Movie Review The Glass Castle

The Glass Castle (2017) 

Director Destin Daniel Cretton

Written by Destin Daniel Cretton, Andrew Lanham, Marti Noxon 

Starring Brie Larson, Woody Harrelson, Max Greenfield, Sarah Snook, Naomi Watts

Release Date August 11th, 2017 

When I was an up and coming young radio talk show host, I had the privilege of interviewing author Jeanette Walls about her remarkable memoir The Glass Castle. Normally, in prepping for an interview in talk radio, you don’t have time to read entire books, you’re forced to skim and pick and choose important portions to discuss in the brief time you have with your subject. In the case of The Glass Castle however, I was lucky enough to have a full weekend and in that weekend, I read the entire book because I simply could not stop myself.

The adage has it that you should never meet your heroes because they never live up to your idealized version of them. Jeanette Walls defied that adage in every way in my brief interview. Just as in her book she was charming, erudite, earthy, and fascinating. She had the kind of wit that comes from combining the mountains of West Virginia with the privilege of Park Avenue. In short, she was as delightful in voice, it was a phone interview, as she was in written form.

Given how harrowing that written form was, the human result is that much more remarkable. It is this version of Jeanette Walls that I took with me into the film adaptation of her remarkable memoir The Glass Castle. The film version stars Academy Award Winner Brie Larson and thank heaven for her, she resembled the Jeanette Walls of my brief but exciting memory.

The Glass Castle stars Larson as Jeanette Walls in 1989 when her career as a gossip columnist for New York Magazine has brought her the kind of fame and security she could never have imagined while growing up in poverty on a West Virginia mountainside. This Jeanette Walls is perfectly coiffed, stylishly dressed, and on the arm of a handsome, nebbishy financial adviser, played by New Girl star Max Greenfield, giving her even more of the fiscal security she never knew as a girl.

We also meet that young, insecure version of Jeanette, played by a pair of young actresses, Chandler Head and Ella Anderson, whose brilliant but damaged father Rex (Woody Harrelson) and scatterbrained artist mother Rose Mary (Naomi Watts) shuttle her from one place to the next always outrunning some bill collector or agent of law enforcement. When she was very young, alongside her three siblings, these changes in scenery seemed like an adventure with her father as part ringmaster and part wizard. As Jeanette comes of age however, the magic begins to wear off and the stench of her father’s alcoholism and emotional abuse becomes unbearable.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review: Dream House

Dream House (2011) 

Directed by Jim Sheridan

Written by David Loucka

Starring Daniel Craig, Naomi Watts, Rachel Weisz, Martin Csokas, Elias Koteas 

Release Date September 30th, 2011

Published September 30th, 2011

You cannot separate a movie from its marketing campaign. A movie marketing campaign defines what a movie is before audiences get a chance to see it. Dream House, starring Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz has been established as a haunted house thriller via marketing but the problem is, Dream House isn’t really a haunted house movie at all.

The film stars Daniel Craig as a man investigating a murder that he may have committed. The apparitions that Craig’s character sees aren’t ghosts but rather projections of his damaged psyche. The marketing campaign trades the twist about Craig’s character having been in a mental hospital and not being the man he thought he was, so that it can sell Dream House as a ghost movie. This leaves Dream House to limp through 45 minutes of runtime to a reveal that has already been revealed in commercials and trailers.

Daniel Craig is Will Atenton, a successful book editor who is quitting his job to become an author. Will is headed home to his beautiful wife Libby (Rachel Weisz) and their two adorable daughters who are now living in their new home in the Connecticut suburbs. Unfortunately, the realtor has failed to mention that a man named Peter Ward may have murdered his family in this house or that tourists and teenagers like to drop by and look in the windows.

This takes us to about 45 minutes into Dream House. The marketing campaign has spoiled the fact that Daniel Craig’s Will is really Peter Ward and that he may have killed his family. The movie however, treats this as a shocking twist, giving this plot turn a Hitchcockian reveal.

