Bodies and Ghosts (or You Know, the Usual Capsule Reviews of Recently Seens)

Haywire

As far as Soderbergh films that have been tailored for a non-actress to show off the skills she's known for go, Haywire is more successful than The Girlfriend Experience (which, above all, is fatally boring for a movie about a call girl in the recession played by a pornstar). Gina Carano isn't much more competent a dramatic screen presence than Sasha Grey, but she doesn't really need to be. With an all-star class coyly teasing out their roles, and nicely orchestrated action scenes amidst stimulating locales (Barcelona, Dublin, New Mexico, old...Mexico), Haywire delivers, mostly. I can put my few formal complaints aside (score was awful, Barcelona color pallettes annoyingly sepia'd out to indicate past tense) to appreciate the whole: a smart "lark" that suggests more going on, evidenced in Ewan McGregor's loaded line in reference to the heroine: "Oh, you shouldn't think of her as a woman. That would be a mistake."

The Ghost Writer

Hey, it's Ewan McGregor again! Here Polanski crafts a bizarre world of grey sands and wind, a theatrical CG scape peppered with classically trained Brit thespians that creates an unsettling divide between this strange cinematic place and the real America/Britain being satirized. Enough unplaceable tension and black comedy to bring it to the kind of heights expected from its director, but a disjointed enough feel to keep it from being on par with his finest work.

Diary

The Pang Brothers, those prolific hit-or-miss pan-Asian (and now North American) sometimes masters, sometimes hacks are known for films full of promise that they usually squander by the second or third acts. Speaking as a fan of theirs, I have to say Diary follows the same unfortunate formula. There are some beautifully eerie images present in this Hong Kong psycho-horror from a few years ago (one depicts a giant wooden marionette stomping by in the background of a woman's nervous breakdown), but ultimately it ends up repetitve and over-explains itself.