depp's favorite childhood cartoon character Pepe LePue. Whatever the inspiration, the performance is truly inspired and even if the rest of the film had stunk I could recommend Pirates on the strength of Depp's performance alone.

Not to be outdone, Oscar winner Geoffrey Rush preens and hams it up as much as Depp, and to as much success. Being the bad guy, Rush is allowed to growl all his dialogue and chew every bit of scenery that isn't nailed down. Rush appears to relish the freedom of playing a Pirate Captain and his excitement is part of the fun of Pirates of the Caribbean The Curse of the Black Pearl. 

Knightley and Bloom are quite a bland pair in comparison, but how could they not be? Compared to Sparrow and Barbossa, the characters in La Cage aux Folles are bland. Bloom and Knightley are saddled with the film's two most conventional roles of hero and heroine, and though their love story is sweet, it doesn't carry much weight. It’s made even less weighty by a cop out ending that is a little too tidy for a pirate tale.

Director Gore Verbinski shows here, as he did in The Ring, that he hasa steady hand and a strong eye for strong compelling visuals. Verbinski and his team creates an entire pirate universe for the film to exist within, a lively, vibrant and yet lived in place right out of dream conception of where Pirates existed. Creating such a coherent story without having to reign in his over the top performers is another remarakable balancing act that demonstrates Verbinski's talent, he makes his performers comfortable and gets the most out his crew. The best directors can do that. 

Movie Review: The Ring

The Ring (2002) 

Directed by Gore Verbinski 

Written by Ehren Kruger 

Starring Naomi Watts, Martin Henderson, David Dorfman, Brian Cox, Jane Alexander 

Release Date October 18th, 2002 

Published October 17th, 2002 

With Halloween around the corner, movie fans are making their plans for Halloween movie watching. Most will stick to the classics: Jason, Freddy, and Rocky Horror. Some fans will take a chance on new movies like Ghost Ship and The Ring. Will either of these films become Halloween rituals? We shall wait and see on Ghost Ship. As for The Ring, with its stylishness and mystery, it has a chance at achieving cult status.

The Ring stars Mulholland Drive’s Naomi Watts, an actress used to stylish mystery, as Rachel Keller, a journalist investigating the unexplained death of her niece. Investigators and doctors have no clue what could have killed this normal, healthy 15-year-old girl. What the investigators failed to notice were the mysterious deaths of three of the girl's friends in separate locations, with each of the kids dying at exactly the same time: 10 p.m.

From a friend of her niece, Rachel learns of an urban legend about a videotape. If you watch it you die exactly one week later. A typically skeptical Rachel begins investigating more benign leads, which takes her to a cabin not far from the girls' Seattle home. At the cabin, Rachel stumbles across the tape and watches it for herself. Suddenly the details described in the legend begin to come true; an eerie phone call informs Rachel she has one week to live and images from the tape begin to appear in reality.

Rachel then takes the tape to her ex-husband, Noah (Martin Henderson), who happens to be a video expert. He also watches the tape and is puzzled at his inability to determine its origin. The tape doesn’t have the distinguishing marks of an average tape. Adding to Rachel’s mounting terror is her strangely sullen but intuitive son Aiden (David Dorfman) who accidentally views the tape, making the investigation even more urgent.

We have seen this conceit before. In fact, we saw it earlier this year in Fear Dot Com. In that film, if you viewed the Web site in the title, you would die in three days. In each film, the investigators believe that if they find the source they can stop the killer. However, there are many subtle differences. Fear Dot Com is a poorly lit, slowly plotted, poorly acted, deeply dull film, more obsessed with unusual visuals than with creating a compelling story. The Ring is more stylish, with an occasional arty quality that is notable in the killer video.

The performances by Naomi Watts, Martin Henderson and David Dorfman are all perfectly pitched, with each creating interesting characters that are never merely manipulated by the plot. The film also has a great mystery to it. At first, the killer is unseen and the more the killer stays off screen the more suspense the film builds.

In fact, it isn’t until the killer is revealed that the film loses steam. It’s a shame that as good as most of The Ring is that director Gore Verbinsky can’t resist the false ending. The ending is highly unsatisfying, a shameful Hollywood tease for a sequel in case the film is profitable. Why is it the first ending of a modern horror movie is almost always the better ending? 

The same thing happened in Red Dragon recently, the Silence of the Lambs spinoff. Putting aside the distasteful ending, The Ring isn’t a bad movie. For most of the film, it’s a suspenseful, engaging horror mystery and I recommend it for your Halloween viewing. However, you're better off leaving when you think it should end instead of waiting for the film itself to end.