Apartment 1303

"Apartment 1303" is yet another entrant into the never ending parade of J-Horror films that all seem to bleed together. They all feature a lead character who must investigate the mysterious death of a loved one all the while being haunted by a pale-faced ghost girl with long, black hair. The film is based on a novel by author Kei Oishi whose most famous book, The Grudge, spawned a series of successful films in his native Japan as well as two in America. Oishi is also responsible for the ultra-creepy, "The Last Supper", which was based on an original idea about a plastic surgeon who ate the flesh of his female patients. "Apartment 1303" has none of the flair or creepiness of its predecessors. To say it pales in comparison to films like "Ju-On" or "The Shining" is an understatement. It´s not even up to snuff compared to the recent "1408."

The film begins with a young woman moving into her brand-new apartment on the thirteenth floor. Before she can even unpack her belongings, she´s dangling over the balcony and an unseen force shoves her over the edge. One month later, the apartment is rented to Sayaka who has just moved away from home for the first time. Sayaka throws a housewarming party with her boyfriend, Ryota, and their friends. They can´t believe she got such a great apartment for so cheap. Sayaka notices a strange odor coming from the closet of one of the rooms. Suddenly, she emerges as a shell of herself. She shuffles across the floor like a zombie and starts munching down on dog food. Her friends have no idea what´s wrong with her. Before they can even get a straight answer, Sayaka dives off the balcony to her death.

Sayaka´s older sister, Mariko (Noriko Nakagoshi), is shocked at her death. Their mother, who hasn´t fully recovered from their father´s death, is completely grief-stricken and begins withdrawing from reality. From a police detective named Sakurai (Arata Furuta), Mariko learns that there have been other suicides in the apartment going on for nearly three years. It all began with a girl named Sachiyo who lived with her alcoholic and abusive mother. Sachiyo jumped off the balcony and it was discovered her mother died six months prior and that Sachiyo had been living with her corpse since then. To unravel the circumstances behind her sister´s death, Mariko must delve into the strange deaths of Sachiyo and her mother. Along the way, she deals with a shady apartment manager and the rental company, neither of whom seem to have a problem with collecting rent money on a haunted apartment.

There is also a creepy mother and daughter who live right next door in 1302 who don´t seem too moved or broken up by any of the deaths they witness. I found it odd that in this spacious apartment building, there doesn´t seem to be anybody else living there. The reasoning behind the insanity of Sachiyo´s mother is never explained either. One scene, she´s a mean drunk and in the next she´s chewing on a water bottle until her gums are raw while scribbling nonsense on the walls. Perhaps, "All work and no play make Jack a dull boy" in Japanese?

"Apartment 1303" isn´t just derivative, it´s outright generic. The film goes through the motions without any kind of emotional weight or pathos. Mariko´s investigation is devoid of suspense, mystery, or thrills. It actually consists of nothing more than exposition and flashbacks strung together rather than real detective work. For lack of a better term, the acting is full of "actor-y" moments. I´m talking about overly melodramatic soap opera acting, instead of downplayed, nuanced performances. The actors scream, cry, wail, and flail about to subtly clue us into their depression. The film piles on the cheese even further with a bombastic score. As if screeching string instruments and booming horns are suddenly going to make us soil our underoos. Writer/Director Ataru Oikawa lends a pedestrian hand to proceedings. Say what you want about these redundant movies, but many of them still have some visual style. "Apartment 1303" lacks even that with not a single shot that leaps out at you. Finally, the film´s climax is filled with terrible special effects, including some laughably bad greenscreen work.

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Invisible, The

No doubt, I could go on from now until tomorrow telling you everything that's wrong with "The Invisible," but in the end it's one's gut feeling that counts, and I liked this 2007 release. It's a ghost story with no scares. A thriller with no thrills. And a romance with no romance. And yet... When it was over, I felt I had gotten to know the characters and sensed their pain. Sentimental? Yes, with an ending that moved me as much anything I've seen in a long time. Not a great film, to be sure, but one I was pleased with having watched.

While Director David S. Goyer has made films like "ZigZag" and "Blade: Trinity," he's mostly known as a screenwriter of such things as "Blade," "Dark City," and "Batman Begins," and it's the dark tone of these movies that shows up in "The Invisible." Writers Mick Davis and Christine Roum based their script on the novel "Den Osynlige" by Mats Wahl and on the Swedish film of the same name. Then Goyer added his own noirish touches, making a film so heavyhearted and melancholic, it will not appeal to everyone.

