As always, let’s let it stand that a mild spoiler warning is in effect…

For whatever else may be wrong with it, “Boogeyman” has one of the best opening scenes I’ve witnessed in awhile. Expertly photographed, well-acted and scored, perfectly setting up the visual motifs that one generally expects from a film called “Boogeyman.” It’s one of those scenes that captures an “I’ve been there” childhood-experience moments, then beautifully transforms it into a large-scale “your worst nightmare” sequence; one of those scenes that any good spook story needs.

Unfortunately, the end of the beginning spells the beginning of the end of anything really cool or notable coming from “Boogeyman.”



The story: Our 20-something hero has issues. They seem to stem from having had his father walk out on him, and (it’s implied, then puzzlingly dropped) the resulting mental deterioration of his mother. It’s not that simple, of course: Our hero, as a boy, insisted that his father didn’t walk out… rather, he’s sure that his father was really sucked into the closet by The Boogeyman. Despite an apparently lengthy run of therapy, this belief has left him traumatized to this day, and terrified of closet doors as a bonus. Advised that “spending the night” in his old, now-abandoned house will cure his ills (no, really, thats actually what happens,) he hunkers down for a night at the old homestead to “face his fears.” No prizes for guessing that the house is plenty scary-looking enough without a Boogeyman present, or that suspicious locals and yes, even “the girl that got away” start turning up to propel the story.

I won’t spoil the ending for you, but I don’t think it counts as the same thing if I tell you something that most definately ISN’T the ending, (or, rather, the “answer.”) I only bring it up because it’s absence is sort of a pleasant surprise. Anyway, here goes: No one in the principal cast of “Boogeyman” ever turns out to actually be The Boogeyman in their previously-unknown schizophrenic alternate-personality. Remember when that sentence would seem like a given? But for the last few years, “the bad guy is really the good guy’s eeeevil other-half” has become the go-to “gotcha” for sub-average thrillers, so I found it sort of a nice surprise that “Boogeyman” doesn’t go for it even though it would easily “fit” the movie.

The flip side of the coin is, sadly, that “Boogeyman” doesn’t really “go for” much of anything. It’s well directed and moves at a fluid pace, and for awhile there it looks like we may actually be heading somewhere interesting; but instead it bogs itself down in a clunky “all hell breaks loose” finale that would be welcome if the film had bothered to give us more reason to care about what’s going on and what it all means.

I was hoping that the film was going to highlight some of the “origins” behind the mythology of “Boogeymen,” (it’s generally thought that the term is a modern evolution of swamp creatures or “boggy-men” of old European folklore,) or at least create an interesting mythology of it’s own, but sadly this is not the case: There’s as little going on with The Boogeyman himself as there is with his titular film. The closest we get to a “big idea” in this case is that the movie seems to imply that The Boogeyman is not only “The Closet Monster” but also “The Monster Under the Bed” and “The Bathtub Drain Monster,”along with a few others I might have missed (he’s also, apparently, “The Runs-Out-of-Ideas-and-Just-Runs-Up-The-Stairs-And-Decks-You Monster,” but I’d never heard of that one before.)

This is one of those scary movies where at (or near) the finale, as surviving characters stand around gravely intoning “it’s over…”, it’s only the audience that seems to think “it’s over… except for how you explain all those missing people and property damage.” For awhile, it looks like the film might even head into interesting psychological dimensions about fear and trauma, but in the end all we’ve got is a gussied-up monster movie, featuring really one of the most dull-looking “monsters” in a good while.

FINAL RATING: 4/10

There are certain “dream projects” that get talked up for so long that, eventually, even eternally optimistic film geeks start to get a little “tell me another one” about them. One such project, or rather, “prospect,” is that of Sam Raimi reuniting with Bruce Campbell to make another “Evil Dead” movie. (prior installments: “Evil Dead,” “Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn” and Army of Darkness.”) It seems like not a week goes by that we don’t get yet another report of director Raimi (currently working on his 3rd “Spider-Man” film) either confirming or denying plans to continue the franchise that made him famous.

