The Luckiest Man in America whammies out

It's quite curious to me that a movie that would go to the trouble to meticulously recreate Press Your Luck's stunning set piece, that enormous board of slides and flashing lights — one of the best game show centerpieces ever — would then go so far afield with the story of Michael Larson. Always looking for the next scheme, Larson memorized the board's patterns and used that knowledge to break the bank. For all the small details captured, like the accurate rendering of the hidden score and spins readout that only the contestants are intended to see, there are incredible diversions in the story, such as network brass drinking champagne in the background after they decide to cash in on Larson's performance. The reality was quite the opposite. 

I'm not sure anyone coming to this movie with no knowledge of Larson or Press Your Luck would find the story particularly interesting; its scenes are largely confined to the show's studio. And I think many people could have written this better. For example, it seems malpractice not to have a scene of Larson sitting at home, eating cereal in his pajamas, watching the great game show block of The $25,000 Pyramid, Press Your Luck and The Price Is Right. One day, studying those lights bounce around the squares on Press Your Luck, he thinks he notices something and starts taking notes through the use of a VCR recording. The tagline at the bottom of the poster says, "What's behind his winning streak?" That's the meat of what is interesting about Larson, and it is largely unexplored here.

I also think Peter Tomarken, who did a fine job hosting the 1983-1986 game show and spent some of his time providing angel flights to sick individuals, would be insulted by the unfairly smarmy portrayal of him in this production. While the cast includes some fine performers like David Straithairn, and it's clear that Paul Walter Hauser studied Larson's in-the-zone technique, it's not enough to save this misguided script. For those intrigued by Larson's feat, Game Show Network's documentary Big Bucks: The Press Your Luck Scandal is excellent and remains the definitive telling of the Larson story.

Verdict: 2 out of 5

Also see // RIP Peter Tomarken

Movies: Leave the World Behind

I can’t remember the last time I reacted this negatively to a film’s ending. The premise: A vacationing family led by Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke find themselves in an unraveling world — a ship barrels ashore while they are luxuriating on a beach; then cell phones and internet quit working (the ultimate horror). It goes further downhill from there in a what’s-going-on puzzle that continually teases the viewer with vague clues such as mysterious animal behavior. Meanwhile, another couple arrives to add cultural and political tension to the mix (groans). 

The movie strongly reminded me of M. Night Shyamalan’s notorious The Happening (with less wind) and, to a lesser extent, Stephen King’s novel Cell. At its best, Leave the World Behind weaves several tense threads together in thrilling fashion and achieves a compounding sense of dread, but the film then simply ends as things appear on the verge of greater calamity without providing any resolution apart from the daughter's quest to see the final episode of Friends. I know that sometimes a filmmaker wants us to be left with a puzzle to ponder, but it just doesn’t work here. It’s an infuriating ending, and, while I do not condone violence, it left me wanting to throw large objects at director Sam Esmail.

Now streaming on Netflix  //  2 hours 21 minutes  //  2.5 stars out of 5

Movies: The Car (1977)

 Just how much menace and dread can be extracted from the revving engine of a tricked-out Lincoln Continental Mark III with illegally tinted windows? That's explored at length in 1977 horror-thriller The Car, renowned among some as a so-bad-it's-good chestnut; critics had fun describing it as "a total wreck." My grandmother drove a Lincoln Continental back in the early '80s, and I remember it as an incredibly long vehicle with those little panels that would come down and hide the headlights when not in use. I was fascinated by those.

Starring Josh Brolin as the sheriff, The Car followed in the recent dust of highway thrillers like Duel, and its poster is simply fantastic with the car's angry face and the windswept lettering.  I remember it as one of the first movies that scared me as a kid when it was on TV, probably as a "movie of the week" on one of the big three networks back in the days when they aired theatrical releases as Event Programming. The titular auto zips around a desert town terrorizing its residents, seemingly without anyone behind the wheel, and it all looks pretty great in HD. Hammy dialog aside, the threatening face of that rampaging vehicle stirs dread every time it appears. Though the plot may be thin, it has its effective moments; the best one gives new meaning to the phrase "drive-thru" in a harrowing scene involving one of the leading damsels. It all builds to a sudden, fiery conclusion, with the movie never signaling what drove the car to its murderous rampage, literally or figuratively. As with so many things, the journey is more satisfying than the destination.

