Kate Beckinsale plays an art restorer. While working on her current commission, she discovers a previously hidden inscription, which points to a murder conspiracy 500 years ago. As she tries to solve the mystery, whose key lies in the paintings depiction of a chess game, people around her, connected in one way or another to the painting, begin to die. Is the past reaching out to wreak vengeance on the present? And who is the Black Queen?
I won't tell you, except to say that the answer is painfully obvious. Based on The Flanders Panel, a novel by Arturo Perez-Reverte, author of The Ninth Gate, this is a much less successful film than Roman Polanski's effort. The premise is intriguing, but the resolution is deeply disappointing. Beckinsale's character, furthermore, is so blinkered and pig-headed that we feel very little sympathy, and consequently worry, for her.
Trailers for The Punisher, The Big Empty, Step Into Liquid, Quicksand and Dracula's Curse. Nothing to do with the feature itself.
Nice idea, disappointing execution. Nice to see such character actors as Michael Gough however. Also, the film runs 102 minutes, not the indicated 112.
A good chess mystery
The movie isn't bad, but it's lacking something. It is quite an old film (1992) but it looks older, it has an 80s feel to it, the colors aren't sharp, as many European films were until recently. The copy is not the best either and the DVD comes with no extra features. The story is good and Kate Beckinsale offers a good early performance. I cannot help but compare it to the cinematic adaptation of another Perez-Reverte novel, The Ninth Gate, and there is where this one falls short. Still it's entertaining and surprising as a good mystery should be, and if you are a Kate Beckinsale fan, you will be glad that she is in almost every scene.
Read the Book
Even though I assumed the book--Arturo Perez-Reverte's marvelous The Flanders Panel--would be superior to the film, I was stunned at how truly awful this film is. Kate Beckinsale is quite good, but most of the casting choices are wretched, and this film looks like it was directed by a college student on a modest budget. The sleazy ending has little to do with the subtle, surprise ending in the novel. Perez-Reverte must have cringed when he saw what was done to his story.
Professor David Ash (Aidan Quinn) is skeptical of the supernatural, yet he is invited by elderly Nanny Tess Webb (Anna Massey) to investigate paranormal goings-on at her country estate. When Ash arrives, he meets her three adult children (Kate Beckinsale among them, who becomes his future love interest) and the family doctor (John Gielgud), all of whom deny anything is going on and claim that Nanny Tess is merely hallucinating. Yet after spending some time there, the professor begins experiencing unexplainable visions that only Nanny Tess, and often only he, sees. Furthermore the ghost of his sister, who died as a child in a drowning accident, begins to roam the estate. Is he imagining it and going mad? Or is the house truly haunted? Adapted by Tim Prager from the James Herbert novel,... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Lewis Gilbert (II) DVD Release Date: Released the 21 August 2001 Usually ships in 24 hours
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A love letter to movies (and the French new wave of the 1960s in particular), Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers starts with a 1968 riot outside of a Parisian movie palace then burrows into an insular love triangle. Matthew (Michael Pitt, Hedwig and the Angry Inch), an expatriate American student, bonds with a twin brother and sister, Isabelle (Eva Green) and Theo (Louis Garrel), over their mutual love of film--they not only quote lines of dialogue, they act out small bits and challenge each other to name the cinematic source. Matthew suspects the twins of incest, but that doesn't stop him from falling into his own intimacies with Isabelle. As the threesome becomes threatened, Paris succumbs to student riots. The Dreamers aspires to be kinky, but the results are more... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Bernardo Bertolucci DVD Release Date: Released the 13 July 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Neve Campbell is an arresting enigma in When Will I Be Loved, one of writer-director James Toback's most mysterious and successful minimalist dramas about sex, deception, and mutable identities in New York City. Campbell plays twentysomething beauty Vera, whose nude shower scene during the film's opening credits looks more like mythic preparation for a soon-to-be-fateful day than brazen exploitation. Ensconced in a fantastic loft paid for by her parents (Barry Primus, Karen Allen), the unemployed Vera embarks on an odyssey that begins with a mutually deceitful job interview with a college professor (Toback), leads to misadventures in questionable perception in Central Park, and climaxes with Vera's successful manipulation of two powerful men, one a craven lover (Fred Weller) and... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Neve Campbell - Fred Weller Director(s): James Toback DVD Release Date: Released the 25 January 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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This movie started out with a lot of potential, as Lizzie (Thora Birch) recounts the sordid tale of a weekend gone horribly wrong. Four truants chose to make a weekend for themselves rather than go on a prep school field trip. The mystery lies in the telling of the tale, as Lizzie's and Martyn's accounts diverge sharply from each other. A pshychiatrist and a police detective try to sort out the stories, but ultimately it is Lizzie who determines the fate of everyone involved. The movie has suspense but it doesn't go nearly far enough in pulling the pieces together into a plausible whole. Instead, you get a compelling set of events that more or less leads to an inescapable conclusion. More Info about this DVD Director(s): Nick Hamm DVD Release Date: Released the 19 October 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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A rarely screened cult favorite from Paul Verhoeven, this story of medieval war and revenge should please action fans and admirers of the director and his semi-regular leading man, Rutger Hauer, but its graphic scenes of sexual violence earmark it for mature viewers only. Hauer stars as a 16th-century mercenary hired by a Western European ruler (Fernando Hilbeck) to assault a neighboring kingdom; when the king reneges on his promises to Hauer and his men, they kidnap his son's fiancee (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and hole up in a nearby castle. Hauer and Leigh are standouts in a strong cast that includes Tom Burlinson, Bruno Kirby, the late Brion James, and Susan Tyrrell; Verhoeven's realistic approach to the down-and-dirty facts of medieval life and the bloody aftermath of warfare offers a... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Paul Verhoeven DVD Release Date: Released the 03 February 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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