Movie Review: Trap (2024)

Genre: Thriller  

Director: M. Night Shyamalan  

Starring: Josh Hartnett, Ariel Donoghue, Hayley Mills, Alison Pill  

Running Time: 105 minutes  

Synopsis: In Philadelphia, firefighter Cooper (Josh Hartnett) accompanies his teen daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) to a concert featuring pop superstar Lady Raven (Saleka Night Shyamalan). While Riley is having the time of her life enjoying the show, Cooper notices an unusually high law enforcement presence at the arena. He soon learns that the authorities have cordoned the venue to capture a serial killer known as The Butcher, who is believed to be attending the concert.

What Works Well: The initial twist is a good re-orientation of character intentions, and Josh Hartnett delivers a layered performance, full of dad-trying-to-fit-in traits and more edgy quirks. In the early scenes Ariel Donoghue adds bouncy energy as a teenager anticipating and enjoying a spectacular night.

What Does Not Work As Well: Way too much time is invested in Saleka's concert performance, unfortunately fanning suspicions that the project is mostly a nepotistic exercise to promote her music career. All the early investment in Riley is sidelined as Lady Raven then Cooper's wife Rachel (Alison Pill) take turns in the spotlight. The law enforcement efforts are an exercise in quantity (seemingly every Philadelphia police and SWAT officer is at the venue) over quality (they are all remarkably ineffective). Once the action moves away from the concert arena, the plot defaults to an endless series of false endings and silly escapes enabled by idiotic behaviour.

Key Quote:

Lady Raven: Monsters aren't real!

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Movie Review: Wicker Park (2004)

Genre: Romantic Drama Mystery  

Director: Paul McGuigan  

Starring: Josh Hartnett, Diane Kruger, Rose Byrne  

Running Time: 114 minutes  

Synopsis: In Chicago, advertising executive Matt Simon (John Hartnett) is engaged to his boss' sister Rebecca (Jessica Paré) and about to head to China on a business trip. But at a restaurant he overhears the voice of his ex-girlfriend Lisa (Diane Kruger). They had initially met two years prior when he worked at a video equipment store, and were deeply in love when she inexplicably dropped out of his life. Now Matt postpones his trip and sets out to find Lisa, a search that will involve his best friend and shoe salesperson Luke (Matthew Lillard) and Luke's girlfriend Alex (Rose Byrne), a theatre actress.

What Works Well: This remake of the French movie L'Appartement successfully emphasizes style in a story of elusive romance, second chances, deception, and desperate longing. Director Paul McGuigan uses split screens, dreamy filtering, plenty of snowy urban landscapes, and frequent time jumps to convey interactions between fate, loss, love, and infatuation. The hypnotic aesthetics and complex narrative structure deepen the eternal soulmate search, and allow layers of revelations, secrets, and hidden agendas to unpeel with careful timing. Matt Simon's singular determination is a suitable role for Josh Hartnett, while Diane Kruger and Rose Byrne convey the challenge of contrasting perspectives.

What Does Not Work As Well: The plot is built on a tower of just-in-time coincidences, and demands questionable character decisions and actions (or non-decisions and non-actions) at almost every turn. The multiple flashbacks and variable points-of-view occasionally threaten coherence.

Conclusion: A pleasingly perplexing pursuit of passion.



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Movie Review: Wrath Of Man (2021)

A heist thriller, Wrath Of Man bolsters basic macho action with a sharp attitude and an engaging if unnecessarily convoluted plot.

In Los Angeles, a heavily armed gang violently robs a Fortico armoured truck full of cash. The two guards and one civilian are killed. The company, managed by Terry Rossi (Eddie Marsan), beefs up resources and training to try and discourage similar incidents. Experienced guard Patrick "H" Hill (Jason Statham) is one of the new recruits, and veteran Fortico employee Haiden "Bullet" Blaire (Holt McCallany) introduces him to the company's protocols. Another guard, "Boy Sweat" Dave Hancock (Josh Hartnett), resents H's aloof attitude.

H has an investigative agenda and wastes no time imposing his aura and seducing the only female guard Dana (Niamh Algar). He impresses everyone by single-handedly thwarting an attempted heist, then gains legendary status when his sheer presence scares off yet another gang. In flashbacks, his backstory is revealed: he has murky connections to both the underworld and enforcement agencies through the FBI's Agent King (Andy Garcia), and a very personal score to settle. Meanwhile, a gang of ex-military veterans led by Jackson (Jeffrey Donovan) and including the bloodthirsty Jan (Scott Eastwood) plots an audacious job.

