MOVIE REVIEW: LABYRINTH OF DREAMS (1997)

Written and Directed by Gakuryu Ishii

From a novel by Yumeno Kyusaku

Photographed by Norimichi Kasamatsu

Edited by Kan Suzuki

Music by Hiroyuki Onagawa

Production Design by Toshihiro Isomi

Starring

Rena Komine as Tomiko

Tadanobu Asano as Niitaka

. . .

“You must never, ever become a bus conductor.”

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker.

Boredom in a small town out in the sticks. 

You’ve got to make your own fun.

Even if it’s all in your mind.

Or maybe it all starts in your mind until you find a real life adventure to displace your boredom.

Either way . . .

Tomiko works as a bus conductor. She punches tickets. She offers an additional pair of eyes at dangerous crossings-especially train tracks. This is in some vaguely delineated Japanese past-1930s? 1940s?-in which the monotony of existence in a small town is all-consuming. No significant reference is made to the world beyond this town. Tomiko’s job as a bus conductor is explicitly presented as a job for women. Only men are permitted to work as bus drivers. Tomiko narrates her story by way of a series of letters to her best friend. We find out that she had great expectations that this job would be more of an adventure, but, alas, it’s a grind like all other things. It becomes exciting only when Tomiko takes on the role of a civilian detective.

Another bus conductor dies in a suspicious accident. There’s a rumor that she was murdered by a bus driver who manipulated and seduced her into becoming a victim. The implication is that this predator has insinuated himself into the job of bus driver because it allows him proximity to his prey. Whether this is the truth or just a creepy folktale is the mystery at the heart of Labyrinth of Dreams. 

A prime suspect emerges: the sullen yet handsome bus driver Niitaka, whom Tomiko first sees taking a nap right on the train tracks. This sets up a core ambiguity: is Niitaka just a deeply depressed person, or is he a monster? Maybe he is a monster but also feels remorse over his killings which drives him to various antisocial and self-destructive behaviors. Tomiko takes a very black and white perspective on things, casting herself as a dogged seeker of justice right out of a paperback thriller. She’s convinced that Niitaka is the murderer. But the film outside of her constructed narrative allows us to see Niitaka in other ways. Labyrinth of Dreams uses close-ups of Tomiko’s relentlessly suspicious face to remind us that we’re supposed to be on her wavelength even while other shots create a static of uncertainty. Niitaka himself is so emotionally closed-off that we end up projecting whatever pleases us onto him. 

Tomiko finds herself attracted to Niitaka. Niitaka seems to take an interest in her. Tomiko possibly sees their romance as an undercover operation to ferret out the truth, but she also seems to sort of like him. The key scene between these two happens over two glasses of wine. I won’t spoil what exactly occurs but Niitaka challenges Tomiko to play a game of “chicken” involving the two glasses. This is all deeply suspicious . . . but ultimately it's as ambiguous as everything else. The most that can be said for sure is that Niitaka is a deeply troubled person . . . but is he a monster?

Labyrinth of Dreams uses black and white cinematography to evoke harsh feelings of isolation and fear as well as a dreamy romanticism. Everyone that appears in front of the camera is an actual human actor, no deep fakes, no computer generated sidekicks. All of the props, costumes, locations, the bus, the train, the train tracks, the trees, the fog-it’s all there, it all exists, even if it’s all lit, framed, and assembled into a stylish set of sequences that defy easy explanations. Ultimately, Tomiko and Niitaka’s lives are very, very small. They each try to leave their mark upon the world-for good, for evil, maybe just to beat back the oppression of insignificance, maybe they don’t actually know why, maybe they can’t ever know.

Maybe Tomiko’s just inventing a narrative-any narrative, even a ghastly one-to escape a tightly constrained existence in a world that looks down on poor working class women.

Maybe Niitaka’s depression drives him to minimize his own narrative to reduce the surface area of emotional vulnerability.

There is an ending that points to some possibilities, but much is left up to We the Audience to sort through, assemble, discard, and/or frame as significant.