First it was coming. Then it wasn’t. Then ED’s “Ash” (Bruce Campbell) was going to battle the leads in a “Freddy vs. Jason” follow-up. Then that was dead. Then ED4 was back on. Then it wasn’t. At this point, I’m not believing that ED4 is coming until ten minutes after I finish watching it.

Sometime last month, a new wrinkle was added as millions of web-browsing fans were met with the kind of news that immediately screams “Nightmare Scenario” to geekdom: “Evil Dead remake planned!” Nothing puts a film geek’s shields up like the (lately) all-too-frequent prospect of a “cult” classic of yesteryear getting a “new, hip, fresh” makeover for the masses. The wrinkle to the wrinkle, however, thrust the issue into an entirely different paradigm: It was Raimi himself, and ever-present collaborator Rob Tapert, who would produce the remake through his “Ghost House” productions label, (which became a major financial powerhouse in the horror-movie game after releasing “The Grudge.”)

And now the third twist: “Bloody-Disgusting.com,” who can be counted on to scoop pretty much everyone when it comes to horror movies, has offered up an early tease of a coming interview with Raimi…

http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/index.php?Show=3270&Template=newsfull

…wherein he seems to drop this tantalizing bombshell: “There will be an Evil Dead 4, and there will ALSO be an Evil Dead Remake.”

Ooooo… kay?

“Aint-It-Cool-News’ ” leader Harry Knowles joined in with some rumor-mongering of his own…

http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=19340

…floating the prospect that Raimi is seeking South Korean filmmaker Chan Wook Park to helm the remake.

So here’s what I think is going on here:

In my estimate, Raimi and Tapert (assuming this is all true and not miscomunication of some kind) are trying to recreate for the “Evil Dead” franchise what occured for George Romero’s zombie series when the “Dawn of the Dead” remake came out: The remake wasn’t really quite so terrible as most fans (entirely logically) hoped it would be, it was a big hit with the public and it drew big money and interest toward Romero’s “real” zombie follow-up, the in-production “Land of The Dead.”



So what I’m guessing is that Raimi’s “math” on this is reading as follows: “ED is still primarily a cult item, famous director or not. All the fans are going to go see it no matter what, but who knows who else will? So with a remake we can aim for a big ‘no baggage’ hit for Ghost House, and ED4 can only benefit from that as well.” Good plan, if it works…

What makes me curious (and also cautiously cautious) about the idea of a remake is… as much as I love “Evil Dead”, there really isn’t that much there to “remake.” It’s a “look what we can do” indie horror opus, a showcase for early gore FX, Raimi’s innovative directing style and Bruce Campbell’s manic lead performance. All three of those elements, by design, won’t be present in any remake, so what’s left? A bunch of friends go to a cabin in the woods, read a book they shouldn’t, bad stuff happens. In other words: There’s seemingly limitless room for the right director, the right cast and the right FX team to have a good time and show their stuff, just as Raimi and company did in the first place.

And really, if remaking the first one is what it takes to finally get #4, fine. Do it.

…About tonight’s “State of The Union.” I won’t be watching live (I’ll catch the news reruns later,) partly because I’ve got stuff to do, and also because I want to be in a more evening-like, non-cynical mood to watch what promises to be the surreal spectacle of a U.S. President spending most of the rundown of American democracy’s “state” instead talking about the state of the new Iraqi democracy. Also, really, watching Bush struggle through a speech without any comical mispeak is sort of like watching Clinton struggle through the same without any comical mistruth, it’s just kinda hard for me to take live.

But, before I go out, just four thoughts I think we all need to keep in mind these days:

1.) Having voted for Bush does not make you “moral.”



2.) Having voted for Kerry does not make you “intelligent.”



3.) The “red states” are not “The Heartland of America”…



4.) …anymore than the “blue states” are “The Brainland of America.”

