Movies

Harlan Coben has made a nice living out of writing typically American novels, stories of kidnap and murder with complex plots and mostly happy endings. Imagine my surprise when Tell No One was turned into a very French film last year. Ne le dis à personne is surprisingly successful in moving the story to Paris while not neglecting too much of Coben’s complex plot.  The cast are a bunch of familiar French character actors plus Kristin Scott Thomas. And Coben in a cameo as a man at a train station. There’s a bit of a lull in the middle,...

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The Reaping manages the strange trick of being a bit dull despite containing everything you might expect in a horror movie. Hilary Swank plays a former missionary (?) whose family is massacred in Africa and unsurprisingly loses her faith, subsequently dedicating her life to disproving miracles Dawkins-style. She ends up in a small Louisiana town trying to prevent what appears to be a series of Old Testament plagues, conveniently happening in order. It’s directed by Stephen Hopkins, who avoids credibility problems by going way over the top and  dispensing with any connection to realism. Among the supporting cast is...

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For those too young to remember, the Zodiac  serial killer operated in San Francisco in the late 60s and early 70s, and was never caught. This movie is based on journalist Robert Graysmith’s book, and concentrates on the effects of the case on Graysmith and his colleagues as well as the SFPD police. It comes to a fairly definite conclusion given the less-than-conclusive real-life story, and as usual Fincher packs an enormous amount of detail in. Jake Gyllenhaal is OK as the younger Graysmith but doesn’t really convince when he’s older, Robert Downey is unsurprisingly very convincing as his...

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There’s a whole genre (getting increasingly tired) of ‘people waking up in locked basements’ movies, and Unknown is one of the better examples. An added twist here is that all the characters have been gassed so they don’t even  know who they are, except that some of them are kidnappers and some are victims. A fine cast gets to play out the puzzle, led by Jim Caviezel and Barry Pepper, and it’s less than 90  minutes long. There’s something vaguely unsatisfactory about the resolution, and it’s hard to develop any sympathy for the characters when they could all turn...

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Captivity caused a big fuss, due mainly to its tasteless (and inaccurate) billboard advertising campaign. Now it’s finally here, it turns out to be nothing more than a remake of Misery with occasional bits of violence. Elisha Cuthbert, who spent most of 24 being menaced by cougars or locked in basements with nutters, manages to avoid any typecasting by dropping the cougars for this one. She plays a model who awakes trapped in a Saw-style basement, with only a Jimmy Carr look-alike for company, and with occasional visits from another bloke dressed in black overalls. The most obvious plot...

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Disturbia was a huge hit in US cinemas long before its UK cinema release. Shia LaBeouf (star of Transformers) plays a teenager placed under house arrest, tied to his luxury pad by electronic ankle bracelet. Before you can say ‘this is just like Rear Window’, he notices that creepy neighbour David Morse bears a resemblance to a serial killer in the news bulletins. And that he has another new neighbour in the attractive shape of Sarah Roemer (who looks at least 25 but is mystifyingly in the same school year as our hero). Anyway, it’s pretty tense, Morse is...

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