If you push the button, two things will happen. The best quote I ever saw as regards Richard Kelly's The Box, was that it is a Marmite movie. Marmite is a food substance that people either love or hate, The Box is a Marmite movie. Cameron Diaz and James Marsden star as a couple who are visited by a mysterious stranger (Frank Langella) who has a bizarre offer. The Box now in the couple's possession has a button (Langella's mysterious Arlington Steward informs them it's called the Button Unit), they are told that if they push the button then a complete stranger will die, they will then receive a life changing amount of money. What to do?. Based on a Richard Matheson short story titled "Button, Button", The Box is an ethereal mind meld of a piece. Morals and ethics are married up to a whole bunch of twists and other worldly ideas, which goes some way to explaining that where once there was a more than adequate half hour "Twilight Zone" episode (Profile in Silver/Button, Button 1986), there is now a near two hour movie crammed to the brim. It's this that hurts an otherwise stylishly produced and potentially thoughtful picture. After the raves and craves for his "Donnie Darko (2001)", Richard Kelly appeared to believe the press praise, that here was a new surreal director on the block. Where "M. Night Shyamalan" had success with the twist gimmick and couldn't let it go until his career went in the swamp, so to Kelly who kept straining to make movies that were needlessly over complex, trying to be smart when it isn't needed ("Southland Tales (2006)" is a car wreck of a movie). The Box does have intelligence and lots of good ideas, but a two hour film it does not make, with the attempts at weaving all the threads together proving to be too problematic come the finale. Incredulity a most appropriate word, plausibility is not. The Box, an intriguing - attractive - failure, but some do and will love it. If you haven't seen it then roll the dice and good luck. 6/10 Footnote: We have yet to actually get an adaptation to screen that contains Matheson's original literary ending!
Set in the South just after the US Civil War, Laurel Sommersby is just managing to work the farm without her husband, believed killed in battle. By all accounts, Jack Sommersby was not a pleasant man, thus when he suddenly returns, Laurel has mixed emotions. It appears that Jack has changed a great deal, leading some people to believe that this is not actually Jack but an imposter. Laurel herself is unsure, but willing to take the man into her home, and perhaps later into her heart.
Tough narcotics detective 'Popeye' Doyle is in hot pursuit of a suave French drug dealer who may be the key to a huge heroin-smuggling operation.
Threats from sinister foreign nationals aren't the only thing to fear. Bedraggled college professor Michael Faraday has been vexed (and increasingly paranoid) since his wife's accidental death in a botched FBI operation. But all that takes a backseat when a seemingly all-American couple set up house next door.
In the winter of 1982, a twelve-man research team at a remote Antarctic research station discovers an alien buried in the snow for over 100,000 years. Soon unfrozen, the form-changing creature wreaks havoc, creates terror... and becomes one of them.
Tom Ripley is a calculating young man who believes it's better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody. Opportunity knocks in the form of a wealthy U.S. shipbuilder who hires Tom to travel to Italy to bring back his playboy son, Dickie. Ripley worms his way into the idyllic lives of Dickie and his girlfriend, plunging into a daring scheme of duplicity, lies and murder.
Edward Wilson, the only witness to his father's suicide and member of the Skull and Bones Society while a student at Yale, is a morally upright young man who values honor and discretion, qualities that help him to be recruited for a career in the newly founded OSS. His dedication to his work does not come without a price though, leading him to sacrifice his ideals and eventually his family.
When Nina and her high school friends receive eerie text messages declaring that they will all die within three days, they dismiss it as a hokey prank - until one by one, the pals start turning up dead in the alpine countryside. With the cops stymied, Nina and her remaining friends must scour their past for clues to identify the madman before he kills them all.
Near a gray and unnamed city is the Zone, a place guarded by barbed wire and soldiers, and where the normal laws of physics are victim to frequent anomalies. A stalker guides two men into the Zone, specifically to an area in which deep-seated desires are granted.
Peter Winter is a young schizophrenic who is desperately trying to get his daughter back from her adoptive family. He attempts to function in a world that, for him, is filled with strange voices, electrical noise, disconcerting images, and jarringly sudden emotional shifts. During his quest, he runs afoul of the law and an ongoing murder investigation.
The movie's plot is based on the true story of a group of young computer hackers from Hannover, Germany. In the late 1980s the orphaned Karl Koch invests his heritage in a flat and a home computer. At first he dials up to bulletin boards to discuss conspiracy theories inspired by his favorite novel, R.A. Wilson's "Illuminatus", but soon he and his friend David start breaking into government and military computers. Pepe, one of Karl's rather criminal acquaintances senses that there is money in computer cracking - he travels to east Berlin and tries to contact the KGB.
Two brilliant, but dull, scientists set out to invent a love potion, but failing in that they attempt to create the ultimate artificial woman with stunning results. Only problem is their new creation only has eyes, and lust, for busty next door neighbor.