Uwe Boll’s “Alone in The Dark” is actually faring even worse than his prior effort, “House of The Dead” at the box-office. Many are chalking it up to the fact that films based on video games are never all that good or successful, but I find that theory has a fatal flaw: Hardcore gaming aficionados aside, no one has heard of this franchise, much less knows that it’s a video game. My take: Only one film in a genre can be ultra-successful at a time, and every who went to their local theater this past weekend seeking a poorly-made, cliche-ridden horror film chose “Hide & Seek” instead.

Normally, this kind of bad “luck” in a row would kill a filmmaker’s career, or at least wound it, robbing me of the “pleasure” of watching more of Boll’s exercises in finely-crafted Perfect Awfulness. “Fortunately,” Boll is no ordinary bad filmmaker… his next game-based actioner, “BloodRayne,” is mostly-done and heading our way soon enough. In fact, the Movie Gods have already blessed us with a teaser-trailer that has me positively giddy with anticipation.

Click to download here (or right-click and “Save Target As” for Windows/MSIE users)

http://media.cinema-post.de/BRay_TTeas.mpg

Based on yet another modestly-successful video game that no one was really aching to see turned into a film, “BloodRayne” is about a statuesque redhead vampiress who fights Nazis. Boll’s film, on the other hand, takes place in the Middle Ages and purports to be an “origin story” for the heroine. Whatever. Kristanna Loken, (thats two n’s and one k, as Google is no doubt sick of having to tell me,) the German model who you’ll remember as “Terminator 3’s” Terminatrix.

Me, I got my first look at her back in another video game-based arena, the defunct “Mortal Kombat” TV series. Now, after you watch that trailer and get a look at her in costume, take a look at her in costume from the TV show here:

http://kristannaforever.free.fr/photos/kristanna%20loken%20mortal%20kombat.jpg

Is it just me, or are the two “looks” just a little too similar?



“T3” I’m not so hot on, but it’s made Loken a rising name, and as far as I’m concerned you can never have too many gorgeous models willing to squeeze into skimpy, fetishistic costumes for genre flicks. B-movie mainstays Michael Madsen and Michelle Rodriguez are fellow good guys, but the biggest (okay, 3rd biggest) reason to look forward to this is the simply inexplicable presence of Sir Ben Kingsley (no, seriously!) as the villian. I’m not kidding, he’s in this, watch the trailer.

So if your like me, and you just can’t get enough awful horror/action movies and/or girls in leather swinging swords at one another, this one could just be a dream come true…

P.S. MY dream involving Kristanna Loken, of course, already came true about a year back, when she made a new friend in pop singer Pink:

http://www.celebritympg.com/kloken/kristanna-loken-nude_009.jpg

(ignore the title, it’s a clean link)

I realize I’ve bee posting a lot of material about “The Passion” recently, mostly because it’s again become newsworthy with the Oscar “snub,” and I just wanted to clear something up:

I don’t have a “problem” with Christianity, Christian filmmakers, etc. I am not a “liberal” and this is not a “secularist attack” on religion or people of faith.

That being said, one of the big misconceptions about “Passion” criticism is that it’s all about a liberal/conservative or red-state/blue-state split. Folks, thats just a flat-out lie. The truth is, a host of film and culture critics “from the right” offered up their disgust with the film and it’s messages (upfront and hidden.) In fact, “Conservatives” actively opposed to the Passion-ization of their “side” are probably the great untold story of this year in political film-writing.

So let’s tell it.

Charles Krauthammer is probably the most eloquent spokesperson that mainstream conservativism has right how. If you’ve never read his columns, you ought to. (He’s also a regular on cable news nets. He became invaluable to the “religious right” this year, as a voice for “caution” in the stem-cell debates despite his own condition (Krauthammer is paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair.) But he also established himself as an independent thinker when he took apart “The Passion” in his Washington Post column:

http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/2431

This is, quite simply, the best review of “The Passion” written anywhere, by anyone, to my knowledge. Krauthammer is not a man I am in the habit of agreeing with, but he is one of the smartest individuals working in political commentary today, and this is why. He elects to take on the subject of the film’s alleged anti-semetism, and cuts through Gibson’s defense against such claims with surgical skill.

