House of Sand and Fog - 2003 ***

Sad and mournful tale of an evicted woman who begins a battle with the new owners of her house after she can no longer afford to keep up the payments and it is repossessed. Kingsley is riveting as Behrani, the stern and liberal Air Force Officer who believes that the new house will be the key to his family's happiness once and for all, and Connelly isn't bad either as Kathy, the recovering alcoholic who feels she has finally lost the fight with her various demons when she is kicked out of her family home, adding the last blow to her already tortured being. It's very sad and touching, as well as being quite gut-wrenching and upsetting.

A Guy Thing - 2003 ***

 

A moderately funny chick flick about a guy who wakes up after his bachelor party to find a strange woman in his bed. He automatically assumes they have slept together and therefore tries to come up with a plan to keep this a secret from his bride-to-be. It's definitely one of those 'old school' chick flicks, with actors who just aren't around anymore, but it's okay and relatively amusing.

The Haunted Mansion - 2003 ***

I've never watched a film based around a ride in a theme park before. Quite interesting idea I think.
Jim is brilliant at his job. So much so that it does tend to interfere with the other areas of his life like his marriage and his children.
After missing his wedding anniversary he promises to make it up to his wife by taking the family away for the weekend, which then goes off the rails when they are contacted by the occupants of a scary old mansion, and asked to go there and do business. Arriving in a torrential downpour, they are greeted by the butler and persuaded to stay the night in one of the beautiful rooms. That's when the fun starts...
For a children's movie, this creeped me out quite a bit, and I actually enjoyed it a lot more than I anticipated i would. Murphy is very funny, and his two children are adorable.

(HORROR) Black Cadillac - 2003 *

'Black Cadillac' is a totally ridiculous film. It's badly acted, hideously shot, and the story line is all over the place. A lot of the film, although supposedly horror, is taken up by the three main characters bickering and fighting each other over various stupid things. This leads you to start to lose interest by the time anything actually starts happening (and let's face it, what actually happens is so rubbish that it's best to just get out while you still can).

National Security - 2003 *** 1/2

A funny film that you don't need to invest much intellectual capacity in. Martin Lawrence and Steve Zahn are thrown together as a mismatched pair of cops, despite the fact that Lawrence had recently accused Zahn of beating him up in a racial hate crime (don't worry, it's really funny, not insulting) resulting in him having to spend 6 months in jail. They now find that they both have to work together to bust a smuggling operation in a soft drink factory. Funny.

Matchstick Men - 2003 ***

'Matchstick Men' was a bit of an odd film. Quite quirky, and rather amusing but with a hint of a poignant story buried inside. Nicholas Cage and Sam Rockwell play con-men. Cage has a nervous tic coupled with manic OCD and Rockwell is ruthless and unsympathetic towards anyone especially his partner.
The film follows their various jobs and Cage's surprise meeting of a daughter he never knew he had. But there is a twist.
Worth a watch.

(HORROR) The Suicide Manual - 2003 ***

Freaky and very disturbing film. I only watched it because someone on IMDB was raving about it after watching the 'Whispering Corridors' films. The story as you can probably imagine centres around a manual found on a suicide chat room that talks about what the best ways are to kill yourself. It's like an even more disturbing version of The Ring. A depressed and solitary cameraman stumbles across the manual after meeting a suicidal girl who swears by it and tries to uncover the whereabouts of the mysterious girl 'Rickie' who presents it.

It's very eerie. Japan does eerie so much better than anywhere else.