Why spoil the twist? Why ruin what the director clearly believed was important enough to frame as a shocking surprise? The choice to spoil Craig’s identity in the marketing campaign may explain why the cast of Dream House refused to promote the film. Then again, it could also have to do with how everything after the big twist is a clumsy mess.

The resolution of Dream House finds Will/Peter investigating the murder of his family even as he can see his wife and kids as if they were still alive. Will/Peter’s neighbor Ann (Naomi Watts) is among those with important details about the murders as is Ann’s angry ex-husband Jack (Martin Csokas) and a drifter named Boyce (Elias Koteas).

The ending of Dream House is stunningly inept given all of the talent on display. Daniel Craig is compellingly sad yet determined as Peter while Naomi Watts and Rachel Weisz do variations on attractive vulnerability. Director Jim Sheridan builds a few strong individual scenes but the ending is too convoluted to be believed or enjoyed.

Could Dream House have been a better movie had the twist not been spoiled by the marketing campaign? Probably not given the bad ending but then again, we’ll will never know. As it is though, Dream House dragged on for 45 minutes to a reveal that I was already aware of before ending in the inept fashion of your average B-movie.

Movie Review J Edgar

J. Edgar (2011)

Directed by Clint Eastwood

Written by Dustin Lance Black

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Armie Hammer, Naomi Watts, Josh Lucas, Judi Dench 

Release Date November 9th, 2011 

Published November 7th, 2011

J. Edgar Hoover's place in American history is remarkable. From the 1919 Anarchist Bombings to the Lindbergh baby to every famous gangster taken down by arrest or death, Hoover was there. When John F. Kennedy was killed; it was Hoover who informed Bobby Kennedy of the President's death with a terse phone call.

Hoover's place in American history is unquestionable regardless of his unethical, even treasonous acts. J. Edgar Hoover is a towering figure casting a shadow across the 20th century that touched everything from Al Capone to the Cold War to Kennedy's assassination to the beginning of Nixon's downfall.

A Fitting Tribute

The movie "J. Edgar," directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, is a fitting tribute to the man. J. Edgar captures the best and the worst of the man who coined the phrase G-Man and revolutionized law enforcement while becoming infamous for his abuse of power and his private struggles with his sexuality.

The story of J. Edgar begins with an elderly J. Edgar Hoover (DiCaprio) dictating his memoirs. We begin with the origins of the Red Scare, the 1919 Anarchist Bombings. Hoover, at the behest of the Attorney General, a target of an assassins in the bombings, giving Hoover the authority to investigate the bombings with new, broader law enforcement powers.

Anarchist Bombings Raid

The Hoover led raid on a suspected communist labor headquarters was a debacle. While it could be proven that leaflets found at the scene of the bombing of the Attorney General's home were printed in this location there was no evidence that the people inside the supposed communist outpost had taken part in acts of terror.

Everyone, aside from Hoover, including the Attorney General lost their jobs because of the raid Hoover organized. With the infrastructure of the then Bureau of Investigations, the Federal moniker would be added later, and the job of director fell to Hoover as the last man standing. He would stay in the position for more than 40 years.

Three Important People

In his time as the head of the FBI J. Edgar Hoover had only three people close to him, his mother (Judi Dench), his secretary for 40+ years, Helen Gandy (Naomi Watts) and Hoover's right hand man, Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer). The relationship between Hoover and Tolson has been the topic of great conjecture for many years.

The movie "J. Edgar" treats the romance between J. Edgar Hoover and Clyde Tolson with respect and care. Keeping in mind the times in which these men lived, a repressed era when homosexuals faced grave persecution, it makes sense that the relationship is very reserved. That said, "J. Edgar" is not without passion as DiCaprio and Armie Hammer demonstrate remarkable chemistry.

