All Around The Town (2002)

Thanks for the memories!

Just perfect...

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Definitely Canadian-made, with Nastassja Kinski, whom I haven't seen in years, getting all of the casting budget. The rest of the actors were Canadian and not known to me - therefore, for a while, it was difficult to tell the blondes apart and the young leading men apart from one another. I didn't recognize Kinski at first (I forgot she was in it).Anyway, the story is Sybil-esquire. A girl is abducted as a child, comes home two years later - flash forward to adulthood. She's a college student, and one of her professors is murdered. She is accused, and her sister, who works for the D.A.'s office, goes on leave to defend her.This is a typical Sonny Grosso production - that godawful music and a draggy pace. The story held my interest, and the acting ranged from good to adequate. The lead woman was quite good, except when she cried, she wasn't crying and needed the glycerin they use to fake tears. Not in the budget I guess. Not sure what's up with Kinski - she is still beautiful certainly and she was always a good actress. At the time of this TV-movie, she was about 42 years old - I suppose with her ingenue days over, the going got tougher.Entertaining if you can tell everyone apart. To me a lot of them looked alike.

It was an okay movie, but they didn't get in depth enough and I felt like the book was so much better that it makes me want to read the book over to see if it's my imagination. But it's better than a lot of things, and I watched the whole thing so that gives it some definite advantages over a lot of things. The characters seemed shallow and their acting seemed forced. That was disappointing. It only skims the surface of the book, which I was disappointed in. I really liked the ending though, and that was a major plus in it's favor. Overall I think it's better than some of the other books made into movies and I look forward to seeing some of her others.

FYI this movie just came out on video. I noticed it along with a few other MHC videos when I was at the video store, and since I had a rent-one-get-one-free coupon and like suspense, I decided to check it out.First and most important, I liked it! Knowing it was a TV movie, I didn't go into it expecting `Citizen Kane.' I haven't read the book, and I'm embarrassed to say it, but I didn't figure out the ending. (Yes, I'm pretty dense, so I guess you have to take that into account.) It's definitely one of the most heinously cliché-filled movies I've ever seen, but I really don't think it matters. It's entertaining.The story as told in the movie is of a now college-aged woman named Laurie who was kidnapped and molested when she was a little girl. She has now developed multiple personalities to cope with it, and when an English professor she is close to is killed, she's the main suspect. Her sister and a psychiatrist try to help her. The weakest part of the movie is the return of the couple who kidnapped Laurie. Maybe this part of the plot is covered better in the novel because what's here seems to have some gaps. It was still interesting, but it's one of those things where I wonder if the director had to trim the movie down and cut out the part that explained what the hell the deal was.Other than that, I thought the acting was pretty good. I liked Andrea Roth as the older sister, and Kim Schraner as Laurie was good at doing the multiple personality thing except for several moments of probably unintentional complete out-of-control cheesiness. But I think they fit right in. The movie's biggest bonus is that the psychiatrist is played by Michael Shanks from Stargate SG-1, who I didn't realize was in the movie when I rented it (The video box gives Nastassja Kinski top billing, and she is in very few scenes.) He actually has a pretty big role in the movie, which is fine with me because as I was watching, I realized he's almost good-looking enough to make me pass out. In fact, I'm now in favor of human cloning.So, if you like suspense/mystery, have a rent-one-get-one-free coupon, and want to give your brain a break and drool over Michael Shanks for 90 minutes, I recommend it!

I may be one of the very few people in the world who have never read a Mary Higgins Clark book and I have no idea if this is a faithful adaptation, but if it is, it sure won't be an incentive for me to run to the bookshop. This movie is just an average thriller whose cruel lack of originality is hardly masked by purely artificial "complexity". Actually, it really looks like the writers took almost all of the cliches of the genre and threw them into the mix : intertwined stories of kidnapping and murder, suspect with "multiple personalities", creepy couple of bad guys, understanding sister, wonderful shrink, cunning private investigator, angry boyfriend, jealous woman : all these elements loosely combined together cannot be considered as a plot, sorry. The acting, doesn't do much to help this lousy story : while the actress who plays Laurie does a decent job (despite the fact that she yells a lot), Nastassja Kinski delivers a remarkably poor performance : apparently, she doesn't give a damn and keeps her eyes half-closed during the entire movie. I guess she just needed the money. To conclude, I would only recommend this to die-hard Clark fans who will probably dig it. I for one will wait a long time until I get one of her novels or watch another adaptation of them.