Patriot Games

I am about to give you some sad news and you have to be very strong now...Sean Bean dies.

Cause of death: impaling by anchor, followed by explosion (for good measure).

Now to the actual story of the film.

A group loosely affiliated with the IRA is making an attempt to kidnap one Lord Holmes, cousin to the Queen of England. What they did not factor in is that ex-CIA agent Jack Ryan would leisurely stroll by and throw himself in the middle of it all to not only save the Lord and his family but also take out a few bad guys while he's at it. One of them is little Patrick Miller, whose brother Sean (this is Sean playing Sean) is right there to witness his baby brother killed.

He is incarcerated, he swears revenge, his friends get him out of jail and while they still have their sights set on Lord Holmes, Sean has his eyes set on Jack Ryan. Yes, one of the members of the group of IRA guys going rouge is about to go rouge.

Shoot-outs, training camps in North Africa, a few explosions, cars forced off the road, a boat chase and the ultimate fight to death on a speeding, burning boat in the middle of a storm (because it wouldn't be an action sequence without there being a storm, obviously).

Yes, this is mostly standard action fare. Only, this has a way better cast than your random action movie. The original Jack Ryan is Harrison Ford. You also have James Earl Jones, James Fox, Richard Harris, Samuel L. Jackson, a very young Thora Birch - and those are just the supporting players. And of course there is Sean Bean and his brother in arms (until he falls victim to Sean/Sean's blinding revenge) is Patrick Bergin (whatever happened to him, I wonder).

6/10

Manhunter

If Red Dragon had been made in the 1980's it would be this film.

Oh, wait.

It has. It is.

You know what? This film is not bad at all. Sure, it isn't as stylish as the later incarnation of the book Red Dragon, or stylish in a distinct 1980's way (read: dated), but the actors are as stellar as the ones who play the same roles in 2002. Although some of them may have faded into obscurity.

Will Graham is here played by William Petersen (yes, he of CSI fame, basically inventing his later role here), the tooth fairy/red dragon is played Tom Noonan (you have seen him before, I am certain, but you may not remember the name), Joan Allen plays the blind woman and the late Dennis Farina is Jack Crawford. And, oh yes, there is Hannibal Lecter (on IMDB it is spelled Lecktor), a role forever associated with the brilliant Anthony Hopkins. How could poor Brian Cox (also a brilliant actor) ever stand a chance of being remembered for it.

The music is as 1980's as the clothes are. Everything that you have seen later is here, as well, Will Graham digging into the criminal mind, the journalist rolling downhill while on fire, the weird teeth bit.

The two films even have the same score on IMDB. I get that films fade into memory of those that have concsiously lived through the times they were made in and Red Dragon serves a valid purpose for later generations. Myself, I have lived through both incarnations (yes, I am that old) and am ok with both versions.

7/10

Klute

This is the second film I have watched with Jane Fonda in one week...this time around with a really bad hairdo but in a much better film.

The Klute in the title is John Klute, acting as private detective when a friend disappears, leaving behind one very strange letter of abuse addressed to a prostitute in New York City, and the police are ready to give up on the case. That would be six months after the disappearance.

John goes off to New York to investigate and talk with the prostitute in question, one Bree Daniel. Now, Bree has regular meetings with a psychiatrist, musing about how she wants to quit 'tricks' and concentrate on her work as a model and actress (wait, is this officially called 'actor' now, too?). Or maybe she doesn't want to quit. She seems unsure and her efforts to turn her life around are half-hearted at best.

Initially reluctant to help John in any way, she does eventually get involved, tagging along as he interviews people working within her trade, trying to find other prostitutes said to have met with a weird guy that used to beat them up. It is generally believed that this is the missing friend, named Tom. Then they come upon one girl that does not identify Tom from a photo John Klute shows her and says that it was an older looking man, instead.

It is at this point that I knew who the real culprit was and the conclusion that Tom is probably dead is pretty obvious, as well. The real criminal is the person actually financing John Klute to investigate Tom's disappearance. Now that John is getting close, though, he starts to try and clean up all lose ends.

