The Lake House (2006)

Romantic drama directed by Alejandro Agresti. It's a new version of the South Korean film Il Mare (2000).

Sandra Bullock is a doctor called Kate. Keanu Reeves is an architect called Alex. The pair fall in love. The problem is that Alex lives in 2004, while Kate lives in 2006.

They communicate through letters left in the mailbox of a lake house in Chicago, somehow bridging the two-year gap but without being able to meet.

Trying to work out the various time/space concepts made my head hurt. It’s great that the film makes you think, but this tends to be at the expense of the storytelling. I wanted to focus on the relationship between the couple, and not get bogged down by the dodgy science. Other films, such as Back to the Future, deal with the conceptual stuff much more neatly so that it can be moved out of the way and not distract from the plot.

Another flaw is that – by definition – too much of the film has to show the two characters alone, talking to themselves. The best moments are those rare occasions when we actually see the pair together – or nearly together.

I really enjoyed The Lake House despite the fact that it fundamentally doesn’t work. Thankfully, Bullock is great, whatever she’s in, and she raises an average drama to something well worth watching – as long as you don't ask any questions.

Inside Man (2006)

Directed by Spike Lee, this is an unusual and original thriller focused on a hostage siege during a New York City bank robbery. 

Clive Owen masterminds the heist. Denzel Washington is the detective and hostage negotiator, who finds that the case is stranger than his usual tasks. Jodie Foster plays a mysterious power broker who tries to help the bank’s founder Christopher Plummer protect something in his safe deposit box. 

It’s edgy and dynamic, and also occasionally funny. 

The music by jazz musician and trumpeter Terence Blanchard is oddly jarring at times, but it works. 

The three leads are all at their best, although I would have liked more dialogue from Clive Owen.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

Adapted from the Swedish bestseller by Stieg Larsson, this is a surprisingly disappointing thriller. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about, and couldn’t. 

1. The plot is made complicated by poor storytelling but is actually very simple: a journalist (Daniel Craig) and a young, troubled computer hacker (Rooney Mara) investigate a girl’s disappearance from 40 years ago, uncovering the secrets of a wealthy family. 

2. It’s highly stylised, but the aesthetic seems deliberately ugly. 

3. It’s unnecessarily violent: the scenes with Mara and her abusive social worker seem completely gratuitous. She could have filled in her backstory as dialogue. Did we really need to see it?

4. Something about the story doesn’t ring true. I never believed in the characters or the main relationship between Craig and Mara. In fact, there’s no chemistry between anyone. 

5. The film seemed too impressed with its own tech. There are way too many shots of laptops being typed into. There are also too many shots of Mara riding a motorbike. 

6. It’s unevenly paced. One unexciting scene in which Mara researches in a library seems to go on forever. But then the “action” (and there’s very little of it), is oddly rushed. 

On the plus side, Daniel Craig is always watchable. But unfortunately that isn’t enough. Maybe the original Swedish film from 2009 is better.

The Insider (1999)

A whistleblower thriller based on a true story. Russell Crowe plays Jeffrey Wigand, who – when fired from his job in the tobacco industry – shared secrets about the conduct of his firm, even though he and his family were threatened and intimidated for doing so. Al Pacino plays the TV producer responsible for the 60 Minutes documentary that will air Wigand’s revelations. Christopher Plummer is the presenter of the show, who has a conflict of interests in terms of honouring his ethics vs. protecting his TV career. 

It’s entertaining and fairly gripping, if a little too long at 158 minutes. Director Michael Mann turns in something more sophisticated and less trashy than Heat, which also featured Pacino and the actor playing Wigand’s wife, Diane Venora. 

Pacino is terrific, even if (or because) he plays the same character in all his films: a hardboiled-yet-sensitive tough guy with integrity. 

It’s a little thin on the topic of Wigand’s marriage and the strains placed upon it. That thread could have been explored better. Otherwise, it's difficult to fault.