Director and co-writer Guy Ritchie re-teams with star Jason Statham to create a high energy yet brooding adaptation of the novel Cash Truck by Nicolas Boukhrief. The four cinematic chapters titled A Dark Spirit, Scorched Earth, Bad Animals, Bad and Lungs, Liver, Spleen, Heart complement Wrath Of Man's titular mood and hint at the playful rage within. The movie rises above stock revenge cliches thanks to high production values, a clever flashback structure, a threatening music score, stylish action scene staging, and Statham's enduring charisma.

An inside mole, gangland wars, revenge most cold, and a half-baked enforcement operation combine for a thick plot featuring four separate groups competing for screen time. The armoured truck guards, Hill's core underworld colleagues, the FBI, and Jackson's crew create too many men (and just one woman) without enough screen time to properly connect them. The Scorched Earth chapter particularly suffers, violence layered upon violence while the dynamic between the Hill and Jackson factions fails to properly latch.

The crucial heist resulting in three deaths kicks-off the drama in the opening scene (filmed in one take and mostly from inside the truck), and is a worthwhile centrepiece. Ritchie returns to the event twice more from different perspectives to fill in the main character's roles. Several other action scenes inject regular doses of excitement, none better than Hill finally revealing his shooting skills and cool temperament by foiling a robbery in progress. The final climactic heist runs ragged and gets close to chaos, but with Statham in command, Wrath Of Man is in good hands.



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Movie Review: The Ottoman Lieutenant (2017)

A romantic drama set on the eastern front of World War One, The Ottoman Lieutenant is a clunky and stale story assembled from expired components.

It's 1914. In Philadelphia, 23 year old idealistic nurse Lillie Rowe (Hera Hilmar) meets Doctor Jude Gresham (Josh Hartnett), who is fund raising for his hospital mission in the village of Van near the east border of the Ottoman Empire. Lillie decides to donate a truck loaded with medical supplies and travels to Istanbul, where dashing Lieutenant Ismail Veli (Michiel Huisman) of the Ottoman Army is assigned to accompany her to Von. With war approaching, Ismail is also tasked with keeping tabs on local rebel activities.

Lillie and Ismail bond during the journey, and upon arrival at Jude's hospital she volunteers as a nurse and meets the mission's founder Doctor Garrett Woodruff (Ben Kingsley). Ismail and Jude both pursue Lillie's heart, but romance becomes more complicated when war erupts and tensions rise between the army and the Christian Armenian population.

A Turkish funded retort to 2016's The Promise, The Ottoman Lieutenant aims for epic overtones in presenting a more sympathetic view of Ottoman actions during the Great War. Here Armenian rebels side with invading Russian forces, and although atrocities against the Armenian population are on display, they are presented within a context of an army stamping out a wartime threat. And of course, Ismail as the heroic Ottoman lieutenant abhors unnecessary bloodshed and risks everything to prevent violence against civilians.

Politics aside, The Ottoman Lieutenant is a bore and would have been considered uninspired back in the 1960s. When it's not plain silly, Jeff Stockwell's script is full of predictable and bland dialogue spouted by dull characters and devoid of any originality or bright sparks. The cast members are in over their heads, none more so than unfortunate Icelandic actress Hera Hilmar, who never convinces as a spirited American woman, her line delivery and narration inflicting physical pain. Reduced to caricature representations of the elegant soldier and utopian doctor respectively, Michiel Huisman and Josh Hartnett are far from the required level to create a compelling romantic triangle. Ben Kingsley appears to wander in from another, darker movie.

Director Joseph Ruben does capture some excellent vistas in the rugged terrain, almost compensating for a stupefyingly antiquated and repetitive Geoff Zanelli music score. Abandoned and incomplete subplots, including guns hidden at the hospital mission and Dr. Woodruff's background and physical ailments, litter the pretty scenery.

The Ottoman Lieutenant attempts to improve the image of a defunct empire, but is defeated by cinematic ineptitude on all sides of the camera.



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Movie Review: Lucky Number Slevin (2006)

A raucous crime thriller, Lucky Number Slevin offers a delectable multi-faceted plot and jaunty execution. A busy story of gangland vendettas offers rich rewards and plenty of barbed wit.

