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Pollyanna McIntosh as The Woman.

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Rachel Weisz and Daniel Craig. (POSTMEDIA)

The Woman

A DOCUMENTARY extra about the making of this horror movie features an angry audience member at the Sundance Film Festival loudly proclaiming that the film has no redeeming social value whatsoever.

Well, that's always a matter of opinion. (Somebody needs to introduce this guy to the concept of the blog.) In fact, the film is an unsubtle double-edged satiric attack on both patriarchal authority, and perverted notions of savagery and civilization.

Chris Cleek (Sean Bridgers, excellent) is a lawyer who rules his family with a stern hand. While off hunting, he spies a feral woman (Pollyanna McIntosh) living in the wild. He orders his family to empty a root cellar. Then he captures the woman and chains her to the wall with the intention of cleaning her up and civilizing her.

The fact that he does this in secrecy implies his intentions are not as noble as he pretends, and the plea from his wife Belle (Angela Bettis) to reconsider his plan earns her an offhand, contemptuous slap in the face, a sign Chris's authority within the family is backed up by brutality.

As for the savage captive, she stays strung up, inciting the creepy interest of Chris's creepy teen son (Zach Rand) and the sympathy of daughter Peggy (Lauren Ashley Carter), whose escalating distress has become obvious to one of her teachers.

A collaboration between director Lucky McKee and novelist Jack Ketchum, the film is hardly an example of the kind of brainless, gratuitous horror we've seen elsewhere. In fact, it is an impressively deft exercise in genre-mashing: American Psycho vs. Nell. 'Ö'Ö'Ö

Dream House

IT'S actually difficult to gauge one's true feelings for this B-movie with an A-list cast. If you saw the trailer before seeing the movie, as I did, you have to cope with anger at the way the studio totally gave away a mid-point twist for all to see. As a critic, I try not to give away any significant plot point after the first act; the studio sure as heck shouldn't be responsible for major spoilers.

Assuming you haven't seen the trailer: Daniel Craig stars as Will, a guy about to embark on writing a novel. He leaves his prestigious publishing house and heads to his nice little suburban home in Connecticut (actually Toronto) to work on his novel in the pleasant company of his adoring wife Libby (Rachel Weisz) and his two adorable daughters.

While renovating the newly acquired house, he discovers the place was the scene of some shocking murders -- a woman and two young girls apparently shot by the crazed head of the house. He suspects the neighbour (Naomi Watts) who lives across the street knows something important about the case and indeed she does. In fact, everyone knows something Will doesn't know. (If you've seen the trailer, that includes you.)

It's a pity the trailer gave it away, because there is some worthwhile stuff in the first half, with a particularly neat revelation involving the publishing firm where Will worked. But after that, director Jim Sheridan lets the story devolve into a painfully obvious ghost story/murder mystery that doesn't deserve its quality cast.

DVD extras include a doc on the construction and design of the house itself, which is all very nice but misses the more interesting story of how Craig and Weisz fell in love on the set and eventually got married. 'Ö1/2

Anonymous

THE outrageous premise of this historical drama is that Shakespeare did not write the plays attributed to him. In fact, as portrayed by Rafe Spall, William Shakespeare was a whoring, money-grubbing, nearly illiterate actor, not above either blackmail nor murder.

Those are rather serious charges for such a speculative piece of historical fiction. Lest one take them too seriously, it is best to remember the source: director Roland Emmerich last gave us the apocalyptic thriller 2012.

As Emmerich and writer John Orloff have it, the plays and poetry were written by Edward De Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (Rhys Ifans), a man torn between his impulsive inspiration and his obligations to the court of Queen Elizabeth. But the Earl observes the potency of London theatre and resolves to have his voice heard by having his plays performed.

I'm impressed the director of the rebooted Godzilla so skilfully navigates the Gordian knot of intrigue, flashback, plot, counter-plot and counter-counter-plot, even if one is forced to accommodate the director's tendency to leap from era to era: one minute, the elderly, doddering queen is played by Vanessa Redgrave and the next she's played by Redgrave's daughter Joely Richardson as a hottie bent on seducing young De Vere: Elizabeth the Quilf.

A familiarity with Shakespeare's body of work pays off: De Vere uses the character of Polonius in Hamlet in a veiled attack on his own father-in-law, Elizabeth's conniving, puritanical adviser Sir William Cecil (David Thewlis), and writes the entirety of Richard III in an attempt to direct the theatre-going mob against Sir William's equally conniving hunchbacked son Robert (Edward Hogg).

It turns out the pen is not mightier than the sword after all. 'Ö'Ö'Ö1/2

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Top DVD Rentals

1. Drive

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6. 50/50

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-- Rogers Video, week ending Feb. 5

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 9, 2012 E4