I was bored the other day and in the mood for a lightweight murder mystery sort of thing, so I plopped down on the couch and started flipping through Netflix’s “Watch Now” options on my Roku box until I came across this one. Though it sounded like a completely standard “cops hunt elusive serial killer” story, I was intrigued by the cast, which included both Tom Noonan AND Bill Moseley. Since that’s a combination that seems much more suited to a scary horror movie than a murder mystery (those are two creepy-ass mo-fos, if you ask me), it kind of gave me hope this film might be spookier and more entertaining than it sounded.
Right away I had a major beef with the picture, though, and that beef was the casting of Eliza Dushku as a homicide detective. Setting aside the fact she’s a terrible actress, the more pressing issue for me was this: Since when do cops get promoted to homicide detectives in their mid-20’s? But you know what, I said to myself, whatever. Maybe she was the Doogie Howser of her department, what do I know? Let’s just suspend that disbelief thing, go along for the ride, and hope that Noonan and Mosely come along soon to save us from the silly.
Dushku stars as Detective Megan Paige and is, as the story opens, the chief investigator in the case of a murdered little girl (incidentally, this movie is loosely based on an actual series of crimes in Rochester, NY in the 1970’s). The girl’s first and last names both started with the letter “C” and so did the town where her body was found, and Megan soon becomes convinced the three Cs are no mere coincidence. She begins spending hours and hours in the attic of her house, going over every crime scene photo and file repeatedly until, eventually, she just cracks. It begins with hallucinations of the ghost of the dead girl and progresses from there very quickly to an attempt at suicide, all while her boyfriend, a fellow detective named Kenneth (Elwes), watches on helplessly.
Cut to two years later and Megan is back on the force after spending many months in treatment for what was eventually diagnosed as schizophrenia. To avoid a lawsuit, the force agreed to take her back on, though only in limited capacity as a records clerk. But when another little girl’s murdered body is found — another girl with double initials found dead in a town that starts with the same letter — Kenneth, now her ex-boyfriend and also her boss, reluctantly lets Megan consult on the case, recognizing that she has insights into the original murder none of the other cops share.
(Annnd there’s where I rolled my eyes again, by the way. Because, really? You’re going to let the woman on thorazine for schizophrenia interview witnesses and handle evidence? Good luck in court, fellas!)
BUT ANYWAY,this flick did keep me relatively entertained and it was almost exactly the kind of movie I was in the mood for. And really, if they’d cast a better actress in the lead role, it could have been a fairly intriguing examination of the conundrum that comes when the very thing that makes a person excel at their job (the intuition, insights, and focus Megan gains as part of her mental illness) is the same thing that ultimately is their undoing. Dushku, though, overacts so ridiculously that she made the scenes that would’ve been pivotal to this theme just look silly. Kind of too bad, because the supporting actors all did a fairly decent job, including Noonan and Moseley, as well as Timothy Hutton as Megan’s support group buddy and Carl Lumbly as her doctor.
It’s not a great movie, obviously. It’s not even really a good one. Nevertheless it’s decent, and perhaps most importantly, also FREE. You could do a lot worse. Trust me — I do a lot worse on a regular basis.
[Netflix me (including Watch Now!) | Buy me]
Genre: Mystery
Cast: Eliza Dushku, Cary Elwes, Tom Noonan, Bill Moseley, Carl Lumbly, Michael Ironside
I realize this is going to sound weird applied to a film that features as many scenes of zombies snacking on human entrails as Zombieland does, but you know what my first thought was when I left the theater after finally getting my lame butt in to see this movie? My first thought was, “I’ll be damned if that wasn’t the feel-good movie of the year.”
After reading
I didn’t know much about this movie when a friend of mine asked if I wanted to go see it with her last Saturday. All I knew was that it was set in Nome, Alaska and had something to do with a psychologist doing a study on a group of patients all claiming to have been abducted by aliens. Snowy Alaskan backdrop, extraterrestrials — sign me right up!