The Car is currently streaming on Netflix.

Movies: Midsommar

Somebody's been watching The Wicker Man. Like that '70s classic (and the cheeky Nick Cage remake), Midsommar takes us to an isolated clan practicing increasingly creepy pagan-like rituals, smiling and gracious all the while. It is fertile territory for a thriller.

Midsommar plods along in the Swedish sunshine for a bit until director Ari Aster takes a hammer to viewer's kneecaps with a singularly disturbing scene. This moment defines the movie, much like a particularly disturbing sequence in his interesting debut, Hereditary, defined that movie. It's treated as a big moment; the music and the visuals of the awaiting crowd amongst the jagged, rocky landscape create a palpable dread of whatever is about to unfold. And, once it becomes apparent, the realization of what is about to happen is almost as shocking as seeing it reach its horrific conclusion. The results are displayed in graphic detail, with another horrifying act capping the gory sequence. It is disturbing, and it will be too much for some viewers.

The two principal characters of Midsommar are in the midst of a fragile relationship, and Aster weaves the emotional wreckage of that into the tapestry of insanity unfolding in the Swedish countryside. The movie is rather long and might benefit from excising the opening half hour or so, which establishes the relationship of the leads and is the weakest portion of the film.

Nothing else in Midsommar equals The Big Scene, but it is an enjoyably unsettling experience that will linger in the mind. 

3.5 out of 5

Midsommar (2019, 227 minutes) is currently streaming on Prime Video.

Also see // The Wicker Man (1974)
The Wicker Man (2006)

Movies: The Bedroom Window (1987)

With The Bedroom Window, it seems director Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle) set out to make the Hitcockiest movie Hitchcock would make if he and Alma were around in the mid to late 1980s. It’s so overtly Hitchcockian that you almost expect to see the old master walk by in one of the bar scenes or seated in the crowd in the theater scene, casting a knowing fourth-wall glance at the camera. 

It’s got the signature Hitchock ingredients of romantic intrigue and an innocent man wrongly accused and digging himself ever deeper a hole in a plot that involves the protagonist Terry (Steve Guttenberg) doing the boss’ wife (Isabelle Huppert), who witnesses an assault of a woman from her lover’s bedroom window in the middle of the night after hearing screams. To cover up the affair, Terry, rather than his paramour, goes to the police. In terms of plotting, it’s a clever idea that sends our protagonist into a series of mishaps and errors.

Currently available to stream on Amazon Prime, The Bedroom Window often does look like a Hitchcock film in style and staging, and there are a few scenes in which Huppert, dolled up to the max, is framed like a ‘40s vixen. It generally doesn’t look much like an ‘80s movie; the bar scenes, however, with Mario Brothers and Ms. Pac Man video games in view and ‘80s music playing, are exceptions. A curiosity that struck me is a song that plays in both bar scenes — a repetition of music that seems intended as a harbinger of the villian's presence. Particularly in '80s movies, I'm always trying to identify the music, and, in this case, it’s a third-tier Robert Palmer single, "Hyperactive," that many viewers probably wouldn’t even notice had been played in the earlier scene. "Hyperactive" was a single of the time; it crawled to #33 on the Hot 100 on the coattails of its #1 predecessor, "Addicted to Love." Why not use a more identifiable tune or a bit of ominous orchestration that recalls Bernard Hermann?

Most of the movie is a fun watch as Terry gets on the trail of the villain and begins to make a mess of things, but the movie’s final act is rather unimaginative. I think Alma would call for a rewrite.

'It' is not a very good movie

Is it the extreme anticipation associated with a cultural touchstone? 

