Darwin never looked so good.

It’s ALIEN with a spectacular pair of natural knockers.

Designed by H.R. Giger – the alien species, not the knockers – a half-human, half-alien life form called Sil (Natasha Henstridge in her human form) escapes from a SETI facility and goes on a rampage fucking everyone. In the Biblical sense. And then fucking them in the Hollywood sense.

Spreading her alien seed, doing what every species on Earth has been designed to do by genetic engineering since life began, somehow she is regarded as doing something wrong. Only because she is not of the human species.

And it only confuses the issue when non-humans have such great knockers.

Specialists are called in to hunt down the alien: Michael Madsen as the Tough Guy, Alfred Molina as The Dork, Marg Helgenberger as The Hot Scientist and Forest Whitaker as The Empath, all led by Ben Kingsley The Brain.

SPECIES hangs our credibility by a thread by initially mating human DNA with alien material to spawn Sil, but we can live with that in a haze of scientific jargon and mungus ta-tas; that thread is cut when The Empath is introduced, tracking mud all over the science and jerking all over the jargon. Whitaker is only here so that the alien hunters can glean clues to Sil’s movements without hard evidence and stay hot on her hot tail. That spoils an otherwise good story centered around the most basic tenet of natural selection.

Sex.

The message at the core of SPECIES is that every living thing’s purpose is to mate; continuance for the genetic code. It’s what Marg Helgenberger aches to do with Michael Madsen all movie.

We’ve grown so inured to that mating message with all our displacement and duplicity and political correctness that when Sil asks a captive woman why she is here on Earth, the woman tearfully laments, “I don’t know!” And people don’t! They think they are here to make money, to worship false gods, to get married, work a job, buy a house, blah blah…

Writer Dennis Feldman got it right – the purpose of life is to propagate more life. And the organism in this story trying to copulate copiously is designed correctly as well – she is the most alluring thing on two gams. Genetic engineering at its best. Henstridge is so strikingly beautiful, there is nothing else onscreen when she glides past. Helgenberger is a tasty specimen herself, but in this movie, Henstridge is in a league of her own.

The message gets a little lost when the person on the team who eventually has mind-blowing, unprotected sex with Sil is The Dork. Who promptly explodes with alien bodybursting.

There’s the other message: the more beautiful the chick, the more painful the disease.

END

The Barbaric Yawp of the Lunatic Fringe.

In 1970, author Clifford Irving fooled all of the people some of the time when he produced the autobiography of one of the world’s most intriguing recluses, Howard Hughes.

Like all great hoaxes, it eventually served him better than the truth.

And like all movies “based on true stories,” we approach cautiously where truth fears to tread. You see, THE HOAX is the movie about the making of the book that would become another book about the movie we are watching. No matter which way you squint at it, you’re gonna end up cross-eyed.

THE HOAX is screenplayed by William Wheeler and directed by Lasse Hallström, starring Richard Gere as Clifford Irving, the author who convinced publisher McGraw-Hill and Life magazine that he was authorized to tabulate the dictated Autobiography of Howard Hughes (1971). He was not, of course, and despite many adversities (from within and without the Irving camp) the book was published. Now here’s where it gets cross-eyed: after Irving was exposed as a fraud in early 1972 and spent 17 months in jail, upon his emergence, he wrote the book The Hoax (published 1981 – date varies with source, but the 2007 reissue, to coincide with the release of the movie, is no hoax). It is this book that this movie is about – the silver-tongued, sweaty machinations of two desperate grifters.

At least, that’s what the movie makes them out to be. When we open on Irving, he is already a fast-talking con artist, his middling life with Swiss-German wife, Edith (Marcia Gay Harden), injected with cons of cars, loans and luxuries. Dick Suskind (Alfred Molina) is his overtly-sweating literary assistant. It is the early ’70s, and billionaire film-maker, aviator and entrepreneur Howard Hughes is already regarded by many as nuts or dead or worse; newsreel footage of Hughes and the era is intercut throughout the film, giving us context.

With a book deal dead, Irving desperately wants to ensure his next idea (and pay advance) will not be killed in utero, so concocts a story that the secluded Hughes – whom he truly believed would be too sick or too crazy to condemn his book – has commissioned him to write Hughes’ biography, which would be dictated to him in private. Forging handwritten letters of intent and carefully caressing the Hughes enigma, Irving stipulated conditions whereby he became the “spokesman for the lunatic hermit” – the sole voice, contact and payee for Hughes in the outside world.