Labyrinth of Dreams asks a lot of its audience, and I respected and admired it for doing so.

COMICS REVIEW: BATMAN & ROBIN ADVENTURES #25 (1997)

“DEMON IN THE SKY”

Cover Art and Script by Ty Templeton.

Penciled by Bo Hampton

Inked by Rich Burchett and Terry Beatty

Colored by Lee Loughridge

Lettered by Tim Harkins

Associate Edited by Darren Vincenzo

Edited by Scott Peterson

Published by DC Comics/Time Warner in 1997, cover date December ‘97.

. . .

“Up until this moment, I was uncertain of the limits of this technology. Now I’m certain it has none.”

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker.

Batman gets abducted by a flying saucer.

Who’s piloting the flying saucer?

Ra’s Al Ghul.

How did Ra’s Al Ghul get a flying saucer?

Well, aliens abducted Ra’s Al Ghul. 

Ra’s Al Ghul refused to be a prisoner. 

Ra’s Al Ghul killed the gray aliens onboard, and hijacked the saucer for his own use. 

And then Batman comes along in his Batplane. 

That’s when Ra’s Al Ghul used his new extraterrestrial vehicle to abduct Batman in midair. 

Impressive how Ra’s turned a stressful situation to his advantage, isn’t it?

Of course, Ra’s fucks it all up by monologueing to Batman about his new toy, and his new scheme to use an alien death ray to melt the polar ice cap to drown industrial civilization. 

But Batman’s a skeptic who doesn’t believe in UFOs and alien abductions and crap like that, so he thinks Ra’s is bullshitting him. This is funny . . . because Batman’s a longtime friend and colleague of Green Lantern, Superman, and the Martian Manhunter-but maybe he’s never crossed paths with the probe-happy grays before? 

Still, Batman’s obliged to chase Ra’s around the block yet again since it’s obvious the seemingly immortal evildoer is up to no good.

That’s Batman and Robin Adventures #25. It mixes 1990s Batman the Animated series shit (mainly the visuals) with The X-Files shit (alien abduction, MIBs, skeptic v. believer themes). It even has one of those ambiguous-but-not-really endings that The X-Files is notorious for-you know, where skeptical Scully is pretty much always wrong? This time around, Batman is Scully to Robin’s Mulder. It’s a trifle, but it’s fun.

The flying saucer is controlled by brain waves. Ra’s Al Ghul’s 700 years of martial arts and esoteric meditation practice enables him to easily assert his willpower over the dronelike mentality of the gray aliens. Ra’s is into an eco-terrorism trip of late, and so he monologues about using the flying saucer’s death ray to bring on the collapse of industrial civilization. Once all that capitalist bullshit’s properly scuttled, he’ll be able to enjoy fresh air and clean water just like in the old days. It’s a commendably ambitious plan. (FAN FICTIONAL DIGRESSION: I like to imagine that Ra’s got inspired by playing Final Fantasy VII on the original hardware. Ra’s seems kinda old to take up gaming, so I figure Talia Al Ghul-who doesn’t appear in this issue-hipped him to FFVII off panel. “Dad, I know you don’t like technology, but this game is totally your vibe!”)

You even get a scene where some John Keel-style Men In Black exhort Bruce Wayne to investigate Groom Lake. The implication is that the MIBs know that Bruce Wayne is also Batman. This is an amusing wrinkle in the Batman mythos. Maybe this thread could pay off in future “Extraterrestrial Hunter” adventures where Batman and Robin get tasked to interdict anal probes and cattle mutilations and the like.

My favorite panel depicts Ra’s as having bloodshot, unblinking eyes. It’s like Ra’s mindmeld with the flying saucer has turned him into even more of a sleepless power addict. No rest for the ambitious.

Batman and Robin Adventures #25 is a perfect dollar bin find. It’s a double-sized issue. It’s a quirky, self-contained episode in the endless Batman saga. It’s also on-trend with the escalating 1990s nostalgia wave of late. Read it once, read it twice-read it ‘til you get bored, and pass it on to someone else. Or keep on reading it ‘til it falls apart. Just don’t leave it entombed in a polybag with a piece of cardstock.