Something has to account for mediocre movies getting a critical pass — I'm thinking of The Force Awakens, for one, and a more recent example is the 2017 adaption of the classic Stephen King horror novel It, which is about as much of a holy grail as Star Wars for King fans. It's stunning to me that this movie sits at an 85/84 on Rotten Tomatoes, and I think a lot of horror movies in recent years — Insidious and The Conjuring among them — have been pretty grossly overrated. I mean, we know going into a horror movie that most of them are bad, but have we set aside all expectations at this point? 

Here, Andy Muschietti's big-budget treatment gets off to a quite promising start in the opening scenes as the paper boat floats down the street in the heavy rain and Georgie pursues it; when it goes down the drain and Georgie comes face to face with Pennywise for the first time, it's captivating to see the solicitous monster trying to push just the right buttons to lure in his prey. Bill Skarsgard nails it in that moment, and I'm ready to go along for the ride. Sadly, though, the movie quickly descends into the usual jump scares, noise and nonsense of modern horror movies; long before the silly final confrontation mercifully arrives, I just wanted it to be over (my viewing partner wholeheartedly agreed). As plenty of others have pointed out, a real bright spot in the movie is Sophia Lillis as Beverly; she displays a gravitas beyond her years that hints at great things to come. 

If I had to watch one of the two adaptations of It again, I'd opt for the slow-burn TV version. I recall that King once said he should have called the novel "sh*t." I don't know about that, but, when it comes to this movie, if the clown shoe fits …

All these confused Star Wars feelings

Two years ago, I felt like I was one of the few detractors to The Force Awakens, which is so mired in homage to A New Hope that it fails to be its own movie, so I've watched with interest all the fan negativity being hurled at The Last Jedi. The truth lies somewhere between the critical 91 and the audience 51 scores bestowed upon this very long movie at Rotten Tomatoes … I find myself settling around a 3.5 out of 5. I left the theater feeling fairly conflicted … not outright disliking this one, but also thinking the whole franchise might be due for another good rest (which we know isn't happening), and I've never before felt that way.

Some things I know for sure:

• We do all expect a dose of humor in our Star Wars movies. "Will somebody get this big walking carpet out of my way," etc. Here, however, we have one after another painfully lame attempts at getting chuckles, starting right from the opening with the terribly awkward "on hold" for General Hux bit. It pulled me out of the movie. Along these lines, I also found myself becoming annoyed with the antics of BB-8.

• The Princess Leia moments in this movie are, sadly, not especially exciting.

• The homage problem is not as pronounced in this movie, but it's still there, as in the big fight scene in the imperial throne room, or whatever it is, when Rey is shown the attack in progress by Snoke on a handy little TV screen.

• Speaking of Snoke, who the hell is this guy?

• The absence of characters like Han Solo hurts. These movies generally have better casting than did the prequels, but the gravitas of character is lacking in The Last Jedi.

• After seeing them stand around in previous movies, it was cool to see the red-draped imperial guards engage in a major throwdown.

• Rogue One easily remains my favorite of the new films.

Ouija: Origin of Evil

The bar has sunk rather low for the horror genre when this mediocrity is sitting at 82 percent critical approval on Rotten Tomatoes, wouldn't you say? I'll grant you that it starts out promisingly, and I found myself thinking in the early going that it could end up being a rare gem. But oh, how the moods of the spirits do change. On the positive side, the '60s time setting is quaint, and watching the mother and her daughters perpetrate their innocent little ouija board scam has its charms. The ouija board scenes generate a few chills, and those bits when the youngest daughter, who falls under the spirit's influence, whispers evil nothings into her older sister's ear in the dead of night are downright creepy. It all goes awry, however, about half-way through when a character is found hanging from the rafters and the movie descends into typical horror movie claptrap, losing all the cleverness of the first half. Ouija says "no." // Verdict: 2.5 out of 5. Now available on disc and digital.

Chiller's Psycho marathon

As a cable network, Chiller deserves credit for being one of the few that has stayed true to its theme, even if its steady menu of direct-to-DVD caliber movies grows tiresome. The channel is getting well outside that box on Thursday, however, with a lovely Psycho marathon that will include not only the original Hitchcock masterpiece but also Gus Van Sant's 1998 scene-for-scene remake (with the addition of bizarre flashes of cows) and the sequels — Psycho II, Psycho III and Psycho IV: The Beginning.

