In the downbeat, sufficiently unsettling Hide and Seek, Robert De Niro rises to a formidable challenge: he holds his own against a scene-swiping 10-year-old.
As a bereft widower, David Callaway, De Niro turns out to be more than well matched by Dakota Fanning, who plays his young and only child, Emily.
One of the most actively employed child actors in the movie business and one of the most gifted, Fanning has both chops and a preternaturally intense screen presence. Even when you don't believe the setup, you tend to buy what she is selling.
That's a good thing when it comes to a film like Hide and Seek, which needs all the help it can get from its actors. The movie begins as if in a dream. A New York City shrink, David is married to Alison (Amy Irving), a somnolent type whose obvious affection for her daughter can't disguise her restless unhappiness.
Soon after the story starts, violence descends on the Callaway family, splintering it into pieces, and David and Emily move to the country for some healing. Once there, things go from lousy to worse as Emily starts staring blankly into the surrounding woods and palling around with a sinister invisible friend called Charlie. Blood drips into the story as if from a leaky faucet; then, it pours.
Under the spell of Stanley Kubrick at his most audience-friendly and The Sixth Sense, though without the delights these influences promise, the director John Polson keeps the underwritten screenplay by Ari Schlossberg moving at a steady, deliberate clip.
In short order it becomes clear that all is not right in this depopulated country corner, where David and Emily's next-door neighbors (Robert John Burke and Melissa Leo) always seem to be lurking with anxious, guilty eyes.
Among the story's other, more approachable passers-by are David's former student (Famke Janssen) and a friendly local (Elisabeth Shue) who wears big smiles and low-cut dresses that please David but not his increasingly moody daughter. Less attractive but no less welcome is Dylan Baker as the town's somewhat vinegary sheriff.
Hide and Seek hinges on a creepily unpleasant last-minute twist, which attentive students of the horror-thriller hybrid will probably see long in advance. Polson -- whose last directorial outing was the laughably over-ripe high school-horror movie Swimfan -- delivers the genre goods well enough in this new movie but is not in possession of a discernable style.
Last week saw the appearance of another odious screed full of lies from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) Ambassador to Australia, Xiao Qian (肖千), in the Financial Review, a major Australian paper. Xiao’s piece was presented without challenge or caveat. His “Seven truths on why Taiwan always will be China’s” presented a “greatest hits” of the litany of PRC falsehoods. This includes: Taiwan’s indigenous peoples were descended from the people of China 30,000 years ago; a “Chinese” imperial government administrated Taiwan in the 14th century; Koxinga, also known as Cheng Cheng-kung (鄭成功), “recovered” Taiwan for China; the Qing owned
In Taiwan’s politics the party chair is an extremely influential position. Typically this person is the presumed presidential candidate or serving president. In the last presidential election, two of the three candidates were also leaders of their party. Only one party chair race had been planned for this year, but with the Jan. 1 resignation by the currently indicted Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) two parties are now in play. If a challenger to acting Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) appears we will examine that race in more depth. Currently their election is set for Feb. 15. EXTREMELY
Jan. 20 to Jan. 26 Taipei was in a jubilant, patriotic mood on the morning of Jan. 25, 1954. Flags hung outside shops and residences, people chanted anti-communist slogans and rousing music blared from loudspeakers. The occasion was the arrival of about 14,000 Chinese prisoners from the Korean War, who had elected to head to Taiwan instead of being repatriated to China. The majority landed in Keelung over three days and were paraded through the capital to great fanfare. Air Force planes dropped colorful flyers, one of which read, “You’re back, you’re finally back. You finally overcame the evil communist bandits and
They increasingly own everything from access to space to how we get news on Earth and now outgoing President Joe Biden warns America’s new breed of Donald Trump-allied oligarchs could gobble up US democracy itself. Biden used his farewell speech to the nation to deliver a shockingly dark message: that a nation which has always revered its entrepreneurs may now be at their mercy. “An oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms,” Biden said. He named no names, but his targets were clear: men like Elon Musk
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