Guest chirs3 Report post Posted April 8, 2002 ... because you'll need to go, and you won't wanna leave your seat. Starring: Jodie Foster, Someone Yoakem, and... others... Sidenote: Music by Howard Shore! Award Winning Music-Man of LOTR! w00t! Sidenote2: I like how they did the credits. The thin 3-D letters hanging in midair in front of city-shots. Neato. Story: Recently divorced Meg Altman and her daughter Sarah are house shopping in New York. The movie opens with them being shown a truly sweet piece of property, that once belonged to a rich famous person whose name I don't recall. That man's children are fighting over his money now. But anyway. The house is huge, and includes a spacious living room, two bedrooms, an elevator (how cool is that? the guy who used to live there become disabled), and of course, The Panic Room. Surrounded by concrete and steel on all sides, with ventilation, an independant phone line, food, water, video-camera system covering the whole house, PA system, and other safety goodies. Meg and Sarah move in, have the standard first-night-in-a-new-house Pizza dinner, then hit the sack... Three men - Junior, B-something... Burnham?, and Raoul pull a little burglary magic and get inside the house. While they're having a little miscommunication downstairs, Meg gets up for some medicine (I presume Tylenol PM). On her way, she opens the Panic Room for some truly blinding light. She gets the pills, goes back to bed... gets up to shut off the Panic Room lights, when she sees the guys on the monitors. She hauls downstairs, grabs her daughter, and locks herself in. But she soon finds out that what the three men are after... is inside that room... And then- *chirs3 is shot before he can give away any more* The Good: ... damn near everything, really. The cinemetography is really out there, always providing a good view of what's happening, while experimenting with really neat ideas. One particular example is when the three guys first break in, there is one looooong continuous shot covering all four floors of the house... good stuff. The music (Howard Shore r0XoRz!) does what it should - accents the film without outshining the action (some movies do this). The whole movie is very engaging - some reviews pull out the ole' "Sucks you in and never lets go" line (I'm sure they've got a collection somewhere), and I'll agree with them. The Bad: The only real problem with this movie is the common characters. Sarah, Meg's daughter and companion in the Panic Room, has a disease (never mentioned by name, I'm guessing diabetes?) and needs medicine... outside the room. There's the loudmouthed idiot bad guy, the strong silent "I've got a gun" bad guy, and the bad guy who doesn't wanna see anyone get hurt. We've all seen these guys before, which makes certain parts a little predictable. Overall: Definitely worth seeing. There are enough plot twists to keep the sometimes-predictable characters interesting, and it's really one of the few "Edge of your seat" movies that have had me on the edge of my seat. People were gasping, going "Oh no!", "Uh oh!", doing commentary like that. It was quiet enough not to be annoying, and it shows what this movie does to you. Plus it's got Jodie Foster. Ain't that enough? Chirs3 gives "Panic Room" 8.5 painful looking sledgehammer shots out of 10. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest starvenger Report post Posted April 16, 2002 After seeing it, I couldn't put my finger on why I didn't like it. The cinematography was excellent, the acting was pretty good, and the plot was at least somewhat original. So why did it disappoint? Maybe it was because my girlfriend and I were calling the spots way ahead of time, and when they occured, it wasn't as good as we'd hoped. Or maybe it was the Home Alone-esque attempts at levity that killed the mood. Or maybe it the use of cliche bad guys. Whatever it was, there was a lot of potential for good stuff in this movie, and in my opinion it failed to deliver. 6/10. It didn't suck, but it won't blow you away. It should be a solid DVD rental though. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest ArkhamGlobe Report post Posted April 16, 2002 The film finally opened in Sweden last week so I went out and saw it. I liked it a lot. It wasn't on the level of Fincher's last three films, but I didn't expect it to, after all (I believe Fincher himself also said this), it's just a popcorn movie. But it's incredibly well directed, nice cinematography and good acting and musical score. The ending is predictable, but the film is highly entertaining nevertheless (for me, anyway). It actually reminded me somewhat of early Brian De Palma. Style over substance, but entertainingly so. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest pinnacleofallthingsmanly Report post Posted April 16, 2002 There was a thread about this from awhile back. I thought the movie was shit. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
