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| 11/22/2003 |
| Gothika: Like a Jump to Conclusions Mat |
A Movie Review
by Wes Bennett
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“X2: X-Men United”, “Die Another Day”, “Swordfish”, “X-Men” and “The Last Boy Scout”, yes truly an impressive volume of work. Halle Berry, after “Monster’s Ball,” is now, along with Ben Affleck and Angelina Jolie, an Oscar winner. For me, the moment in “Ball” when Berry told Billy Bob Thorton to “make me feel good“ (before the seduction scene) was one of the all time, most awkward moments in cinema. Berry, who’s half white, didn’t endear herself to me anymore, with her over-the-top Oscar acceptance speech. For me, it was again, more awkward than anything else.
Along with the presence of Berry, I knew this was going to be a bad film, even though the original preview was kind of freaky and atmospheric. I hoped that, like “The Order” or maybe “The Core,” I could extract a kind of B movie enjoyment from it. For the most part I was right, the film got awful reviews and has numerous flaws, but overall it manages to hold one’s attention and be, at the least, entertaining.
Berry plays psychiatrist Miranda Grey. Driving home on a dark and stormy night, she takes a detour and swerves to avoid a girl standing in the middle of the road. Miranda wakes up four days later in a penitentiary, unable to remember what happened the previous four days. Colleague Dr. Pete Graham (Robert Downey Jr.) explains to her that she murdered her husband (Charles S. Dutton) with an ax.
Meanwhile, she's tormented by an angry ghost who carves bloody messages in Miranda's flesh and tosses her around her cell like a rag doll. Either that, or Miranda has gone completely insane.
The premise promises a psychological thriller that blends questions of sanity with hints of the supernatural or things that can’t be explained by science. But this is all quickly abandoned. The film has very poor transitions and abruptly switches modes from a horror to a murder mystery.
It’s easy to get hung up on details of plausibility and logic. Some would argue that this is a psycho thriller with the plausibility of a nightmare, so it’s not supposed to make sense. The genre has always been one with the specific duty of involving, scaring and absorbing us for its running time, after which it is over and we can go home and eat cheeseburgers. It’s only when we think about what we saw, that brings trouble.
First of all the treatment of Berry by the ghost is ridiculously abusive and unnecessary. The ghost should have communicated more clearly, instead of with cryptic hints like "Not alone." We wonder why she is torturing Berry so much. After the mystery is revealed the previous events seem like they have been more of a series of cheap, ineffective scares.
For along time, ”Gothika” seems to serve up a repetitive recipe for suspense by putting Halle Berry alone in a room or her car or her cell, adding scary music and out of nowhere the dead blond girl appears. This will repeat 10 times and on cue about every fifteen minutes.
Even with the lack of solid transitions, the film only derails in the last 20 minutes. This is when “Gothika,” has the honor of featuring what has got to be one of the worst lines of dialogue in the last decade. A man frantically shoots at the ghost of a woman he murdered four years ago. The bullets have no effect. A scream, some profanity, just a shocked expression would have done. But no, in response he observes: “this isn’t logical, you’re already dead.”
Without giving too much of the plot away, I will tell you that everything seems too convenient and far fetched. The filmmakers go to such lengths to make sure that you can’t guess the ending. Consequently things don’t fully make sense when the mystery is unveiled. Even so, would I rather see this than “Cat In the Hat?” Yes. Would I rather sit at home and what a “Playmakers” marathon? Yes again. Do I think that Michael Jackson molests children? Do I know what a rhetorical question is? Let’s just stop.
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| "We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide, then question the manner in which I provide it." |
- Jack Nicholson
A Few Good Men
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Distributed Beers
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| 5 |
Sierra Nevada Bigfoot |
| 4 |
Guinness Draught |
| 3 |
Newcastle Brown Ale |
| 2 |
Bass Pale Ale |
| 1 |
Samuel Adams Boston Lager |
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