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DVD Gothika (Widescreen Edition)
The title of Gothika prepares you for a spooky, atmospheric thriller with an emphasis on supernatural mystery. The best way to appreciate the movie itself is to understand that it's a waking nightmare that needn't make sense in the realm of sanity. Making a flashy Hollywood debut after his superior 2000 thriller Crimson Rivers, French actor-director Mathieu Kassovitz pours on the dark and stormy atmosphere, trapping a competent psychologist (Halle Berry) in the prison ward where she treated inmates (including Penelope Cruz) until she was committed for killing her husband (Charles S. Dutton), who was also her boss. Did a car crash cause her to suffer ghostly delusions, or is a young girl--dead for four years--sending clues from beyond the grave? Berry has to prove her innocence while Kassovitz keeps everything--including the viewer and costar Robert Downey Jr. (as Berry's colleague)--in the dark about just where the nonsensical plot is leading. There's a better movie in here somewhere, among the catwalks and crannies of the impressive prison-castle setting, and Berry gives 100% in a performance that's consistent with the movie's overwrought tone. Attentive viewers will identify the killer early on, and the ending is anticlimactic, but Gothika serves up a few good shocks for ghost-story connoisseurs. --Jeff Shannon
this women is a goods act, but has nothing on alica key's
alica key's needs to start being in movies,like i said this movie did not even move me or made me BUDGE!
Because Someone Is Dead Doesn't Mean They're Gone!
A brilliant and respected criminal psychologist, Dr. Miranda Grey (Halle Berry) is an expert at knowing what is rational. Under the direction of her husband (Charles S. Dutton), Miranda treats dangerously disturbed patients at the Woodward Penitentiary for Women. But Miranda's life is thrust into terrifying jeopardy after a cryptic encounter with a mysterious young girl leads to a nightmare beyond her wildest imagination.
Gothika starts out with tremendous promise. The story appears that it will be more original and rewarding than most horror/thrillers. Halle Berry certainly rises above the usual B-list acting. Even Downey, Jr. seems suspiciously at home in the film's prison setting. The trouble begins for the audience shortly after it does for Berry. Soon the film begins to get predictable and ordinary. Only the terrific cinematography and convincing atmosphere save the film from sinking to the depths of the many who have gone before. There is a commentary track featuring director Mathieu Kassovitz, and Matthew Libatique. This track is not a real standout... it plays more like having a couple more people in the room.
An above average Dolby Digital 5.1 track will be found here. While not aggressive, the surrounds create a great deal of ambiance. Rain is quite convincing as are the mystical "things that go bump in the night". Dialogue is usually clear and center except for the opening scene. The two actresses seem to be whispering and I had to crank it to catch what they were saying.
There are some scary moments in Gothika and it will certainly hold your interest. There are obvious influences from The Ring, particularly as the climax begins to unravel. The twists are quite imaginative, but the film tips its hand a bit too early. If you think you've seen most of this before, you're "not alone".
ok film. if you're gonna buy it, get the 2 dvd version
A slightly better than average movie, kind of a darker version of "What Lies Beneath" (Zemekis). Halle Berry is fine, but this is far from her best work. (At least it's better than Catwoman. What was she thinking on that one?)
Some people really liked this, and it does have a few good moments, but as far as ghost stories go, I've seen better.
Oh, if you're on this page to buy the movie, go get the 2 dvd version. It really makes me sick the way Hollywood studios rush out a bare bones DVD, wait for fans to buy it, then release a special edition 8 months later. I've now started waiting on every DVD. If it's not a mindblowing SE on first release, chances are one will come pretty soon. (For example: I, Robot; Man on Fire; The Day After Tomorrow; X-Men [later released as 1.5] and X2: X-men United [a 2.5 is rumored]; Panic Room; etc...)