Private Punchline

J.Edgar Hoover's private life has been a punch line for many years. That's because while going out his way to use rumor and innuendo about alternative lifestyles in order to blackmail and manipulate other powerful individuals, it's a karmic comeuppance that Hoover's own private life becomes fodder for ridicule.

That said, director Clint Eastwood and screenwriter Dustin Lance Black treat Hoover's cross-dressing and homosexuality with grace and caring. In fact, it may be Eastwood's considerable tenderness in treating Hoover, making him something of a tragic victim of his time, which may be bothering people the most about "J. Edgar."

A Remarkable, Oscar Worthy Effort

Those who wish only to condemn Hoover's awful excesses will struggle with the moments in "J.Edgar" when Hoover is treated with respect and care and even rendered sympathetic. No man or woman is defined in a single way; there are always degrees and shades. Most of J. Edgar Hoover's life was spent on the wrong path but other parts of his life are worthy of a fair revision.

"J. Edgar" is a remarkable film. Clint Eastwood's direction is artful and studied while Leonardo DiCaprio's performance is layered with sadness, strength and a compelling will. The Academy Awards season has begun and "J. Edgar" is one film highly likely to make an impact on Hollywood's biggest night.

Movie Review: You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger

You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010) 

Directed by Woody Allen

Written by Woody Allen 

Starring Naomi Watts, Anthony Hopkins, Josh Brolin, Lucy Punch

Release date September 22nd, 2010

Published September 22nd, 2010

Woody Allen has long been a cynic and often a downer, especially in recent years. However, that cynicism as in the underappreciated comedy “Anything Else” or last year's weaker but not bad “Whatever Works” was at least leavened with biting humor. For his latest effort "You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger" Allen has given in to an arrogant cynicism that desperately could use some better jokes.

Gemma Jones is ostensibly the star of "You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger," if only for the fact that she plays the character who is most subject of Allen's contempt, as Helena a woman whose husband of 45 years, Alfie (Anthony Hopkins), has left her. Having become a severe burden to her daughter Sally (Naomi Watts) and her husband Roy (Josh Brolin), they have fobbed Helena off on a fortune teller named Cristal (Pauline Collins) who has become a friend and guru.

Sally meanwhile, has a budding flirtation with her boss played by Antonio Banderas and Roy, struggling as a novelist who can't finish his second book, begins an affair with a neighbor played by Frieda Pinto. And then there is poor, pathetic Alfie who after leaving Helena has taken up with a prostitute named Charmaine (Lucy Punch) who is spending him into the poorhouse and cheating on him even as he professes love for her and wears out his Viagra prescriptions to keep up with her.

In the universe of Woody Allen, Sally, Roy and Alfie are burdened with the knowledge of their longings and sorrows while Helena takes idiot comfort in plans for her afterlife, living again as she has lived in the past, possibly as Cleopatra or some sort of English royalty; what point would there be to a dull past life?

In this universe there is no comfort for the intellectual while the dullard finds peace in her foolishness and is the only character to emerge unscathed. Now, as a fellow non-believer who finds such things as past lives, after-life, fortune tellers and mediums to be mere hokum, I can identify with Mr. Allen's loathing of such things. However, Mr. Allen becomes boorish when he protests the fools without humor as he does in "You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger."

As Mr. Allen wields his bitterness by mocking Helena he seems to lose track or simply pay no mind to the travails of Sally and Roy. Naomi Watts and Josh Brolin play at having had romantic chemistry, a good trait for a couple portraying marital decay, but as the marriage ends and once it is over we are merely taught a lesson in chance that has little humor or interest.

Roy brings about his own moral undoing but it has little to do with his cheating on his wife or falling in love with Ms. Pinto. As for Sally, she has no real moral undoing; she's merely unlucky in love. Neither plot is delivered with much humor or insight; it's likely the mundane nature of Sally's plight is the point of her story but I think if we want mundane we can find plenty of it in our own lives.