After a series of seemingly unrelated murders including the killing of two bookies and a sniper attack, Goodkat (Bruce Willis) sits next to a young man at an empty bus terminal and recounts a strange story from 1979, when a struggling family was brutally annihilated as a result of a horse race fix gone wrong.

Back in the present Slevin Kelevra (Josh Hartnett) arrives in New York City to stay at the apartment of his friend Nick Fisher, who is mysteriously nowhere to be found. Jovial next-door neighbour Lindsey (Lucy Liu) makes friends with Slevin, but he is soon mistaken for Nick and abducted, twice: first by mobsters working for The Boss (Morgan Freeman), then by goons working for The Rabbi (Ben Kingsley).

The Boss and The Rabbi used to be gangland partners who ran the city's most powerful crime syndicate. Now they have fallen out, The Boss' son has been killed, and he wants Slevin to assassinate The Rabbi's son in retaliation. Meanwhile The Rabbi wants Slevin to repay an outstanding loan. Goodkat is lurking in the shadows, and police detective Brikowski (Stanley Tucci) tries to untangle all the motives as Slevin seeks to survive the impending mayhem.

Plenty of movies have attempted to recreate the sheer verve of Pulp Fiction; few have succeeded as well as Lucky Number Slevin. This is an in-your-face barely-in-control full throttle thriller, a white knuckle wild ride through the world of crime and punishment.

Combining numerous disparate events that slowly converge into a brilliant whole with a collection of memorable characters, Lucky Number Slevin is an intricate narrative puzzle. The film starts with the pieces all over the place, but writer Jason Smilovic and director Paul McGuigan know exactly where they are heading and how to get there. Every detail matters, and as the picture is assembled the narrative wizardry comes to the fore. Of course the plot holes are there to be picked, but overall the story of vendettas, revenge, goons and rogue assassinations is sly and resplendent.

Stylistically McGuigan deploys typical Tarantinoesque touches, including colourful marginal characters, just about everyone lying about almost everything, occasional philosophizing, brief explosions of violence, and oddities like rivals The Boss and The Rabbi occupying apartments across the street from each other. In relative terms the blood and gore are dialed back, and Lucky Number Slevin revels in the power of a single compact trigger event for all the mayhem.

The cast members stay within themselves and allow the script to star. Josh Hartnett is in the middle of the pandemonium as Slevin, and finds one of his career best fitting roles. Without stretching beyond established personas, Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman and Ben Kingsley offer plenty of weighty veteran talent, all three as men still trading in death when they should know better.

Breezy and fierce in equal measures, Lucky Number Slevin runs the perfect race.

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Movie Review: Parts Per Billion (2014)

An end-of-the-world drama and romance, Parts Per Billion features three loosely connected storylines but adds up to less than the sum of its parts.

A war in the Middle East results in biological weapons being launched. Winds spread the lethal airborne germs, triggering massive death on a global scale. In Michigan, three couples await the arrival of the end, with flashbacks filling in their backstories.

Anna (Teresa Palmer) is intently following the news and the looming disaster increases the intensity of her jealous attachment to fiancé and musician Erik (Penn Badgley). He is calmer and less interested in world events. Lawyer Mia (Rosario Dawson) has a successful career, while her husband Len (Josh Hartnett) is underemployed but supportive. Their relationship is under stress because she did not discourage the advances of an office colleague. They take refuge in their sealed basement as the germs arrive.

The elderly Andy and Esther (Frank Langella and Gena Rowlands) are at the hospital for medical tests when the airborne contamination strikes. Oxygen masks help them survive. He is struggling with feelings of guilt, as he was paid large sums of money to help develop the biological weapons now destroying humanity. The three couples share some associations: Erik is the grandson of Andy and Esther, Mia successfully defended and acquitted Andy in a legal case, and Len's sister Sarah (Alexis Bledel) is a nurse looking after Esther at the hospital.

Sharing some of the same contaminant properties as 2011's Contagion, Parts Per Billion focuses more on people and less on events. Writer and director Brian Horiuchi is interested in the lives and loves of relatively ordinary people, and leaves the broader response to the crisis, if any, off screen. The six central characters are relatable, but far from profoundly interesting. They are also passive victims and observers rather than protagonists.

