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Reviews by Matt Heffernan <matt@filmhead.com>
This week my picks are
What Lies Beneath
(2000 - 
) and
The Lodger
(1926 - 
).
The first film this week was one of two big hits that director
Robert Zemeckis released last year. Michelle Pfeiffer stars
as a woman who is haunted by the ghost of a dead girl who
had an affair with her husband (Harrison Ford). Zemeckis
shamelessly steals from Hitchcock to make the best bad movie
of 2000, which of course was a big hit in a year when even
bad-bad movies made money. This was in stark contrast to
Zemeckis' follow-up hit,
Cast Away,
which was the worst great film of the year.
Full review from July 26, 2000
The most surprising Hitchcockian reference in What Lies Beneath was to the second film, which was The Master's first work in what would be his trademark genre. The Lodger is an updated (to the mid-1920s) story about Jack the Ripper, starring Ivor Novello as a mysterious man who may or may not be the infamous serial killer. Since the film was silent, Hitchcock had to invent a way to convey footsteps from the floor above. He simply made a glass floor, and shot Novello walking on it from underneath -- which is exactly what Zemeckis does at one point in his film. The Lodger shows the bright creativity of the young director (he was only 27 when it was released) finding his own style.
For more information, visit the Internet Movie Database:
What Lies Beneath (2000)
The Lodger (1926)
Here's some merchandise for sale at
| What Lies Beneath (2000) | -- VHS |
| What Lies Beneath (2000) | -- DVD |
| What Lies Beneath: Score | -- Compact Disc |
| The Lodger (1926) | -- VHS |
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