In the end, John saves Bree and they leave her apartment together, although to a voice over of her again sounding unsure about what is going to happen.

7/10

Scenic Route

Old friends Mitchell and Carter are on a road trip together. We don't know from where to where they are going, but they are in the middle of the desert (Nevada?). Mitchell is on crutches. Again, we are never really told what happened.

What we do know is that Carter stages a car breakdown because they don't talk anymore like they used to and he manufactures a situation where they have no choice but to talk. And while they're there he goes off on Mitchell for having given up on his dream on becoming a musician and marrying the "rebound-girl" after breaking up with the love of his life.

But first, they kick the shit out of each other. This happens before the credits. Mitchell has a broken nose and a bloody face and Carter does not move after one final blow. This is the intro.

Then we go back to the previously mentioned car trouble and the fight (first verbal) that follow after Carter's go at a life intervention and Mitchell finding out that his friend has simply removed a wire from the car to keep them stranded. He owns up when a passing car offers them a ride into town. Before the helpful man is allowed to drive off, Carter has to start the car to prove to Mitchell that he fixed it.

It is only after the driver left and some more fighting that the car is really broken. More yelling, blaming each other and the fight from the beginning follow. Mitchell comes to and Carter is still not moving. Mitchell mourns over the body of his friend and eventually starts digging a grave in the desert. As he pulls the body towards it, however, it tunes out that Carter is still alive. When he now realizes that he was about to be buried, he loses it and storms off.

The reunite and suffer together through the heat during the day, the cold nights and the lack of water. As a last ditch effort they stumble off in the direction where Mitchell thinks a town may be and eventually come to the remains of what used to be a small group of houses. But at least they find water.

And then suddenly a cell rings and they have reception again (hurray!) and are saved.

Or are they?

6/10

In Their Skin

The Hughes, a couple that has recently lost a child, are heading to their cottage with their young son to - presumably - find some sort of normalcy again.

The very next morning they get woken by a strange couple and their son that claim to be helpful neighbors that wanted to bring them some firewood as a welcome gift. The are so obviously loonies that everyone in their right mind would have hopped back into the car and gotten the hell away from there. The Hughes, however, ever the nice family, have them over for a very uncomfortable dinner instead.

As soon as the weirdos are asked to leave, the family dog gets shot dead, the car tires are slashed and the neighbors come back armed and very, very dangerous. The terrorize the Hughes and make it clear to them that they came to take over their life.

Mary and Mark Hughes are supposed to be almost the same age (story has it she is one year his senior) but Josh Close, writer and main protagonist is about 10 years younger than Selma Blair and had to grow a beard to at least look somewhere in the vicinity of the age he is supposed to play. Also, he is not the greatest actor in the world. The loony couple are so overplaying their respective roles (especially James D'Arcy) that they are almost comical.

The family captive story has been done over and over again and many times much better than in this film. It is nicely photographed, looking as bleak as the Hughes' situation.

4/10

A Lonely Place to Die

I didn't read up on what this film was about. So at first glance, it looked like a climbing movie (*snore*). What with the title and all, I expected an accident that would leave one climber alone stuck somewhere on a mountain range.

Luckily, this is not what happens.

A group of mountaineers (five to begin with) are out in the Scottish highlands when they stumble upon a little girl that has been kidnapped and kept inside a box underground. They take the girl with them and while a couple head off to take a precarious but short route to the nearest hamlet, the others go off with the girl. Unfortunately for all, the kidnappers are already hot on their heals and have no qualms about killing them off one by one. And this they do.

The kidnappers apparently have been in the business of abducting young children from out of state and making millions off of their parents. Here they are about to meet with a negotiator speaking for the girl's father, when their bargain chip gets snatched up, so their problems are multiple. Nevertheless, they still try to pull off the money handover (without having anything to trade in for it).

In the end, the girl is save (of course, she is), the last remaining heroine is on her way to the hospital and the one surviving kidnapper is captured himself and gets some hands-on treatment from the girl's father and his henchmen.