Money quote: “When it comes to the Jews, Gibson deviates from the Gospels — glorying in his artistic vision — time and again. He bends, he stretches, he makes stuff up. And these deviations point overwhelmingly in a single direction — to the villainy and culpability of the Jews.”

What makes this work so well as criticism is that Krauthammer is approaching this from a religious standpoint. He knows his Bible inside and out, and he knows where and when to call “The Passion” out on it’s claims of Gospel-authenticity as an answer to all critiques:

“Gibson contradicts his own literalist defense when he speaks of his right to present his artistic vision. Artistic vision means personal interpretation.

And Gibson’s personal interpretation is spectacularly vicious. Three of the Gospels have but a one-line reference to Jesus’s scourging. The fourth has no reference at all.”



Andrew Sullivan is someone you ought to hear of if you haven’t already. A gay, pro-war conservative from England, he’s one of the right’s most impressively varied commentators. He’s never afraid to speak his mind, even when it puts him at odds with the rest of his “side,” and when it came time to review “Passion” he proved it:

http://andrewsullivan.com/index.php?dish_inc=archives/2004_02_22_dish_archive.html#107777885354905430

Money quote: “The whole movie is some kind of sick combination of the theology of Opus Dei and the film-making of Quentin Tarantino. There is nothing in the Gospels that indicates this level of extreme, endless savagery and there is no theological reason for it. It doesn’t even evoke emotion in the audience. It is designed to prompt the crudest human pity and emotional blackmail – which it obviously does.”

Portrayal of the Jews?

“The first scene in which Caiphas appears has him relaying to Judas how much money he has agreed to hand over in return for Jesus. The Jew – fussing over money again!”

And does it give too much of a “pass” to Pialte and the Romans?

“Pilate and his wife are portrayed as saints forced by politics and the Jewish elders to kill a man they know is innocent. Again, this reflects part of the Gospels, but Gibson goes further. He presents Pilate’s wife as actually finding Mary, providing towels to wipe up Jesus’ blood, arguing for Jesus’ release.”



In the end, Sullivan feels that the film is motivated by “psychotic sadism” more than anti-semetism, but in summation:

“Anti-Semitism is the original sin of Christianity. Far from expiating it, this movie clearly enjoys taunting those Catholics as well as Jews who are determined to confront that legacy. In that sense alone, it is a deeply immoral work of art.”

James Bowman writes for an art and culture publication called “The New Criterion.” I’d never heard of him or the publication before stumbling across his reviews awhile back, and I almost never come to agreement with his opinions on film, but he’s as well-read and talented a writer as any film critic you can name. He disliked the film intensely, as well:

http://www.jamesbowman.net/reviewDetail.asp?pubID=1489

What’s interesting here is, he’s completely unconcerned with most of the political stuff surrounding the movie, he just thinks it’s a bad film. What’s more, he finds it completely the opposite of what it was hyped as! Instead of a work of anti-Hollywood insurgency, Bowman sees a typical “victim chic” movie, and as for the theology at play, well…

“Surely, whatever other heterodoxy he may be guilty of, Mel cannot believe that pity is the same thing as piety?”

So there y’go. I’ll try to make this the last “Passion”-related posting for awhile (no promises if there’s new news,) but I do think these three perspectives help open up the debate a little more.

More amusement heads our way from the folks at “Passion for Fairness,” a web-based advocacy group started to petition The Academy to nominate “The Passion” for Best Picture. When that didn’t pan out for them, they ominously promised a major announcement…

Here it is:

http://www.passionforfairness.com/article42.html

Short and sweet: They want all their like-minded fellows to skip watching the Oscar telecast and instead rent and re-watch “Passion” instead. They plan to offer tips and suggestions for staging “Passion Parties,” for the occasion which, if nothing else, are sure to be the most pleasant and proper-looking events where people gather to delight in watching film of a man getting stripped and whipped for two hours ever.

