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.

Movie Review: The Recruit

The Recruit (2003) 

Directed by Roger Donaldson 

Written by Roger Towne, Kurt Wimmer, Mitch Glazer 

Starring Al Pacino, Colin Farrell, Bridget Moynihan, Gabriel Macht 

Release Date January 31st, 2003 

Published January 30th, 2003 

Is Al Pacino's act running thin? An unquestionably brilliant actor for most of his career, Pacino has been uneven at best in his most recent work. His last, the Hollywood satire Simone, was a middling comedy that featured a mugging, forced performance by Pacino. However, the film before that, the ingenious thriller Insomnia, showed Pacino at his best. His newest work continues the spate of uneven performances as Pacino plays mentor/tormentor to Colin Farrell in The Recruit.

In The Recruit, Al Pacino plays CIA recruiter Walter Burke, a grizzled vet whose job it is to find the next generation of agents. Burke has his eye on an MIT student named James Clayton (Farrell), whose father may or may not have been an agent himself. Clayton isn't interested at first, but suspicions as to whether his father was an agent and whether Burke knew him, and how his father died, cause Clayton to join up.

Soon Clayton is shipped off to the Farm, the CIA's highly secretive spy training ground. Burke is the Farm's lead trainer and though he was friendly with Clayton while recruiting him, Burke is quick to let Clayton know that things are different on the Farm. From now on, nothing is what it seems as students and teachers turn tables on each other in a series of testy spy games meant to wash out the weak and send the strong on to the CIA. While at the Farm, Clayton meets Layla (Bridget Moynihan), another potential agent whose alluring chemistry with Clayton may or may not be an act.

The Recruit is a construct of numerous setups meant to lead the audience in one direction and then pull the rug out from under them. Unfortunately, the setups are rather ham-handed and lack any real suspense. Any intelligent audience member can see where the film is going. That is, until the end--which is a minor surprise--but by then, the movie has spent so much time jerking the audience around with one random twist after another, it becomes hard to really care.

Farrell is very good in a role that requires his character to be very smart but yet, easily manipulated by Pacino's character who may a bad guy or may be a good guy. Farrell has the look of a star; he's charismatic and engaging with a strong good-guy swagger. There are moments where he evokes a young Mel Gibson. Like it or not, that Hollywood buzz about Farrell being the next big thing may be more than just hype.

If the rest of The Recruit were as good as Farrell, it would have been a very good film. Unfortunately, director Roger Donaldson takes this intelligent character and buries him with an uninteresting love interest, a hammy Al Pacino, and a plot that twists and turns so much as to exhaust the audience rather than entertain it. Colin Farrell has a very bright future in front of him and The Recruit will do little to slow his momentum as he builds towards bigger roles in Daredevil and the delayed, but much buzzed about, Phone Booth. The Recruit will be just another film on his resume soon enough.

Movie Review: The Reaping

The Reaping (2007)

Directed by Stephen Hopkins

Written by Carey Hayes, Chad Hayes 

Starring Hilary Swank, David Morrissey, Idris Elba, AnnaSophia Robb, Stephen Rea 

Release Date April 5th, 2007

Published April 4th, 2007

Is Hilary Swank finally feeling her Oscar curse? After winning two Oscars, a feat only two other actresses in history can claim, Swank continued her strong run with the terrific drama Freedom Writers. That film however, despite solid reviews was not a box office winner. Now comes the low-point of Ms. Swank's post Oscar career. The Reaping is a dull witted, thrill-less thriller. A horror film with little or no horror. A religious based scare-fest that fails to be either really religious or scary.

In The Reaping Hilary Swank plays Katherine Winter a former missionary turned college professor whose hobby is debunking religious miracles. She touts having visited 47 miracles and found 47 scientific explanations for the so called miracle. Her loss of faith is related to her time in Africa with father Castigan (Stephen Rea) where her husband and pre-teen daughter were slaughtered by fearful tribesmen who believed the sacrifices would save the lives of others.

Catherine's latest debunking assignment takes her to a small town in Louisiana called Haven. There a science teacher, Doug (David Morrissey), is trying to convince the townsfolk that they are not under attack from the ten biblical plagues. The plagues that the people believe are being visited upon them are believed by many to be coming from a teenage girl (Anna Sophia Robb) whose brother died under mysterious circumstances.