Alfie's plot is the only one to generate much of any comic steam and all of that comes from the wonderful performance of Lucy Punch as Charmaine. Ms. Punch is a walking punch line of snapping gum and streetwalker cliché. Her overwrought idiot line reads are almost all jokes and Ms. Punch delivers them with effortless humor. Mr. Hopkins is good as the dazed old timer pretending he's still young and yet realizing that all he really wants is a comfortable chair but his realizations are nothing new.

If you enjoy Woody Allen's brand of cynicism, minus his usual wit then "You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger" is the movie for you. While I am as much a cynic when it comes to religion, the afterlife, mediums, fortune tellers and the like, I try not to bore people with my rationality. Mr. Allen bores away in "You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger" and like meeting the know-it-all at a party you cannot run away to the other side of the room fast enough.

Movie Review: Fair Game

Fair Game (2010) 

Directed by Doug Liman

Written by Jez Butterworth, Jon Butterworth

Starring Naomi Watts, Sean Penn, Noah Emmerich, Ty Burrell, Michael Kelly 

Release Date October 1st, 2010

Published October 2nd, 2010 

Is it just me or does the American left wing love remembering their failures? Whether it's Paul Greengrass in “Green Zone” relieving many of the massive intelligence failures that slipped past us during the Iraq war or Doug Liman building a lovely monument to our ignorance of the truths uncovered by Ambassador Joe Wilson in “Fair Game,” we cannot seem to get enough of reminding ourselves how powerless and ignorant we were.

The left loves mulling over it's failures and “Fair Game” is nothing short of a commemorative plaque to failure, a paean to blithe ignorance and a testament to the left's love of pointlessly re-living the past while ignoring the present and failing the future. Oh and I haven't even yet mentioned director Doug Liman who apparently must have been made quite ill by what he found in the story of Valerie Plame as his camera whips and sways about like vertigo patient off of his meds.

Valerie Plame (Naomi Watts), for those who are somehow still ignorant, was a CIA agent working on intelligence in the run up to the war with Iraq. We pick up her story in that brief respite from September 11th, the bombing of Afghanistan and the rather bizarre decision to attack Iraq. Plame was working around the globe all the while returning home on weekends for dinners with friends and nights with her former Ambassador husband, Joe Wilson (Sean Penn) and two children.

When the White House made the attention shift to Iraq Plame was among the working class analysts who looked at the data with zero agenda and offered sane sound evidence. Among the many intelligence gathering tasks Plame's group was assigned were allegations that Saddam Hussein was attempting to buy Yellow Cake Uranium from the tiny African nation of Niger, not to be confused with Nigeria; two different places.

Knowing that her husband had contacts and experience in the region from his time in the Ambassador corps; Plame recommended Joe be sent to meet with a group put together by the Vice President who then sent Wilson to Niger on a fact finding mission. That mission revealed that Niger had almost zero capability of transporting the alleged materials if indeed they ever had such things.

Meanwhile, Valerie's own intelligence gathering seemed to uncover that Iraq barely had the weapons to rub two sticks together let alone create a working nuclear program. The greatest danger in the country lay with the scientists from the long defunct nuke program whose knowledge and capability might be valuable to another more viable enemy such as neighboring Iran or even North Korea.

Valerie was on task to gather many of these scientists to bring to the US when all hell broke loose. Watching helplessly as the White House ignored and distorted evidence he had gathered, Joe Wilson took to the op-ed pages and the Sunday talk shows to reveal the lies of the Bush Administration. In retaliation a coterie of Bush henchman including Richard Armitage, Karl Rove and fall guy Scooter Libby leaked the name of Joe's wife and set off a tidal wave of lies that likely lead to more death and future instability in the Middle East.

Sounds like a wonderful narrative for the American left doesn't it? Well, it's not so much a narrative, that's what truly happened. Wilson, Plame and numerous others told us this was happening as it was happening and have since written comprehensive non-fiction accounts of it all. We simply were not listening. Now, Doug Liman offers “Fair Game” and because it is such a lazy, slipshod effort we will continue not listening.

