The Cinema For 1/29/10: Gibson Returns And Another Candidate For Worst Movie Of The Year

The Cinema is back:

Back to being his quality angry self

And so is Mel Gibson, as he is a Boston detective trying to find out who murdered his daughter in "Edge of Darkness"

The reaction to this movie is almost 50/50. Half like it, and half don't like it.

Richard Roeper gave it a solid "B".


However, the Globe and Mail's Liam Lacey didn't feel that the directing of the movie matched the quality writing. But he did highlight how an apoplectic Gibson is better than any other verison of him:

The dialogue is noticeably above par thanks to A-list screenwriters William Monahan (The Departed) and Andrew Bovell (Lantana). From them we get the Gibson line, “You’d better decide whether you’re hanging on the cross or banging in the nails.” Or Winstone’s fatalistic observation: “We live a while, and then we die sooner than we planned."

Smart dialogue doesn’t extend to the movie's structure – it grows more wobbly as it progresses, suffering, perhaps, from the weight of boiling a six-hour mini-series into a two-hour movie. The attempt to communicate Tom’s precarious psychological state with hallucinations, flashbacks and dreams feels clumsy and, worse for a thriller, slows things down.

The Spill guys give their review of "Edge of Darkness", and it was a fairly decent review for the film:


There was only one other notable release this weekend, and it sure wasn't a good one.

Competing with "Leap Year" and "The Spy Next Door" for worst movie of the month (and possibly, the year), basically everyone has asked what the hell was wrong with all the quality actors for taking roles in the disastrously written "When In Rome."

It has been trashed everywhere, including this review from Detroit News critic Tom Long giving credit to Kristen Bell, but not much else:

Bell (a native Detroiter, as is Shepard), still best known for her TV show "Veronica Mars," has the sort of light comic touch it takes to pull off a story as preposterous as this one, an ability to balance romance with physical shtick and just a touch of cynicism.

But the tide is working against her here. Director Mark Steven Johnson ("Ghostrider," "Daredevil") has no sense of tone or rhythm -- the opening moments of this film may constitute the worst music and image sequence ever -- and writers David Diamond and David Weissman ("Old Dogs") repeatedly undercut comic moments with too-sentimental pap.

The comedy is occasionally adequate, the romance never convincing. Ms. Bell deserves better. So do audiences.

And last week, there wasn't a Cinema to talk about how awful "Legion" was (and "Extraordinary Measures" wasn't that much better). We shall leave it be, knowing it also deserves to be mentioned as a nominee for the "Worst Movie of the Month."

That's the Cinema for this week, until next week hopefully.....

FIN.