As PR manuvers go, it has the potential for doozy-hood. The possibility of news about “surprisingly low Oscar ratings” being juxtaposed with footage of cherub-faced partygoers downing root beer and munching cheeze-puffs to the beat of Caveziel’s flesh-flaying would be appropriately iconic. Overall, though, this is a surprisingly harmless, sensible and creative reaction on their part. But along comes THIS little money quote:

“This is not a boycott. We will not target advertisers of the Oscars. We are not encouraging or discouraging any action toward Hollywood. Rather, we simply suggest a better channel for our frustration toward the Academy.”

Umm… guys? Yes, it is a boycott. It doesn’t matter if you don’t actively target the advertisers, if the ratings go down it effects the ad revenues which is the same thing. The only way it wouldn’t be a boycott would be if you instructed Passion-partiers to leave their TV’s tuned to the telecast while they watched the DVD, so that the ratings would remain unaffected, but that would negate the whole point and be kinda silly. But still, folks… your staging a boycott. Just admit it. Part of being a grown-up advocacy group is using the proper names for things. You wish to inflict symbolic injury upon The Academy, so your boycotting the telecast. There’s nothing wrong with that, but be honest with us already.

(BTW, just my own personal thought here… wouldn’t the real “turn the other cheek” thing to do here be to watch the show anyway, possibly while praying for the souls of those involved? Just a thought.)

In terms of opinions on films, I probably disagree with Roger Ebert as often as I do with Michael Medved. The difference between the two men, as far as I’m concerned, more about the quality of their work (which is to give their opinions) rather than the content, i.e. Ebert is an excellent writer of scholarly film reviews, whereas Medved has degenerated into a predictable political commentator who uses the fig leaf of film reviews to push his agenda.

I bring this up because, ever since Medved became newsworthy for his “crusade” to spoil the ending of “Million Dollar Baby,” Ebert has been admirably at the forefront of calling him out about it. It’s no secret that much of the “mainstream” film press is at constant odds with Medved and his allies, but this is the first time it’s boiled over so publicly.

Here’s Ebert’s column on the subject, which I must say is the finest summation of the situation I’ve yet read. (DO NOT CLICK THIS if you haven’t seen the movie)

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050129/ESSAYS/501290301

It goes without saying that I’m with Ebert on this one, but thats not why I’m so fond of this piece. What I like is, Ebert isn’t just making some general gesture of dissaproval for spoilers, he’s giving Medved’s whole act the once-over it’s richly deserved for a long time.

Money quote: “Medved has for a long time been a political commentator, not a movie critic, but he must remember from his earlier days that moviegoers do NOT want to be informed of key plot surprises, and write enraged letters to critics who violate this code.”



Bullseye. Real critics have been much too accomodating of Medved for too long, and it’s time someone with Ebert’s clout said what needed saying: Medved isn’t primarily a film critic anymore, he’s a political pundit who makes his points in the guise of “movie reviews” to get more exposure for his agenda and the agendas of people he considers allies.

As to Medved’s defense of his actions, that he believes that the film’s surprises are hidden to “trick” people into seeing a message-movie rather than for dramatic purposes, Ebert also offers a deft takedown:

“Medved appeared on Pat Robertson’s “700 Club” to describe the plot in great detail. The outcome of the movie does not match their beliefs. They object to it. That is their right. To engage in a campaign to harm the movie for those who may not agree with them is another matter.”