Poffy Hughes

Irving’s methods and madness are an entertaining duplicity, as he and Suskind are shown stealing documents from the Pentagon, wildly photocopying manuscripts of Hughes’ chief executive, Noah Dietrich (Eli Wallach – that guy is still alive?!) and wordsmithing their way through business meetings, with Irving eventually physically and verbally channeling Hughes so eerily that even Suskind is taken aback. But – as a dissatisfied real-life Irving tells it – the film’s content is itself “a hoax of a hoax.”In the author’s own words: “The movie misses the point that the Howard Hughes hoax was a live-action adventure story concocted by two middle-aged hippie expat writers and a Swiss heiress.” – from CliffordIrving.com

Who am I to argue?

In the film, Irving is a desperate, pathological scammer and Suskind, his jittery, not-too-bright sidekick. Real-life Clifford Irving: “Dick Suskind, witty friend and co-conspirator, is offered to the public as a self-righteous, sweaty buffoon. The scenes that deal with Movie Clifford feuding with Movie Dick, getting him drunk and hiring a bargirl to seduce him, are totally fictional. The Hughes people mailing the package of files to me is also made up.”

Movie Irving tells Suskind that the more outrageous the lie, the more inclined people are to believe it. “I handed them 3 yellow letters and they gave me half a million dollars. Is that plausible?” As the publishers’ suspicion grows, Irving’s audacity grows disproportionately. When a publishing exec (Stanley Tucci) insults him during a negotiation, “Who are you anyway? Clifford Fucking Irving!” Irving counters in wrath, “I’m Howard Hughes!”

One would think that the McGraw-Hill and Life publishers who hung on Irving’s every word (because it was supposedly coming from, or about, Hughes) would be more canny – but the reality is: there is a part of all of us that wants a hoax to be true.

In the end, movie Irving (slicking back his hair, penciling in a mustache and hallucinating about Hughes’ thugs roughing him up) has gotten so deep into Hughes’ head that he probably could’ve written the definitive biography if Hughes had okayed it. One of McGraw-Hill’s head publishers, who had met Hughes, lauds Irving’s book as authentic for its perfect emulation of Hughes’ speech patterns.

It was obvious that the money issue, which would be Irving’s downfall, was never thought through, as firstly there was no way Irving, Edith or Suskind could convincingly cash all the checks paid to Hughes through Irving and secondly, any large expenditures or sudden windfalls would be monitored by the greedy government staking its claim in all personal income.

It is scary how big Hughes actually was; the movie intimates that he had a hand in the pocket of the grandest hoaxer of all – Richard M. Nixon – and that he was unhappy with Nixon after he “stopped doing tricks for Hughes” when he gained the Presidency which Hughes helped him attain. I’m just sayin’… Watergate. I’m just sayin’.

Is the message of real-life Irving simply his audacious will to action? That to ever make a dent in this world – do ANYTHING. Key word: do. Create product; throw it at the beast and as long as it is there, it counts. Sure, he paid with jail time, but don’t we all pay in some way? For fame OR infamy. Though a ruse, this product of his is now more famous than any of his other work. That’s one barbaric yawp heard ’round the world.

Movie Irving had to be content with all of the people some of the time, but for real-life Irving, THE HOAX ensures his scam lives on for all of the people for ALL time.

And that’s the truth.

END

Spider Sense-tingling.

Poff Ock

Grander, faster, slicker than its predecessor, director Sam Raimi‘s SPIDER-MAN 2 is more action-packed, more thrill-rided, more rollercoastered than SPIDER-MAN (2002) – but though its plaudits stretch skyscraper tall, its demerits run Mariana Trench deep.

Based loosely on the comicbook episode Spider-man No More, plot finds Dr. Otto Octavius (Alfred Molina, in strapping scenery-chewing mien) “tampering in God’s domain” (as they used to say in 50s B-Movies) trying to subvert the Second Law of Thermodynamics (as they should be saying now, if it weren’t for science riding backseat to Jamaican “psychics” and George W. Bush’s mongoloid church administration) to get more energy out of a system than he put into it. Which can’t be done. If you know your science. Which Octavius apparently does not. Thus, amidst Pretty Orange Explosions, everything gets pear-shaped, causing four steel-belted, evil arms to fuse to Octavius’s inner Manson, spawning the fearsome “Doctor Octopus,” who becomes a supervillain. Natchelly.

