The Frozen Ground (2013)

“The Frozen Ground” got me burning mad. Nicolas Cage as cop. John Cusack as serial killer. Shot and chopped up young women. Alaska. True story. 1980s. The whole murky grisly movie works OT to condemn violence against and the objectification of women ... And yet writer/director Scott Walker’s camera stares nose close at Disney Princess Vanessa Hudgen’s stripper ass as she stage grinds. Because one can’t make a film about strippers and hookers being slaughtered by a loser kook without a little T&A stage action. At least if everyone behind the camera is male. Maybe only women should make films about cruel ways men treat women. Especially talking fact. Plot: Cusack’s Robert Hansen has 20 girls in the grave, but Hudgens’ (“Spring Breakers”) prostitute/stripper has escaped and can ID him. Her lone hero is Cage’s cop, who works so hard on the job, his family is neglected. Nothing on screen differs from an episode of “Law & Order: SVU,” so we only have stunt casting to cheer. Cusack underplays. So does Cage. The less said about 50 Cent’s pimp, the better. Recalling the victims to pop music: Ugly bad move. D+

Scoop (2006)

“Scoop” is a Woody Allen thing so forgettable and oh-so-Woody Allenish bland, I watched it the other day and only at the very, very end did I realize, “Oh, I have seen this before.” Folks, that never happens. And it stars Scarlett Johansson and Hugh Jackman. That’s some feat. SJ is a college newspaper reporter who finds herself on the trail of a possible serial killer who also happens to be a royal Brit (Jackman) and she falls for him, to the chagrin of her unlikely pal (Woody Allen), an old magician who entertains tourists who’d rather be in Vegas. Not London. The story idea seems solid, even if our reporter first has sex with her interviewees before interviews. I could guess this another Allen fetish, but college girls seem too old for him. It’s the execution. From the absolute lack of any suspense, odd for a thriller, to Allen’s shit nightclub jokes older than his leads. Snooze. What are the chances he wrote this in 1966 and updated not a word? C-

The Oxford Murders (2008)

There is much to laugh at in “The Oxford Murders,” a serial murder thriller mixing in philosophy, math, and Frodo (Elijah Wood) as a hunk of smooth manliness wooing the English ladies with spaghetti and meatball themed sex. Not intended as a comedy, this flick is hilarious. Wood stars an American student who puts all his life into entering Oxford U to study under John Hunt’s wild-haired fruit loop professor’s logic class only to learn after his arrival on campus that the professor has retired from teaching. The kid is stunned. Really? Adults wrote and directed. The adults are Jorge Guerricaechevarria and Álex de la Iglesia (real names?) and they dish up all the genre thriller clichés sprinkled with inane philosophical babble and algorithm riddles that only nerds must think clever, with Wood – I must mention this again – as the stud wooing woman thrillingly open to pasta experimentation. Might all this be satire? Dig Jim Carter’s inspector who slowly catches on that serial murderers kill multiple victims. Dud. D+

Stoker (2013)

Director Park Chan-wook (2003’s “Oldboy”) makes his American debut with “Stoker,” a gorgeous, nasty domestic drama turned serial killer thriller that takes Hitchock’s “Shadow of a Doubt” and cranks up the violence and perversion to skin-crawling affect. As with the 1943 classic tale, a girl (Mia Wasikowska) suspects her romantic/handsome/suave Uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode) of murderous deeds after her father mysteriously dies and the uncle -– father’s brother -– moves into to help comfort the mother (Nicole Kidman). The line “We don’t have to be friends, we’re family,” sums up the story: There is no love here. This familial lot is as creepy and somber as the house they reside in. That is a double edged sword. Park and writer (and openly gay actor) Wentmorth Miller start in crazy town and stay, banging you in the head with a frying pan from frame one. Hitchcock served a fine dinner first, then took to swinging. Such is life. Hitchcock would dig the dark path of our central heroine. Wasikowska (“Alice in Wonderland”) owns the film, against the cool Goode and Kidman, who cooks up an acting storm from a role blankly stamped “frigid.” Watch it twice. Squirm. B+

X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008)