Even though the sequels are not particularly well-regarded films, it surprises me how rarely (pretty much never that I can recall) they show up on TV, given the endless hours of airtime filled by C-level movies. These nuggets should be of at least passing interest to fans of horror and Hitchcock. Psycho II (1983), a moderate success, offers Vera Miles and Meg Tilly in the cast; Psycho III (1986) is directed by Anthony Perkins; and the made-for-cable prequel Psycho IV (1990, Showtime) could be considered an extra rare treat: It wasn't even available from Netflix on disc when I still subscribed a couple years ago.

Each year, I anticipate the arrival of October and what few surprises the cable channels might have in store for us in terms of fun old (and by "old" I mostly mean 1980s) horror movies. And, each year, I'm disappointed when AMC's Fearfest trots out the same dozen movies it has shown for the last 10 years. Take note, AMC — Chiller is schooling you with this marathon.

(The Psycho-fest begins at 11:30 a.m. central. Bonus: If you really want to make a day of it, David Fincher's The Game and Hitch's The Birds precede the marathon. Go, Chiller!)

Netflix is out to lunch

If, as a business such as Netflix, I did not provide Raiders of the Lost Ark on Blu-Ray, I would throw in the towel and write a letter of apology to customers.

Season of the Witch

1.5 out of 5

Despite a lot of bad reviews, I approached this Nicolas Cage vehicle with an open mind, because it's a horror movie and I have previously come to the defense of his similarly maligned The Wicker Man. The plot finds Cage and Ron Perlman, a pair of medieval swashbucklers, charged with transporting an alleged witchy woman on a long journey to meet her judgement. This is preceded by a series of battle sequences that show Cage and Perlman tiring of their bloody adventures while engaging in supremely hammy dialogue about things like who's buying the drinks tonight. The movie fails to do much with its villain; a sequence in which Cage's entourage tries to get her carriage across a decaying bridge is more entertaining than anything she conjures up. There's also a twist in play here, and it's not uninteresting, but it is the most blatantly obvious twist I've ever seen. I'm not one of those types who's always bragging that I had it figured out in the first 30 minutes, but I pretty much saw it coming right away. The movie climaxes with an action-filled throwdown, but the best I can say for all of this is that some of the scenes look terrific in 1080p. Note that the movie has no connection to George Romero's 1976 movie of the same name or Halloween III: Season of the Witch from 1982.

Insidious

2.5 out of 5

The extent to which this movie got generally favorable reviews suggests that our collective craving for a thoughtful, frightening movie has gone unsatiated of late. Competently and stylishly executed, Insidious certainly is better than the typical horror abomination of the week such as Darkness Falls, which I had the misfortune of watching on satellite a few nights ago, but it doesn't earn a spot on the top shelf, either. The trailer gave away the movie's best line — "It's not the house that's haunted" — and this plot centering on a troubled child is definitely not staking out original territory. In fact, I couldn't help thinking of Poltergeist, given that both have a child trapped in another realm, a paranormal investigation team that comes in to assist, and a rescue attempt by one of the parents. It doesn't help that we have a villian that looks like a Sith lord lost from the set of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace; with Saw director James Wan at the helm, it isn't surprising that subtletly gets lost. The best part of the movie is the fairly brief appearance of the paranormal investigators led by Lin Shaye, who brings a certain gravitas, even if she is no Tangina. A couple of bumbling and bickering assistants provide some comic relief, but, by this point, the movie is trending more silly than unsettling.

The folly of Netflix streaming

For a company that has gotten things so right most of the time, Netflix's new price hike seems punitive and incredibly boneheaded. Customers will now pay the price, literally, for the company's misguided placing of all its eggs in the streaming basket as the studios demand higher and higher fees for streaming rights.

I'll be switching to the $7.99 DVD-only plan with Blu-Ray. Streaming plus DVD plus Blu-Ray is no longer a deal after two price increases within the space of months.