And Spidey must save the day.

But Spider-man/Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire), perpetually mooning over Mary-Jane (Kirsten Dunst), experiences a psychosomatic loss of powers and renounces his web-slinging in favor of the geek life. Thus – Spider-man No More.

It is only when Doc Ock threatens his breasty bimbo that he realizes he must reconcile his inner freak with his outer geek.

Overall, SPIDER-MAN 2 sells its product, but falls down in niggly details: Peter loses his job as a pizza delivery guy because he couldn’t make good on a “29 Minute Guarantee” – but what kind of insane, coke-addled pizza parlor would make that kind of guarantee over a 42-block radius in the heart of New York City?; Doc Ock robs banks to buy the components for his evil machine – but why not grab a supervillain nut (whilst cutting out the middle man) and simply steal  the parts?

Visual clichés to grind your teeth by: Peter at a high-class soiree, having every last hors d’oeuvre picked out from under him (it worked for Peter Sellers); bride running through streets in slomo (it worked for Julia Roberts); shot of Spider-man costume hanging decoratively out of a trashcan (worked as comicbook cover – lame as live action); there is even a grandiose “Noooooo!” scene with Doc Ock – this movie has everything!

And can we stop with the screaming? That convention of B-Movie Screaming Damsel is now officially getting on my nerves. From hospital nurses to hot chicks, from Mary-Jane to Aunt May (Rosemary Harris) – every woman in SPIDER-MAN 2 screams exactly the same way; whether a flat-bellied model or Peter’s septuagenarian aunt, they all somehow capture that identical frequency of high-pitched, nerve-fraying, cochlear irritation. And frankly, I’m sick of it! Who screams that way in real life? If I were to become a superhero by some freakish radioactive ferret-bite to the buttocks, and I had to save some supermodel damsel in distress, I’d insist she cease that confounded insensate shrieking if she valued her taut, Body-by-Jake ass.

And Spider-man takes his mask off too much. Why? So we can see him emote. When his powers fail, it is more effective to pull off the mask and look dumbfounded than let the mask tilt its head and say, “Huh?” And how much more dramatic to stop a train, mask-less, straining with neck-bulging effort, rather than letting his round-headed alter-ego smoothly halt it?

The thought and detail that went into the astounding battle scene between Doc Ock and Spidey atop the speeding train rivals that of any movie ever made – so many minute details all working together to create a breath-stopping experience – and plausible, in that world where these super beings live. As just one example of those thousands of details: when Spider-man smashes out through the train windows sideways, he shoots his web with both hands back at the body of the train and pulls himself back onto the side of the moving train before we can even think of how he was going to save himself. Brilliant! Times 1000.

Too many arms on the dance floor…

Unlike the BATMAN movies, we always see Spider-man clearly – especially in a cool elevator scene where he rides with QUEER AS FOLK’s Hal Sparks, a real life comics aficionado in a riotous cameo.

Danny Elfman‘s Spider-Man Theme – that horn line, which always makes me stifle a tear – is epic in its sweeping poignancy, tastefully regal, a superhero’s lament. And the web-swinging tears the breath from your lungs with its breakneck daredevilry.

Peter reveals his identity to Mary-Jane in the most auspicious of heroic deeds – he holds up a building that is about to topple on her. Isn’t it every schoolboy’s fantasy to Meet Cute the girl of their dreams that way?

And I love that his head is the exact, correct roundness.

END

Leonardo, we have a problem… Tom Hanks is prettier than the women…

The Gospel According to Fluke.

Christians are a gutless lot.

Whenever a new fiction dares question their established fiction, they turn into the very backbiting, provincial bigots they accuse everyone else of being.

The “new” fiction is Dan Brown‘s novel, The Da Vinci Code. The “established” fiction is How to Murder with Impunity, otherwise known as Common Sense for Dummies, also called Prescribed Sex and Violence for Preschoolers, aka The Holy Bible (the word “holy,” as always, used in its most broad and ambiguous sense.)

Leonardo’s Vitruvian Cucumber

Through director Ron Howard and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman, Brown’s fable has been demoted to Over-Hyped Hollywood Movie, THE DA VINCI CODE, bringing out the backbiters in force, which says something about the condescending attitude religious leaders harbor towards their “sheep” (so judiciously termed), whom they do not trust to think for themselves.