Quite exciting with casualties falling left and right.

6/10

Black Mirror: The National Anthem

You gotta love the Brits, for they make awesome TV shows.

Case in point: Black Mirror.

This show is not a continuous tale but rather a number of episodes set in some not-too-distant future, where virtual reality crazes have reached new heights and everyone's life takes place online as much as in the real world (sometimes more).

In the first episode, a princess (who, from what I can tell has some sort of It-Girl status and is beloved by the masses) is kidnapped and a video of her pleading for her life and reading out a message goes viral immediately. What the kidnapper(s) want(s) is for the British Prime Minister to have sex with a pig, an act which is to be broadcast live.

Despite the premise being so out there, the episode is impeccably cast and the act - when finally, inevitably committed - is sad and desperate.

Quite good, this.

8/10

Now You See Me

Four very diverse magicians get recruited to perform together. As a way of introducing the characters they are shown performing their respective acts. Daniel does a card trick, Merritt (the 'mentalist') hypnotizes a woman to extort money from her husband, Henley does an underwater escape act and Jack bends a spoon.

When they put on their show in Las Vegas they close it with 'something that was never done before'. They rob a bank. In Paris. This is how it is perceived by the audience: After they announce what they are about to do they recruit the assistance of a 'random' audience member, by people in the crowds draw balls indicating section, row and seat number. They want to rob this audience member's bank. They guy happens to be French and his bank is in Paris. They 'teleport' him into the bank vault and minutes later money rains from the ceiling. Very impressive.

And then it turns out that this particular bank actually was robbed in a way that it corresponds with all the details of the act. The case lands at the feet of FBI agent Dylan Rhodes and Interpol detective Alma Dray. They interrogate the 'Four Horsemen' (as they call themselves) but are being jerked around with little magic tricks and really cannot figure out how they did it. They were, after all, in Las Vegas with an entire audience as witnesses - including one Thaddeus Bradley, a former magician who now makes his money exposing the tricks of his former peers.

The FBI/Interpol duo, Bradley, and the sponsor of the Horsemen, Arthur Tressler, a insurance company honcho, all attend the next performance, this time in New Orleans during the Mardi Gras celebrations. Their final act this time around is also very elaborate and costs someone big money. They now rip off Mr. Tressler himself. His insurance company stifled many locals after hurricane Katrina and the nifty trick has all audience members write down their bank balance on a sheet of paper. Then Tressler is asked on stage and his balance is presented on a big board. Next, everyone is told that they are wrong about what they think they have in the bank and is asked to shine a light on their piece of paper to reveal the 'real' balance. Then a huge light shows Tressler's number lowered by a significant amount, which then appears on someone else's paper - and their bank account. As another chunck of Tressler's money disappears, it goes to someone else in the audience - and so on.

By now, it is clear that Tressler is not the guy who brought the group together. Rhodes and Dray are hot on their heals, Tressler hires Bradley to help him find them and they are being tracked with all high-tech equipment at the FBI's disposal but the nifty magicians get away and always seem to be one step ahead.

Dray meanwhile tells Rhodes of the mythical 'Eye' - a sort of secret society of brilliant magicians that only twice a decade accept new members. If this is more than a myth, the Horsemen set themselves up as viable candidates. There is also a story of a great magician, Lionel Shrike, who died because he wasn't able to escape a safe he locked himself into and had lowered into the Hudson River in New York City.

The big showdown, then, is in New York City. Law enforcement apparently tracked the Horsemen to an apartment where Rhodes and one of his colleagues only find Jack, who stayed behind to destroy blueprints. While his three cohorts are gone, Jack fights off Rhodes and flees in an FBI car. After a high speed drive, the car has a spectacular accident and - after Rhodes pries some papers out of the badly burned dead driver's hand the car blows up. The blueprint Rhodes recovered has the FBI follow a truck that supposedly transports a safe that the Horsemen are thought to have stolen. When they stop the truck, the lock gives way to a string of colorful tissues (a classic!) and the safe opens to hundreds of balloons (a classic!). A dead end.

