Z/Web

Director: Joel Schumacher

This is a lightweight film about a guy being held at bay in a phone booth by an anonymous sniper. However, it’s so well done that you forget the slight plot and just enjoy the ride. Colin Farrell’s on screen almost every minute and he does a competent job, but Kiefer Sutherland as the caller is what carries the movie. He manages to be reasonable and insane, moral and immoral, at the same time. The tension that mounts when Keifer shoots a bystander and the cops arrive thinking Colin did and order him out of the phone booth, but Kiefer tells him not to obey is cool. Colin sweats like a liar attached to a lie detector as he can’t tell the cops what’s going on, but must do everything the sniper says or be shot (or his wife, who is on the scene). Cool flick.

Director: David Cronenberg

Extremely subdued for a Cronenberg film, but good. It’s the story of Spider, a mental patient who’s released from the asylum to a group home. As he lives he’s relives his painful childhood and tries to make sense of the world around him. Gradually we learn the secret of his past and the darkness which has taken his mind. The ambiguous history is well done and forces us to think about everything we think we know. But unfortunately, that also means we never really get to under Spider, and a lot of his behavior is just eccentric and odd to us. That means the film never gets us deep enough to be truly profound, which is unfortunate. Still, it’s an interesting film (though slow on occasion) and it has some terrific visuals and fantastic scenes. Above average.