RT's Mid-Year Report - the Best and the Worst of the Year: So Far

[caitlin1214]

6) Perfect Stranger

Critical Consensus

Perfect Stranger is too convoluted to work, and features a twist ending that’s irritating and superfluous.



SYNOPSIS

Ace New York Courier reporter Rowena Price (Halle Berry) will do anything to get her story---even if it verges on the unethical. After her plans to out a U.S. senator’s homosexual relationship with an intern are thwarted, Price's next chance at a big scoop falls right into her lap. When her friend Grace (Nicky Lynn Aycox) is found murdered, the main suspect is revealed to be Harrison Hill (Bruce Willis), a philandering high-powered ad exec with a very jealous wife. With some help from her right-hand tech guru, Miles (Giovanni Ribisi), Rowena goes undercover as a temp at Hill’s agency, where her own good looks are bound to draw Hill closer to her, taking her to the facts behind Grace’s murder.

No simple plot description can truly explain James Foley’s (AT CLOSE RANGE) twisty, tech-y thriller. It begins with a false setup, takes a whole other route, and makes a series of bizarre 11th hour revelations that not even the most seasoned viewer will be able to predict. The always watchable Berry makes us root for a character whose methods aren’t always the most scrupulous, and Giovanni Ribisi does a lot with the "sidekick" role. Anastas Michos’s cinematography gives Manhattan a slightly sinister glow of cool blue, appropriate to this tale in which nothing is what it seems, and trusting in someone is sure to cause regret---or worse. PERFECT STRANGER may occasionally defy logic, but that is not likely to deter those hungering for a handsomely made, star-fueled studio film with plenty of surprises.

 

[caitlin1214]

5) Norbit

Critical Consensus

Though Eddie Murphy gives it his all, Norbit's material is crass and largely unfunny.



SYNOPSIS

Norbit (Eddie Murphy, channeling Buckwheat and Woody Allen) is a shy, nebbishy fellow, raised by Mr. Wong (Eddie Murphy again) in a combination orphanage/Chinese restaurant in Boiling Springs, Tennessee. As a child, Norbit comes to love Kate, a fellow orphan, but the soulmates are separated when Kate is adopted. Enter Rasputia, an aggressive, plus-sized 10-year-old who protects him from bullies and demands his romantic loyalty, much like her thuggish older brothers demand "protection" money from all the merchants in Boiling Springs. Rasputia and Norbit eventually marry--and the peevish adult Rasputia is played to great comic effect by Eddie Murphy in a fat suit. Although Rasputia is controlling, unfaithful, hideous-looking, and always madder than a hornet, she and Norbit make a life together, albeit one based on inertia, fear, and complacency.

The bubble bursts when the now-grown Kate (Thandie Newton) returns to Boiling Springs to buy Mr. Wong's orphanage. Norbit's love is rekindled, and he must find a way to end his loveless marriage, save Kate from marrying a crooked philanderer (Cuba Gooding, Jr., in a rare villainous turn), and prevent Rasputia's brothers from carrying through with a big con job that would destroy the orphanage and Kate's life. Eddie Murphy, not surprisingly, carries the show, with broad, juvenile humor, fat jokes, and pratfalls, and while he never aims very high, he manages to inject some poignancy into Norbit's and Wong's characters, even as he plays Rasputia strictly for laughs. It's not Shakespeare--it's not even BIG MOMMA'S HOUSE--but the laughs are as big as Rasputia's muumuu.

 

[caitlin1214]

4) The Reaping

Critical Consensus

The Reaping is schlocky, spiritually shallow, and scare-free with its use of cheap, predictable jolts.



SYNOPSIS

In this thriller from director Stephen Hopkins (LOST IN SPACE, UNDER SUSPICION), Oscar winner Hilary Swank is Katherine Winter, a college professor who refutes mysteries and so-called miracles with scientific evidence. When science teacher Doug Blackwell (David Morrisey) invites Katherine and her former teaching assistant/current colleague, Ben (Idris Elba), to his hometown of Haven, Louisiana, to investigate a river whose water has turned blood-red following the mysterious death of a local boy, the cynical professor is forced to find her own faith. The river of blood is just the first in a series of strange occurrences in Haven. It seems that each of the 10 plagues from Exodus is being manifested, in order. The citizens of this Bible Belt town are convinced that 12-year-old Loren McConnell (AnnaSophia Robb) is responsible for her brother’s death and for the strange events. Soon, Katherine finds herself questioning everything as memories from her past suddenly infiltrate the present in her search for the truth.

The Deep South setting is both beautiful and creepy--particularly Doug’s classic antebellum mansion, and the swamps where the McConnell family lives. Swank is reliably solid as Katherine, a woman of faith who lost everything important to her and turned to science for answers. Young AnnaSophia Robb, a young actress to watch, has a captivating screen presence. Brits David Morrissey and Idris Elba (THE WIRE) round out the main characters, with Morrissey a convincing Southern gentleman and Elba a man who overcame his tough life on the streets to become a professor. Stephen Rea also appears as Father Costigan, a link to Katherine’s sad past.