The Horsemen's final performance is at 5 Pointz, where the agents rush to and fight their way through the audience only to always end up where the three remaining magicians are not. They once again pull off the stunt. However, they do not keep the money from the safe, which pops out (literally) of Bradley's car, making the FBI assume that Bradley was behind everything all along. When Rhodes visits him in his cell, Bradley tells him his theory of what happened in details only to then discover that Rhodes was actually behind everything.

The magician make their way to the carousel in Central Park, where Rhodes reveals himself to them and invites them to join the Eye. Later, he meets up once again with Inspector Dray and explains everything. Rhodes is Lionel Shrike's son and used this elaborate ruse to take revenge on everyone involved with his father's death.

I quite enjoyed this.

7/10

Deadfall

Well, this was always going to end badly.

Two siblings, along with the driver of their getaway car, go through the middle of nowhere (somewhere in Michigan, I guess) on snow covered country roads. The idea is to get to Canada after having pulled off a heist. They are dressed to the nines and one of the siblings, Liza, is wearing a skimpy dress, counting money on the backseat. Then, the car hits a deer and skitters off the road, turning over and landing upside down, killing the driver. Liza and her brother Addison make it out without a scratch.

A patrol car happens by and calls in the accident. As Addison gets out of the car he apologizes to the cop before shooting him. The siblings flee the scene further into nowhere and the oncoming heavy snow. To better their chances of getting away, they split up and try to make it to Canada, separately.

Addison walks off into the woods and runs into a native American, who has difficulties re-starting his snow mobile. The two men start fighting which costs Addison a pinky and leaves the other man dead. He moves on from one chance encounter to the next, picking up vehicles along the way and leaving a trail of bodies for the cops, who have by now found the body of the patrol man, to follow.

Liza gets picked up by Jay, who is on the way to see his parents in a remote farm house after just getting out of jail. Barely freed for a few hours, he accidentally kills his former boxing coach and thinks the road blocks he sees set up are there for him (I assume). As he drives away from one, he finds Liza who, despite having changed into something more appropriate, stands by the road freezing terribly. In the car, she finds out where Jay is headed and after spending the night with him at a motel, she calls her brother and leaves a message with the location of the farm house of Jay's parents.

Addison, wounded by now, makes it there first and takes Jay's parents hostage and together they sit down for Thanksgiving dinner. When Jay arrives he has Liza in tow and at first the two siblings do not acknowledge each other but soon enough old wounds break open. Liza told Jay earlier that her father, the devil, was killed right in front of her and her brother took care of her ever since. The relationship between the two siblings appears to a little too close for comfort and it also seems that Addison, who was the one to kill their father, took over the role of would-be devil in his sister's life.

At this point, a police woman comes by, looking for Jay because of a call she got from Detroit. She also ends up a 'guest' at the dinner table. Ultimately, law enforcement catches up with Addison and the distraction caused by the local sheriff - the police woman's father - gives Jay the chance to overwhelm Addison (Jay is, after all, a former champion boxer and silver medalist at the Beijing Olympics). In the end, it is Liza who shoot Addison to end his torment of the family and free herself.

I thought the police woman with the daddy issues was just one complicated family relationship too many. Otherwise, quite interesting.

6/10

Licence to Kill

Bond's friend Felix is about to get married. On the way to the ceremony at Key West, the two are pulled into an ongoing operation to arrest drug lord Franz Sanchez. In a very adventurous manner, Felix and Bond land in front of the church Felix is to be married in.

While Sanchez escapes by paying off DEA agent Killifer while Felix and his new wife are surprised by Sanchez' henchmen in the honeymoon suite. When Bond learns that Felix has been badly injured and his new wife was killed, he is out for revenge. His first victim is Killifer (Ed from Twin Peaks!), who gets fed to a shark, with his bribe money as a sendoff. M flies in to send him to a new assignment in Istanbul, Bond refuses and quits. M revokes his licence to kill and he is taken into MI6 custody, which of course he escapes. James Bond is now a rogue agent.