And it's not that I'm a streaming naysayer. I got a Roku late last year, thinking that I'd love it. I have enjoyed it from time to time, but the streaming selection is notoriously mediocre, and there's the larger problem of picture quality. I have a cable broadband connection, but I almost never get an HD stream. I've invested in a quality home theater, and I don't care to watch VHS or less quality on my new HDTV. I think many people agree with me, whether it's because of broadband issues or the desire to have top-notch picture quality. Netflix has made a surprisingly large miscalculation in its attempt to jettison the DVD side of its business.

It may be a few months down the road, but I predict Netlix backs off the new pricing and cuts the fees to some middle ground.

Review: The Rite

Verdict: 2.5 out of 5

Exorcism flick The Rite may lack spewed pea soup, but it does have Anthony Hopkins doing his thing, and doing it well. It seems to have become fashionable to trash the bulk of his latter day output, but I'm content to feast on these morsels in anticipation of the next pleasant surprise, such as the excellent thriller Fracture. Somewhat similar in tone to The Exorcism of Emily Rose, The Rite, directed by Mikael Håfström, who helmed the so-so adaptation of Stephen King's 1408, is one of those movies that easily sets itself apart from the baser majority of horror films while, at the same time, failing to ever be truly compelling. It's set in Rome with Hopkins as a veteran exorcist who's given an apprentice of sorts — an American seminary student (Colin O'Donoghue) who is coming down with a bout of atheism. The church has decreed more exorcists are needed, and the student's mentor decides a tour of duty with the exorcist will cure what ails him. The movie offers two exorcisms, the first centering on several sequences with a young girl who contorts and gets fiesty, and the second serving as a twisty curveball in the movie's closing stretch and the ultimate test of the student's doubt. Neither takes us anywhere we haven't been before, but it pushes some of the right buttons over the course of its too-long 120-plus minutes, and Hopkins, as always, is worthy of our faith.

The Rite is available now on Blu-Ray, DVD and pay per view.

Review: Teeth (2007)

Verdict: 4.0 out of 5

Teeth is one of the most twisted movies you'll ever see. Its subject matter, at once laughable and horrifying, is sufficiently scandalous that major movie chains wouldn't carry it. The story of our young heroine, a somewhat self-righteous "promise ring" wearer, is wickedly humorous as it skewers that mindset while she stumbles through a series of disastrous encounters with young men who want to get in her pants. The twist in this story is that she is in possession of a vagina dentata, a concept rooted in folk tales of many cultures, and it proves to be a weapon she can wield against masculine aggression. The movie drops none-too-subtle hints of the source of her situation as shots of a pair of enormous smokestacks near her home repeatedly appear , and her mother is dying, presumably of cancer. As fear builds in her of what she is, a mixture of dread and anticipation builds in the viewer for each successive encounter. And to the movie's credit, each tops the previous in over-the-top outrageousness. Whether or not you care about the feminist statement bubbling throughout, it's a surprisingly compelling shocker. And you will be shocked.

Review: The House of the Devil (DVD)

Verdict: 3.0 out of 5

If your fondest horror movie memories take you back to the early 1980s and movies like Halloween, you'll want to have a look at The House of the Devil, which meticulously recreates the look and feel of horror cinema of that era. Directed by Ti West, whose resume includes such nuggets as Cabin Fever 2, it also indulges in the nearly lost art (at least for the horror genre) of the slow burn, taking its sweet time to get to the payoff.

College student Samantha (Jocelin Donahue), desperate for cash to pay her first month's apartment rent, snags a phone number for a babysitting gig from a bulletin board on campus. When she gets the job and shows up at the middle-of-nowhere address, she finds herself in a dark, cavernous old house with a mysterious old couple (the briefly seen but effective Tom Noonan and Mary Woronov) who would have fit right in with the Rosemary's Baby crowd. Samantha is then left to her sitting duties, and the movie finally begins to amp up the tension with a few bump-in-the-night noises and … well, not much else, really, until the climactic scenes, which center around a lunar eclipse and a rather unconventional ritual.