 

[caitlin1214]

3) Premonition

Critical Consensus

An overly obtuse potboiler that borrows charmlessly from "Memento," "The Sixth Sense," and "Groundhog Day."



SYNOPSIS

Sandra Bullock (CRASH, MISS CONGENIALITY) stars as a housewife troubled by a tragic premonition in Mennan Yapo’s thriller. Linda Hanson’s life revolves around her beloved daughters (Shyann McClure and Courtney Taylor Burness) and her husband, Jim (Julian McMahon, CHARMED). The familiar, picture-perfect terrain of her existence is abruptly shattered when she is informed that Jim has died in a gruesome car accident, and Linda spends the rest of the day in shock. When she awakes the next morning to find Jim calmly eating breakfast in the kitchen, however, she is even more disturbed. As the week progresses, Linda wakes up to find Jim alive again or dead again in an increasingly complex pattern that she struggles to make sense of. Linda realizes she’s in the midst of a premonition and decides she must try to save Jim, but when she finds out he might have been cheating on her, her resolve is seriously tested.

PREMONITION should appeal to fans of Christopher Nolan’s MEMENTO and M. Night Shyamalan's THE SIXTH SENSE, as it too presents an intriguing puzzle for the audience to solve. Despite a few plot holes, the film provides an interesting take on the mutability of time. The notion of a mysterious unknown beneath the mundanity of everyday life is attractive, and the exploration of time as twistable--rather than linear--is fascinating. Nia Long (ALFIE) plays Linda’s best friend, and Amber Valetta (HITCH) plays the other woman in Jim’s life.

 

[caitlin1214]

2) The Number 23

Critical Consensus

Clumsy, unengaging, and mostly confusing, The Number 23 fails as both a psychological thriller and a Jim Carrey career move.



SYNOPSIS

In Joel Schumacher’s psychological thriller THE NUMBER 23, Jim Carrey takes on another dramatic role. Carrey’s character is similar to his roles in THE TRUMAN SHOW and ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND: he portrays an average man thrust into quite extraordinary situations after a series of strange events cause him to question everything he’s ever taken for granted. On his birthday, Walter Sparrow is given a mysterious and tattered book called THE NUMBER 23 by his loving wife, Agatha (Virginia Madsen). As Walter reads the book, he quickly notices its alarming similarities to his own life. Rather than stop reading, he continues, unknowingly inviting the book to take over his life. The deeper Walter gets into the plot, the more he sees himself in its protagonist, Fingerling, whom we see through highly stylized sequences in which Carrey appears as the seedy detective character. Madsen is also present in these scenes, cast as Fingerling’s pain-loving girlfriend Fabrizia. As Fingerling and Fabrizia’s love affair inches towards its fiery conclusion, we learn the role the number 23 has played in their story and will play in Walter’s future if he cannot keep his growing obsession with it at bay. While Carrey and Madsen are adept at playing a man gone mad and a headstrong wife in crisis, they are most fascinating as their dark counterparts, and Schumacher succeeds in creating a truly intoxicating noirish underworld of sex and death through those sequences.

 

[caitlin1214]

1) Because I Said So



Critical Consensus

Because I Said So is an unfunny, cliche-ridden mess that manages to make Diane Keaton temporarily unlikable.



SYNOPSIS

Diane Keaton lights up the screen as an overbearing, matchmaking single mother in this slightly offbeat romantic comedy from director Michael Lehmann (HEATHERS, THE TRUTH ABOUT CATS AND DOGS). The film is a lot of fun, with both Keaton and Mandy Moore delivering energetic performances as a loveable and pretty believable mother-daughter team. After seeing two of her three stunning daughters (Piper Perabo, Lauren Graham) happily marry, Daphne Wilder (Keaton) focuses all her worries on Milly (Moore), her youngest, most insecure, and unlucky-in-love offspring. Twentysomething Milly has got her career as a chef figured out, but is clueless when it comes to love, attracting a never-ending slew of married, cheating, and closeted men. Taking matters into her own hands, Daphne places a personal ad for her daughter, interviewing the suitors herself and settling on one particularly promising young man named Jason. Meanwhile, clueless to her mother’s plans, Milly starts to fall for Johnny, a cute musician who in spite of treating Milly like gold, is hardly what Daphne has in mind for her daughter’s future. As Milly becomes increasingly involved with both men, Daphne must face whether maybe she could still have her own romantic life at age 60, instead of just living vicariously through her grown daughters.

Unabashedly a chick flick, BECAUSE I SAID SO’s intended audience is clearly female, but that’s not to say it’s all soft. The movie's girl talk includes frank discussions about sex and orgasms, demonstrating the unusually close relationships between the film’s women and distinguishing the film from others in its genre. While following a vague romantic-comedy arc, the film also explores the bonds between women, focusing more on the mother-daughter relationship at the heart of the film than on any of the male love interests.