He teams up with a former CIA agent, following Sanchez to the Republic of Isthmus, where he poses as an assassin looking for work, earning Sanchez' trust. Bond's assassination attempt of the drug lord is foiled by agents of the Hong Kong Narcotics Bureau, which has been undercover trying to discover Sanchez' operations headquarter. Bond is again captured by the MI6 and about to be sent back to London. Yet, once again he escapes, this time with the help of Sanchez, who believes the Hong Kong agents to be responsible for his assassination attempt. Bond slowly worms his way into the inner circle of the drug operation.

The genius of the drug operation is that cocaine is dissolved in petrol and sell this 'fuel' to Asian drug lords (repeatedly referred to as 'the Orientals'). The sale runs through a televangelist named Joe Butcher (which is really kind of genius - the selling, not the name). The money making plot is the process to get the cocaine from the petrol again, the information is sold by Sanchez.

The grand show-down takes place in Sanchez' laboratory, where Bond is discovered by Sanchez henchman Dario, who betrays him to Sanchez, which leads to the final fight between him and Bond. With all that petrol around, this can only end in fire and explosions. Poor Dario ends up in a giant shredder.

I'm starting to like Timothy Dalton as Bond. The villain here is played by Robert Davi, but the (to me) significant baddie is a very young Benicio del Toro as Dario. The televangelist is played by Wayne Newton, somewhere in the middle of his plastic surgery transformations.

Quite entertaining and much more straight-forward in plot than many other Bond films.

6/10

Capricorn One

In the 1970's everything was a conspiracy.

One of the classic conspiracy theories and one of the more persistent ones is that the moon landing was a hoax, a film directed by Stanley Kubrick. French director William Karel took this story and made the mockumentary Opération Lune (Dark Side of the Moon) in 2002. Of course, as many people do not understand satire, many a conspiracy theorist thought this only proved them right.

Capricorn One was inspired by all of the moon landing hoax stories. The destination this time is planet Mars. Mere seconds before a crew of three astronauts it to take off, they are led from their aircraft Capricorn One and brought before Dr. Kelloway, who explains to them that the life support system installed in Capricorn One is faulty and the flight would be too big a risk for them. However, blowing off the mission is not an option, as the funding for the space program is in jeopardy and the general interest in space travel has been waning for some time now. So, everyone is led to believe that the mission went ahead as planned.

Even ground control is unaware of what is happening. One technician reports wrong readings with his terminal. He became suspicious when the TV feed reached his station before the feed from the aircraft, which is of course impossible. He discusses this with his reporter friend Caulfield (Elliot Gould, appearing to replay his role of Philip Marlowe) and when Caulfield tries to follow up with him, the technician has simply disappeared.

The astronauts are kept in hiding for months until the originally scheduled landing of Capricorn One. The plan is to have the capsule land off course to give the people in the know an excuse for not having a live feed and time enough to retrieve the trio. Unfortunately, the aircraft loses its heat protecting shield on re-entry and burns up. This means that officially the astronauts must have died during the incident. When the three realize what has happened and consequently fear for their lives during the extended cover up scheme, they hi-jack a plane and take off, due to lack of fuel in the middle of the desert. To increase their chances of making it back to civilization before being found by the puppet masters of the operation, they take off into different directions, while unmarked helicopters comb the desert in search of them.

Meanwhile, their families mourn their losses and attend memorial services. And Caulfield is the only one, who believes that something is not quite right and goes off into the desert to search for the astronauts himself. He hires a small airplane with pilot and actually finds one of them, Chales Brubaker, the only one who managed to avoid being captured.

Their only chance of survival at this point is to make a very public appearance. They do so by showing up at a very public memorial service, skipping in slo-mo.

7/10

Burning Bright

Things I learned from watching Burning Bright.

(1) Buying a tiger as a private citizen in the US is a piece of cake. It requires barely any paper work.

(2) If you tell you college aged stepdaughter that her mother did not leave a will and conveniently forget to mention the life insurance policy that leaves money to the stepdaughter and stepson, she will take that at face value and never suspect you to do something so ridiculous as lie to her. Never mind that you just cleared out her bank account.

