This weekend’s slate includes a horror movie, The Last House on the Left, which I am planning to see at a screening tomorrow night. During my Box Office Mojo years, I was asked to review horror movies—a genre I personally find repugnant and generally without value—and, after seeing one too many, I declined to attend horror screenings (a policy other critics eventually followed). I figured my readers knew I did not like those pictures—The Ring painfully comes to mind—and there was practically no value in a review of a movie everyone knew I’d hate. I am trying Last House on the Left because it looks like it might have a plot. Here goes.
But there goes Race to Witch Mountain, a remake of the studio’s 1975 supernaturalism thriller Escape to Witch Mountain, which Disney is refusing to screen for the press. It must be regarded by the studio as awful. That’s too bad; based on the trailer, I had been looking forward to seeing Race to Witch Mountain. Thoughts on other trailers: Terminator Salvation looks obnoxious, though I liked director McG’s We Are Marshall. Star Trek, with its youthfully recast starship Enterprise crew looking like the Jonas Brothers and director J.J. Abrams putting lots of humans in flight is unimpressive. Star Trek’s trailer is 90 percent sensory assault, so there appears to be no trace of the melodramatic NBC series’ intelligent writing. On the other hand, I have heard from reliable sources that Disney/Pixar’s Up, opening on May 29, is terrific. Let’s hope is has more lift than Cars or last year’s wailer, WALL-E.
The week’s best movie choice arrives on a new DVD: the outstanding 1996 motion picture debut of Edward Norton as a choirboy in a Catholic murder mystery, Primal Fear. Paramount does the legal thriller justice with a new Hard Evidence Edition, sealed in an evidence bag. Primal Fear features Mr. Norton’s stuttering altar boy defended by a slick Chicago lawyer (Richard Gere, practicing for his slick Chicago lawyer in 2002’s Best Picture winner, Chicago). The movie holds up, even for those who know the twist. The DVD includes three strong features—none in that frantic, zero attention span style—recounting the film’s success. Final Verdict is a thoughtful reconstruction of the movie from page (the novel by William Diehl) to screen, with principal cast and crew participating, except for Mr. Gere, who comes off as a bit of a dandy like his character. We learn here that the stutter and the clap were Mr. Norton’s ideas, creating a criminal character that “uses the lawyer’s [lack of an] ego against him.” The other two features—Star Witness and The Psychology of Guilt (a repudiation of the so-called insanity defense)—include tidbits such as Leonardo DiCaprio passing on the altar boy role, studio resistance to non-stars in the picture, which boosted careers for Laura Linney, Frances McDormand and Maura Tierney, and keen observations by Mr. Norton about getting the role. My favorite: The studio’s Sherry Lansing—one of Tinseltown’s last businessmen to think big—in Cecil B. DeMille mode. When she found out the newly cast Mr. Norton was sleeping on a friend’s sofa on Laurel Canyon, she picked up the phone, demanded a hotel room for the young actor and added: “and get him a convertible.” That’s classic Hollywood and so is this gem of a movie, which launched the career of one of its best actors, who went on to star in The Incredible Hulk, The Illusionist, and The Painted Veil.
