Hey folks, Harry here... the first review of this flick was pretty dang positive, this one is more so-so... I'm interested to see a so-called Erotic Thriller with Meg in it. That's pretty different from her typical outing. Here ya go...
Hey Harry,
Dib here again. Well, as threatened, I'm back with a review of Jane Campion's In the Cut. We saw what was billed as the World Premiere, but since you already had a review of it up last night I wonder how accurate that really is. But regardless, most of the cast was there and it seemed somewhat well recieved.
Personally, I'm kind of so-so on the film. It is billed as a thriller, but I spent the first half of the movie waiting to be thrilled. In other places I've seen it billed as an "Erotic Thriller", but I'm not quite sure how accurate that is either. Meg Ryan was all kinds of naked in this movie, but I don't know if I would call it that erotic. It was dirty, and Mark Ruffalo was definitely "In the Cut" if you know what I mean, but I just didn't find their relationship that believable. Maybe it's because he doesn't strike me as the most handsome of men, and his character was very abrasive and treated Meg's character like crap from the start - so why was she attracted? I guess you could argue low self esteem, but they certainly didn't lay the groundwork for that in the movie. Then again, it was adapted from a book, and generally a lot of backstory gets lost when that's the case. Still, though, Meg's character seemed normal enough but she acted as if she couldn't get a gu! y so her choices were limited, and yet every other guy in the movie was clearly after her as well, so I couldn't reconcile that idea.
The performances were good, though. Jennifer Jason Leigh was in it as Meg's half sister, and there was even a small part for Kevin Bacon. He actually did a very good job with his part, although I think he just tries to get into all these movies to make the Six Degrees game easier for all of us.
The cinematography was done in a way that made me feel the grittiness of the film. Lot of shakiness, and focusing.. but it worked.
All in all, it definitely picked up during the second half of the movie but it was only enough to make it into an Okay movie for me. I've seen more thrilling thrillers and more erotic movies, but I wouldn't write it off completely. It does have it's merits.
Dib