(3) A boy that yells out things like "No red!" and "Eat! Now!"at random makes for a realistic portrait of a child with autism. Holding your flat hand in front of his face will always calm him down.

(4) A young woman with a crowbar will tear a hole into a wall quicker than a tiger can tear down a flimsy cupboard door.

(5) If you plan on killing you stepchildren by setting a tiger free inside your boarded up house, maybe you should think about taking the gun with you when you go to hang out in the local bar.

(6) Making someone have to look for their cell will add additional excitement to any film.

(7) Hiding in a big freezer is a great idea.

(8) When you return home from your night at the bar to hopefully find your would be victims dead, don't just walk inside without first checking where the tiger is.

(9) The fact that you use a reference to a William Blake poem as a title will probably be lost on your target audience.

2/10

Firewall

Jack Stanfield works for the Landrock Pacific Bank in Seattle and his day is about to take a weird turn when a debt collector shows up at his job trying to collect $ 95,000,-- in gambling debts. Jack realizes he has been victim of identity theft. What seems like a small incident at first is supposed to be used to set him up. The fictitious gambling debt is to be used as an also fictitious reason for him to steal from his own bank.

His colleague Harry has set up a business meeting with one Brian Cox, offering both of them work. After a few drinks, as Jack gets in his car to return to his family, Cox gets into the backseat and puts a gun to his head. While Jack was at work, his family has been taken hostage at their house. As Cox and Jack return their, they are kept at gunpoint over night.

The next morning, Jack is to go to his job as usual, equipped with a video and voice feed connected to the culprits. During the day, Cox shows up again for a 'meeting' with Jack, that his assistant is suspicious of, as she didn't set it up. Cox has Jack take him on a tour through the server room where he explains his plan. With Jack's technical expertise, he is supposed to transfer millions to an account on the Cayman Islands.

After a difficult day, with Jack trying to contact somebody, anybody for help and being found out, Cox drives home his point by killing one of his own associates for not paying attention for a moment that Jack used to sneak his video camera (disguised as a pen) onto his secretary.

The family devise a plan for Jack's wife and their two children to escape by clever use of one of the son Andy's toy - an remote controlled car, that has in the past interfered with TV reception is used to interfere with the video feed that is being used to keep taps on the family. They do not make it out and - in a quiet moment - Cox again emphasizes that he has no scruples, he feeds Andy, who has a severe peanut allergy, with a cookie containing peanuts and making Jack beg for the EpiPen.

Finally, the plan is set into action, with Jack moving to different terminals in the bank as to not be interrupted by one of his colleagues, who is hot on his heals the entire time. When the transfer is made, Jack and Cox split up. When Jack gets back to the house it is empty. One of the culprits returns to finish him off, but Jack beats him to death with a stand up mixer (handy thing, that).

He flees to Harry's empty apartment and hears a message on the answering machine from his wife, reading from a script that makes it look like a message to her lover, Harry, and a confirmation that she has left Jack. When he hears someone coming in - it is Harry with Cox, still in future business partner mode - he hides in a closet (classic!) to see Cox execute Harry. Jack realizes, that this will only reflect back on him with the tale of an affair and Cox using Jack's own gun. His flight continues...

To pressure Cox into giving his family back, he takes the baddie's cell with him and calls Cox as he is re-transferring the money and telling him that he will give him the money in exchange for his family's safe return the next morning. Jack changes his plan, however, when he realizes he heard the family dog bark as he was on the phone with Cox. The little pet has a tendency to run away and has been equipped with a GPS collar.

With the help of his secretary, he manages to locate the dog, who has been thrown out of the transport vehicle for unruly behavior. Fortunately, they are close enough to the hide out for Jack to sneak up to the house and a combination of one of the culprit's reluctance to hurt his family, Cox' hurt pride and Jack's and his wife's anger, the bad guys are taken down once an for all. Cox meets his end in a fist fight, cut short by use of an ax.