To be such a long time coming, the denouement is neither original nor particularly compelling, but that's also not the point in a movie that gives you Dee Wallace (the mom in E.T.) as the landlady and a soundtrack that includes The Fixx's "One Thing Leads to Another" played on cassette through a Walkman. Satisfying as those nods to elder horror fans may be, it's equally disappointing that the movie mostly squanders the frightful opportunities of Samantha wandering tentatively around that big scary house — it's a slow burn that never reaches a boil.

Review: Surrogates (DVD)

Verdict: 2.5 out of 5

The recent box office misfire Surrogates is based on a graphic novel with a clever premise: The world's populace sits at home in virtual hibernation, connected to sensors and diodes, operating robotic representations of themselves out in the world with their minds. I like this hook because it's really not that far removed from spending a day connected to a video game controller, something millions of people do more often than not. In this world, the death of a surrogate by an accident such as getting hit by a car while crossing the street leaves the hibernating owner untouched. Want to look sexier than you really do? That's possible here, too. The conflict in Surrogates arises when a couple of surrogates are "killed," and the action results in the deaths of the owners, as well. Enter Bruce Willis and his surrogate with really bad hair to tackle the case, which involves the remorseful inventor of surrogates, a military weapon and a protagonist steadily awakening to the dulled human existence of the surrogate world. The action intensifies as Willis casts aside his surrogate and reenters the world in his own skin. Although Willis spends some scenes trying to spark a renewed real-world connection with his wife, the movie lacks a compelling emotional anchor and ends up feeling much like the surrogates look — a bit too plastic and polished with nothing genuine underneath.

Review: Paranormal Activity

• It's the Blair Witch of the 2000s, and almost as good.

Stars: Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat
Director: Oren Peli
Rating (out of 5): &&&1/2
Run time: 1 hr 39 mins

Paranormal Activity, the shoestring-budget movie riding a crest of Blair Witch-sized buzz, is getting a bit overrated, but it's still a movie that every horror fan should make a beeline to see. In a time when empty horror films come and go at the multiplex just about every weekend, this movie proves there is an appetite among audiences for something more than f/x and torture porn, and it's nice to see a fright flick with a brain get some attention. It's been reported that DreamWorks bought the movie with every intention of doing a big-budget version but decided that the lo-fi version was too effective to discard. The movie's rudimentary production style is certainly reminiscent of that of The Blair Witch Project, which, in my opinion, remains the superior of these two movies.

By now, you probably know the basics of the plot — a young couple early in their relationship are having unusual experiences in their home, and the male half (Micah Sloat) decides to set up a camera and audio recorder in the bedroom in an attempt to capture whatever may be happening while they sleep. Early on, we learn that the happenings are attached to the female half (Katie Featherston) and that the noises they both hear and the whispers she hears are the work of a sinister presence. Micah's interest in playing with the electronics is deeper than his conviction that something is really going on until he begins to catch things on tape and the occurrences begin to escalate. Wanting to defend his woman, he also becomes provocative toward the force as the movie goes on, breaking one of the cardinal rules of dealing with the paranormal. It is here that the movie uses one of the staples of the haunted house tale — tension between a couple breeding negative energy that serves to escalate the activity. For all this movie does to cleanse the palate of so many bad horror movies in the 10 years or so since The Sixth Sense and The Ring, it still turns to some familiar devices such as a Ouija board, things that go bump in the night and a snowy television screen. I even found its occasional use of a jolting noise reminiscent of the classic The Haunting, the quintessential horror movie in which the unseen is powerfully frightening — a technique that has been sadly forgotten by too many movie makers.

The best horror movies are those that play on dread and anticipation in unique ways, and Paranormal Activity achieves this in presenting everything from the point of view of Micah's video footage, focusing primarily on a wide view of their bedroom and the hallway. In the beginning, the viewer gets nothing more than a little tease in the overnight footage, which is often time lapsed, but the payoffs gradually increase. By the time the camera captures shadows and footprints creeping into the room, viewers are squirming at the edge of their seats, and the final payoff is truly creepy — almost enough to forgive the grating bullheadedness of Micah's character.