COMICS REVIEW: JUNK CULTURE (1997)

by Ted McKeever (writer/artist/colorist/color separations/creator)

Lettered by John Workman

Edited by Shelly Roeberg

Published in 1997 as two issues dated July and August by DC/Vertigo/Warner Bros./Time Warner.

. . .

"Two for the price of one! Three for a dollar! Step right up! Hey, you think it's possible to mail back the unused portion of Mom and Dad for a complete refund?"

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker.

Here's the love child of Weapon X and Animal Man if they honeymooned in Westworld.

Junk Culture. Two word title. Two sisters, Eve and Lola. Twins. Dual natured mixture of meats'n'robotics-cyborgs, if you like. A mad scientist tells us that one sister inherited a good nature and the other one an evil nature, but that turns out to not exactly be true. Through a series of mishaps and fuck-ups involving both bad luck and bad design, the twins discover the artificial nature of both themselves and their world. Eve and Lola respond with a combination of both violence and amusement. Two issues. Across two months. Published by DC Comics/Vertigo. I half-expected the villain Two-Face to show up, but this is a creator-owned title by Ted McKeever, so no dice. We do get back cover ads for Joel Schumacher's Batman and Robin on both issues, though.

At first, Eve and Lola think they are typical teenage protagonists of a corny, mildly edgy sitcom-esque storyline. They live with their clueless father and their doting mother in the at first sarcastically and then allegorically named Newtown. Sarcastic, at first, because Newtown just seems like a mildly R-rated version of Riverdale, and then later it turns out to be a facade for an elaborate experiment to make Eve and Lola think that they are real human beings. The residents are professional actors. Behind the scenes lurk heavily armed henchpersons ready to intervene if the twins go off-program in some catastrophic manner. Which, of course, they inevitably do, bringing about the total destruction of this highly dubious experiment.

I suppose a major idea of Junk Culture is that the artificiality of the scenario extends well past the core story of the lab grown twins. A major strand of the narrative involves the aging scumbag rockstar Al Roma, who is a creature of the music industry. Roma thinks he's a genius and entitled to unlimited sex and fame even though he's a big ugly hack. Lola has been brainwashed to have a fangirl crush on Roma, which sets up one of the best visual gags in the book. I suppose there's the implication that the dinosaurian rockstars of the late 1990s require a secret army of mind-controlled cyborgs to maintain ticket sales. Moreover, this is a story published in two separate issues that really should've just been one double-sized one shot. Artificially stretching it across two months seems like a meta piss take on the bizarre and arbitrary way American comic book publishers slice up narrative into twenty-two or twenty-four page segments per issue whether or not that's the most effective pacing for a given work. Junk Culture is art-object-as-comic-book-industry-gouge.

One of the more amusing moments involves Eve and Lola availing themselves of an arsenal of guns and armor. The main sidearm they expropriate looks very similar to the futuristic handgun Harrison Ford used to retire rogue replicant skinjobs in Blade Runner. Junk Culture puts the blaster in the hands of the replicants, and the gun sights on foolish human Frankenstein types. Ain't that a bitch. 

1997's Junk Culture, curiously, seems to anticipate more well known works of end of the millennium pop culture. The similarity to 1998's The Truman Show is self-evident, although the Peter Weir directed film is more about perception and persistence freeing its protagonist from an artificial world as opposed to applied violence. 1998's video game Metal Gear Solid explored a conflict between clones who find themselves fighting a proxy war on behalf of shadow government/mad science factions emanating from the depths of the American military-industrial complex. And, of course, 1999's The Matrix gloried in kung fu and firepower as it explored armed resistance to an imposed virtual reality system of oppression. Junk Culture is more downbeat than these more well-known movies, and even suggests that the cyborg twins are doomed to fall even as they destroy the idiotic world that birthed them. Ted McKeever's off kilter character designs puts across a world mired in greed, stupidity, and pretension. Even a mad scientist's grandiose revelatory monologue comes across as a Frankenstein seriously failing to grasp his own endeavor. Eve and Lola's rampage isn't quite what we want, but it's probably better than we deserve.

