The Game (1997)

The movie starts off with a long (ish) home video and then we are introduced to Michael Douglas who plays Nicholas Van Orton who is an financier who doesn’t seem to have a particularly nice life. He almost reminds me of a tone down version of Gordon Gekko. In the film, he gets given a birthday present from him odd brother. He signs up to CRS which just screams wacko. After we are introduced to Nicholas and his brother the story spends a fair amount of time showing that CRS don’t seem the full ticket. The main question is just what is CRS offering and to be honest it’s a good question and it’s made even more intriguing because it Michael Douglas that its happening to. It’s not long until the story starts to unravel and the moment it goes weird is when Nicholas goes home and comes across the doll, then the TV starts talking to him. Things get even stranger when he encounters a waitress and after coming across a bloke on the floor the movie descends into a bit of a far fetched idea and whilst watching it I was thinking that it resembled North by Northwest a bit in that it stretches credibility a bit.

The film does have a strange curiosity to it as the question to what the game is. Things seem to be getting out of hand before the mad scene involves Nicholas and the house has been painted with ultra-violet paint and weird loud music.  When Conrad (Sean Penn) comes back into the story after appearing and leaving at the beginning, he seems somewhat more hysterical. He is very untrusting when he finds a glove compartment full of CRS keys. This leads to a nice scene between Penn and Douglas when they talk about stuff that has happened in their past.  After a good scene with Douglas being trapped in a taxi after it goes in the sea. When Douglas and the cops go to the CRS headquarters it has magically disappeared, that much was obvious.

What isn’t as obvious is what happens when Nicholas goes to see Christine. After smashing up the camera they had in the smoke detector, a bunch of men with guns come at then and attack them. It’s a great scene. After Christine tries to tell Nicholas whats going on there is a nice twist where we find out that Sam is in the con with CRS. All of a sudden Nicholas is dumped in the middle of mexico and spends several minutes getting back home where he finds his home is to be sold and it’s at this point he tracks down his ex-wife. The story climax’s with Nicholas shooting his brother by accident and in shock jumps off the top of a building and somehow manages to land on a pre-prepared crashmat. When he lands he discovers that his brother did this as a birthday present and he is in fact very much alive. Now if that were me then I wouldn’t just hug him, I would scream and shout at him and walk straight out. Nicholas acts like its just a small prank. The film easily falls apart when you start to think of the different scenarios that could have happened like if Nicholas had jumped off a different side of the building or if he’d hit something on the way down or even if he had shot his brother in the head instead of the chest.

The movie has two faces in it that are familiar to me. The first being Armin Mueller-Stahl (Anson Baer) and the second is Peter Donat (Sam Sutherland) who I know from the X-Files as Fox Mulder’s dad. Sean Penn is quite good and despite not being a big fan of the painfully indulgent actor I can’t deny that he wasn’t mesmerising on screen. Douglas is always good and he was especially good in this. As the lead female actor in the movie, Deborah Kara Unger was ok as Christine. She has a bit of an attitude to begin with but when she returns then she seems to have changed a bit.

This being a David Fincher film it was always good and Michael Douglas and Sean Penn carry the film well. You have to leave your senses at the door before seeing this because if you start to apply logic to this film then it becomes an absurd film but if your willing to look past this then it’s a perfectly fine film that flags a bit in the middle but picks up to a thrilling conclusion.

The Skeptic (2009)

I was a bit of a Sceptic watching the Skeptic. Mainly because it had Tom Arnold in it. Sorry I had to get that gag out of the way. According to IMDB, this film is also called The Haunting of Bryan Becket but The Skeptic sounds better.  

 

The story tells of Bryan Becket who at the beginning of the film finds out that his aunt has died. first reaction when he finds out his aunt died was that he inherits the house thus making him instantly unlikeable. It’s hard to believe that he a) is married and b) has a child. After the funeral he and Tom Arnold go and visit the house and he decides that due to his marriage troubles he is going to stay and sort things out. 

 

When Sully is having what seems like a fit, at first I thought he was pretending to have a fit but in a good twist he was actually unwell. Normally this would have been a joke but it seemed to be the first indication that this wasn’t going to be your typical middle of the road movie. 

 

When he realises that he doesn’t own the house he goes to some institute that his aunt  left the house to and after a bit of waffle we find out that his aunt believes that the house is haunted. I like that he is threatening to contest the will believing that the sleep lab trying to dupe an old woman and manipulate her but in reality it is Bryan that is doing it. 

 

What’s quite interesting is that it doesn’t go weird straight away but takes the time to build things up. The bit where Tom Arnold makes Bryan jump was quite a shocking moment. By the halfway point the shocks start to come more frequently before stopping again. Tom Arnold is easily the best thing in this (never thought I would admit that). Whenever he was on screen I was enjoying the movie but whenever he wasn’t on then I started to lose interest. 

 

The death of Bryan’s mother is used as a reason why Bryan is so sceptic. The wife and kid are bought back in after a while and it seems like they are bought it because the writer needs something fresh to keep the story going.  

 

Zoe Saladna (Cassie) is probably the next big name in this after Arnold. She is perhaps best know for appearing the most recent Star Trek movies. She starts off in the institute as a patient who seems a bit volatile and then disappears for a while before returning by forcing her way into the house. It’s at this point it seems to go even slower and its at this point that I started to give up as it seemed to go from being something spooky to just an episode of Dr Phil or something like that. There’s an awful lot of shouting and screaming from other rooms throughout this film. Robert Prosky also appears as Father Wymond and Prosky has one of those faces that you instantly recognise. He has played roles in Mrs Doubtfire (1993), Miracle of 34th Street (1995) and Gremlins 2 (1990). He died shortly after this film was finished and it’s a perfectly fine performance and he does get some good scenes.  

 

The film picks up in the final act when Bryan goes back in the house thinking that Cassie is in there. The film ends with him falling down the stairs looking into a room that seem to lead to a place that made him smile then it ends. It’s definitely a strange movie and ends all of a sudden. It’s a film that has its moments and its not the worse film that I have seen but I cant deny that it wasn’t what I was expecting.