In order to “save” their flock from – who knows what they’re afraid of (maybe “independent thought”)? – and proving once again that they have absolutely no faith (that’s the million dollar word, right?) in the supposedly omnipotent invisible guy they claim can do just about anything, religious leaders take it upon themselves to attempt stymieing this harmless, edge-of-boring media. Trickling this attitude down to the sheep themselves, we end up with protests and vigils and undue animosity towards free-thinkers, which of course, eventually escalates to murder and topless dancing.

I have not read the book. Apparently, it’s a page-turner. Or a well-marketed fad. But THE DA VINCI CODE movie – for all its touting of “shaking the foundations of Christianity” – is just not all that compelling.

Threatening to bog itself in esoteric jargon and weighted with faux-gravitas, this fable posits an interesting twist to that hoary tale of virgins and saviors and whores (oh my!), maintaining that Jesus took Magdalene as his wife and sired a bloodline that exists today. (I’m already feeling unholy.)

Symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks, sporting Vitruvian Man mane, and working from his Handbook on Furrowed Brows) and Detective Sophie Neveu (dull Audrey Tatou) find themselves embroiled in a murder frame-up which leads them on a Quest for The Holy Grail, no less (without the aid of Monty Python, who undertook The Quest 30 years ago on a smaller budget in a superior film).

Pursued by Detective Fache (Jean Reno), and by a self-flagellating, Opus Dei albino monk (Paul Bettany), who kills with the blessing of the church (which is what Christianity is all about), Langdon and Neveu seek asylum with the old man from Scene 24, Sir Leigh Teabing (Ian McKellen), a Grail expert, who exposits most of the “sacrilegious” aspects of this tale, invoking Leonardo Da Vinci, Sir Isaac Newton, The Knights Who Say Templar, the fictional Priory of Scion and the very real – though not self-flagellating – Opus Dei order (a kind of cult within the larger cult of the Christian church).

Trapped between the desire to deliver a “summer blockbuster” and to stay true to the cerebral nature of Brown’s text, Howard serves us a kind of COLUMBO episode on ‘ludes, where clues and riddles click into place like jigsaws. Though it delivers on the mystery and mental levels, the movie trips over in its execution.

Howard’s pacing is uncharacteristically sloppy, with an overlong third act that reveals the Grand Mystery anticlimactically and then pads itself to 145 minutes with further vapid revelations – but by then, it’s all about as relevant as the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow.

There are also unnecessarily huge production numbers for the historical flashbacks showing knights covered in medieval poo, which involves Howard helming practically a whole second movie just for these vignettes, diluting the import of the spoken word and crucifying our imagination on glaring imagery, by showing us exactly what each speaker describes, like those insufferable 1980s rock videos which used to depict every line of the song lyrics with relevant visuals.

THE DA VINCI CODE is intriguing, yet far-fetched enough not to affect any person over the Age of Reason. Unfortunately, Christianity has no place for reason.

And what most scares religious leaders is not that this world-shaking fictional “secret” is provable – exactly the opposite! The secret – that Jesus spawned descendants – is itself based on “faith”! Who is going to test Jesus for his DNA? So how can anyone prove, either through documents, riddles, or by chopping down the mightiest tree in the forest with a herring, that they are of JC’s blood? The real life church is scared not because it believes its followers will intelligently discern that THE DA VINCI CODE is guff; it is scared because it knows its followers already have the propensity to believe inexplicable malarkey – they’ve been feeding it to those followers for the past 2000 years!

Lose enough followers to other religions/cults/Reason and your “church” is demoted to merely “cult” status (where it rightfully belongs), with no tax exemptions or impunity to fiddle with boys.

Langdon – with an eidetic memory (extraordinarily accurate recall) – cracks the final code on the strength of a fallacy. In recalling Newton’s grave, he remarks that “all the orbs (planets) were represented, but one – the apple that inspired Newton to work out the laws of gravity.” Firstly, Newton died in 1727, before the discoveries of Neptune (1846), Uranus (named in 1850) and Pluto (1930). How then could “all” of the orbs have been represented on his tomb? Secondly, Newton’s apple is an apocryphal tale. It is urban legend. Thirdly, relating a fruit to a planet is stretching a premise to begin with; the fact that the puzzle is solved through this fatuous symbolism only further illustrates how the church can sell provincial fables from Israel as Holy Writ. (If Christian leaders educated themselves in fallacies of this nature, they might be able to make compelling arguments against the media they fear so irrationally. But in believing they have found Truth – and hold a monopoly on it – they stop searching for it.)