”Fair Game” offers nothing new to the story of Valerie Plame, nothing that those already interested in her story don't already know and nothing that anyone opposed to the Plame 'version' will willingly listen to. It's great to have yet another pop cultural recording of our failure to stop the war in Iraq but like Paul Greengrass's “Green Zone,” we needed this movie five years ago.

We needed movies like “Fair Game” when John Kerry was being beaten in a must win 2004 election. We needed movies like “Fair Game” when people on our side of the argument like then Senator Hillary Clinton voted to send us to Iraq.

We knew then, even before Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame were being dragged through the mud that we were being lied to and we did little to nothing to oppose it. “Fair Game” would be worthy now if it offered some object lesson for us to learn from. This would be a worthy effort if it gave us something useful to carry forward. Instead, “Fair Game” is merely a checklist of our failures recounted with tremendous historical accuracy.

And then there is the bizarre direction of Doug Liman, one of our finest action directors (Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Bourne Supremacy, Bourne Ultimatum) who battles the straight drama of “Fair Game” with an action directors eye. Using a handheld camera, Liman acted as his own Cinematographer and attempts to give us a firsthand point of view of the events inside the Plame-Wilson household.

It’s a bold experiment except that Liman’s idea of a firsthand account is a whipsaw move of the camera from one character to the next as if we were strapped to the back of a fly on the wall. Bring your sea-sickness meds, especially for the dinner party scenes where Liman attempts to take on the perspective of every character at the table in very short order.

Late in the movie, in a quiet scene between Penn's Joe Wilson and Watt's Valerie Plame, Liman's camera can barely stay still to keep Ms. Watts in frame. Yet, in the next moment it is trained almost perfectly on Mr. Penn as if the actor, who is a fine director in his own right, demanded Mr. Liman pauses while filming him.

There is a scene between Watts and Sam Shepard who plays Valerie Plame's father where the director actually seems to have left in a frame where someone off screen bumped the camera knocking both actors almost completely out of frame. Whether this is some sort of cinema verite experiment or just plain laziness is anyone's guess.

I truly despise much of “Fair Game.” As someone who opposed the war in Iraq from day one I am tired of reliving our failure to prevent this massive screw up. It's done, millions of Iraqis are dead, hundreds of thousands of our soldiers are dead and no one, not even the beloved President Obama, can give us a reason why or voice any kind of proper outrage about it.

Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame have tired of the topic. Having moved from Washington after writing their books they are content to leave it all behind. Their approach is my approach. Unless you can show me something new, a lesson that we can pass on from this devastating, destructive, nearly decade long failure that is Iraq, I am simply not interested. “Fair Game” is irrelevance in film form.

Movie Review The International

The International (2009) 

Directed by Tom Tykwer

Written by Eric Warren Singer

Starring Clive Owen, Naomi Watts, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Brian F O'Byrne 

Release Date February 13th, 2009 

Published February 12th, 2009 

Director Tom Tykwer is best known for the cult classic Run Lola Run, a film that consists of one woman running almost non-stop for nearly 90 minutes with an occasional bit of dialogue and a little gunfire. For his latest and most high profile effort to date, the new thriller The International, Tykwer applies a similar formula as Lola only with a little more dialogue and gunfire but still plenty of running.

Clive Owen stars in The International as an agent of Interpol on the trail of the shady dealings of a devilish bank. This bank, run from Luxembourg, is weeding its way into the international arms market. To get there they engage in assassinations to smooth their way.

Anyone who has ever stood against the bank has died and now Clive and his partner, a New York district attorney played by Naomi Watts, are at the top of the hitlist. They must gather the evidence they need to bring down the bank before the bank's killers bring them down permanently.