The movie's subject is death; although, to be fair, the movie does more than explore the tragedy of dying. It's far more introspective than that and delves into the subject of death in life, being "invisible" while still alive. In that sense, the film is more a symbolic parable than a straightforward ghost story, which audiences probably won't expect. So, give Goyer credit for doing what he wanted rather than what Hollywood formula dictates. Whether Goyer succeeded or not, you'll have to decide for yourself. For me, a lot of it worked.

The film centers on two high school seniors from very different backgrounds. The first character is a young man, Nick Powell (Justin Chatwin), a child of privilege, whose father has died; he is being raised by a cold, possessive, perfectionist mother (Marcia Gay Harden), who has the boy's life mapped out for him. The second character is a young woman, Annie Newton (Margarita Levieva), a child of misfortune, whose mother has died; she is being raised by a cold, indifferent father.

Nick is outwardly a model student, but inwardly he resents the world his mother has outlined for him, and in rebellion sells essays to other students to raise enough money to leave home as soon as he graduates. Annie is a tough delinquent who steals cars and jewelry and spends her nights with a hoodlum named Marcus (Alex O'Loughlin). Through a tragic mistake, their lives cross, and Annie murders Nick. Almost.

Annie and several of her hooligan friends attempt to rough up Nick for what they think is his involvement in turning Annie in to the police for a jewel robbery, but the beating goes awry and they wind up thinking they've killed Nick. They dump his body down a drainage hole in the forest and leave him for dead. But Nick isn't dead, and he finds his spirit suddenly lingering somewhere between life and death. If his body dies, his spirit will die, too. So he needs to find his body and, more important, find someone who will find his body and help him survive. Unfortunately, in his spiritual state, he cannot easily communicate with the living.

OK, you already see elements of "Ghost" in the story. But not really, because director Goyer is more concerned with the inner lives of the near-murderer and her victim. Since Nick knows who tried to kill him, he seeks out Annie to do what he can to get her to confess to the crime and lead the police to his body. In Nick's observing her, though, Nick learns that he and Annie have more in common than first meets the eye.

"The Invisible" is a quietly sad and lonely film about quietly sad and lonely people. At first, we see only the good in Nick and only the bad in Annie. As things go along, we begin to feel less concerned about Nick and more sympathetic toward Annie. Meanwhile, even Nick, who must rely on his murderer to save his life, begins to understand Annie and himself better.

The story moves slowly, the director preferring to establish a melancholy, somewhat enigmatic mood rather than hit us over the head with rousing action. For audiences used to nonstop movement and whizbang special effects, this film will seem like a long haul. After Nick's disappearance, a charismatic detective (Callum Keith Rennie) enters the picture, but after a few scenes, he disappears from the narrative. Likewise, we initially see much of Nick's best friend, Pete, (Chris Marquette), but then Pete finds less and less screen time as well. What it boils down to is a picture about Nick and Annie, and perhaps it would have been better for the filmmakers to have left out the peripheral characters altogether.

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Return to House on Haunted Hill [Unrated]

In the beginning William Castle created "House on Haunted Hill," a campy 1959 horror romp starring Vincent Price. Forty years later Warner Bros. remade the film starring a campy Geoffrey Rush in the Vincent Price role. Now, in 2007 we've got WB's direct-to-video sequel to the remake, "Return to House on Haunted Hill." I'm afraid to ask what comes next: A remake of the remake or a sequel to the sequel of the remake? My brain hurts.

While we're pondering such momentous questions, let me remind you that some of the best things about the 1999 remake were a roller-coaster ride early on, Rush's over-the-top histrionics, and a really spooky setting. Although the film quickly devolved into a dreary CGI-laden extravaganza, the building in which everything took place was creepy as all get-out. Unfortunately, what with the older script having used up the roller coaster angle and dispatched Rush's character, the only component left to the new filmmakers was the setting. It's not enough.

To recap the '99 film, an eccentric millionaire offered a large sum of money to a group of people if they could spend a night in a haunted house, in this case the long-abandoned Vannacutt Psychiatric Institute for the Criminally Insane. Then he tried to scare them to death. The thing was, it wasn't long before everyone discovered that ghosts actually did haunt the old, rambling edifice, and the spirits of the people who died there (at the hands of the demented Dr. Richard Benjamin Vannacutt and in a 1931 patient revolt) came back to kill most of the guests for real.