With a plot that might've been lifted from The X-Files, nothing is quite what it seems in The Forgotten, a psychological conspiracy thriller with Julianne Moore doing fine work as a grieving mother whose nine-year-old son was killed in a plane crash. At least, that's what she's been led to believe, but when even her husband (Anthony Edwards) tries to convince her that she's delusional and never had a child, things start to get very spooky indeed. Dominic West (from HBO's superb series The Wire) plays a similarly traumatized father, and when they witness some very strange events--and a mysterious man (Linus Roache) who might be indestructible--this glorified B-movie potboiler directed by Joseph Ruben (best known for Dreamscape and The Stepfather)... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Julianne Moore - Dominic West Director(s): Joseph Ruben DVD Release Date: Released the 18 January 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Johnny Depp gets high off another acting challenge in this tricky adaptation of a Stephen King yarn. Although the mood is too sinister to allow for the mischief of his Pirates of the Caribbean turn, Depp still manages to embroider his role here with plenty of quirky business. He plays a writer, depressed and nearly divorced, who's stuck in an isolated cabin (shades of The Shining) when a stranger (John Turturro) arrives, accusing him of plagiarism. Writer-director David Koepp (Stir of Echoes) does his best to make the rickety material compelling--he gets the maximum out of the cabin set, for instance--but the problems inherent in the King story eventually win out. The climactic scenes are particularly unpleasant, especially in contrast to the cleverness of Depp's... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Johnny Depp - John Turturro - Maria Bello Director(s): David Koepp DVD Release Date: Released the 22 June 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Despite box-office dominance during its opening weekend, The Butterfly Effect is better suited to guilty-pleasure viewing at home. When writer-directors Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber (who penned Final Destination 2) aren't breaking their own haphazard rules of logic, they're filling this sordid thriller with enough unpleasantness to make eternal damnation seem like an attractive alternative. In a role-reversal from his That '70s Show persona, Ashton Kutcher plays a college-age psychology student who discovers, by re-reading his childhood journals, that he can revisit his past and alter traumatic events, hoping to improve their previously unfortunate outcomes. Instead, this foolhardy experiment in chaos theory (the titular "butterfly effect," popularized by Jeff... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Ashton Kutcher - Melora Walters - Amy Smart Director(s): Eric Bress - J. Mackye Gruber DVD Release Date: Released the 06 July 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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It's not the scary hit that The Ring was in 2002, but The Grudge makes a similarly convincing case for American remakes of popular Japanese horror films. Barely a year passed between the release of Takashi Shimizu's creepy ghost story Ju-On: The Grudge and the production of this American remake, set in Tokyo and starring Sarah Michelle Gellar in her first post-Buffy horror film. About the only significant difference between the two films is the importing of a mostly-American cast (including Bill Pullman, Clea DuVall and Grace Zabriskie), but The Grudge was reconfigured (by screenwriter Stephen Susco) to allow Shimizu to refine and improve the spookiest highlights of his earlier version, which enjoyed previous incarnations as a short film and two... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Sarah Michelle Gellar - Jason Behr - Clea DuVall Director(s): Takashi Shimizu DVD Release Date: Released the 01 February 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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While it doesn't rank with such grim classics as The Silence of the Lambs and Seven, D.J. Caruso's Taking Lives offers similarly heavy atmosphere, beginning well before fizzling into absurdity. Freely adapted from the novel by Michael Pye, and set in Montreal (although it was filmed in Quebec City), the plot trades in several familiar tropes of the serial-killer genre, beginning with the FBI agent (Angelina Jolie) who brings her unique skills (and brooding, low-key demeanor) to the vexing case of a killer who, out of apparent self-loathing, steals the identities of his victims and lives their lives until it's time for the next gruesome murder. Ethan Hawke plays the killer's alleged next victim, and in a film filled with twists that grow increasingly unconvincing,... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Angelina Jolie - Ethan Hawke - Kiefer Sutherland Director(s): D.J. Caruso DVD Release Date: Released the 17 August 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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