Movie Talk at Rogue Slayer Law Student Movie Fan

Ashley Judd plays Jessica Shepard. Jessica has issues. She has anger. She has loss. She has sex. She has drinks. Jessica hides her feelings. Ashley Judd is a great actor. Ashley hides her acting skills. Jessica hits people. A lot. Twisted hits the audience with anvils. A lot.

Can you tell I was a little disappointed? Here's a movie with a great plot: Jessica Shepard is a newly promoted San Francisco homicide inspector. The victim in her first assignment is a man she knew briefly. As is the second. And so forth. Her parents died when she was young when her father, who was also on the SFPD, went on a shooting spree which concluded with his wife and finally himself. Jessica was raised by her father's partner, who by the time we come into the story, is the Police Commissioner.

Jessica pretends she's the perfectly well-adjusted rising star, but each night she cuddles up with a bottle of wine and her parents' crime scene photos. She begins experiencing blackouts around the time of the new murders and no one, including Jessica, can be sure if she's a target or a suspect.

The cast is great: Ashley Judd at the center, Samuel L. Jackson as her boss/father substitute, Andy Garcia as her new partner, David Strathairn as the department psychiatrist, Camryn Manheim as the crime labster extraordinaire, D.W. Moffett as the ex-prosecutor and present defense attorney, and Leland Orser as the creepy perp.

And look! It's Russell Wong, of the brief-lived Black Sash! I guess he got his job back on the SFPD after all. I hope Mako is taking good care of the school. It was such a cool place. We know that Nick moved on and became a witch/whitelighter from the future, who has to make sure his parents create him in the past and that his perfect big brother doesn't grow up to become a crazed magical maniac. But that's another story. At least everyone stayed in the Bay Area.

Back to Twisted. I got the feeling that Ashley Judd was trying so hard to project Jessica's efforts to hide herself from everyone around her that she forgot to show anything to the audience. I didn't feel any depth from the character most of the time. I could understand if they started off this way and then slowly let us see more as she understood more, but I never felt like we were let in on the process. She had a really cool black vintage Mustang, though.

There were a few times when the dialogue, blocked acting and lack of chemistry between actors combined to make me really think "Oh, this is so bad." Most of the time, though, I just wished they had given us something more than what the final cut turned out to be. Any scene between Ashley Judd and D.W. Moffett felt like it had been filmed separately for each actor. The first such scene included the timeless line, "Back when you were in the district attorney's office, you lived to nail guys like this to the wall."

They do a good job of keeping you guessing as to who the killer is, but that's mostly because almost all the characters are so flawed that you can picture any and all of them having done it. I can think of only one character who is likable all the way through. I won't say who, but you'll know who I mean if you see it. If you don't see the film, it's probably because you just don't care, so it won't matter if I don't tell you. If you just have to know and don't want to drop the $10 at the theatre or wait until the DVD, drop me an e-mail and I'll fill you in. I'll even tell you whodunnit if you ask nicely.
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Close on the heels of Angel's cancellation, Joss Whedon is back in the saddle. Universal Pictures has given the go-ahead for Serenity, the big screen adaptation of Whedon's space western Firefly. He will be writing and directing. The articles say that "most" of the original cast will be returning. I hope by "most" they mean absolutely each and every regular cast member. One of the articles here list "such... returning cast members as" and then list everyone except Alan Tudyk. Hopefully they've simply not finalized things with him, but he'll still be coming aboard.
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It was a well-fought battle for the trophy in our Pick the Winners contest last night. I surged ahead early, with 11 correct picks to my nearest competition, who had 8 and 9. Unfortunately, those who had hitched their stars to Lord of the Rings (thus spake The Hammer) fared best, and it came down to a tie between The Girl and our friend The Hammer (so named because in spite of her slight appearance and occupation of librarian, she is a killer at arm-wrestling), who had 19 correct picks each. We needed to determine who would hold the trophy for the coming year, but in deference to the late hour (or perhaps the simple addition of several birthdays since the last arm wrestling match), it was settled with a thumb-wrestling match. The Girl prevailed, and the Oscar-like trophy will be on our entertainment center at least until next year.

In bonus entertainment, Showtime had repeated airings of The L Word, so we were all able to view the latest episode as soon as they announced Best Picture. We didn't bother watching the acceptance speech, since they'd been up there thanking everyone so many times already. Excellent episode, by the way, but more about that later...
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