On the same subject, Jim Emerson, the editor of Ebert’s website, offers up a most-agreeing second opinion on the issue. It’s a good piece in it’s own right, covering the issue from a broader perspective than just Medved’s transgression, and incorporating the thoughts of a slew of other critics as well:

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050128/ESSAYS/50129001

Meanwhile, Medved hasn’t yet responded specifically or in depth to Ebert, but he’s been busy on his other projects; such as trying to deflate the currently-popular “truism” that the Academy Award’s snubbing of “The Passion” is merely the “far-right” counterweight to the snubbing of the “far-left” “Fahrenheit 9-11”:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110006213

His central argument here is that the comparison is flawed because Fahrenheit is nakedly political but Passion is not. I have only this in response: If Medved cannot see anything political in the making of an ultra-traditionalist religious film, focused 100% on pain, punishment and retribution to the exclusion of all other virtues, marketed as a film that “liberal” Hollywood “doesn’t want you to see,” then he is either FAR less insightful than I had thought, or he is being intellectually dishonest with us.

But what do you think?

Here’s the first thing you need to know about this movie: Irregardless of the title, no one in the principal cast is ever once actually alone in the dark. In fact, no one is ever alone period and, if they are, is usually daytime. They ARE in the dark a whole lot in the 3rd act, but in teams numbering anywhere between two and infinity (“infinity” being the precise number of heavily-armed soldiers resembling the good guys from “Aliens” that are dispatched to clean up the big Creepy Crawlies who, amazingly, resemble the bad guys from “Aliens.” Hmm…)

The second thing you need to know is that the director is one Uwe Boll (has anyone figured out how that’s pronounced yet?) a German-spawned filmmaker who jumped to the top of Film Geekdom’s “I-cannot-look-yet-cannot-look-away” list with a single film, last year’s “House of The Dead.” It managed to earn the impressive title of “worst film ever to be based on a video game,” appeared to have been assembled on a dare, and grossed somewhere in the negatives despite a Halloween opening. Given this overwhelming evidence against Mr. Boll, Hollywood did the only logical thing: It immediately signed him to make five more films based on video games.

So, then, Boll is something of a unique specimen, a director who has become more famous for making an awful film than many will ever become for making a good one. Even among film geeks, Boll defies easy categorization: His passion for making action movies out of video games being evenly matched with his apparent lack of talent for doing so.

The good news, I suppose, is he seems to have gotten a little bit better. Emphasis on a little bit.



“Alone…” opens up with a narrated title crawl (let that sink in for a moment) that not only provides backstory complicated enough to make another whole film out of, but actually gives away every major plot point the film has to offer, including the villianous nature of a major figure which in the actual movie seems to have been meant as a surprise! But try not to think about that too hard.

Inhale: Christian Slater is Edward Carnby, paranormal detective and former paranormal government agent. He chases ancient golden artifacts around the world at the behest of an elderly historian and his lab assistant (Tara Reid.) He’s also got amnesia about his childhood. “The world” is being invaded by big ugly Gigeresque monsters, somehow related to the golden artifacts, which in turn are related to a long-lost Native American civilization that opened a gateway to “the other side.” Stephen Dorf turns up as Carnby’s former government boss, who calls out the big guns when the monsters turn up.

Exhale.

The thing about Boll is, he shows here he knows how to do certain things. He knows how to shoot action scenes of guys firing machine guns at CGI monsters. He knows how to shoot a choreographed martial-arts duel. He’s got a good eye for gory surgery, and helicopter crashes, and he makes good use of the big, fast-moving, occasionally-invisible monsters. So there are individual beats and scenes here that work. It’s the assembly thats a god-awful mess (the plot-spoiling pre-title crawl is there for a reason: the story is incomprehensible without it.) Nothing fits together, the characters are almost nonexistant (despite the recognizable actors,) and it’s impossible to care about whats going on from frame to frame.

Only part of the blame for this can really be laid on Boll. He’s still nothing resembling a good or even passable filmmaker, but his choice of material isn’t exactly doing him any favors. Over the last decade or so, as video games have become more “mainstream,” they’ve also become progressively less original. The outlandishness of the dimension-hopping plumbers in “Super Mario Bros.” or the speedy “Sonic the Hedgehog,” bred of creative ways around graphical limitations and the natural tendency of geek subcultures toward fantasmagoria in the early days of gaming has given way to a modern age where most of the more popular titles are chiefly trying to be playable knockoffs of existing movie and TV franchises. Films based on recently-popular video games, then, will be copies of copies.