From the vantage point of the three couples, people are dying en masse, television reports reveal powerless elected officials fleeing, and opportunities for salvation or rescue are not even mentioned. A sealed basement and stocks of supplies offer hope for Mia and Len, but only if they can tolerate each other in confined surroundings. Oxygen masks extend life for Andy and Esther as long as they can find more canisters at the hospital. Anna and Erik just embrace the end with understandable anxiety but overall ambivalent acceptance.

With the title referring to the measure of contamination but also the miniscule relevance of every individual in a global context, it may be fully Horiuchi's intent to highlight the banal nature of life and predictable appreciation of love as the end comes into focus. But the movie suffers mightily from the absence of momentum. Other than small revelations about the couples, not much of anything actually happens over 98 minutes spread thin across three sub-stories. The repetitive shallow expressions of love, anger, frustration and regret struggle to leave an impression.

Parts Per Billion rides in on an evil wind, but exits in a whimper.

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Movie Review: Sin City (2005)

An adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novels, Sin City is an artistically stunning anthology crime thriller. With every frame a stylistic triumph, the film jolts the comics to life, ironically in a grim and crime-infested city where life is cheap and hope goes to die.

After a brief prologue featuring an assassin (Josh Hartnett) and his target (Marley Shelton) at a rooftop party, the film features three loosely related stories, with the adventure of detective John Hartigan (Bruce Willis) split into two chapters. With his heart close to failing, Hartigan is about to retire, and as a final mission sets off to rescue 11 year old Nancy Callahan (Makenzie Vega) from child killer Roark Junior (Nick Stahl). Hartigan's partner Bob (Michael Madsen) tries to convince him not to go through with it, but Hartigan is determined to end his career with a bang. The film's final major chapter returns to this story, with Junior identified as the son of Senator Roark (Powers Booth), and a grown-up Nancy (Jessica Alba) still in peril.

In the second story, ugly brute Marv (Mickey Rourke) is enchanted by prostitute Goldie (Jaime King), but finds her dead in his bed after a night of passion. Marv bruises his way through town to identify the killer, a revenge quest that involves his parole officer Lucille (Carla Gugino) and Goldie's twin sister Wendy. The trail leads Marv to maniac cannibal Kevin (Elijah Wood), who is protected by the all-powerful Cardinal Patrick Henry Roark (Rutger Hauer).

The third story takes place in Old Town, where a group of prostitutes rule the streets. Gail (Rosario Dawson) is their leader, and her man is Dwight McCarthy (Owen Wilson). When a gang of thugs led by corrupt cop "Jackie Boy" Rafferty (Benicio del Toro) first intimidate Shellie (Brittany Murphy) and then Gail's girls, a bloodbath ensues, with silent martial arts expert Miho (Devon Aoki) having a field day. The carnage destroys the fragile balance between the working girls and the cops. An epilogue again features the return of the assassin, as well as Becky (Alexis Bledel), one of Gail's girls.

Co-directed by Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez with Quentin Tarantino credited as a special guest director, Sin City is a visual feast of cinematic artistry. Filmed in black and white but with isolated splashes of vivid colours, the film dives into the deep end of adult graphic novel territory, where extreme violence is a shortcut to every problem and every scene threatens to end with a gory punctuation mark.

To survive for any length in this milieu, the men possess superhuman strength, and the women use a combination of weaponry and seduction to carve out their territory. Heads are routinely bashed or severed and body parts are chopped off for fun: Sin City has no pretense of law and order and film is not for the faint of heart.

Across all its stories, Sin City easily lands its punches on traditional targets: politicians and priests are the symbols of corruption hiding behind dirty veils of authority, literally spawning and protecting generations of evil and mayhem. Prostitutes (Goldie, Gail and her entourage), cynical but honest goons (Marv), righteous killers (Miho) and honest cops willing to bend the rules (Hartigan) are the heroes of Miller's world.

Men propelled into action to protect or avenge women, who may or may not need help, is a prevailing theme powering the film. Hartigan's final mission is to rescue Nancy; Marv will tear up the town in memory of the only woman who was ever nice to him; and Dwight risks his life to try and save the ladies of Old Town from annihilation.

The Old Town segment is relatively the weakest, Dwight and the gaggle of girls tangling with Jackie Boy never quite clicking as individual characters worthy of attention, and a few too many mob and mercenary baddies show up to muddle the objective. Jackie Boy himself and the dialogue-challenged Miho emerge as the most memorable contributors, which probably wasn't the intent.

