Stuck (2007, Canadian/USA)

Yep, that was a Stuart Gordon film. I'm still a bit unsure as to why Gordon took to this particular real-life story - a woman who hits a homeless man with her car and leaves him stuck in her windshield in a garage for days - but . . . okay, I just answered my own question. Gordon obviously saw an opportunity for both gore and absurdist comedy, and he ran with it. Mena Suvari (where has she been?) is Brandi, a nursing home worker looking at a possible promotion. One night on the way home from a club, Brandi hits a down-on-his luck Stephen Rea with her car. She freaks, heads home, and spends the next day trying to save her own ass. Gordon milks this set-up for all it's worth, particularly in the final third, when things go from just plain nuts to batshit crazy. I think the audience for Stuck is probably pretty limited, but it features a good performance from Suvari, an excellent one from Rea, and while it's not a terribly deep film, it certainly isn't something you're likely to forget anytime soon.

The Invasion (2007, USA)

I'm a sucker for any Body Snatchers movie. The 70's version is my favorite, followed closely by the original, and I've even seen the mediocre 90's one a couple of times, despite my hatred of Abel Ferrara. But this latest version is incredibly dumb - so little of The Invasion makes sense that one could think it was written by a bright ten-year-old. Incomprehensible science babble, a jumbled timeline that removes most of the tension from the proceedings, and a heroine whose face is so immobilized by Botox injections that it's pretty hilarious when she has to fake having no emotions. It's also particularly heavy-handed when it comes to moralizing - Kidman's character is a therapist who wishes that everyone could just get along, and there are pretty constant references to Iraq and other global conflicts. It's a mess of a film, not even remotely worthy of its predecessors. Nice Veronica Cartwright bit, though. Too bad she didn't get to scream this time around.

The Golden Compass (2007, USA/UK)

I wasn't expecting it to be good, but this was just terrible. More exposition than any film can possibly contain and still be any fun at all, plus there's simply no flow - scenes just pop up out of nowhere, characters speechify without any real context, and some otherwise decent actors give pretty poor performances (I'm excepting Sam Elliott here). It's obvious that the film was cut down enormously, which would account for some of the jumpiness, but I don't think even a three-hour version would have made much more sense. It's an impossible book to film, particularly since Chris Weitz guts the more metaphysical and religious complications of the original story, essentially creating yet another empty-headed adventure film. And cutting the end off? What a terrible decision. Obviously, the filmmakers were thinking that they'd get some of the difficult stuff out of the way at the beginning of a second film, but it's a pretty gutless move, and since the movie bombed at the box office, it doesn't look as if a sequel is on its way anytime soon.