When the “best” your genre has to offer is “Resident Evil,” a Romero-zombie knockoff that even other Romero-zombie knockoffs don’t want to be associated with, you might want to reconsider your genre from the ground up. Not that anyone is, of course. Up next is a Bond-wannabe based on “Spy-Hunter,” and Boll is already hard at work on a Blade-wannabe called “Blood Rayne.”



And, meanwhile, somewhere on a shelf, the rights to game properties with some merit, like “Metal Gear Solid” or “The Legend of Zelda,” are waiting patiently for someone to grow a clue.

Keep waiting.

I’m going to do my best not to directly give away the “surprise” truth about what’s going on in “Hide & Seek,” but as this review may by discussing aspects of the film which might clue you in, a MILD SPOILER WARNING is in effect.

Robert DeNiro (apparently not having completed whatever penance also compelled him to make Godsend last year) is a well-off Manhattan psychiatrist (psychologist?) with a pleasant but pill-popping wife (Amy Irving) and a precocious daughter named Emily (Dakota Fanning, the child actress with the big Precious Moments saucer-eyes and the disconcertingly mature speaking voice.) One Daddy and Daughter wake up to find Mommy dead in the tub, having slit her wrists. This bothers little Emily, afflicting her with a trauma that manifests itself as a compulsion to bug those celebrated eyes directly into the camera for an extended period of time.

Helpful father, concerned for the big city’s possible negative impact on his daughter’s troubled psyche and, more importantly, mindful that Manhattan just isn’t going to work as the setting for a moody psychological thriller; decides to move them to a more genre-appropriate location: A big old house in a barely-inhabited upstate rural community that backs up to a big, dark forest. Suddenly, withdrawn Emily is all sunshine and giggles again, (well, sometimes,) having picked up an imaginary friend named Charley. Soon enough, she’s keeping secrets, telling lies, playing poorly with others and blaming household accidents on Charley, and “someone” keeps bumping off small animals, threatening people and leaving ironic, elaborate messages on the wall in crayon.

So yeah, here we are in yet another “spooky kid” thriller, watching yet another middle aged actor of note try to solve yet another mystery of what’s wrong with yet another buzzed-about child actor. All mental sparks reminding you of “The Sixth Sense” are intentional and hoped-for by the producers.

All the usual building blocks are there: High-contrast autumnal days, dark blue nights, old houses where doors and drawers open with thunderous sound but footsteps are barely audible, faulty wiring that gives out at just the wrong time, ominous crayon drawings, serial abuse of dimmer switches, big loud hands-crashing-on-organ-keys music when badness rears it’s head, dark cellars, darker caves, superpowered flashlight beams, electric generators with minds of their own, supposedly smart people (these films always make the main characters doctors or lawyers or some other high-end profession because they’ll be more likely to keep classy, atmospheric stuff around the house) making immensely stupid decisions and, naturally, a cast of supporting (and main) characters who spend so much time acting like psychotic killers that you just know they can’t be the psychotic killer who may or may not be on the loose.

Oh, and it probably goes without saying that our characters inhabit apparently the only white-collar upstate New York collective of “summer homes” where news has not yet spread as to the invention of the cellular telephone, nor do I think it will surprise you that this town’s policework is seemingly handled by ONE sherriff, (played by reliable “that guy” actor Dylan Baker, who I suppose comes as a bonus peice in the middlebrow-thriller Erector-Set,) or that the most overused and worn-out psychological malady of all modern thrillers eventually gets called in for the touchdown.

Let me be as blunt as I can be about the surprise element here: There is a “3rd act twist,” it’s incredibly lame, and if you go in trying to figure it out you probably will within the first forty minutes. Just remember the dependable Thriller rule that the person who behaves the most like the bad guy is almost never the bad guy, and the equally-dependable Crappy Thriller rule that the person who’d be the most dissapointing bad guy very often is.

