Movieline Online

THE FLICK: With all the praise heaped on director David Fincher by adoring cinephiles it’s no wonder he has delusions of Hitchcockian greatness. How else could you explain him taking on the challenge of a film set almost entirely inside one room, inside one house, with a one massive McGuffin at the heart of it all. “Panic Room” is Fincher’s mental exercise; a directorial challenge of storyboarded B-movie visual excess. The results (suspenseful but showy with an overly simplistic script from David Koepp) are much closer to Hitchcock hand-me-downs Brian DePalma or Dario Argento than the old master himself. Jodie Foster tackles the single-mom role as a recently divorced Manhattan apartment shopper who buys a three floor brownstone which houses a singular curiosity piece: a well-stocked panic room, complete with video monitors, air conditioning and a safe full of money. Of course, no one knows about the money except the three men who break in to steal it (played by Forest Whitaker, Jared L...

DIRTY PRETTY THINGS: A socially conscious thriller or a mystery with a message depending on how you look at it, director Stephen Frears’ (“High Fidelity,” The Grifters”) descends into the immigrant underworld of London where backroom organ “donations” are doing steady business. And selling a kidney might be the only way out for a pair of proud but desperate refugees from the law. Unpredictable and engaging, the movie does a good job backing its characters (and the audience) into a corner. Extras include a behind-the-scenes special and running commentary with Frears.

THE FLICK: The “Godzilla” series is in a constant state of flux – from a mean-spirited monster-on-the-loose in the first film to a kid-friendly superhero in the 60s & 70s, the big green guy never feels (or looks) the same way twice. After director Shuseke Kaneko’s invigorating re-invention “All Out Giant Monster Attack,” it looked like the king of the “kaiju” genre (the Japanese word for “monster”) was back in a big way. But “Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla” (2003) is a bit of a momentum killer. Instead of taking the giant monster mythology in new directions, the film purposefully goes back to the standard formula for most of Godzilla’s reign in the 90’s. This time it’s the Japanese government who invests in Mechagodzilla (nicknamed Kiryu), constructing their superweapon from the skeletal DNA of the very first Godzilla that attacked Tokyo in 1954. Kiryu is armed with the latest firepower including an unstoppable freeze ray called “Absolute Zero.” But all those tax dollars go right d...

THE FLICK: More than any of his other 1970’s behind-the-camera contemporaries, George Romero resented the label “horror film director.” And while many might find this attitude ungrateful, it’s exactly what made his films so distinct. After the slow-building success of “Night of the Living Dead,” and with a couple of interesting experiments like “The Crazies” and “Martin” behind him, Romero finally revisited the zombies he’d created with “Dawn of the Dead.” As a sequel, “Dawn” is a direct narrative continuation of the ’69 storyline despite the fact that ten years had passed between movies. But the tone of the film is a complete 180 from the nostalgically paced scares of the first film. Not only had Romero evolved as a filmmaker but society had changed as well, making itself an easy target for the director’s scathing satire of consumer-driven excess. Although their origin is still unexplained, the undead are gaining strength in numbers, forcing what’s left of the human population to scat...

THE FLICK: It’s hard to say which is more responsible for the continuing popularity “One Million Years B.C.”: Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion monsters or the famous one-sheet poster of star Raquel Welch in a furry cavegirl bikini. Both make a strong case for themselves in Fox’s remastered DVD, available separately or as part of the Raquel Welch collection. With no dialogue other than grunts, groans and sparse cave-speak, this sci-fi feature from Hammer studios in Britain follows the fate of two tribes, the primitive Rock Clan and the more advanced (and much better groomed) Shell People. Tumack (John Richardson), ostracized from his Rock brothers, crosses the harsh landscape and falls under the spell of Luana (Welch), who soothes his temper and shows him another way of living. Of course, Tumack’s skills come in handy when a hungry Allosaurus drops in and makes a smorgasbord of the Shell village. Actually, Harryhausen’s monsters play a much smaller role in “One Million Years B.C.” than his...

THE FLICK: The films of Ron Howard are remarkable mainly because they are so unremarkable. Drifting from genre to genre with a consistent amount of box-office success, the director seems to bend his style to suit each new project he undertakes. But the result is often a “film by committee,” hitting all the expected notes but never getting over the creative hump. With “The Missing,” the first project from Howard’s production company, Imagine, that wasn’t created in-house, we finally see a sliver of the heart of darkness the director always kept hidden. Starring Cate Blanchett as a frontier medicine woman and Tommy Lee Jones as her estranged white-Indian mystic father, together they track down a group of renegade Indians who have captured Blanchett’s daughter and plan to sell her into slavery at the Mexican border. Their journey puts them in harm’s way from flash floods, Army scouts, Indian curses, and their own family animosity. Billed as a Western Thriller, the film combines well-drawn...

THE FLICK: Like John Belushi and Chris Farley before him, Jack Black is a fat funnyman whoÕs not for all tastes. His brand of humor can feel desperately obnoxious and, until ÒSchool of Rock,Ó was best used as a walking exclamation point in films like ÒHigh FidelityÓ where his mosh-pit personality played second banana to straight-man John Cusack. But put a guitar in his hands and itÕs almost like pulling the sword from the stone. His work in ÒTenacious D,Ó the mock-rock duo featured in a series of shorts on HBO, should have warned the world that he was a six-stringed genius. But, alas, few people picked up on it until ÒSchool of Rock,Ó BlackÕs breakthrough starring role after the admirable ÒShallow Hal,Ó proved he could not only carry a movie, but also make it his own. As Dewey Finn, a lifelong loser with pathetic musical aspirations for rock stardom, Black finds a custom-written role that fits like tight leather pants. Taking over his roommates identity as a substitute teacher for some...

THE FLICK: Certain films inspire a sense of ownership. They are the underdogs, the movies that no one else knows about, sitting on a dusty shelf in the back of the video store, habitually rented out by a select few who embrace them warts and all. Too unpopular to be called cult...too eccentric to find mainstream success. Films like “Vanishing Point,” a counter-culture action film with a need for speed. Bereft of stars and short on story, the film follows Kowalski (Barry Newman) as he races the clock to deliver a Dodge Charger from Denver to San Francisco in 15 hours. Hopped up on pills, he soon picks up a caravan of local authorities who chase him across three states and several highways trying to end the folk hero worship spawned by a blind DJ (Cleavon Little of “Blazing Saddles”) who preaches the anti-authoritarian gospel. Along the way, Kowalski runs into an eclectic group of characters (helpful hippies, mean-spirited moonies, and a gay version of Bonnie and Clyde) lifted straight o...