Movies: Oliver Stone's W.

Verdict: &&&1/2

It turns out that George W. Bush and I do have something in common — a taste for Dr. Pepper, that most addictive of beverages (even if I'm now confined to the caffeine-free version). It's one of the rather mundane details that director Oliver Stone makes clear in W., a film in which I believe Stone has fairly pure intentions (this is no Michael Moore-style ambush). I went to the movie seeking a bit of catharsis — a purging of some of the emotional disappointment of the past eight years — as well as perhaps a few insights into how Bush II came to be. Check the expectations at the door, and there's fun to be had here.

Weaving past and present, Stone shows us the young W. as a man who indulged in the privileged fun life while continually struggling to gain the approval of his accomplished father. Fast-forward to the 2000s, and the current W is seen planning the war in Iraq, devising the "axis of evil" rhetoric and puzzling over those elusive WMDs. One of Stone's missteps is focusing almost exclusively on Iraq and ignoring the highly disputed and suspect election outcome in 2000.

A serious challenge for this movie is that it's just about impossible to stop evaluating the cast's approximation of their respective characters and fully give in to Stone's narrative. Josh Brolin, at least, owns his character; the first time he did the Bush laugh, it was so true to life that I wanted to rewind and hear it again. Also precisely on the money is Scott Glenn as Donald Rumsfeld; in a great scene in which the principles are commiserating about the absence of WMDs over lunch, Rumsfeld is singularly focused on the pleasures of a fabulous slice of pecan pie. Toby Jones also rises to the occasion as political weasel Karl Rove, the man who knew how to help Bush push the people's buttons (at least before 2008, anyway). From there, it's a decidedly mixed bag: Thandie Newton, as Condoleezza Rice, turns in a sub-Janet Jackson-on-SNL effort; Jeffrey Wright makes a reasonable stab at Colin Powell's voice of reason; and James Cromwell is impossible to separate from James Cromwell in the role of George H.W. Bush.

Stone comes closest to revelatory in the scenes in which W. consults with his church pastor, seeking to light his inner fire. Someone who went so single-mindedly in the directions Bush did must have felt some divine anointment. Stone aims to tie it all together in a series of fantasy interludes in which Bush stands before a stadium full of roaring baseball fans. It's high-concept and a noble attempt, but it's not the grandiose spiritual revelation audiences crave, particularly when it leaves the movie feeling as if it doesn't have an ending.

DVD: Shutter

• Joshua Jackson tries bad horror.

Genre: Horror, remake, J-horror
Director: Masayuki Ochiai
Run time: 1 hr 25 mins
DVD released: July 15, 2008
Cast: Joshua Jackson, Rachel Taylor
Verdict: &1/2

This unnecessary J-Horror knockoff (it's actually a remake of a movie from Thailand) answers the question of whether Dawson's Creek's Pacey (Joshua Jackson) can carry a horror movie. Not that there's anything particularly wrong (or right) with his acting (that goes for his role in FOX's mediocre new X-Files wannabe, Fringe, as well), but I kept expecting Dawson or Katie Holmes to come 'round the corner. With its Vengeful Female Spirit and Secrets from the Past, this movie feels as if it were made by someone whose only cinematic references are The Ring and The Grudge and all the lame imitators that followed. The Jackson character and his new wife, played in full I-want-to-be-Naomi-Watts mode by Rachel Taylor, begin to find ghostly images in their photographs — both casual snapshots and in the professional work of Jackson's character. And that could be mildly interesting, but the movie can't even nail ghostly photos in a compelling fashion. The one almost-frightening moment involves a boy gazing at a window reflection on a subway train, and the rest you'll anticipate before it even happens. Shutter is one of those tired movies that leaves you wondering why anyone bothered; it's a picture totally out of focus. // DVD NOTES // Nothing like a steaming pile of cinematic dung gussied up with a dozen self-important featurettes, is there? Everything from shooting in Japan to tips for ghost hunting is covered. Alternate and deleted scenes, including an alternate ending, and audio commentaries are also needlessly included.