In contrast, the Marv story works best and is delivered as pure cinematic gold. The relentless revenge quest of a most ugly man perfectly fits the film's dank soul, his indestructible forward momentum cutting a swath through sin city and all the way to its religious core. Mickey Rourke as Marv has never been better, transformed into a half-monster yet with his damaged moral compass somehow still functioning.

Slick, hyperkinetic and cynical to a fault, Sin City is an enthralling experience.

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Movie Review: Here On Earth (2000)

A stultifyingly atrocious teen romantic triangle drama, Here On Earth is a stinking miracle of rehashed ideas mixed with bad writing and lousy acting.

Rich teenager Kelley (Chris Klein) is about to graduate as the class valedictorian from a prestigious private college located near a working class suburb of Boston. Demonstrating ridiculously poor judgment on the eve of graduation, Chris goes for a wild joy ride in a brand new Mercedes, antagonizes local blue collar teen Jasper (Josh Hartnett), and makes a move for Jasper's long-time girlfriend Samantha (Leelee Sobieski). The evening ends with an old fashioned car chase and the two boys wreck the local (but fortunately empty) diner in an impressive fireball.

Kelley and Jasper get away with a light sentence that requires them to rebuild the diner, with Kelley forced to stay with Jasper's parents over the summer. The boys spend their days sneering at each other at the construction site, while Sam starts openly flirting with Kelley. They fall in love, but a devastating disease is waiting to dramatically enter the story.

Possibly one of the worst written movies to somehow receive respectable financing and a studio release, Here On Earth was scripted by Michael Seitzman and directed by Mark Piznarski with a reported $15 million budget. While some moments of adequate cinematography and lush scenery are pleasing to the eye, it is otherwise difficult to see how this turkey could have consumed millions in production dollars.

The black hole at the heart of the drama is a script devoid of any genuine emotion, sympathy or believable characters. Kelley and Samantha emerge as the romantic leads, and both are distinctly unlikable and incomprehensible characters, their on-screen behaviour totally inconsistent with their background. Kelley is supposed to be the class valedictorian yet spends the first 30 minutes of the film behaving like a total jerk, and then somehow he has to become the heart of the story. Seitzman throws in an oh-so-original stern dad and dead mom to justify Kelley's actions, and so he's not such a bad kid after all.

Meanwhile Samantha discards a life-long friendship with Jasper to chase after the kid who destroyed her family's business. Desperate to make his heroine more appealing, Seitzman hatches a serious ailment for the young lovers to contend with. They may be a dreadful couple, but they have tragic issues to deal with.

Klein, Hartnett and Sobieski read their lines with dead looks in their eyes, with Klein and Hartnett breaking out into shirtless macho fights at regular intervals. The supporting cast features actors who should know better than to appear as the parents of these kids, including Michael Rooker, Bruce Greenwood and Annette O'Toole.

Somehow in amongst the dross there are dreamy lines of dialogue about what heaven must be like. Never mind that, Here On Earth is cinematic hell, unearthed.

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Movie Review: Black Hawk Down (2001)

Based on real events, Black Hawk Down is a stellar war movie. The depiction of the Battle of Mogadishu is a stirring story of a mission gone wrong, and the men who had to subsequently rescue each other and limit the damage.

It's October 1993, and US forces including Army Rangers and elite Delta Force troops are stationed in Mogadishu, Somalia. Initially deployed on a famine relief mission, the US military is getting embroiled in a local civil war among squabbling warlords who do not hesitate to use starvation as a weapon. Powerful militia leader Mohamed Farrah Aidid is designated as the worst of the bad guys. Delta Force operators do capture arms dealer Osman Ali Atto (George Harris), but are no closer to shutting down Aidid's operation.

Based on sketchy intelligence, Major William Garrison (Sam Shepard) hurriedly cobbles together a mission to try and capture Aidid and his top aides while they meet at a safe house. American troops backed by helicopters leave the safety of their airport headquarters and delve into the dense Aidid stronghold of Bakaara Market within the labyrinthine confines of Mogadishu. Intended to last less than an hour, everything that can go wrong on the mission does go wrong, with thousands of militiamen taking up arms against the small American extraction team and shooting down two Black Hawk helicopters. The American forces get caught in a nightlong quagmire, incurring heavy losses while they try to rescue fallen soldiers and escape from a city filled with countless enemies.

