First dayFirst show

There’s the red herring subplot involving the next door neighbours, when Pfeiffer suspects Warren Feur (James Remar) of murdering his wife Mary Feur (Miranda Otto). The origins of the ghost are, of course, closer home, and has to do with something Ford has done in the past.

The credit for showing the first cinematic toilet flushing and the most horrific bathroom slaying goes to thrill meister Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.

Zemeckis’ Hitchcockian homage spends long sequences in the bathroom, dwelling lovingly on the shower, mirrors, taps and floor. Long sequences revolve around a gargoyle-studded antique bathtub, though one must hand it to director Robert Zemeckis for one particularly breath-stopping bathtub sequence.

Ford too must be credited with breaking away from his macho man image, but in the wrong film. Pfeiffer tries hard but is let down by the weak script.

The film’s denoument is painfully stretched and you quickly get the answer to what lies beneath all the hype a weak and unoriginal film delivered by the talented director of Forrest Gump, who falls prey to run-of-the-mill horror film gimmickery.

— SANDEEP UNNITHAN

28 Days
Rating: * *

KICKING the habit is no picnic. It’s a nightmarish world of towering shadows, rife with insecurity, alive with pain and razor’s edge emotion.

Unfortunately, 28 Days’ director Betty Thomas squishes her version of serious subject matter into a cozy, sunshiney rehab home populated by a lovable, if idiosyncratic, collection of kooks.

Gwen Cummings (Sandra Bullock) is a serious binger. She floats to cloud nine every morning with a coupla ol’ pills and a bottle of happy. Generally the life of the party, rock bottom arrives when she rampages through her sister’s picture perfect wedding and smashes a car into the front porch of a house. Sentenced to 28 days in rehab at a home called Serenity Glen (where do they get these cheesy names?), a petulant and rebellious Cummings immediately begins to devise ways to trash the system. The rest of the movie travels along the predictable path of emotional group sessions, playing hookey at a pub with her verrah English boyfriend, Jasper (Dominic West – who?) and her cold-water-in-the-face realisation that she needs help,Bullock may try her hardest to break the movie-going world’s perception of her as America’s favourite cuddlebug, but she sure botches this chance as she sketches an unconvincing character hooked to alchohol and prescription drugs. Her compatriots at the home are also etched in hackneyed lines, including basketball player Eddie Boone (Viggo Mortenson) who forms a threadbare love-interest for Bullock. Though there is an attempt to link Cummings’ alchoholism to her mother’s (through flashback), the family angle remains largely ignored, save for a soppy scene where her sister (Elizabeth Perkins) forgives her for her past excesses.

However, the film does have its moments; successfully marshmellow soft where Bobbie Jean (a fellow drunk) listens to her children speaking about their feelings when she’s wasted or honestly funny-sweet when the group hams a scene from Bullock’s room-mate’s favourite soap. Director Thomas does the hand-held camera bit to depict Bullock’s woozy world to perfection while the music kicks in at all the effective places.

— JOEYTA BOSE

Ratings: **** Very good; *** Good; ** Average ; * Give it a miss