By the way, my second favorite visual gag involves an army of ants swarming a spilled soda. It's mean-especially towards comic book dorks like myself-but it's too damn true.

POETIC VIDEO GAME REVIEW #31: FALLOUT (1997)

this is

the post nuclear

new clear . . . the new clear . . .

role playing game

that lets you be

who you want to be 

new . . . clarity . . . The . . .

put points into brains, communications, skill with weapons

New . . . Clarity . . .

you can even dial your capacity to communicate down to zero

most will not do this

the game steers you towards having an intelligence based approach balanced with some weapons skills

The New . . .

but you can be who you want to be

within limits

within the parameters of a violent post-apocalyptic survival game

you won't be taking up cosmetology, semiotics, or site maintenance custodial duties

but think on those Mad Max movies, you'll get the drift

. . . Clarity . . .

your mission is to save your insular community that lives in a subterranean survival complex known as a Vault by finding water purification equipment out in the World, but your adventures shape'n'sharpen you into a stranger by game's end, thus causing you to be cast out from your Vault, accursed to wander the radioactive wasteland

. . . The New . . .

it's a riff on Eden, I suppose

except with a bunch of Adams and Eves choosing to stay in the garden while You get scapegoated for learning of the Good and the Evil out there in the scary huge World

. . . Clear . . . The New . . .

the people of the Vault are grateful

but your ass has to Exit

Status Quo must be preserved

from You

who reeks of the New

. . . Clarity . . .

born of nuclear annihilation

kind of a bummer

but open for sequelization

across the decades

yes

plural of decade

since 1997 A.D. (Anime Domini)

the year of Final Fantasy VII

. . . The New Clarity . . .

that product we already know

must be sold and resold 

perma-wander the wasteland

. . . The New . . . Clear . . .

not so new

-January 2009-September 2022

POETIC VIDEO GAME REVIEW #30: FINAL FANTASY VII (1997)

 

you realize

okay

that so much trouble could've been avoided

if Sephiroth hadn't been left alone

down in that secret library

that time alone

fixating on such a bizarre conception of himself

it's a fuckin' dilemma

'cause I don't like anyone looking over my shoulder

and I never had any teachers worth-a-fuck

I had to seek out the Good Shit all on my own-

-hmmm.

Maybe I'm okay with Sephiroth's unsupervised reading time. Sure, he caused a lot of damage, but the Shinra regime was already violent, and thereby provoked responses in kind. Sephiroth just clarified the worldaround situation by igniting the planet's rage, causing it to vomit forth giant monsters and speeding up the collapse of the Mako-extractive Shinra machine, and this in turn puts the Player on the map to intervene. Cloud, Barret, Tifa, Aerith, Vincent, Cait Sith, Cid, Yuffie, Red XIII-just so many cooling rods getting dropped into place, y'know? But without that brush with cataclysm . . . would the people of Midgar get the point?

-I know, I know, I know. 

It isn't fair.

The collateral damage was incalculable.

It really sucks.

But the people of Midgar had to have their asses kicked a bit to wake them up out of their narcotized complacency. Sephiroth crossed every line, sure, but nothing less would hit it, y'know? 

Even the Ending refuses a return to Status Quo, depicting the corrupt metropolis of Midgar reabsorbed into Nature in the fullness of time-all the storm and stress of Cloud v. Sephiroth-just the workings out of so many chemical-metaphysical reactions-

Of course, this all got rolled back quite a bit by subsequent sequelizations/remakes/remixes.

1997 ended up being a lifetime ago, didn't it? More than enough time for millennial zeal to cool out, and the Inevitable Nostalgia Malfunction to seize up the brainworks-

Nothing can be left well enough alone, can it? 

-December 1999-August 2022

MOVIE REVIEW: CUBE (1997)

 Directed by Vincenzo Natali

. . .

FUN FACT: The actor Ice Cube does not appear in the 1997 film Cube.

-William D. Tucker.

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker.

