Z/Web

Author: Franciois Ozon

Director: Franciois Ozon

Delightfully bizarre mix of old fashioned English murder mystery and musical farce. Yes, musical! This is the story of several generations of a family (grandmother, mother, aunts, and daughters) and a couple female servants trapped by snow in a large house who discover one morning that the only man in the house has been murdered — stabbed in the back. The phone line has been cut, the automobiles sabotaged, and the snow is blocking the gate so the eight women are trapped. Then the fun begins as the women begin to bicker and accuse, and slowly all sorts of unexpected truths emerge and we learn that every woman has secrets. It’s completely soap opera absurd, and thus hilarious, and the director brilliantly plays this up with overly dramatic music and camera zooms. And each of the eight women has their own song they get to sing, breaking out with a tune in an (often) absurd moment, the room going dark with them in a spotlight, creating a hilariously campy feel. Fortunately, most of the tunes are pretty good (the first, in particular, is wonderful), and the camp feel is appropriate and gives the film an unexpected dose of fun. The murder mystery is a bit of joke (literally) but has a somber touch to it by the twist ending. Pretty good film. A bit long — it’d be better trimmed by 10 or 15 minutes — as it doesn’t quite live up to its promises and gets slow in places. But overall a lot of fun and silliness, witty and entertaining.

Author: John Grisham (novel)

Director: Gary Fleder

This kind of film is awkward as I’ve read the book (though not recently) and I find that distracts me as I’m constantly comparing the two as much as I try not to do so. The most significant change I noticed is that in the film the trial’s against the gun industry — in the book it was tobacco, if I remember correctly. Of course both the book and the film are blatantly anti-smoking/guns which is rather annoying: the other point of view isn’t even given the slightest voice (except that of irrationality). The trial itself is rather a joke, with neither side having much of a case (at least from what we see in the film). The characters are mildly interesting, especially Cusack and Weisz, but Gene Hackman’s jury consultant is too obviously evil to be human and Dustin Hoffman’s white hat lawyer is too inept to be heroic. What makes the film work is the whole con by Cusack and Weisz and our curiousity as to what will happen to their scheme. If you’ve read the book, this is an okay film — it’s on par with the novel. If you haven’t read the book I think you’d like it better as many aspects of jury duty will be surprising and interesting.