Since the death of the girl's brother, the river surrounding the town has seemingly turned to blood, frogs are falling from the trees, and soon each of the biblical plagues will have made an appearance, killing dozens of people. Is it god, the devil, or does this teenage girl represent one or the other? These are the questions that Catherine must answer before the next plague becomes the last.

I'll say this for Hillary Swank in The Reaping, she has never looked this good before. Swank has always been unconventionally attractive but in The Reaping she is tanned and toned and her sometimes severe features have been toned down through some sort of cosmetics work and all of this really works for her. If I was recommending movies solely on the attractiveness of the star, I would totally recommend The Reaping.

That however, is not something I would ever actually do. As great looking as Hillary Swank is in The Reaping, the movie is a dopey series of clichés leading to an ending more predictable than your average romantic comedy. Director Stephen Hopkins (The Life and Death of Peter Sellers) is not untalented. The problem is the story he's telling isn't all that compelling.

The Reaping plays like an above average production of one of those lame ass Left Behind movies where highly religious characters spout this and that about God's love until the wicked are smited and the righteous live on. Bad actors, overly earnest dialogue, and low budget aesthetics give those films a camp appeal that might have made The Reaping a ripe parody. Unfortunately, this high budget flick is deathly serious about its dopey, superstitious plot.

Is this the Oscar curse finally catching up with Hillary Swank? Maybe? Maybe not? The failure of The Reaping seems to be more a function of genre than of superstition. Aside from last years The Omen remake, religious themed horror flicks haven't delivered big scares since the 70's. Movie's like Bless The Child, Lost Souls and Skeleton Key have all starred beautiful starlets battling satanic forces and each has stunk out loud.

Is that because we are simply tired of rote plots and tired situations? Probably. It may also be that the old fire and brimstone doesn't really do much to put fear into people anymore. In a post 9/11 world, can the perceived horrors of potential damnation compete with the real life horrors in front of our eyes? The Reaping is also rather outdated in its reliance on the supernatural in an era where a more realistic, visceral and bloody style of horror dominates the market.

Whatever the reason, supernatural or otherwise, The Reaping is a failure. Not scary enough for horror. Not bad enough for camp, the film flickers on to the screen and simply lays there. Hilary Swank looks gorgeous and is impeccably talented but even two Oscars can't roust these characters and this situation into anything lively enough to be called entertaining.

Movie Review: The Real Cancun

The Real Cancun (2003) 

Directed by Rick De Oliveira 

Written by Brian Caldirola 

Starring Benjamin Fletcher, Laura Ramsey, Snoop Dogg, Simple Plan 

Release Date April 25th, 2003 

Published April 30th, 2003 

What do you get when you cross “Girls Gone Wild” with MTV's “The Real World?” You get the tepid sociological experiment The Real Cancun. Taking the conceits of reality TV and translating them to the loosened standards of the big screen, the producers of America’s first reality show have created a new category that is not quite documentary but not exactly verite either. It's a new genre that is being called "reality movies.” Reality in it's pseudo TV definition. But thanks to this film’s box office belly flop, the genre is likely DOA. Shot over 1 one week, edited in 6 weeks and in theaters just as quickly, The Real Cancun is about a group of strangers thrown together in a beautiful Cancun hotel and filmed 24 hours a day, just like “The Real World.”

This collection of buff bodies and minimal intellect includes a pair of African American pals, Paul and Jorell, who speak more “player” than they act. A pair of friends, David and Heidi, who swear they are just friends (Yeah right). There are the twins, Nicole and Roxanne who provide the film’s “Girls Gone Wild” moment with their tandem flashing in the wet T-shirt contest. There is also Allan, the virginal 18 year old who before Cancun has never drank alcohol before. How long do you think that lasts? Another virginal character is Laura, a seemingly naïve 20 year old from Wisconsin who surprisingly maintains her virtue throughout the film.

Aside from Alan, the guys in this film are interchangeable caricatures of the worst in male stereotypes. There is the vapid underwear model Casey, who's catchphrase "Any of you girls wanna make out" is featured heavily in the film’s ads, and who is as stupid as his pick up line. Jeremy, who claims to have a girlfriend back home is the first in the house to 'get some.' In fact, he gets some from one of the girls in the house, though which interchangeably attractive girl it was escapes me. Jeremy then proceeds to ignore the girl the rest of the week. 