Directed by Ridley Scott and based on the best-selling book by Mark Bowden, Black Hawk Down is an exhilarating war movie. After a slowish start to establish the premise, the film explodes into an unrelenting two hours of non-stop intensity as the battle is covered from several angles. As far as representing the grim agony of street warfare in third world cities against overwhelming opposing forces, the film stands a class apart. Scott and cinematographer Sławomir Idziak capture the chaos, confusion and danger-around-every-corner that characterizes modern urban warfare.

Soldiers are separated from each other, seemingly straightforward tasks like getting to the crash sites and rescuing the pilots turn into cascading disasters, with the rescuers needing rescue. Every block is a battleground, every window, doorway and rooftop a source of danger. Soldiers perform impromptu surgery, while others push ahead despite wounds and exposure to comrades killed under horrific circumstances. The film rams home both the insanity of war and the courage of the men who make it their profession.

Black Hawk Down does get a few things wrong. The Somalis are all faceless hordes, the definition of a blood thirsty enemy presented with no context. Back in the early 1950s Hollywood started to humanize natives in Westerns and then Germans in World War II movies. To produce a 2001 film without a modicum of perspective on what the other side is willing to die for is quite myopic.

Also relatively poor is the lack of distinction among the American fighting men. Josh Harnett, Tom Sizemore and Eric Bana emerge as individuals due to defined character traits, but the rest of the men are effectively interchangeable, and once bulked up in equipment and helmets, they all look the same. The large cast includes Orlando Bloom, Ewan McGregor, Tom Hardy, Jeremy Piven and William Fichtner.

But the objective of the film is to celebrate the armed forces, and to snatch a moral victory out of an astounding defeat which carried huge local tactical and overall strategic resonance. After the Mogadishu humiliation the US was seen as weak, defeatable, and quick to cut and run. But at the level of the fighting men, Black Hawk Down does reinforce the one-for-all and all-for-one ethos of the military, the heroic sacrifices, and no-man-left-behind principles. Against overwhelming odds the street battles feature countless examples of men risking their lives to help others, a band of brothers mentality that turns individuals into an army.

Loud, severe and imperfect, Black Hawk Down passionately captures the ugly realities of war as waged in hostile cities.

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Movie Review: The Virgin Suicides (1999)

A tender story of how girlhood can go terribly wrong, The Virgin Suicides is a wispy tragedy, softly unfolding with a sentient style.

It's 1975, in the suburbs of Detroit. Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon (James Woods and Kathleen Turner) have five daughters ranging in age from 13 to 17. Mr. Lisbon is a schoolteacher, his wife a homemaker, and they are deeply religious, keeping their daughters sheltered and away from social activities. Therese (Leslie Hayman), Mary (A. J. Cook), Bonnie (Chelse Swain), Lux (Kirsten Dunst), and Cecilia (Hanna R. Hall) become the subject of fascination bordering on obsession for the boys in their neighbourhood. The level of curiosity is amplified when the youngest girl Cecilia attempts suicide by slashing her wrists, but she is saved.

Dr. Horniker (Danny DeVito) advises the Lisbons that they need to allow their daughters to mingle more with their classmates. The first party hosted by the girls ends tragically when Cecilia does indeed succeed in killing herself. The surviving sisters tentatively start to socialize more, but when the free-spirited Lux falls under the spell of Trip Fontaine (Josh Hartnett), the coolest boy in the school, Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon clamp down harder, triggering grim consequences.

Sofia Coppola's directorial debut, adapting the Jeffrey Eugenides novel, is a hypnotizing journey into the perilous world of growing up. The Virgin Suicides is a bleak story delivered with a delicate touch, capturing the suburban melancholia that emerges with the loss of innocence. Coppola bathes the film in happy colours, soft light, and an airy, remarkably open atmosphere, contrasting the image of flourishing suburbia with the suffocation within families behind closed doors. Death is hovering nearby, the disease-infested neighbourhood elm trees the subject of much agony: should they be left to die naturally or chopped to avoid infecting others.