In my continued quest to see all the movies John Carpenter has ever written or directed (see my recent review of
I’m not generally a big fan of animated films — I’m not sure just why, since I almost always end up loving them when I do sit down and watch them. But I’m rarely drawn to them intentionally. Usually when I see an animated film, it’s because somebody else wanted to see it and I went along. And so was the case with Coraline last weekend. (The Case with Coraline — sounds like a Nancy Drew mystery. . . I digress.)
A reader just sent me a link to a feature on her site that ranks the 20 hottest vampires of all time. Guess who’s number one? Uh huh:
Glee – I’m behind by three episodes, but I WAS behind by six until this past weekend and then I started to get caught up and got all sucked in again. That said, I confess nothing gets my dander up like a subplot involving a faked pregnancy being used to trick an unhappy husband into staying in an awful marriage. Newsflash to men everywhere: Most women would never, ever consider doing something like that. I promise, we wouldn’t. We. Would. Not. In any case, this is a subplot that I feel is not only grossly cliché and completely out of place in the show itself, but one I think we women ought to be downright offended by. If you’re not offended by it, rest assured that I am offended on your behalf. Wrap that shit up, Glee, and give me more songs by Journey or I may bail before the year’s out. You’re on alert, yo.
The Forgotten — I recognize that this is not a good show. That said, you know what? I’m enjoying it anyway. I really like Christian Slater; I can’t help myself. And even though everybody starts off dead and so there is never a happy ending, I kind of like the concept behind this series — a show about a group of volunteers with various sorts of skills who spend their free time working as amateur sleuths. I love sleuthing — it’s why I became a librarian, in fact. In any case, while I haven’t been overly impressed so far with the plots, it MIGHT get better. It COULD get better. I’ll hang in a little while longer.
NCIS: Los Angeles — Oh, please, I KNOW this one is not a good show. I’m still watching this one just because every episode is so amazingly stupid and bad, it is absolutely hilarious. I laugh out loud no fewer than 8 times per episode, which is more than The Daily Show gets out of me half the time these days. Oh god, I love this one. I LOVE IT. I have never seen a show this ridiculous. It’s totally awesome. Plus, I will never get tired of looking at L. L. Cool J’s butt, no matter how old I get. Or how old he gets. May we grow old together, in fact, me and L. L Cool J. And L. L. Cool J’s butt. All three of us, old. Together. Forever.
Flash Forward — I’m behind by three episodes, and I think it’s because. . . meh. I mean, I like the concept of this series, and I fully intend to get caught up (this weekend, even). But I haven’t gotten sucked into it that solidly yet. Not like I got with Lost, certainly. I never fell behind on a single episode of Lost until season three, come to think of it, but I started falling behind on FF on EPISODE three. Probably not a great sign. That said, I’m still IN. I’m just not IN all the way. I’m sort of hokey-pokey-in. One foot, one hand, shakin’ it all about. What do you guys think of this one? If it lasts long enough, Joseph Fiennes or John Cho for Boyfriend of the Week? Both?
Three Rivers – It’s terrible, I know it. Stop, I know it. But still. Of the three new medical shows (Mercy and Trauma being the other two), it’s the only one I watched a second episode of, and even though I haven’t then watched any more, I’m letting them pile up on the DVR for a rainy day and am even sort of looking forward to the day that rainy day finally arrives. Incidentally, I recently went to the ER myself and guess what was playing on the TV while I was there — Mercy and Trauma. I motioned to the TV set and said to the doctor, “Really? Isn’t that kind of like playing Castaway on an airplane?” And he laughed and said the nurses liked it. Personally? I think health care reform needs to start RIGHT THERE.
I somehow managed to get through both high school and college (as an English major, no less!) without ever reading this novel, one of the most famous books ever written. Don’t ask me how it happened. I don’t have an answer. What’s important is that I finally got around to it, right?