The other two guys, Matt and Fletch, pal around while Matt attempts to get a woman named Sarah to have sex with him. Sarah is a Vegas girl who claims she has a boyfriend she loves back home, this does not sop Matt in any way. Matt and Fletch are portrayed as such dopey testosterone-fueled morons that they will likely be the first to complain about how they were edited. Hey guys, before you complain remember you were the one wearing the Female Body Inspector T-shirts.

The Real Cancun is played as much as a good time as it is a social experiment. Of course it doesn't take much to mix alcohol and 20-somethings and end up with sex and various other debaucheries. What is surprising is how tame it really is. Anyone going for the boobs and sex won't be entirely disappointed but this is not “Girls Gone Wild.” For example, when one of the twins goes topless in the wet t-shirt contest, she covers her breasts with her hands as much as she can.

There really isn't much of a story here, though producers would like you to fall for Allan and his coming of age, so to speak. But Allan is so amazingly clueless that his minor personality switch isn't really that compelling. The movie’s best story arc involves Paul and Sky, a gorgeous African-American girl who has strict requirements on how she is to be courted and when Paul doesn't follow the rules her rebuff is quick and brutal. Paul doesn't sulk long and is soon in the sack with some girl off the beach, after which he spends his remaining days failing to win Sky back.

The Real Cancun is a tepid experiment in trying to convert the conceit of “The Real World” to the big screen. Though any of these people would make the cut on the TV show, their adventures aren't interesting enough to warrant a feature film. Remake The Real Cancun as a weekly series on HBO and maybe you have enough cheap thrills for late night TV.

Movie Review: The Reader

The Reader (2008)

Directed by Stephen Daldry

Written by David Hare

Starring Kate Winslet, David Kross, Ralph Fiennes, Bruno Ganz, Lena Olin

Release Date December 12th, 2008

Published Decemebr 11th, 2008 

The first 45 minutes, give or take, of The Reader starring Kate Winslet and newcomer David Kross, are some of the more bizarre minutes in any movie this year. These awkward, sexy, meandering scenes offer some of the more uncomfortable laughs I have had at any movie this year aside from Sex Drive. My mention of a teen sex comedy in relation to what is essentially a holocaust movie should give you the impression of just how uneasy I was feeling during these early scenes. 

David Kross plays Michael Berg, a teenager in 1950's Berlin who gets very ill walking home from school. A tram worker, Hannah (Kate Winslet) with a rather severe sensibility, kindly walks him home. He returns to her building later to thank her for caring for him. It begins an entirely uncommon affair that will shape the rest of Michael's life. Director Stephen Daldry, I'm sure, wishes to exploit the clumsy sexuality of a 15 year old, not an uncommon topic in movie. 

Here however, the fumbling earns laughs in the strangest most uncomfortable ways, including showing young Michael bared completely before his new love and us. Don't worry, actor Kross is over 18. Admittedly, that fact is not all that comforting. Maybe the bigger sin of these early scenes is the fact that Hannah's motivations for getting involved with the young man she simply calls Kid, are entirely unclear. One moment she is demanding a favor, the next minute she is nude, he is nude, and a stilted lesson in sex is underway.

Then, one day, Hannah is gone. She has cleared out of their little love nest and Michael is devastated. Cut to several years later, Michael is at law school. His professor, Rohl (Bruno Ganz) a Jew who survived the death camps takes Michael and several other promising students to a trial where people who worked in the Nazi death camps are on trial. The defendants are women who worked as guards at Auschwitz. It should be no logical leap for you, my friends, to figure out that Hannah is one of those on trial. Michael says nothing. Then, Hannah tells a damning lie that Michael knows he can refute.

I will leave you to discover Michael's choice and the consequences. After a weird start, with heavy, R-rated sex, The Reader slowly becomes a gut wrenching drama. Ralph Fiennes becomes the elder Michael and his relationship to Hannah in the years after the trial is touching and sad. The film dances precariously close to being meaningless. So much of the drama is internal and requires the actors to really sell it. Thankfully, Winslet and Fiennes are tremendous salesmen. Two of our finest actors draw us close to these actors and even in the strangest of contexts make The Reader a very moving emotional experience.