An ok, fast-paced watch. Nothing to write home about but entertaining enough.

5/10

Alexandra's Project

Steve comes home on his birthday expecting a surprise party. While he was at the office, his wife had all photos of his family sent over to the house. Supposedly, the will be used as part of a surprise present.

What Steve gets instead is a chair placed in front of a TV set, playing a tape of his wife telling him about her frustration with their marriage.

He sits through the recording, that begins with his children telling him happy birthday and then leave. He watches his wife have sex with their neighbor while telling him that this is how she has been earning her own money while home alone.

And he learns that she has not only sent the kids away and is leaving him, she has also taken every photo he possessed of the children with her as the ultimate punishment.

An interesting concept and quite well made film.

Certainly disturbing.

8/10

Identity

The lawyer of Malcolm Rivers makes one last ditch effort to stay the execution of his client. Rivers, convicted of murdering six people a few years back is brought to a middle-of-the-night hearing, where the lawyer and a psychiatrist try to prove that he was not aware of what he was doing because of his multiple personality disorder.

The many people in Rivers' head all end up in a motel in the pouring rain that keeps them from getting where they want to go. The group is as random as can be, including a family with small child, a prostitute, an actress, a couple of criminals, a former cop...

What happens in the court hearing and is played out by the character in the motel is that the one personality that made Rivers kill has to be irradicated. To achieve this one by one the people at the motel get killed off until the sitting judge is convinced that the culprit is gone.

The real story in the film is what is going on at the motel. The characters don't seem to be aware of what they actually are in the bigger picture, so this plays out as a quite brutal whodunit. Each person that dies gets marked with a room key, counting the bodies down from 10 to 1. They all hurl accusations and cannot seem to find any common ground on how to handle their situtation. Halfway throught the killings, one of the most level-headed of the group, Ed, turns out to be the personality that the committee around Rivers can work with.

This is when the two stories overlap, Ed suddenly finds himself strapped to a chair a not recognizing himself in the mirror. He is confused as to how he is no longer in the pouring rain by the motel. But this really turns out to be the way in. When all but one of the characters at the motel are gone, the committee is satisfied with their progress and Rivers' death sentence is overturned.

However, on the way back to the prison the psychiatrist realizes to late that one of the personalities believed to have died in an explosion acutally survived and that was the very one they would have needed to eliminate. Deadly mistake.

Despite the flaws and the confusing set up I really, really enjoy this film.

8/10

The Day of the Jackal

The survivors of the French Foreign Legion have been trying to assassinate French president Charles DeGaulle reapeatedly, making the president one of the most closely guarded man in the world. After yet another failed attempt, as a last resort, they hire an English hit man to do the job, going by the code name "The Jackal".

The film details on the one hand the minutiae preparations of the Jackal for what he considers to be his last kill, because his profile as a hired killer would be raised so profoundly that he cannot work again. The hit requires him to change names, passports and appearances several times.

On the other hand, we follow the - at first secret - investigation of the French police into the group of Forein Legion members and eventually the Jackal. They edge their way closer to finding and stopping the assassination. Obviously there are a few setbacks, most importantly leaked information.

After the Jackal finds out that his identity has been compromised and the mission is to be aborted, the pushes on nonetheless, possibly as a matter of pride.

This is one of Fred Zinneman's last films. Very dense and intriguing.

7/10

Exam

Eight people are in the run for a job as assistant for an elusive CEO of a company trying to engineer medication to eradicate a pandemic. The applicants are sat down in a room - each one with one piece of paper in front of them. They are told that on the sheet there is a question and they are to answer it. For this the have 80 minutes time.

When they turn their paper around it is empty. Or is it? The spend the time given them by trying to find out if words can be seen with help of liquid, lights etc. As it is also pretty clear that only one person can get the coveted job, they soon start turning on each other to try and eliminate the competition.

The candidates puzzle over the question and dissect every word they have been told. It is all very gimmicky but nonetheless entertaining and thrilling. Sometimes all you need to make a decent film is one room and a handful of actors.

