Movies do many things. They can make the strongest person cry or the sternest person laugh. All it takes is a couple of hours. Knowing the greatness films can achieve, it pains me to know how many average and emotionless films have been released in recent times. This is a short review of three such films.
Let’s start with a little film called “Gothika” about a psychiatrist at a mental institution who claims to be haunted by the spirit of a dead girl. Prompted by the ghost, she proceeds to murder her husband, an action which, predictably, gets her committed to the asylum that she worked for.
Although the movie has some strong points, including a strikingly “Panic Room”-esque editing style, its major flaw is its incredibly generic story line. It’s one of those “I’m haunted by spirits that want me to solve their unjust murder and in the process I will learn that someone I am close to had something to do with it and that person will try to stop me from uncovering the plot” type of movies.
It’s “Stir of Echoes,” “What Lies Beneath” and a dozen other similarly styled suspense/horror flics all over again. This is not to say it doesn’t deliver the occasional scare, because it does. There is just not enough to bring it to above average.
I don’t want to nitpick, but if a psychiatrist went insane, wouldn’t it be some kind of violation to keep her locked up in the place she worked not a week earlier? That just didn’t sit right with me.
Another thing that didn’t sit right with me was “The Missing.” Now, this film isn’t so much bad as it subpar by the director’s standards. This film was directed by Ron Howard, maker of such great films as “Apollo 13” and “A Beautiful Mind.” He could have made a great movie about a frontier-era woman battling Indians who steal her daughter to sell into slavery in Mexico. The problem is, he doesn’t. The film is slow and underwhelming.
There were some good moments, and unlike the last film I reviewed, it had a far more original plot, notwithstanding the stereotypical strong-willed western female character who can handle anything. That has been overdone.
I enjoyed some of the characters, including Tommy Lee Jones, and the villain was detestably well made for the screen.
Which brings me back to what I said earlier. It’s only bad by the director’s standards. Ron Howard has a lot to live up to.
Now, let’s shift from directing geniuses to the directing scum of the world. Richard Donner’s “Timeline” is, by all meanings of the word, awful. I did not read the book of the same name. However, as a fan of Michael Chrichton, I can only hope his writing was better than Donner’s directing.
Donner, one of the oldest directors in the business, has made the most clichÇd, underdeveloped, paradox-filled junk heap of a film that I don’t even know how to begin to describe it.
For starters, let me say that if you are going to make a movie about time travel, at least try to follow some kind of scientific law. In the film, a group of archeologists travel back to the dark ages and get stuck. They say things like “Hey, don’t do that, it could change the course of human history” all the while killing people who could be the ancestors of the person who invented the Polio Vaccine or, God forbid, the television.
The flaws of “Timeline” go far beyond time travel incongruities. How about the fact that the characters in this film are so emotionless, so without depth, that on the rare occasion when one of them died, I didn’t care?
Running on guesses, coincidences and cinematic clichÇs, this movie fails miserably to be the epic story it pretends to be. An experienced director like Donner, who has been at it since the late 50’s, has no excuse for garbage like this. He should be making the kind of movie that keeps the audience entertained from start to finish.
It saddens me to see so much wasted talent, but I can’t stand the likes of Paul Walker, Halle Berry or Richard Donner. So maybe the talent isn’t so wasted after all. Hopefully, these people will stop making movies after they realize they are no good at it.
Oh well, at least I have “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World” to keep me company in this long winter of mediocrity. Hopefully, as spring returns, so too will engrossing and exciting entertainment.