Several minutes into The Reader I was ready to pan it. By the end, Kate Winslet had revealed so much of herself, and Ralph Fiennes had shown such stunning sensitivity, I was completely turned around. Never underestimate the power of actors. Their ability to fix even the most troubling of internal drama is mind-blowing. The Reader is awkward and discomfiting; with scenes of a sexual nature that will put off many more skittish audience members. It's also a heart rending, human drama featuring fine performances from Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes for whom I say, the movie is a must see.

Movie Review: The Radium Girls

The Radium Girls (2018)

Directed by Lydia Dean Pilcher

Written by Ginny Mohler, Brittany Shaw 

Starring Joey King, Abby Quinn, Cara Seymour, Susan Heyward

Release Date October 23rd, 2020

Published October 25th, 2020 

Unbridled capitalism is a lovely idea but in practice, you get a story like that which is told in the new movie, The Radium Girls. If you aren’t familiar with the story of The Radium Girls, it’s a horror story about the lengths that some will go to protect profits. The company American Radium was willing to sacrifice the lives and health of poor female workers just to protect a few million dollars. It’s a story of monstrous greed and a company that abandoned basic humanity and decency in favor of money. 

Joey King stars in The Radium Girls as Bessie, the youngest of three sisters, all of whom have worked for American Radium. The oldest sister, Mary, passed away three years prior to this story. Her death was deemed to have been due to syphilis. Now, middle sister, Josephine (Abby Quinn) has fallen ill with similar symptoms to Mary. When a doctor, working on behalf of American Radium, diagnoses Josephine with Syphilis, the sisters realize that the company is lying and trying to cover something up. Josephine is a virgin, so an aggressive STD is not causing her illness. 

At the recommendation of Walt (Colin Kelly-Sordelet), a young man that Bessie has met and fallen for, the sisters meet with the New Jersey Consumer League, headed up by Wiley Stephens (Cara Seymour) who informs them that she’s received complaints about American Radium before. Stephens convinces the sisters to see a new doctor and to take the drastic step of exhuming Mary’s body so that her actual cause of death can be determined. When Mary’s grave is opened, her bones are so radioactive that they glow in the dark. 

While working at American Radium, the sisters worked as dial painters. Their job was to paint the numbers on a watch with a radium based paint so that the numbers glowed in the dark. To get the finest point on their brushes, the girls were instructed by the company to lick the tip of their brushes. At one point in American history, after the discovery of radium, actual campaigns pushed radium as an elixir and bottled it for sale as a drink. 

That was before it became clear what Radium was doing to the people that consumed it. We will come to find out that American Radium knew, well before the death of Bessie and Josephine’s sister, that consuming radium was deadly. The company conducted their own study of radium exposure and when the results came back and showed how deadly radium was, the company buried their own study and kept instructing the workers to lick the tip of the brush. 

What American Radium did is unconscionable. It’s monstrous and, as Joey King’s Bessie states in The Radium Girls, they should have been tried for murder. The company willfully facilitated the deaths of its employees because glow in the dark clock faces became a multi-million dollar market. The company buried their own scientists, literally as the movie shows, in order to cover up what they did to their workers. 

I was once a strict capitalist. I believed that market pressure would be enough to get companies to act in the best interests of the public and their employees. Then, I read the story of The Radium Girls in college and I lost my taste for unfettered capitalism. I simply cannot abide what American Radium did to desperate, poor women in the name of capitalism. Now, I am certainly not a communist but unlike a lot of people I can be critical of capitalism and still believe in it. 

The Radium Girls were a flashpoint that led to the creation of unions and federal regulations that gave unions the teeth to deal with corporate exploitation for profit. In the last three decades however, as unions were consumed by their own greed and workers rights have become a passé issue among the political elite, we appear to be heading toward another flashpoint. As billionaires get richer and richer, their exploitative practices that risk the lives of their employees and customers alike, get more extreme. 

We need stories like The Radium Girls to be told as a cautionary tale. People need to be reminded that when we aren’t vigilant about worker’s rights and working conditions, companies will willfully exploit our ignorance. The actual movie is a tad on the rudimentary side. It’s not a special movie from a technical standpoint. That said, the movie has tremendous value as a polemic and an example. With what we are still learning about the way modern corporations have intentionally crushed unions and ignored environmental concerns, movies like The Radium Girls should be a flashpoint for remembering the need to keep a check on the powerful.