In the present film, it's eight years later, and we meet Ariel Wolfe (Amanda Righetti), the sister of a woman, Sara, who survived the fright night in '99. But as the new story begins, Sara dies of a suspicious suicide. Ariel investigates and discovers that her sister was in possession of a journal written by the very doctor, Vannacutt, whose patients murdered him. (Dr. Vannacutt is played in reprise by the endearing Jeffrey Combs of "Re-Animator" fame.) In Vannacutt's journal, the doctor told where he hid a statue, the Bashomet idol, which radiates evil and caused all the mischief in the first place. Sometimes, it's best for a movie not to explain too much; this idol business is a cheap trick better left to old movie serials of the 1930s.

Apparently, the statue is worth a fortune because everybody wants to get their hands on it, including a professor of archeology, Dr. Richard Hammer (Steven Pacy), who's been searching for it for twenty years; plus a pack of mean, nasty cutthroats and their leader, a mean, nasty archeologist named Desmond (Erik Palladino). So the gang of crooks kidnap Ariel and a friend, Paul (Tom Riley), and head out to the old hospital in search of the statue, with Professor Hammer, his friend Michelle (Cerina Vincent), and a college student, Kyle (Andrew-Lee Potts), coincidentally showing up at the same time and bent on the same mission.

This is the film's way of getting everybody together in the old building so the fun can start. Too bad it takes so long to begin, though, because it's already a third of the way into the story before anything even remotely interesting happens.

You can guess the rest. The designers of the building built it to lock down in case of a patient uprising, and that's exactly what happens as soon as the characters enter it. Nobody can leave. From then on, it's pure "Friday the 13th" cliché territory.

"The statue belongs in a museum, not in the hands of some private collector," says Dr. Hammer to the nefarious Desmond. Does that line sound like one from any other movie you've seen? What with the characters splitting up and going in different directions, the character of Desmond being a fellow archeologist, his name sounding rather wimpy for a villain, and the name "Hammer" being an obvious tribute to Hammer Films, so popular in horror circles of the 1950s ,'60s, and '70s, I began thinking maybe "Return to House on Haunted Hill" was supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek homage to all our old action and horror-movie favorites. But, alas, the film is far too grim and straightforward for such sly distinctions. Did you ever see "Ghost Ship" or "Thir13en Ghosts"? Same deal.

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Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Complete Series [20th Anniversary Gift Set]

There is no greater argument to Science Fiction aficionados than that of whether or not James T. Kirk or Jean-Luc Picard. I´ve always been a Kirk man, myself. His interstellar gunslinging and blue alien womanizing was always far more entertaining than the intellectual and calculating Picard. However, I grew up watching the old "Star Trek" re-runs on Saturday mornings and never got fully involved with "Star Trek: The Next Generation" when it debuted on September 28, 1987. There were just so many things to do in my freshman year of high school and "Star Trek" was not among my hot list. The debate as to who was the better captain will never end and will always meet with heated discussion amongst the so-called "Trekkies." However, the debate as to which television show was more successful is hardly a debate, as "The Next Generation" lasted seven seasons and was met with critical and popular success, unlike the original series which found success in syndication, but not during its initial run.

Twenty years later, Paramount has released a magnificent box set containing all seven years of "Star Trek: The Next Generation." With a sizable $440 dollar price tag and an equally astounding forty nine DVDs, this "20th Anniversary Collector´s Gift Set" is a mouth-watering treat for the die-hard Trekkies who sit on the Picard side of the "Who was a better captain" argument. Contained in a large green cube of plastic and shiny platters, this captivating collection of all 176 episodes of the long running science fiction series is simply awe-inspiring. With a complete running time of 134 hours and fifteen minutes for the episodes alone and a couple of hours of supplements, this box set had captured about two weeks of my life to sit through selected episodes and pay a long standing visit with the crew of the USS Enterprise and its familiar crewmembers. I had initially anticipated watching just two or three episodes a season and then sit through the complete array of bonus materials, but ended up enjoying six or seven episodes a season. I typically try to watch an entire series before posting a review, but admittedly fell short of that standard. Sometimes, one needs to break one´s own policies

From the Pinocchio-like Data (Brent Spiner) to the Kirk-like William Riker (Jonathan Frakes), "Star Trek: The Next Generation" is filled with memorable and well acted characters. Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) is a caring and kind Captain who strives to always do what is best for the better good. He stays out of heated action unless it is absolutely necessary. His First Officer, Riker, is usually sent as the leader of the away teams. Riker is the show´s ladies man and the charismatic warrior who is not afraid of using his phaser. After watching "Star Trek: The Next Generation," I realized the show did not need William Shatner doing what he did best in the original series, it had a capable facsimile in William Riker. Data is easily my favorite character and is an android that was build as the perfect example of artificial intelligence. However, he yearns to become human and find emotions and continually undergoes experiments and studies to attempt at better understanding the human condition and becoming as human as possible.

