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The Bone Collector (1999)
Two cops on the trail of a serial killer. They must see as one... They must act as one... They must think as one... Before another victim falls.
Filmmaker(s): Phillip Noyce

Rookie cop, Amelia Donaghy reluctantly teams with Lincoln Rhyme – formerly the department's top homicide detective but now paralyzed as a result of a spinal injury – to catch a grisly serial killer dubbed 'The Bone Collector'. The murderer's special signature is to leave tantalizing clues based on the grim remains of his crimes.

About Being About thoroughly mundane film is based on a story woven around a very intelligent idea. Many films these days are written by writers writing about writing. And so it is here. The detective story is a modern invention, invented by Poe and popularized by...


Published November 22, 2022
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The Amityville Horror (2005)
What happened over the next 28 days has never been explained.
Filmmaker(s): Andrew Douglas

In 1974, a family of six was brutally murdered. A year later, George and Kathy Lutz and their children move into the site of the horrific event, which is haunted by a murderous presence.

The House don’t know why writers and filmmakers so often miss the point. The genre is the haunted house movie, and it exists for a very good reason. The most primitive fears are not of things or people but of situations. Of situations, and the ones...


Published November 22, 2022
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Memento (2000)
Some memories are best forgotten.
Filmmaker(s): Christopher Nolan

Leonard Shelby is tracking down the man who raped and murdered his wife. The difficulty of locating his wife's killer, however, is compounded by the fact that he suffers from a rare, untreatable form of short-term memory loss. Although he can recall details of life before his accident, Leonard cannot remember what happened fifteen minutes ago, where he's going, or why.

Skin as Photograph rate this very high on my scale, primarily for its ambition and intellect. Usually I get annoyed at IMDB comments that report the story as if it were important, but it is here: ---Lenny's home is attacked, wife raped, him injured. He develops this...


Published November 22, 2022
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8 Women (2002)
Living in a house full of women can be murder.
Filmmaker(s): François Ozon

Eight women gather to celebrate Christmas in a snowbound cottage, only to find the family patriarch dead with a knife in his back. Trapped in the house, every woman becomes a suspect, each having her own motive and secret.

3 Women Really had a lot of trouble with this film. I get what it is trying to do and particularly appreciate the notion. The distance between the story and the music is like that great bowling alley scene in “Buffalo 66” (and the similar...


Published November 22, 2022
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Three Days of the Condor (1975)
His CIA code name is Condor. In the next seventy-two hours almost everyone he trusts will try to kill him.
Filmmaker(s): Sydney Pollack

A bookish CIA researcher finds all his co-workers dead, and must outwit those responsible until he figures out who he can really trust.

Books, Binding Pollack recently died, and I dredged this up to watch. It is a strange relic of a time when we really liked these spy stories — and the stories were allowed to be simple. The characters had no life outside the confined story....


Published November 22, 2022
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Pendulum (2001)
Murder, betrayal, lies. Time reveals all.
Filmmaker(s): James D. Deck

The nature and lure of power: in Dallas, a councilman is on trial for corruption, the D.A. is running for the US Senate, a serial killer is slashing prostitutes, and a professor is murdered. Amanda Reeve is assigned to investigate the law-school killing. She hears rumors that the dead man offered women students good grades in exchange for sex. The trail leads her to two wealthy, beautiful students whose alibi is provided by a librarian. At the same time, the cops close in on the slasher. Meanwhile, Amanda misses her former lover, next in line to become D.A., and a reporter is fired for getting close to the truth about the Senate candidate. Is a cover-up or conspiracy in the works?

Primal Instinct first howler in this is the notion that Texas hosts the “finest law school in the south,” as if it were possible — and if would matter if it was. Of course, once we are introduced to a DA running for Congress, we...


Published November 22, 2022
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2 Fast 2 Furious (2003)
How fast do you like it?
Filmmaker(s): John Singleton

It's a major double-cross when former police officer Brian O'Conner teams up with his ex-con buddy Roman Pearce to transport a shipment of "dirty" money for shady Miami-based import-export dealer Carter Verone. But the guys are actually working with undercover agent Monica Fuentes to bring Verone down.

Too “American” actually liked the original for the unexpected reason that it was intelligently stylish. Judging as a viewer, it must be amazingly difficult to be stylish and fresh because Hollywood (and the advertising industry) turns styles into mannerisms. The first film did something pretty...


Published November 22, 2022
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Clue (1982)
It's not just a game anymore.
Filmmaker(s): Jonathan Lynn

Clue finds six colorful dinner guests gathered at the mansion of their host, Mr. Boddy -- who turns up dead after his secret is exposed: He was blackmailing all of them. With the killer among them, the guests and Boddy's chatty butler must suss out the culprit before the body count rises.

Hasn't a Clue genre has more opportunities for mind-bending and/amusing bends than the mystery. Especially film mysteries. And this one has a very promising foundation: a parody of a parody: ‘Murder by Death,' which itself was rather clever in a lowbrow sort of way. Add to...


Published November 18, 2022
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The Kovak Box (2006)
Filmmaker(s): Daniel Monzón

David Norton is used to being in control. As a best-selling author, he decides the fate of his characters, their lives and their deaths. But what happens when his fictional world becomes all too real?

Inverted Writing is a standard form for a movie like this. It is so heavily imprinted that when you encounter a deviation, it shocks. We have a writer who wrote a book that comes alive. We expect that the relationship between book (the film within)...


Published November 9, 2022
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The Outfit (2022)
Everyone has something up their sleeve.
Filmmaker(s): Graham Moore

Leonard is an English tailor who used to craft suits on London’s world-famous Savile Row. After a personal tragedy, he’s ended up in Chicago, operating a small tailor shop in a rough part of town where he makes beautiful clothes for the only people around who can afford them: a family of vicious gangsters.

Patterned read until after seeing this. Very likely, the effectiveness of this comes from a few key people with deep experience in the stage, plus possibly one person with a sensitive philosophy of blocking. So if you talked to them, you’d get a bunch of very...


Published November 2, 2022
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