From Roger Ebert:
quote:Richard Gere stars as a Washington Post reporter named John Klein, who is so happily married (to Debra Messing) that when they agree to buy a new house, they decide to test the floor of a closet for lovemaking purposes, to the surprise of the real-estate agent who walks in on them. If there's one thing you demand in a real-estate agent, it's the good judgment to leave a closet door closed when he hears the unmistakable sounds of coitus coming from behind it. Furthermore: Gere is 53. He's in great shape, but to make love at 53 on the floor of a closet with a real-estate agent lurking about is, I submit, not based on a true story.
quote:The director is Mark Pellington ("Arlington Road"), whose command of camera, pacing and the overall effect is so good, it deserves a better screenplay. The Mothman is singularly ineffective as a threat because it is only vaguely glimpsed, has no nature we can understand, doesn't operate under rules that the story can focus on, and seems to be involved in space-time shifts far beyond its presumed focus. There is also the problem that insects make unsatisfactory villains unless they are very big.
Gere and Linney have some nice scenes together. I like the way he takes a beat of indecision before propelling himself into an action. This is Linney's first movie since "You Can Count on Me," which won her an Oscar nomination. I saw it again recently and was astonished by her performance.
On the other hand (excerpted from popmatters.com:
quote:The fact that John is a reporter is important. He's all about facts, after all, and so his inability to explain any of the events that befall him, try though he might, extends an aura of "truth" around his account of the mysteries. He decides to stay in Point Pleasant to solve the mystery of his own arrival there. With the help of police sergeant Connie Parker (Laura Linney), Klein investigates other strange goings-on around town, interviewing some of the many locals who have seen the shadowy mothman. He also has his own visitations that become increasingly threatening; most of these point toward a hinted-at disaster that will occur in Point Pleasant in the near future.
Eventually, as John begins to question his own journalistic rigor and even his sanity, a number of inconsistencies in the stories of the mothman crop up. Several characters allude to the nature of time and the mothman's presumed ability to move back and forth in it. This, I guess, is how the creature can be privy to information concerning the disasters it warns against. But why does it care to involve itself in human affairs? At one point, the eminently down to earth Connie counsels John that even if the mothman is warning of future disasters, there is nothing we can do about it; things will happen, she tells him, and people we love will die. Against her human fatalism, the mothman's prophecies are confusing. If it is a harbinger of doom for Point Pleasant, why does it reach out all the way to Washington, DC to bring John Klein into the mix? Why bring him all the way to Point Pleasant?
Whatever, let it go. There is much to enjoy in The Mothman Prophecies, provided you don't look too closely at such details. There are a number of moments when the film could easily fall into standard horror or psycho thriller fare, but Pellington shows restraint and admirable resistance to generic clichés. The Mothman Prophecies never gives up the ghost, if that is one possibility for what the creature might be. We are never subjected to some creature feature mothman, nor does John or Connie come to any conclusion as to what the mothman is. Alien? Supernatural entity? Who knows? It makes the scary stuff even scarier not to have "the answer," and makes for an affecting film that leaves you wondering long after the credits roll.
Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 51% - which means opinion is sort of divided, which means I'll probably like it. |