There’s nothing here you haven’t seen before or really need to see again (unless you’ve got thing for watching Robert DeNiro mark time in between worthwhile projects) save for the solid range displayed by Fanning, and really thats the whole point: The producers are hoping to coast this one in on her “wow, that little kid can act!” breakthrough here, operating on a model laid down in bronze by Haley Joel Osment in “The Sixth Sense.” Unfortunately, the flaw in their logic is that Fanning, unlike Osment, is a fairly well known actress already and, also unlike Osment, the thriller she’s appearing in isn’t any damn good.

So yeah, I’m going to say firmly that this is worth skipping. But if anyone sees it anyway and wants to disagree, hit the comment button and tell me so. I’m interested to know…

FINAL RATING: 3/10

Just behind the richly-deserved smackdown laid upon “The Passion” by The Academy (and pretty much every single major film award of relevance), the second-biggest political story of this year’s award’s season is turning out to be a rapidly-mobilized, thinly-veiled and outright-disgusting campaign being leveled by the storm troopers of the Religious Right against Clint Eastwood’s “Million Dollar Baby.”

(I’m going to tread super-lightly to avoid spoilers of the film, but if you haven’t seen it yet my advice is that you not click ANY of these links and, in fact, your probably best to skip this whole post until later.)

The first shot was fired by the reliably vile Michael Medved. The fallen-angel Lucifer of Film Geeks, Medved helped invent the venerable pastime of modern geekdom, appreciation of bad movies, with his early book “The 50 Worst Films of All Time.” Soon after that, though, Medved fell and fell hard. He became a full-on traitor to film, art and film fandom by aligning himself with so-called Religious Conservatives (who are neither religious NOR truly conservative, btw) and became a vocal supporter of film-censorship. Medved, since the films’ premier, has indulged in the practice of giving away the 3rd-act twist to “Baby,” under the rationale that he considers the film “disguised propaganda.” This is coded language for: “Medved and his masters disagree with what they see as the ‘message’ that comes with the surprise, and want to prevent it from being seen by ruining it for people.”

Medved, thus far, has not only spoiled “Baby” on his own radio program, but also on the Laura Ingrahm Show and a host of other programs where he has appeared (he’s in higher-profile than usual, promoting his new book “Right Turns,” which comes complete with endorsing quotes from the likes of Anne Coulter, James Dobson and, of course, Mel Gibson.) You can read his, and others’, weak defenses of themselves HERE in USA TODAY:

http://http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2005-01-23-million-dollar-baby-mystery_x.htm

Medved takes the opportunity to AGAIN spoil the movie here in his obligatory Oscar column, amid the expected rant that The Academy’s failure to nominate Mel Gibson’s plotless scriptural sadism, “The Passion of The Christ,” for Best Picture:

http://http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-01-25-medved_x.htm

This is a preview of coming attractions, folks, as to what the “mode of attack” will be from the Fundamentalist movement. “The Passion” was their (370)million dollar “baby,” a film which they turned into a manufactured megahit by using Churches and preacher’s as unpaid advertisers and literally bussed people to see. Mel and his movie were supposed to lead an insurgency of “moral values” into “secular” Hollywood, and now those hopes have been dashed by the surprise growing of a spine by The Academy.

So the attack will be to trump up, through articles and press releases, the notion that ALL of the other nominees are somehow coded anti-moral propaganda films that “Passion” was passed over for. “Passion For Fairness,” a front group founded to inundate The Academy with “demands” (their words, not mine) has been ticked off for the past two days that their efforts have failed:

http://http://www.passionforfairness.com/

They’ve passed on the idea of a boycott, how nice of them, but they ominously promise a “major announcement” in the coming days. Ooh, I’m a’shakin.

By the way, PFF’s slogan is “impose your values on Hollywood!” Nice buncha folks, eh?

More on this to come, I’m sure.