Just when you thought "The Reaping" was the most convoluted and overwrought flashback-riddled thriller starring an Academy Award-winning actress in theaters, along comes "Perfect Stranger."
April 14, 2007 (Press Release) --
Berry strange choice: Her performance in the overwrought thriller 'Perfect Stranger' strays far from Oscar path
Just when you thought "The Reaping" was the most convoluted and overwrought flashback-riddled thriller starring an Academy Award-winning actress in theaters, along comes "Perfect Stranger."
With her Oscar for "Monster's Ball" fading fast in the rear-view mirror, Halle Berry continues her string of earnest but mostly sub-par performances in mostly bad films, from "Die Another Day" to "Gothika" to "Catwoman." In "Perfect Stranger," she sure knows how to wear a killer dress, spout the f-word and flash the cleavage, but her acting is all over the map in a performance that goes from perplexing to just plain embarrassing.
Not that Katharine Hepburn in her prime could have rescued this script.
In yet another movie that knows less about investigative journalism than a teenage blogger who has never heard of "All the President's Men," Berry plays Rowena, a crusading scribe/sleuth who uses a male pseudonym because she's under the impression that female journalists aren't treated as seriously. (Tell that to Carol Marin, sister.)
Giovanni Ribisi, an intense little bundle of energy who can be great in the right role but sometimes comes across like a performer on "Saturday Night Live" doing an over-the-top impersonation of a Method actor, is Miles, Rowena's computer whiz of a research assistant -- a manic creep who is so obsessed with Rowena in such an unhealthy way that we fully expect to see a scene of him sniffing her underthings while she's in the next room. Ribisi's performance is so twitchy you want to sit him down and pour a Thermos of decaf down his throat.
When Rowena's childhood friend Grace turns up dead in a most gruesome fashion, Ro and Miles set out to prove the killer is none other than Grace's former lover Harrison Hill (Willis), the famous chief of one of the leading and most glamorous advertising agencies in the world. Hill's wife (Paula Miranda) is exotic and gorgeous, and her family owns the agency, but he continually jeopardizes his marriage and his professional standing by hooking up with a series of gorgeous young things. Sometimes they're employees, sometimes they're babes he's met in online chat rooms. Sometimes they're both of those things.
(Note: We can tell it's a successful ad agency because there's some laughably blatant product placement, e.g., bottles of Heineken lined up in a perfect row on a conference table, and an entire team of employees wearing Reebok warm-up suits to a pitch meeting because that's how you're going to land a big account -- by wearing the potential client's gear.)
I know advertising is a competitive game and there can be fierce rivalries between major agencies -- but Willis turns Hill into the Manhattan high-rise equivalent of Jack Nicholson in "The Departed."
Source: http://www.msn.com
Posted by Richard Roeper
Just when you thought "The Reaping" was the most convoluted and overwrought flashback-riddled thriller starring an Academy Award-winning actress in theaters, along comes "Perfect Stranger."
With her Oscar for "Monster's Ball" fading fast in the rear-view mirror, Halle Berry continues her string of earnest but mostly sub-par performances in mostly bad films, from "Die Another Day" to "Gothika" to "Catwoman." In "Perfect Stranger," she sure knows how to wear a killer dress, spout the f-word and flash the cleavage, but her acting is all over the map in a performance that goes from perplexing to just plain embarrassing.
Not that Katharine Hepburn in her prime could have rescued this script.
In yet another movie that knows less about investigative journalism than a teenage blogger who has never heard of "All the President's Men," Berry plays Rowena, a crusading scribe/sleuth who uses a male pseudonym because she's under the impression that female journalists aren't treated as seriously. (Tell that to Carol Marin, sister.)
Giovanni Ribisi, an intense little bundle of energy who can be great in the right role but sometimes comes across like a performer on "Saturday Night Live" doing an over-the-top impersonation of a Method actor, is Miles, Rowena's computer whiz of a research assistant -- a manic creep who is so obsessed with Rowena in such an unhealthy way that we fully expect to see a scene of him sniffing her underthings while she's in the next room. Ribisi's performance is so twitchy you want to sit him down and pour a Thermos of decaf down his throat.
When Rowena's childhood friend Grace turns up dead in a most gruesome fashion, Ro and Miles set out to prove the killer is none other than Grace's former lover Harrison Hill (Willis), the famous chief of one of the leading and most glamorous advertising agencies in the world. Hill's wife (Paula Miranda) is exotic and gorgeous, and her family owns the agency, but he continually jeopardizes his marriage and his professional standing by hooking up with a series of gorgeous young things. Sometimes they're employees, sometimes they're babes he's met in online chat rooms. Sometimes they're both of those things.
(Note: We can tell it's a successful ad agency because there's some laughably blatant product placement, e.g., bottles of Heineken lined up in a perfect row on a conference table, and an entire team of employees wearing Reebok warm-up suits to a pitch meeting because that's how you're going to land a big account -- by wearing the potential client's gear.)
I know advertising is a competitive game and there can be fierce rivalries between major agencies -- but Willis turns Hill into the Manhattan high-rise equivalent of Jack Nicholson in "The Departed."
Source: http://www.msn.com
Posted by Richard Roeper
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