You wake up inside a cube. You don't know how you got there. There's doors in each wall, the floor, and the ceiling. The doors-hatches, really-lead to other cubes with doors that lead to other cubes with doors that lead to other cubes with-

Eventually, you discover that some cubes are booby-trapped, some are safe. The booby traps are invariably lethal. Eventually, you discover there are other people here in the cubes with you. These other people also woke up here with no idea how or why or if there are any whys or hows to it. Maybe it was just Cube Time. Now is the time for everyone to wake up inside cubes. #CubeTime4Lyfe

You and the other people in the cubes decide that it is not right for you to be inside the cubes, so you figure out ways to protect yourself from the booby-traps, and you traverse the path of cubes-a maze, really-hoping to find your way back to the outside world. You don't know how you got here, but you do remember your life before getting all cubed-up. There's no water or food, so you've got to pay attention, and work with some haste. It's possible that there's no way out, and that you have been royally and completely fucked out of existence. But your will to survive drives you to try to escape. 

That's what the movie Cube's about, more or less. It's a set of situations and a set of responses to those situations. You watch and ask yourself what you would do if you got cubed-up. Or you pick apart the logic, the plausibility, the plot holes. Math becomes important in this movie, so you might get off checking the filmmakers' homework, so to speak. I listened to a podgrift wherein a group of insufferable grad students nitpicked the film to death and I thought,"You know what? I'd probably prefer getting cubed-up to hanging out with a bunch of academics. Of course, I might end up in the cubes with the unbearable privileged jack-offs. Shit. You just can't win. You really can't."

Look, I get it. The situations presented in the film Cube are thoroughly impossible on many levels. The same could be said of The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Marvel Movies, DC Movies, Godzilla, John Wick, The Fast and the Furious, The Matrix, Twilight, Resident Evil, Jurassic World, Top Gun: Maverick, Star Trek-Cube is no more or less realistic and/or plausible. But all these fanciful movies are about exploring possibilities:

What if you could travel in space at faster than light? What if a corporation used viruses to create undead monsters for military use? What if you had both telekinesis and a laser sword? What if your mind was deluded by a sinister computer system? What if hobbits existed? What if a magic ring could save the world? What if snapping your fingers could alter reality? What if the air force of a major nation allowed a sixty-year old to fly a fighter jet into battle? What if you could fight and shoot and run and kill and get stabbed and shot and brutally beaten for hours and hours without using PCP and without losing consciousness or dying? What if you could save the universe by firing lasers and spitting catchy one-liners?

I guess I think the questions Cube raises are both more interesting and more relateable:

Is there any escape from the cubes? How do you know the other people you meet in the cubes are who they say they are? Could any or all of these other people be collaborators with who or what engineered this bizarre situation? Is this an engineered situation? Is this punishment from God or Satan or L. Ron Hubbard? Is this a reward from God or Satan or L. Ron Hubbard? Is this ordeal some kind of severe form of recruitment? If we survive the cubes will we be rewarded with a cash prize or merely an internship? Will there be a snack waiting for anyone who finds a way out of the cubes? Are we in a construct of the material world, or is this a spooky supernatural and/or metaphysical situation? Are ancient aliens involved? What of young aliens-do they have the attention span to construct such a bizarre and ambitious project? At what age is the brain of a bug-eyed gray considered fully developed? 

Cube seems to lean more towards materialist explanations for what it's worth.

I have decided not to list the actors or the names of the characters they play on the off chance that you, Dear Reader, have not seen Cube, or if you saw it a long time ago and maybe you don't remember all the details. I was lucky enough to watch it without a single spoiler years ago, and I consider myself blessed. Cube, 1997, and the name of the director are all the coordinates you need.

It's not that it's a perfect film. Cube is basically a pricy, state-subsidized student film from Canada, so all you libertarians and Ayn Rand readers can foam and fume about that shit. The actors are hammy, but effective. The dialogue isn't David Mamet, but it's good enough. The set designs are low-budj, but cleverly contrived. You'll remember at least one of the booby-traps, I think. Music's fine. Overall, it's on the level of an episode of The Outer Limits, I would say, which is good enough for me. The group dynamics of the cubists-my pet name for those trapped in the cubes-are sharply observed. Much like the art movement, they're working to attain new and effective perspectives on the bizarre and trying subject matter that surrounds them, that constitutes their oh-so-deadly cosmos. 