Seen through the eyes of teenaged boys, The Virgin Suicides treats girls in adolescence as a fragile mystery fraught with peril. They are easily knocked off course by good intentions tarnished with religious dogma, misguided parental rules metastasizing into a horror show of desperation fuelled by confinement. And the film stands outside the girls and observes them as objects of fascination, young women emerging as enigmas to their parents, and most acutely to the boys who would, under normal circumstances, become the men in their lives.

Despite the raging drama of girls fighting to breathe the oxygen of adulthood, Coppola constructs The Virgin Suicides with remarkable calm, and the film avoids guilt trips, finger pointing and recriminations. Below the seemingly staid surface, the tension may boil, but in the day to day lives of the girls, their school and their neighbourhood, the emotions are in check. Smatterings of gossip and interludes of uneasy silences hint at the turmoil; most of what is wrong is left unsaid. The soundtrack by French duo Air perfectly captures the dolefulness of the film, Playground Love a devastatingly evocative theme song.

In addition to Woods, Turner and DeVito, the supporting cast is sprinkled with interesting faces. As Trip Fontaine, Josh Hartnett delivers a refreshingly assured and animated performance. Michael Paré plays the adult Trip, Scott Glenn has a small role as a priest, and Giovanni Ribisi provides low-key narration. A young Hayden Christensen appears as one of the neighbourhood boys.

But this is a story of five sisters, and as the most adventurous of the Lisbon daughters, Kirsten Dunst shines in a role that lives in the twilight zone between individualism and calamity. Never outwardly rebellious, Dunst allows Lux to smile through life's limits as her young mind assesses ever dwindling options, from breaking a strict curfew to exploring what the roof has to offer when the outdoors are off limits. And when the conditions of growing up become even more stifling, she invites the curious boys indoors, to discover for themselves the images of truncated hope.

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Movie Review: Pearl Harbor (2001)

A romantic love triangle set before, during and after the Japanese attack, Pearl Harbor features a sensational 40 minute recreation of the raid, but is otherwise weighed down by clunky writing and listless performances.

Tennessee boyhood friends and lifelong aspiring pilots Rafe McCawley (Ben Affleck) and Danny Walker (Josh Hartnett) enlist together and join the air command of Major Doolittle (Alec Baldwin). During the recruitment process Rafe meets and falls in love with nurse Evelyn Johnson (Kate Beckinsale). With the United States not yet involved in World War Two, Rafe is granted a transfer to the Eagle Squadron of American pilots fighting in the Battle Of Britain, while Danny and Evelyn are stationed at Pearl Harbor.

Rafe proves himself to be an ace pilot, but his plane is lost during a dogfight and he is assumed killed in action. Gradually the grieving Danny and Evelyn get close, and after a few months they fall in love. In the meantime, the imperialistic Japanese government is negotiating peace with the United States while secretly plotting a devastating blow to the US Pacific fleet. Rafe, who had survived his crash and was sheltered by the resistance in France, returns to Pearl Harbor only to find his best buddy and girlfriend now in a full-fledged relationship, on the eve of the audacious Japanese attack.

With Titanic proving that famous real-life disasters can be recast as grand fictional romances and achieve great box office success, Pearl Harbor uses history as rough background for a three-hour romance. Pearl Harbor aims more for the dreamy universe of From Here To Eternity than the technical reality of Tora! Tora! Tora!. It's a reasonable effort, eschewing historical accuracy for fictional characters caught in the crosshairs of extraordinary events.

But when the emphasis is supposed to be on tenderness and people rather than action and machines, Michael Bay is likely the most wrong director to be at the helm. Bay is much more comfortable with exploding hardware than exploring human emotions. The romance elements never add up to any level of convicing passion, with neither the Randall Wallace script nor Bay's directing able to create memorable moments or sufficient chemistry between the three leads.

The casting choices don't help. Affleck carries a smugness that helps him in the cockpit but oozes insincerity in the romantic scenes, while the stiff Josh Hartnett labours mightily but to no effect trying to prove that he can actually act. Kate Beckinsale is the best of the three and could have smoldered, but she never finds the required masculine reciprocity from neither Affleck nor Hartnett to catch fire.

Wallace also packs in too much into the story. Before the attack on Pearl Harbor there is a side trip with Rafe to the Battle Of Britain, and after the attack Rafe and Danny participate in the training and execution of the Doolittle raid. Compared to the elaborate treatment of the central attack, the other two military sub-stories are rushed, underdeveloped and ultimately unnecessary.

