besherat I return to my dear Atom Egoyan again , after a long time. I can't believe that he was able to make all those wonderful movies with a great themes, great actors and great soundtracks. This film is very good, keep your attention for 100%.

RavenGlamDVDCollector Last year I watched WHITE OLEANDER and because of Alison Lohman in there, decided I wanted more of her. Found this one, with the promising box cover, that beautiful back. Believe me, when it comes to an angelic face, if you look up "angelic face" in the dictionary, there is a picture of Alison Lohman next to it. If you like pretty girls even just half as much as I do, and haven't seen Alison in a movie yet, get thee to a video rental or start TiVo-ing or whatever you guys do to see movies. But do get to see her.Somebody I have seen very little of, is Rachel Blanchard. Years and years ago, back in the day, saw her in CLUELESS, and I have since downloaded as much of that as I could encounter, but getting it on DVD is just not possible. I was instantly intrigued when her name appeared, and soon realized she's the murder victim. Guys, the girl from CLUELESS is in the nude here. But her character gets murdered. Oh, yuck. Kinda traumatic, hell, no, a truckload of trauma, for me to see little Rachel lying there submerged in a bathtub, and the very thought of crustaceans... Not a horror movie, though I found that part creepier than a horror movie. The very idea...As for the story, at first sight, gee, THE FABULOUS BAKER BOYS, with a murder twist? And with old Colin Firth? Kevin Bacon, doing that weird dopey dance? Set in 1972*? I wasn't exactly stoked. But thanks to Alison, my interest grew by the moment, and, the shares of the movie rose. And rose. By the way, Colin's great, powerful performance!*1972? There definitely isn't a 1972 feel to this, except for the cars, and obvious minor things like the tape recorder, etc. Alison's hairstyle is most clearly patently unequivocally "soft Nineties look" while Maureen was light years ahead with a Farrah Fswcett style in 19-fifty-wayback-seven!!! NOT that I am complaining, thank you.Recommended. See it. Wow!Alison: 10 Rachel: 9Movie: 8+{well, to each their own. I see on Wikipedia that the more high-brow critics (who most likely do not even watch movies but simply aim to write for impact's sake) view Alison Lohman as the worst, calling her "...shrill and offensive..." Shrill? Offensive? With that accusation I just made, I rest my case! Shrill, offensive, where? Freaking where???}

Uriah43 A comedy team has made it big and while at the pinnacle of their success a dead woman's body is found in their suite. Although both of them seem to have adequate alibis there is something about the story that doesn't quite add up and hovers over them for the rest of their careers. Meanwhile, many years later, a journalist decides to write a book about them and gradually uncovers clues which the entertainers had hoped to keep secret. A couple of criticisms I have with it concerned the narratives of the events which seemed to take some of the surprise out of the film since everyones knows that a particular person will survive whatever happens. Another criticism is that I felt I was watching a cheap and tawdry parody of the comedy team of Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin. They were made to look bad enough as it was but I felt the director (Atom Egoyan) went too far when he threw in a graphic homosexual scene where Colin Furth ("Vince") tries to mount Kevin Bacon ("Lanny"). Same thing with the sex scene involving "Karen" (Alison Lohman) and "Bonnie" (Sonja Bennett). At one time directors were talented enough to get the audience to use their imagination without having to resort to such sordid tactics. No doubt some folks might think it's important or erotic but I didn't care for it. Neither did I particularly care for seeing Kevin Bacon's buttocks. But again, I guess the director felt it was necessary for some odd reason. Be that as it may, while I thought the acting was adequate overall, this was a film made more remarkable by the story itself rather than any overwhelming performance by any of the actors involved. In short, I would say this movie was about average but could have been much better if it had been directed differently.

treeline1 The story opens in 1957, when Lenny Morris (Kevin Bacon) and Vince Collins (Colin Firth), a famous Martin and Lewis-type act, are hosting a telethon. That night, a dead woman is found in their hotel room and the team breaks up under a cloud of suspicion. Fifteen years later, a young journalist (Alison Lohman) wants to interview Collins for a book and begins to probe the mysterious death.Bacon and Firth are both fine actors, but they are wasted in this terrible film. Alison Lohman is the main character and she's completely wrong for the part of a savvy young writer; she acts like a high school girl and looks so much like Amy Adams I was distracted and wishing Adams had done the part. She is timid and childish in all of her scenes and just isn't strong enough to carry the film. Firth tries to play against his charmer-image as a pill-popper, but I didn't believe him for a minute; he seems to be sleepwalking through the movie. Bacon is good as his slimy, heartless partner, but his character is so odious I cringed whenever he was on the screen.The director apparently thought this was a seductive, sophisticated mystery and used lots of moody film-noir music to try to heighten the drama, but nothing works. The story uses confusing flashbacks every few minutes and I never knew what was going on until the end and then I didn't care. A surprisingly bad and unpleasant movie with unnecessarily graphic sexuality.