input: If I watch a movie and don't once look at my watch or clock to see how much longer it will be running or when I hope that the last scene wasn't the end of the movie, it's got to be pretty good. I'm not an movie internalist or cinema dissectionist. I watch movies and if they keep me interested till the end, then they are pretty good because some of the most critically acclaimed films bore me to death (The English Patient, Shakespeare in Love, Atonement, Crash. This movie kept me interested and absorbed beginning to end. Acting is great, story is absolutely original, flash-back technique very affective. There was a bit of Citizen Kane thrown in tho when Hoffman trashes his apartment after Tomei leaves him, but I forgive that cause I see it as a homage to, rather than a rip-off of, Orson.

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pos/neg ans: positive

input: Need I say--its a stinker! (I gave it a rating of 2)

Only watch it if you suffer from insomnia.

There's plenty of scenery chewing and hamming it up, but not much else happens in this movie. There is no suspense, no deep, shocking secrets revealed, no real threat to the heroine's well being. A few disagreements, slight raising of voices--that's pretty much it. The secrets are nothing that couldn't happen to anybody - the last "secret" revealed in the film is totally predictable by that point.

The plot, such as it is, revolves around a young woman named Faith (Meg Tilly), who is an artist, who is hired to paint a series of mural panels in a huge ballroom in a vast mansion by a very, very wealthy, older widowed woman, and a growing mother/daughter type relationship that the older woman craves with her.

It turns out the older woman's daughter, Cassandra, is dead. You can pretty well fit the rest of the pieces together.

Even the scene with the mysterious man menacing our heroine does not advance to the point where you really fear for her safety beyond maybe a second or two. Why he's still hanging around years after Cassandra's death is a good question.

There's also the question of the fact that in this vast mansion there is only one servant, a faithful butler who seems to do everything--cooking, cleaning, serving the meal, answering the door, etc. Everything except apparently locking the door--since that would be the only explanation for how one of the characters just walks into a room where Faith is.

There's nothing that will have you grasping your chair arms, and leaning forward on the edge of your seat, because there IS no "mounting" tension in this film--just bland, pathetic revelations that get tossed out from time to time.

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pos/neg ans: negative

input: Dull haunted house thriller finds an American family moving into a 200 year old house in Japan where a violent murder suicide love triangle occurred.

Novel setting is about the only element of interest in this very slow moving horror flick by the director of Motel Hell. The film generates zero suspense and is composed of somewhat choppy scenes that rarely seem to be leading anywhere overall.

One obvious example is a fairly early scene where the male lead visits a temple after realizing that his house is haunted as the monk had earlier warned. The monk recounts the history of the house (which the viewer is already familiar with from the opening sequence) and then the film simply cuts away to something else. Earlier the monk had offered to help. Well, where is the help? The family continues to stay in the haunted house as things get worse and worse and no mention of the monk is made until nearly the very end when he turns up again to do what he should have done an hour earlier--try to drive the spirits out of the house, although by this time it's difficult for the viewers to care.

There are some (probably) unintentional campy laughs in seeing the American actors at the end become possessed by the Japanese spirits and suddenly start doing bad martial arts, I say probably because the scene is more than a little reminiscent of the chainsaw duel from the same director's Motel Hell which was more obviously meant to be amusing, but on the whole this is a forgettable dud.

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pos/neg ans: negative

input: Recap: Doctor Markov has developed a new theory how to produce energy, knowledge that might unbalance the world. He keeps his knowledge coded and secret and desperately wants out of the Soviet Union. KGB on the other side desperately wants the new technology. So, they sets a scheme in motion. During a rescue attempt to free Markov, KGB steps in, takes Markov to a secret location and lures him to reveal his secret by saying they are in Sweden, and working for the UN. As a backup, KGB kidnaps Markov's estranged daughter. CIA now send their best agents, a team of (Swedish?) Ninjas to thwart KGB and rescue Markov and his daughter.

Comments: A cult movie that despite not being very good needs seeing. The movie is quite ambitious but lacking in many areas. First off is that it is very dark, probably to conceal locations and bad effects, that some scenes are hard to comprehend. You can't see what is happening. The second thing that it is lacking is martial arts, despite being a ninja-movie. Sure there are some, of quite poor quality, but mostly the ninjas fires automatic guns or sets of explosions. The automatic guns pose a problem too as they seem to have a endless supply of ammunition. And the ninjas seem almost immune to bullets while Soviet guards die like flies.

What does it have that speaks for it then? The idea and ambition foremost. Some actually, and especially for a Swedish movie, decent action-scenes albeit not of martial arts. Some nice slow-motion scenes and pretty much blood and gore. And some very interesting new weapons technology that makes the victims heart or brain explode. Mostly all parts that you look for in a B-movie.

Because it definitely is a B-movie, no mistake could be made there. But if you expect it, and watch it like a B-movie, it is entertaining. But don't forget, it is not only a B-movie it is set in the eighties. Some girls, for example, besides wearing... lets say "interesting" clothes, have lethal doses of eye shadow and makeup.

In all, see for the cult status and the ambition. Enjoy it, and then forget it.

4/10

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pos/neg ans:
negative