Joining Riker and Data in Picard´s staff are a number of other likeable crew-members. Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton) is a blind Starfleet engineer who is able to see because of a high tech visor and is the closest member of the crew to Data. Geordi began his time on the Enterprise as the ship´s Conn Officer, but soon moved on to becoming the Chief Engineer. He was the voice of reason in the show among the crewmembers and aided Data in understanding humans. The show broke convention and added a member to the crew who was among the race of the most hated villains from the original show: a Klingon. Worf (Michael Dorn) is the ship´s security officer after Natasha Yar (Denise Crosby) is killed off in season one and the ship´s muscle. By having a Klingon as part of the Enterprise crew, "The Next Generation" was able to greatly expand its universe and provide a figure to look at social topics plaguing modern day Earth civilization. Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis) is the ship´s counselor and is part Human and part Betazoid. She is able to read feelings and is also the primary love interest of Riker. The ship´s doctor is Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden) and she is a personal friend of Picard and maintains a healthy sick bay. Her son Wesley Crusher (Wil Wheaton) spent four years aboard the Enterprise and served as a Conn Officer in a Internship-like mode under Picard. Finally, Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg) was the bartender at the Ten-Forward lounge on the Enterprise and a close confidant of Picard´s.

"Star Trek: The Next Generation" began its first season and was an instant success. Although the first season suffers from the characters trying to find themselves and many of the crew members not taking the roles they would later hold for the six following seasons, the show established many key storylines and relationships between the characters. Many of the first season shows were self-contained stories that had little bearing on what occurred later in the season. They were singular adventures that did not borrow from previous adventures and in general, the show didn´t seem to have a lot of direction in this first season. This mish-mash of plotlines and the ´feeling in´ period for the characters slowly started to become more structured and more polished as the first season continued. The show would kill off a principal character when Denise Crosby wanted to leave. Many episodes featured Wil Wheaton coming up with an amazing solution to a problem and saving the day. The saucer-section and holodeck were also common devices used during the first season. The first season, however, did introduce one of the series primary villains in the Romulans and laid down the groundwork for the most villainous television bad-guys in history: the Borg.

The second season found a lot of shuffling among the crew of the Enterprise. With Tasha Yar removed as the security officer after her death to a large black puddle of intelligent oil, Worf took over in that position. Geordi moved to become chief of engineering and much of his work was taken over by the previously unnamed Miles O´Brien (Colm Meaney). After much hesitation in the first season, Wesley Crusher is now an Ensign and part of the crew on the bridge. Sadly, Dr. Beverly Crusher has left her position as ship´s doctor and was replaced by Dr. Katherine Pulaski (Diana Muldaur), but Dr. Crusher would return for season three. The Ten-Forward club was introduced, as was its well-informed bartender Guinan. Data became more and more curious of what makes a human tick and Riker grew a beard and gained more power as the second in command on the Enterprise. The second season found consistent storylines and more fleshed out characters that the first season. With some stories spanning the entire season, "Star Trek: The Next Generation" moved past being a one-season wonder and became a show that would survive for many more seasons.

The third season of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" would find Dr. Beverly Crusher returning to the starship Enterprise and continuing her work as the ship´s doctor and hint as a love interest to Picard. She would initially have difficulties in accepting her son´s role as a member of the ship´s crew, but her return was a great improvement over Dr. Pulaski. Pulaski was supposed to be a female equivalent of the original series Dr. McCoy, but her character simply did not have the same chemistry that Bones had in the original series. Perhaps the most memorable part of the third season aboard the Enterprise-D was the season finale and its introduction of the Borg. The season gave Guinan and added presence on-board the Enterprise and showed that she perhaps knew more than anybody else when it came to intergalactic happenings. Her family was killed by the Borg and this frightening collective of cyborgs introduced the most memorable villains in television history. Season three took the solid ground created in the second season and made "Star Trek: The Next Generation" a fast-paced and entertaining hour of television. It´s too bad that it wasn´t until this DVD set that I was finally aware of how good the show became.