Despite the mammoth running length, none of the supporting cast are given enough to do, and the likes of Jon Voight (President Roosevelt), Baldwin (Doolittle), Sizemore (as a soldier stationed at a small airfield who helps rustle up a modicum of resistance during the attack) and Gooding Jr. (as real-life hero Petty Officer Miller) are reduced to symbolic snippets. The Japanese commanders planning the attack never progress beyond grim faced men spouting stock lines.

This leaves the film with its centrepiece to celebrate, and its a masterpiece of battlefield recreation. Bay comes into his own, filling the sky with Japanese Zeros, the ground with thundering explosions and blazing fires, and the sea with large battleships being pummeled and with drowning, desperate men. It's a stunning sequence deserving of full praise, Bay capturing the fury, chaos and brutality of the "date which will live in infamy". Ironically, a film that attempted to emphasize romance at the expense of hardware is almost saved by the roar of battle squashing the intended sweetness of convoluted love.

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Movie Review: The Black Dahlia (2006)

A laborious neo-noir film, The Black Dahlia aims for a mysterious, smoke-heavy mood but is severely undermined by inferior performances, lack of chemistry and an incomprehensible plot.

Dwight 'Bucky' Bleichert (Josh Hartnett) and Lee Blanchard (Aaron Eckhart) are two Los Angeles police officers in the mid-1940s. Both are former boxers who never quite made it to the top, and the police department squeezes some publicity and public support by staging a bout between them. They subsequently become partners and friends, both enjoying the company of Lee's girlfriend Kay Lake (Scarlett Johansson). But for unclear reasons, Lee starts to get agitated when he learns that criminal Bobby DeWitt, a bank robber and Kay's former boyfriend, is about to be released from prison.

Los Angeles is gripped by the brutal murder of starlet Elizabeth Ann Short (Mia Kirshner), whose body is found carved in half, the blood drained from her torso, her organs missing, and her face mutilated. Short was involved in making underground porn films, and Bucky tracks down Madeleine Linscott (Hilary Swank), one of her co-stars. Madeleine comes from a rich and influential family, and she becomes Bucky's lover in exchange for keeping her name out of the news. As he tries to uncover the murderer, Bucky eventually meets Madeleine's strange parents Emmett (John Kavanagh) and Ramona (Fiona Shaw), but the DeWitt case suddenly explodes and consumes Lee's life.

Based on the book by James Ellroy, The Black Dahlia aims to duplicate the success achieved by the 1997 adaptation of Ellroy's L.A. Confidential. But while director Brian De Palma does succeed in creating a grim, corrupt and depressed environment crawling with characters motivated by pure self-interest, that's as far as The Black Dahlia goes. After a tedious and ultimately meaningless intro focused on the irrelevant boxing showdown, the plot careens off a cliff and into swampy territory where everyone has an incredible secret to hide, and every surprise has to one-up the one that preceded it.

By the time The Black Dahlia reveals all its convoluted plot twists, every possible sordid sauce in the pantry has been consumed. The femme fatale, the porn movies, the blackmail plot, the deranged woman, the corrupt cop, the missing cash, the gruesome murder, the illegitimate child, hints of a threesome, and stronger hints of incest. But in a case of quantity overwhelming quality, the film jumps from one jumbled reveal to another with hardly any emotional impact, the plot clumsily bent out of shape rather than enhanced by the shocks.

The impenetrable narrative is further weighed down by a sub-par and uncharismatic cast, lacking chemistry and delivering lacklustre performances. Josh Hartnett is stiffer than a plank, speaking with a despondent mumble, his narration aiming for a dark vibe but sounding like bubbles from the bottom of the swimming pool. Aaron Eckhart goes a bit nuts early on, jumping from acting to overacting, for reasons that the movie chooses to hide for one of the many later twists. And Scarlett Johansson has too many stop-and-stare moments, her hesitant communication conveying uncertainty about the material rather than genuine immersion.

Hilary Swank does a bit better, getting into the spirit of the accumulating absurdities, her performance a combination of sultry seductiveness and a twinkle in the eye. Mia Kirshner is seen only on films within the film, mostly being auditioned for her porn flicks, and ironically she radiates more life and charisma than the other, living characters.

Too dense for its own good, The Black Dahlia tries to get by on an abundance of style but ultimately folds itself into a black hole.

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