Could it be that the cubes are all part of one really big . . . block of cheese?!

MOVIE REVIEW: KISS THE GIRLS (1997)

 Directed by Gary Fleder

Adapted from a novel by James Patterson. 

Starring 

Morgan Freeman 

Ashley Judd

Carey Elwes

Brian Cox

Jay O. Sanders

Alex MacArthur

Richard T. Jones

Bill Nunn

Jeremy Piven

Tony Goldwyn

. . .

"This guy's a collector."

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker. 

Kiss the Girls is an effective serial killer thriller with an intriguing super power: it's basically review proof. I'm not saying it's a perfect film. It just defeats the whole endeavor of film criticism. Not because the filmmakers intended to stick it to film critics or criticism as a field, nothing so intentional . . . it's just that its very purpose and construction renders such projects moot. 

Kiss the Girls began life as an 'airport paperback,' a book that you buy at the airport gift shop to read while flying, and then you pretty much never read it again. Or maybe you bought it at a grocery store back when they used to stock books, or at a long extinct drugstore chain like Phar-Mor or Eckard's, or at Walmart or Target or even a Waldenbooks. You read it over a few nights, thought it was pretty good, and then you never read it again. Not because it's bad or anything. All plot. Compelling technical details to show the author did their homework. Everyone loves a diligent student. No flowery Proustian introspection. No impenetrable  postmodern gamesmanship. No arch satire to make you question what you're reading and give you a headache. No finger-wagging moralism or social commentary. Just the meat and potatoes, please. You only read it the once because it was designed to be both wholly absorbing and totally disposable once consumed. 

Back in the days of ubiquitous used book stores books like this took up lots of space, at least until the proprietors got wise and stopped taking 'em for trade credit. Boy did that piss off the greedy retirees and doctors carting in their cast-offs with broken spines thinking they were gonna take advantage of the trade-in credit system. 

Now, these airport paperbacks were not as immovable as the formula romance novels, but they were still a space hog, and the volume of wasted retail territory very likely contributed to the demise of those used bookstores that couldn't or wouldn't say no to the bargain hunters obsessed with the idea that their leisure reading waste could form the basis of some sort of bookish barter economy. This is one of those strange fantasies of that era of ubiquitous used book stores within which some people dwelled at the end of history. Reading didn't have to be hard. Fiction isn't some arcane art, but a formula. All problems could be resolved by an intrepid FBI agent or, even better, an FBI profiler-which is basically a scientific mind reader. Even though these books gave the impression that serial killers were hiding inside every last bush, that anyone could be a scheming psychopath hiding behind a mask of normalcy, everything was going to be just fine at the same time. If only used bookstore owners could pay their utilities with a wheelbarrow full of brokeback paperbacks. Alas, 'twas not the case. 

So, Kiss the Girls as a literary construct was designed to be read quickly, enjoyed, and cast aside so you could read the next one-either the next book from the same author-James Patterson in this case-or another in the genre by a different author: Tom Clancy, Stephen King, David Baldacci, Michael Slade, Richard Preston&Lincoln Child, John Grisham, etc. You could mix and match 'em as you please! Zero sweat! You don't need a background in critical literary theory or postmodern approaches to late capitalist liberal subjectivities or feminism or even be good at math to jump into the airport paperback game. Ready to read, plug'n'play, zero fuss and even less muss. They certainly don't need to be curated or sorted by a reviewer or critic. I mean, there really isn't anything to review or interpret. It's all there on the face of things. I won't say that the subtext has been dialled to zero, but it's well below eleven. 

No, the only thing which bears critical scrutiny is the business side of things, the economics, the publishing machine that rewards standarized, easily consumable book product. There's an academic paper for you, there’s a magnificent graduate thesis-hell, I betcha if you wrote that sumbitch, why, all those extinct used bookstores would spring right back from the grave! 