The International has a certain timeliness to it that may appeal to the American zeitgeist or hit too close to home. Bankers and banks in the day and age of bailouts and bonuses make great boogeyman. Who wouldn't want to see Clive Owen kicking some banker butt. On the other hand, those who subscribe to the theory of movies as escapism may be turned off by leaving banks on CNN on their TV and finding more bankers in their movie theaters.

The filmmakers don't have anything to say about bailouts or bonuses, the movie instead bores us conspiracies involving debt accumulation. Thankfully, it doesn't linger too long on the conspiracy before director Tykwer gets to what he does best, running and shooting.

The International is a run and shoot movie. There is running and shooting in Luxembourg, running and shooting in Rome and running and shooting in New York City in an explosive and dazzling scene set inside the famed Guggenheim museum. Using the famed architecture to great advantage, the makers of The International craft one of the best gun fights we've seen at the movies in a very long time. This scene alone may be worth the price of a ticket.

The International is a movie of great energy and action invention. Clive Owen in all his rumpled, 5 O'clock shadowed glory sells the dull conspiracy by keeping the intensity at a constant simmer and managing to keep up with his director's hectic pacing. For the fan of big time action only, I recommend The International.

Movie Review: The Ring 2

The Ring 2 (2005) 

Directed by Hideo Nakata

Written by Ehren Kruger 

Starring Naomi Watts, Simon Baker, David Dorfman, Elizabeth Perkins, Gary Cole and Sissy Spacek 

Release Date March 18th 2005 

Published March 17th, 2005 

When The Ring was released in 2002 and became a nationwide sensation with 129 million in box office sales and there was no doubt that there would be a sequel.  Hell, the Japanese version of the film spawned multiple sequels so there was even material from which to borrow for a new movie if necessary.  The real question was whether the story they told in the sequel would matter to viewers, not that it mattered much to marketers who had the poster mocked and approved on The Ring's second weekend atop the box office. Unfortunately there is no more story worth telling, or if there is the producers of Ring Two failed to locate it.

A quick recap of the original concept: The Ring was founded on the idea of a crazy looking videotape that, when viewed, left the viewer with seven days to live. A girl trapped in a well used the supernatural powers of the videotape to escape and claim anyone who watched the tape. Naomi Watts starred in The Ring as a journalist named Rachel who saw the tape while searching out a story about the urban legend surrounding it, a legend that may have claimed the life of her young niece.

Rachel is back in Ring Two with her preternaturally creepy son Aiden (David Dorfman). The two have escaped the tape's supernatural curse by running off to a small town somewhere in Oregon where Rachel has taken a job as a reporter for a small town paper run by Max (Simon Baker). How location could prevent a supernatural being from finding victims is a logical question that the film fails to address, among many other failures in logic and works of luck and chance that would be forgivable were they not so numerous.

Unfortunately for Rachel and Aiden, the tape has been traveling with a new legend attached to it. Teens are passing it around under the pretense that if you can get someone else to watch after you the curse is transferred from you to them. This theory fails a teenager who tries to pass it off on an unsuspecting girl. This is in the opening ten minutes and for some reason is the last time in the film we will hear about the killer video.

From there the film changes the supernatural elements, losing the videotape and randomly deciding that Samara, the killer chick in the video, can attack by possessing Aiden, Exorcist style. This leads Rachel back to that well in the basement of Samara's house and to Samara's real mother, an institutionalized woman played by Sissy Spacek. None of this leads to any satisfying conclusion though to the film's credit there is no overt set up for another sequel.

Ring 2 is shockingly bad. Truly shocking considering the talent of director Hideo Tanaka whose original Ringu is terrifically stylish and suspenseful. Ring director Gore Verbinski skated by in the original by being visually inventive and taking advantage of the films unique premise. Ring 2 abandons the original premise and even much of the strong visual aspects, replacing them with what amounts to a series of rip-offs of other horror movies.

Ring 2 is the perfect example of what I have called 'sequelitis.' It's a film that exists solely as a concept, a poster, a series of demographic marketing numbers and never anything resembling a real film.

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.