Movie Review: Fear Dot Com

Fear Dot Com (2002) 

Directed by William Malone 

Written by Josephine Coyle 

Starring Stephen Dorff, Natascha McElhone, Stephen Rea, Udo Kier

Release Date August 30th, 2002 

Published August 29th, 2002 

The uneven career of Stephen Dorff continues. From his great performances in The Power of One, Blood & Wine and Entropy to his outright awful work in SFW, Space Truckers and Deuces Wild. On occasion he combines both a good and bad performance in one film. Such was the case in Blade where he had some effectively scary cool moments bookended by scenes of screen chewing hamminess. Fear Dot Com sadly features Bad Stephen Dorff, sullen skulking plot manipulated Dorff. Throw in an equally dull Natascha McElhone and you have a very unpleasant moviegoing experience.

fear dot com is a website, or rather FearDotCom.com is the website in the film. No I'm not kidding, Feardotcom.com, which is also the film's official website. Anyway back to the movie. Dorff plays a put upon cop in a nameless city constantly in darkness and always raining. My guess would be Seattle, but no one is drinking coffee and listening to Pearl Jam, which is my narrow stereotypical view of the city. The film was actually shot in Luxembourg, probably for the cheap labor and lack of strict labor laws. I'm off subject again but that was the way it was while I watched the film with my mind constantly wandering off, my inner monologue fixating on better movies than this like The Net or Howard The Duck.

Oh right the plot description. Basically this website takes possession of your soul and makes your eyes bleed until you kill yourself and the person nearest you. The same type of experience you would have watching Stop Or My Mom Will Shoot.

Anyway Stephen Dorff is the cop investigating the website. Dorff is aided by a pretty girl from the health department played by Natascha McElhone. The website steals their souls and won't give them back until they track down a serial killer named Allistair Pratt, played by Stephen Rea doing a sort Peter Lorre crossed with Geoffrey Rush and the devil thing. There is more to it but I don't remeber much of it, this plot makes more holes than a gopher.

Director William Malone, who delivered one of the best B-movies of the last decade with his remake of House On Haunted Hill, seems to want to go in interesting directions but can't get around this minefield of a script. So Malone, Cinematographer Christian Seboldt and Production Designer Jerome Letour do everything they can with the film's visuals to at least make the film a tolerable visual experience. Their work pays off a little in the final 20 minutes or so but by then it's too little too late.

Fear Dot Com isn't the worst film I have seen this year but it is an early candidate for the top 10 worst of the year. Keep your fingers crossed.

Movie Review Solaris

Solaris (2002) 

Directed by Steven Soderbergh 

Written Steven Soderbergh 

Starring George Clooney, Natascha McElhone, Jeremy Davies, Viola Davis, 

Release Date November 27th, 2002 

Published November 27th, 2002 

The teaming of Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney is one of the most promising in Hollywood. Already the team has delivered the sly entertaining popcorn movie Ocean's Eleven. They produced the well-reviewed drama Far From Heaven. Finally, they have in the pipeline the highly buzzed about Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind, Clooney's directing debut. The biggest challenge to the team opens this weekend, the tough sell sci-fi romance Solaris. “Challenging” and “experimental” don't often lead to much in the way of box office but I'm happy to say that at least artistically. Solaris is a hit.

George Clooney stars in Solaris as Chris Kelvin, a psychologist who is asked by the government to go to a far-off space station orbiting an unusual planet called Solaris. Once on the space station Chris should investigate the strange behavior of the station’s crew. Upon his arrival at the station, named Prometheus, he finds a good friend dead and is informed by one of the remaining crew members that the friend committed suicide. The two remaining crew members are Snow (Jeremy Davies) and Gordon (Viola Davis), and both of them are exhibiting odd behavior. 

Gordon refuses to leave her quarters and Snow rambles vaguely about the odd phenomena that befell the crew. Snow warns Kelvin about going to sleep, because when he awakens he will understand everything. Upon awakening Kelvin finds himself in bed with his wife. This would not be unusual except Kelvin's belovd wife has been dead for a number of years. Natascha McElhone plays Rheya Kelvin, or at least that's who the character thinks she is. Logically she can't be but she feels physically real to Chris.

Only a master craftsman like Steven Soderbergh could manage to make a woman as beautiful as McElhone seem so creepy. The scene where Rheya is revealed is a dizzying ride of camera spins and out of focus shots that draws the audience into Chris's nightmare, or fever dream, or whatever it is that is happening to him. From there Solaris spins into the realm of existential crisis, religion and human nature. It's like the best episode of Star Trek: Next Generation ever.

George Clooney is sensational and his chemistry with McElhone is electric. As the couple’s back-story unfolds and we learn what happened to Rheya and the nature of Solaris, Soderbergh toys with the audience, offering innumerable explanations that will have people talking long after the film is over. The film is daring and intelligent in toying with questions of what counts as existence, what approximates experience, if something feels real isn't it then real? 

Solaris is a great film with an intelligent script and a truly magnificent performance by Clooney. That Steven Soderbergh also includes numerous visual and storytelling homage to Kubrick's 2001 and , of course, Tarkovsky's original Solaris from 1972, only deepen the film’s message and help make the film a transcendent sci-fi experience.