The fourth season began with the Borg and found Locutus of Borg returned to the Enterprise, while the ship was under the command of Riker. A massive fight between the Borg and Starfleet occurred during the fourth season premiere and had established that the Borg would be the biggest and baddest threat in the universe from this point forward. This middle point of the series found Wesley Crusher leaving the Enterprise to join Starfleet Academy. Crusher was my least favorite character of the primary crew and I certainly enjoyed watching him depart from the crew and not returning as a primary character from the fifth season on. He did have a recurring role and I saw him once or twice during my episode-hopping, but he wasn´t nearly as pivotal or commonplace after he left for the Academy.

The fifth and sixth season did not see a lot of change aboard the Enterprise, but found the crew investigating many themes popular during the show´s long run. Time travel and the potential of interfering with the time and space continuum was very popular and even Mark Twain made an appearance on the show. Klingon relations were another popular point and Worf´s son Alexander would soon take residence on the Enterprise and have a focal episode during the show´s final season. The Borg would return and Hugh would be introduced during this timeframe. These seasons also took place after the death of the show´s creator, Gene Roddenberry. The show did not miss a beat after losing its creator and although many of the themes started to feel repetitious and not quite as fresh as the third and fourth seasons, the characters continued to build on their wonderful chemistry.

Season seven started slow, but ended perfectly. The show´s longest running antagonist, Q (John de Lancie) was a focal point in the show´s pilot and played a pivotal point in the two hour finale. Q was an odd and powerful nemesis that straddled the line at being friend of foe to Picard. He showed an odd fascination with the ship´s captain and although he routinely put the Enterprise into hazardous situations, he was always helping them out in a roundabout way. Where the show began, it ended and the manner in which the finale revisited the pilot was brilliant. It´s reintroduction of Tasha Yar was a nice touch and I was happy to see one of my favorite characters from the first season return. Q appeared in a large number of episodes and helped the show end on a high note. Picard found some peace at being the ship´s captain and even joined his highest ranking officers for a game of poker.

I did not follow "Star Trek: The Next Generation" during its seven year run on broadcast television. I had watched a few of the first season episodes, but aside from finding Denise Crosby as being a rather attractive blonde, I didn´t find much else of interest during the show. Data was the only other character that held my interest, but he wasn´t enough to watch the show. At the time, I didn´t want intelligent and though-provoking stories. I wanted action that could rival "Star Wars" and I wanted my captain romancing blue aliens. Now I know that I did not give "Star Trek: The Next Generation" enough time to grow on me. I quickly grew tired of watching Wil Wheaton always fix the ship and odd situations to release the saucer section. For me, "Star Trek: The Next Generation" was too tame and too much of a ´thinking´ show to be entertaining enough to follow it.

With revisiting the show and finally giving it its due with the massive 49 disc box set, I have discovered just how rich and fulfilling the show became during its next few seasons. The formulaic approach to the show was left behind after the first year and the actors grew into their characters. Data became the perfect Pinocchio and found a wonderful father-son relationship with Picard. William Riker found almost as much power as the Captain and fulfilled my desires for a Kirk-like adventurer. The stories became better and the show became stronger. I found the second, third and fourth seasons to be among the fresher and more adventurous seasons. The show was on the upswing during these three years and I wish I had the time to watch each and every episode before typing up this review. Of course, I could have spent the time watching the shows when they first aired two decades ago.

A plateau was reached during the final three seasons. The show was more polished and the actors had perfected their characters. There was no longer any great room to grow and the pinnacle third-season finale / fourth-season premiere was left in the rearview mirror of the Enterprise. The stories were still nicely-written and the show still had plenty of strange new worlds to explore, but nothing was fresh and groundbreaking. The show started to become a little stale and lose the momentum from the earlier seasons. I´m sure the creators were aware of this and this came into play when the seventh season was determined to be the last. Some of the stories that fell flat involved a Romulan woman who was Tasha Yar´s daughter. Intended to be a tremendous plot-twist, it became confusing in disinteresting. The finale was awesome and I enjoyed watching the show end strong, but the final three seasons only served to show more adventures and extend the voyage of the starship enterprise.

I easily spent forty hours with this box set and learned much about "Star Trek: The Next Generation." Some of my thoughts to the few episodes I had originally watched from the first season were quite valid, but the show evolved and improved greatly. Data was a simply awesome character and stood out among a strong cast of characters. Riker, Geordi, Dr. Crusher, Worf and Picard were all nicely written and well acted. Q and the Borg were strong antagonists and I only wish the show had spent just a little more time with each of them. It has now been a long time since the crew of the Enterprise-D appeared on either television or film, but their long journey to seek out new worlds was worth a trip and thankfully, those of us that missed the trip the first time around can at least share in their experiences on DVD. This is a great show and a huge time investment, but I think it is worth it.

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