I watched the supernatural “X-Files” TV series with so-so religious devotion, and the 1998 “X-Files: Fight the Future” film was well-timed, bringing back paranormal FBI agent investigators Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson). Yet, by the time “X-Files: I Want to Believe” came 10 years later, I was over the show. So seem the actors and creator/director Chris Carter. This is a “stand-alone” episode, not just in theme, but time. It’s more akin to “Se7en.” Not anything to obsess over. Here, Scully works miserably at a Catholic hospital, while Mulder clips news articles and miserably grows a beard. A perplexing case involving a missing FBI agent, a severed arm, and a psychic criminal priest (Billy Connolly) brings our heroes back to flashlights in the dark and grisly conspiracies, and as the mystery is uncovered, the limits of PG-13 ratings are stretched as is any semblance of logic: A hero hears dogs barking in No Where West Virginia and instantly recognizes the bad guy’s lair. Really? No one here has been to West Virginia, the snow screams Canada. Believe? My faith vanished long ago. C+

The Raven (2012) and Me and Orson Welles (2009)

Two famously eccentric American artists who burnt fast and hot get the fictional film treatment in “The Raven” –- with writer/poet Edgar Allan Poe playing super sleuth over a series of murders related to his writings –- and “Me and Orson Welles” -– with the actor/director as scoundrel muse to a plucky “High School Musical” hero. 

As Poe, John Cusack does that arched-eyebrow John Cusack thing he always does, and he’s flat out wrong in the role. The plot is a grisly rehash of “Se7en” stitched onto a carbon copy of Guy Ritchie’s “Sherlock Holmes,” with a villain that’s dull as rag paper. Worse bit: Poe is shown playing with a pet raccoon. Director James McTeigue thinks he’s still filming “V for Vendetta.” Fawkes that. 

“Me” focuses on a teen drama protégé (Zac Efron) as he cons his way into a gig at the Mercury Theatre for the renowned staging of “Julius Caesar.” Christian McKay plays Welles as madman, genius, romantic, cad, screw-up, and artist, and brilliantly crushes every scene, but with “Tiger Beat” poster boy Efron in the lead pining for a smirking bored Claire Danes, the film sinks. 

Poe and Welles would torch these films. Raven: C- Welles: C+

Zodiac (2007)

During the audio commentary of “Zodiac,” James Ellroy declares this stellar David Fincher film “one of the greatest American crime films ever made.” True. It’s also one of the best films about American journalism and obsession, he kind that cracks one’s life like broken crystal. During the 1970s in San Francisco, the self-named Zodiac killed at random, rambled in cryptic letters to the “Chronicle,” ruled radio and TV, disappeared for years. He owned the information, and therefore the city, and one shudders at what he could have done with the Internet. Among the lives he ruined: The detectives (Mark Ruffalo and Anthony Edwards) and newspapermen (Robert Downey Jr. and Jake Gyllenhaal) who picked up the pieces and stored the evidence. Fincher and writer James Vanderbilt give us a suspect (John Carroll Lynch of “Fargo”) who presents a veiled sense of evil, but manages to stay outside the spotlight. “Zodiac” is wildly accurate, from the newsroom cigarette smoke to the endless interviews and dead-ends that keep detectives busy. Fincher’s masterpiece. A

The Changeling (2008)

An opening title card of "Changeling" proudly proclaims "A true story." I didn't believe a second of it. The story: Single-working mom Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie) comes home late from work one day in 1928 and cannot find her young son, Walter. He's gone. She's distraught. Months later the police find a boy, but it ain't Walter. He's shorter, circumcised, has different teeth and has no memory of his teachers or friends. Christine flips. Big Brother Cop says, "Shut up! He's yours." Christine refuses and is tossed into a medieval insane asylum. Then a child serial killer is discovered. Whew. "Changeling" is a mess. No real people appear on screen. We're given a long line of simpleton characters that spew trite dialogue more suited to a crap 1930s radio drama. Or a day-time soap opera. Jolie's acting -- "I want my son back!" -- is unintentionally funny. Sloppy editing, a dozen drawn-out climaxes and an utter lack of any purpose skunk the film. The stunner: Clint Eastwood, normally brilliant, directed. WTF, Clint!?! D+

The Cell (2000)

Directed by Tarsem Singh, "The Cell" is a serial killer/science fiction thriller with a fascinating twist -- the action takes place inside the disturbed mind of the killer.