As Langdon laments, “Why couldn’t Jesus be married and still be an important figure?” Why indeed? Maybe it’s because I don’t take this issue as seriously as someone who would sit on a bomb or kill another human to prove their love of invisible guys, but The Message that Langdon ultimately tries to impart is impotent and irrelevant.

Instead of standing his ground on the evidence that points to the supposed “truth” of Jesus’s bloodline, Langdon folds to the gutless notion that a lie based on faith is more honorable, or more worthy, than the truth that would destroy that faith. Why are we inculcated to believe this insanity?!

In a movie that trumpets its heresy, who is it trying to appeal to with its eleventh-hour recant? In the greatest paradoxical idiocy of all, the movie’s slogan entreats: “Seek The Truth.”

Dim the lights and I will speaketh Truth: Long before Dan Brown crafted THE DA VINCI CODE, in 932 A.D., after decoding the last writings of Joseph of Aramathea, and on occult information provided by Tim the Enchanter, King Arthur himself, at the Gorge of Eternal Peril, uttered the words which would forever rock the foundations of Christianity:

“Is that an African or a European swallow?”

END

The Genuine Article.

After his magnificent, offbeat BIG NIGHT, writer-director Stanley Tucci reunites that movie’s cast (including Tony Shalhoub, Isabella Rossellini, Allison Janney, Campbell Scott, Oliver Platt, to name a few) in another offbeat triumph.

Intentionally played as an hommage to slapstick and farce, THE IMPOSTORS finds two over-zealous, out-of-work actors, Arthur and Maurice (Tucci and Platt) offending an overrated thespian, Sir Jeremy Burtom (Alfred Molina), fleeing from his wrath and ending up on the very ship that he is taking a vacation cruise on.

From its opening hommage to the silent movie, THE IMPOSTORS shows Tucci’s willingness to take chances: Arthur and Maurice engage in staged battle at an unsuspecting streetside café, Maurice opting to be “killed” by Arthur, even though – we learn in the next scene – that it was, in fact, Arthur’s “turn to die.” One twitch on the side of non-conviction and the delicate humor of this tableau would have fallen flat. Tucci pulls it off directorially and comedically.

Ultimately, “chance-taking” is a double-edged sword, and teetering on that blade will get you either lauded as a genius or slice your bollocks off.

Pofflet, Prince of Denmark

The Damoclean blade grimly alerts us to its presence many times, but is ultimately stayed by Tucci’s deft comedic hand. For instance, editing seems strained in a sequence which sees Arthur and Maurice seeking a room on the ocean liner to conceal themselves; through this device, new characters are introduced to the mélange, some colorfully realized whilst others float wraith-like through the plot – until Tucci’s clever storytelling unites all these disparate strands at the Captain’s Ball, when a character bellows “Impostor!” and we see how each of the players may be guilty of that accusation, all of whom flee at the indictment, which is, of course, not even remotely aimed at them.

Alfred Molina, scenery-chewing like Tim Roth on crank, is that bellowing character, his dexterity at mutton-headed slapstick a revelation; Steve Buscemi as the suicidal jazz singer; Billy Connolly shines as the aggressively-gay tennis pro; Tony Shalhoub is overboard as the ambiguously-foreign terrorist First Mate – but no one can upstage the singularly uproarious performance by Campbell Scott, opting to veer off the grid completely in his rendition of Nazi purser, Meistrich. And there is even a sensational Woody Allen cameo that captures the essence of Allen – love and hate. But below the love, hate. But below that hate, love. Love-hate. Hate-love. Below, love. Above – hate. Below that, love. Above that–

Though Tucci’s script stoops to Stooge-like pratfalls at times, he stays ahead of the Great Unwashed’s pedestrian sensibilities by embellishing it with brilliant minutiae, sprinkled liberally: the bedraggled shot of Molina during an intermission of his HAMLET and his melodramatic apology to the theater audience, replete with crooked wig and burp; Platt’s mindless, drunken soliloquy, including dialogue which seems way off-script (“Boozy boozy boooy – sucky farty boooy – I poke you I poke you I poke you!”); and then there’s Campbell Scott, who arguably steals the movie, whether entering the frame and making the soundtrack needle-scratch, or propositioning the Social Director (a beautifully “Brick House” Lili Taylor), or impassively telling the ship’s discomfited detective, Marco (played with witless Euro abandon by Matt McGrath), that learning how to kill people, “is not that hard”; Shalhoub’s passionate radio call to his lover, including more seemingly off-script entreaties (“Touch me pure! Touch me good! Touch me hard!”); Connolly’s man-wooing of Platt with seductive scenarios of wrestling naked on the steps of the Acropolis, “That’s where we’ll wrestle, my semi-Grecian lad – that’s where I’ll make a man of ye!”

