CineBad!!!

I didn’t hate this movie as much as everyone in the audience when I saw it. As I was walking out, I heard many comments along the lines of, “a waste of film” and “a real waste of 2 hours of my time. I could have been shopping.” I liked it. It did have cheesy moments, I’ll admit…For example, The fact that Joanna (Ashley Judd), the main character’s last name is Eris is a bit cheesy– at least I thought it was corny and obvious (Eris being the goddess of discord that follows Ares, the Greek god of war around, causing fights and mayhem and Joanna goes around killing people). However, I was just informed that most people wouldn’t pick up on this. Oh well. I’m a nerd. We’ve already established that fact.

Joanna’s main function is to go around alluring men into her clutches and then killing them. Every so often she has flashbacks of her daddy and Christmas. As she’s killing someone, she sobs “Merry Christmas, Daddy!” Supposedly it’s because her father walked out on her on Christmas when she was little that turned her into a psycho killer. My dad forgot to call me on my birthday once, does this give me license to lure my boss to his death? Please?

Ewan McGregor plays a nameless reclusive techno-geek private eye known as “the Eye.” He follows Joanna around and elaborately spies on her with all sorts of nifty gadgets. He’s like what would happen if James Bond were in Christopher Reeve’s Rear Window. He becomes obsessed with Joanna, and follows her around the country, charting his progress by buying a new souvenir snow dome for every new city. I like snow domes.

So anyway, “The Eye” gets more and more obsessed with Joanna, and then we discover that his wife disappeared with his daughter a few years back. His daughter is haunting him now– she actually appears in weird places, and they have conversations. He’s a “daddy without a little girl.” Joanna is a “little girl without a daddy…” match made in heaven…or Freudian nightmare? You decide! Don’t miss the spectacular, um, ending. This movie doesn’t actually end. Nor does it fizzle out. It just sort of stops, and the credits roll. But whatever– at least the ending isn’t totally formulaic and predictable. It just doesn’t happen.

By the way, why does k.d. lang gets to have her name not capitalized? I think I’m going to change my name to sCOOTEr bUrCH.