Jennifer Lopez ("Out of Sight") stars as Catherine Deane, a young psychiatrist working with an experimental technology that allows a doctor to "enter" the mind of a comatized patient to help awaken him. Meanwhile, the seriously ill and depraved Carl Stargher (Vincent D'Onofrio) is murdering women before turning their bodies into doll-like figurines. Just as two FBI agents (Vince Vaughn and Jake Weber) close in for an arrest, Stargher suffers a seizure and lapses into a coma. The problem: The latest victim is alive -- for now -- and only Stargher knows her whereabouts. Enter Deane and her sci-fi technology.

The film takes off in wild directions once we sink into Carl's baked noodle, where the killer is alternately an androgynous god and an animal-like beast. And a FUBAR little boy. The art direction, costumes and makeup seem sent straight from hell, and I mean that as a compliment: Dozens of scenes are horrific, dreamy and stick with you, especially a horse sliced to living pieces and a scary muscle-bound hermaphrodite. Umm, you gotta see that. Can't explain it.

But the film is saddled by a miscast Vaughn. He's a good comedic actor, but he has no dramatic depth or authority. Frankly, he's embarrassing. To all police. Some dopey dialogue doesn't help Vaughn's cause. It's a huge fault in a film that could have been a cult hit. D'Onofrio commands the screen as a psycho off his mental leash, while Lopez sparks with a keen intelligence and curiosity. B-

88 Minutes (2008)

Al Pacino looks creaky and old in the creaky and old thriller "88 Minutes," a supposed twisty flick that doesn't have the balls to provide any suspense. Pacino is Dr. Jack Gramm, a haggard forensic psychiatrist who works as a university professor. Here, his week is worse than tenure rejection: A serial killer (Neal McDonough) he helped put away is headed for the death chamber when low and behold a serious of crimes matching the killer's own MO start popping up all over Seattle. Did Jack put away the wrong guy? Hmm, gosh, snore. The whole film is a painful chore, topped by an endless montage where Jack frantically uses his cell phone while driving a taxi across Seattle as the slack-jawed cabbie watches from the backseat. Director Jon Avnet tries fast-paced editing, a flock of obvious red herrings and a wandering camera to gussy up thrills, but he can't save this cable-ready Z-grade whodunit. Bigots who think "God hates fags" will be among the film's fans. Anyone with a soul will flee. When did Pacino become so boring? D-

I Know Who Killed Me (2007)

... and once you find out, you'll pray for the previous two hours of your life back. This Lindsay Lohan serial killer/psychological thriller is so squirm-inducing awful, it's ... well, hell, it's Lindsay Lohan in a serial killer/psychological thriller. Drink that up. The film's worst feat is not that Lohan plays a stripper who never actually strips, it's that the morons who made wrote and directed this crud were aiming for David Lynch territory. All the signs are high: The splitting of self and psyche, the ever-changing idea of identity and reality, owls, woods, curtains, the evil lurking in small-town America, shocking violence, and the eternal savior of pure love. Every actor looks bored. Every shot looks as if it were made by people who know nothing about form and content, or color hue. Background music appears to have been chosen at random. And Lohan, who thinks she's reached adulthood with this dark material, is just out of her league. F

Untraceable (2008)

The critical blurbs of the serial killer thriller "Untraceable" compare it to "Se7en" and "The Silence of the Lambs." I only can assume the critics who said this were paid by studio maker Sony. "Untraceable" is never less than intriguing, but it's a washout. Here, the murderer kidnaps first a cat then a series of people, and then live streams their tortuous deaths on the Internet. The sick joke: The more people who watch, the faster and grislier the death. Our hero is Jennifer March (Diane Lane), who works the FBI's cyber unit. Plot holes abound: Marsh and family are threatened by the killer who stalks their home, and yet no one is offered protection. When the murderer hacks her computer, they never think to investigate the data he's stolen. Not even SpyBot is employed. The movie pretends to preach against audiences hooked on gore, yet it all thrives on just that. Think back to "Se7en" and "SOTL," there's no or little actual on-screen violence. And they worked. I was terrified. Here, director Gregory Hoblit has the camera stare as acid eats away a man's skin. Terrified? No. I was going, "Good makeup." C