And the joie de vivre of the last dance sequence is an utterly contagious masterpiece of the director’s self-awareness, where the full cast, to the strains of Louis Armstrong’s cover of Skokiaan, synchronize a dance routine through the ship set, off the set and into the surrounding studio (where we see the crew, camera tracks, light rigging, false walls), and then out of the studio itself! Almost a sly wink that this movie itself is an “impostor.” Not real life – just entertainment: see? All these characters who were adversaries are now hamming it up together! Another delicate touch which could have easily gone awry. These are not “unknowns” peopling this film – any one of these well-respected actors could have mutinied Stanley Tucci’s decision to unify them in this last, ridiculously-genius dance number. Instead, they joyously partake of the bunny-hopping and arm-waving like a coterie of first-year acting students with nothing to lose, in so doing, beautifully rounding off the film. Tucci’s knowing nudge to movie viewers on many levels, sealing his brilliance as a director willing to take those offbeat chances. One of those rare “Gee-I-wish-I’d-thought-of-that” moments in film. Here too, we are indulged with the prominent soundtrack, which lent itself perfectly to complementing the film’s action with its noticeably-distinct, recurring themes to signify melodrama, suspense, romance and slapstick.

Is it just me, or is it obvious that Tucci and Platt’s real life first names echo those of a past generation’s legendary comedy team? Stanley tips his glass at Oliver to utter the film’s last lines: “To life, and its many deaths.”

END

Identity Cleft.

More than a murder mystery. More than a psychological thriller. More than a horror movie. IDENTITY is its own special slice of crazy.

With most viewers being either misled by this movie’s similarities to Agatha Christie’s TEN LITTLE INDIANS, or just pompously broadcasting their knowledge that IDENTITY was inspired by it, they missed the point this was not a “murder mystery” per se, instead, a finely-crafted journey through the mind of a multiple personality during the course of purging his violent personas.

Ten guests are flood-stranded at a Nevada Motel; among them, John Cusack, former cop and Go-To Everyman, Rebecca DeMornay (almost unrecognizable with her ample boob-job and burgundy hair, playing a character whom she is assuming the mantle of with each passing botox-ed day – a woman who “used to be that actress”), Amanda Peet (whose stage direction was simple – “Back that booty up some more, honey!”), John C. McGinley playing against type as an uber-dweeb, Jake Busey playing exactly his type – uber-psycho, Ray Liotta – always darkly mysterious…

One by one, these refugee guests start dying all Agatha Christie-like.

A Vegetable Split

Intercut with this storyline is a somber eleventh-hour appeal by doctors and lawyers to an ill-tempered judge to stay an execution of a deranged man (Pruitt Taylor Vince, his jerky eyes doing double time Pong). We are intrigued as to how these two disparate tales are related, but we do sense a connection, because the dry, somber doctors are talking about a “killer” and in that wet parallel Motel story there are killin’s galore!

By the end of the second act, after the film’s most hair-raising moment, when all the corpses at the Motel are found missing, it is revealed the Motel scenes have been taking place within Pruitt’s psychopath mind, and each Motel guest was merely one of his multiple personalities.

Have I given away too much? Is it just another Patrick-Duffy-shower-scene cop-out? All this rain-drenched piling in and out of rooms like the Spanish Inquisition with shocked pusses was merely a psychopath’s IMAGINATION? Guess again. Director James Mangold and writer Michael Cooney are only half-finished with their sleight-of-hand.

The true “twist” of the movie is that the doctors in the real world believe they successfully purge the psychopath’s “killer” persona, but in the last few seconds, we discover the cure did not go deep enough.

With all the options this movie had – to blame spirits from an Indian Burial Ground or to wrap on a Patrick Duffy note at any point, the writers led us on a merrier, more interesting goose chase. It is clever without being snide, shocking without being implausible.

Thus, this deponent sayeth: Bravo to the road less traveled.

On the other hand, my “feminine personality” thought the movie brutalized women too overtly and my “killer psychopath” personality is going to make the film-makers pay for giving away my secrets…

END