Yeah. It could happen. Someone needs to get on this. Not me, I got a whole stack of James Patterson books to get through, so no help here-

Kiss the Girls the movie of the book is about a perfect adaptation of the whole airport paperback thing as you can get: it's slick, it's technically proficient, it doesn't fuck about with artsy indulgences, it's got plot twists, you watch it once, and you probably don't ever need to watch it again. I had no problem whatsoever watching it twice to write this, but I probably only needed to watch it the once, now that I think about it. 

Morgan Freeman is terrific as 'forensic psychologist' Alex Cross, a pistol packing headshrinker who specializes in talking down potential suicides and hostage takers as well as interpreting crime scenes for insights into the misfiring brain signals of sick fuck serial killers. Alex Cross is who Dr. Loomis from Halloween dreams of becoming when he grows up: calm, cool, collected, convincing, and quick on the draw. Freeman makes this inherently absurd character compelling and even vulnerable in a few scenes. 

Cross is after a serial killer/kidnapper/rapist known as Casanova, who captures women, tortures them, and murders them. Cross gets drawn in to this case when his niece goes missing in Durham, North Carolina. Casanova is one of these gimmicky serial killers who loves to taunt the cops with edeglordy letters and insinuations. In one scene, we see him in his masked costume descending a staircase in mysterious shadows to menace a victim. Casanova leans his head to the side just so that  director Gary Fleder can give a shout out to Michael Myers, which was a nice touch. 

One of Casanova's victims escapes from his private torture dungeon that's located in the middle of a North Carolina forest and makes her way back to civilization. She becomes the key to hunting down Casanova and ending his reign of terror. She's very well played by Ashley Judd, but I kinda feel like she was left with not much to do until the final act. 

The supporting cast consists of people who all look like they could be killers hiding behind facades of normalcy:

Brian Cox as the blustery good ol' boy police chief, sucking on his pipe, doing a Foghorn Leghorn Southern accent, and warning Cross to stay outta his kitchen! 

Cary Elwes as a cop, who seems like a too obvious choice to be the killer-it's the dude from Robin Hood: Men in Tights fer Chrissakes!

Jay O. Sanders as a colleague of Cross's who has kind of a creepy stare. What's his deal?

Maybe the most amusing bit of casting is Alex MacArthur who I always remember as the skincrawling serial killer from William Friedkin's Rampage. Deep cut, Fleder, deep cut . . .

I don't think I've ever seen Bill Nunn in a villain role, or Jeremy Piven for that matter, so we can probably rule those guys out as suspects. 

If I told who the killer is then there's little point in watching the movie. Sure, it's well made, and the presentation of the masked Casanova killer is stylish and creepy, but the full fun can only be had if you go in blindfolded. Kiss the Girls is the sort of film spoiler culture evolved to protect. 

You watch it. You're like, "Oh, that's how it all fits together. That was pretty neat!" 

In some ways the film version improves upon the paperback version in that the actors here are quite good. They imbue the archetypes-or cliches to use a less pretentious term-with interesting presences and personalities. Morgan Freeman even has a chance to play the vulnerability of Cross when he has to admit to some serious mistakes to his colleague. The R-rating helps. The language is adequately rough. When a character admits to fucking up they say, "I fucked up," which I appreciated.  Back in the 1990s television cop worship shows did not allow their protagonists to speak as adults. You could only do that in the movies. I appreciate this about Kiss the Girls.

The level of violence is sufficiently gnarly without going full splatter. Casanova is a nasty piece of work, to be sure, and the film version doesn't water it down.

Great set designs. Casanova's dungeon ends up having disturbing historical resonances. 

The final confrontation between Cross and Casanova was cleverly contrived, and the movie doesn't linger much past that point.

No need to worry about mid credits or after credits bullshit. Kiss the Girls doesn’t lack confidence. You'll find no trace of franchise envy here. Once the tale has been told you are free to exit the theater into the mysterious night.