6/10

The Russia House

I'm confused. But this is a John le Carré story, so that was to be expected.

What I gather is this: Barley, a British publisher, is recruited by the Secret Service to spy on the Russians, as he has been contacted by a Russian publisher, Katya, regarding a scientific book by one Dante (not his real name).

From then on, he wears wires seemingly everywhere he goes in Moscow and Leningrad. He meets with Katya, later with Dante and some sort of deal is struck, that would have him hand over what everyone refers to as 'the shopping list' (written in invisible ink, no less).

By now, the Brits have teamed up with the US Secret Service as well and people from both sides wearing more or less appealing suits sit in a room together listening in with headphones. Then the British liaison to Barley, Ned, gets suspicious and wants to call the final handover off. But the Americans push on (of course). Words are exchanged, the go ahead as planned and of course Ned was right all along.

Dante apparently is already dead at the time he was supposed to meet with Barley, who has worked out that something is wrong thanks to Katya. He then makes his own plan to double cross his home country. All for the love of Katya.

Or something like that.

6/10

Riddle

Two high school seniors decide one day that it would be fun to take poor, timid, mentally challenged Nathan out for a joy ride and scaring the hell out of him by playing 'chicken'. After Nathan peed himself as a result (and really, what were they expecting) they stop at a gas station and send him to the bathroom to clean himself up. And then the boy vanishes into thin air.

Jump to three years later. Nathan's sister Holly is now a college student but goes home for the week to help out at the local farmer's market. When an apple drops to the floor and she goes down to retrieve it she catches a glimpse of a pair of shoes that are obviously her little brother's. She follows the man wearing them all the way to nearby Riddle.

It is obvious from the get-go that some of the inhabitants of the all-but-dead town know something about Nathan's disappearance and possibly whereabouts but are not willing to talk. Holly reconnects with a former high school colleague (who just happens to be the Sheriff's daughter and OMG didn't Val Kilmer used to look good whatthehellhappenedthere) and eventually the two idiots that were involved in Nathan's disappearance. (Side note: if you hire actors in their thirties to play kids of 21 years, make sure all of them can pull off that age...it is irritating if a 30 year old looks her age *cough* Diora Baird *cough* but is supposed to be of just-out-of-high-school age.)

Together they break into the Sheriff's office to retrieve the files on Nathan from 3 years back. It is then that they (and we) learn that both, Nathan and Holly, were adopted and their real father stabbed their mothe rto death. As a consequence, the kids were adopted and daddy ended up in an asylum for the criminally insane in, yes, Riddle. It is at this point at the latest that we know who took the boy. After losing the two former high school idiots (death by ax), Holly gets chased by daddy to the insane asylum (yes, sure, crawl into a locked and deserted building when you have all the woods to hide in, or, Idon'tknow, you could run back into town or something) where he tells her that the boy stays with him and she belongs with her mother. Why he doesn't kill her when he has the chance (he did stab the woman, remember) I couldn't say. He chooses to torture her with electric shocks instead, giving Holly the chance to set him on fire.

Yeah, it's crap.

1/10

Gone

Two years ago, Jill was kidnapped from her home and dumped into a hole in the middle of a huge forest near Portland, OR. Law enforcement tried for all of two weeks to find said hole where, according to Jill, several skeletons are buried. They start suspecting that the girl made it all up and have her institutionalized.

Jill now lives with her sister Molly, the only family she has anymore. When she comes home one morning after a night shift at the restaurant she works in Molly is gone and Jill becomes immediately convinced that her kidnapper has come back to finish her off.

When she goes to the police to alert them, the do not believe her yet again and don't move a finger to find Molly, who is a recovering alcoholic and they are convinced she will turn up on her own account. Jill sets out to find her and their kidnapper by herself.

At the same time, she is being hunted because she carries a gun, and having been a mental patient she lost the right to do so (even in gun crazy Merica), and has threatened someone with it to gather information. So the film is the police hunting Jill hunting the kidnapper and recovering her sister.

Actually quite entertaining.

6/10