PASSION

PASSION (2012). Director/writer: Brian De Palma.

Christine Stanford (Rachel McAdams) is an advertising executive who takes credit for an idea developed by her assistant, Isabelle (Noomi Rapace). When Isabelle starts to assert herself -- and sleep with Christine's what-are-they-thinking? boyfriend, Dirk (Paul Anderson) --  Christine doesn't like it and humiliates her publicly. It all leads to bitchery of the extreme kind, as well as betrayal and murder. This is a remake of the mediocre Love Crime and is slightly better than the foreign original, though no world-beater. The film is more homoerotic than the original, but more likely because De Palma finds girl-on-girl action sexy than because of any desire to seriously explore lesbianism -- in fact, it's fairly exploitative and childish when it comes to the subject. The movie even goes so far as to present a lesbian as a blackmailing sexual predator! [In one stupid scene Christine calls an employee, Dani (Karoline Herfurth) a "dyke" and the latter lets her get away with it even though she just witnessed Christine kissing Isabelle on the lips!] Passion holds the attention and isn't badly acted, but it's nowhere in the league of De Palma's best movies, such as Carrie.

Verdict: Only for people who are easily titillated. **1/2.

EVENT HORIZON

EVENT HORIZON (1997). Director: Paul Anderson.

It's the year 2047 and the spaceship Lewis and Clark has gone off to find out what happened to the deep space research vessel, the Event Horizon, which disappeared seven years before, past Neptune. Now they are receiving signals from the ship, which turns out not to have been a research vessel, but the site of a secret government project attempting a kind of faster-than-light speed which employs gravity cores and manufactured black holes. What really matters to the fascinated viewer of course is the fact that the Event Horizon went somewhere and has come back with its crew missing and the ship turned into some kind of hateful living organism. As the crew of the Lewis and Clark try to find out what became of the Event Horizon crew, they experience terrible hallucinations, and one poor fellow (Jack Noseworthy) has a harrowing experience in an airlock. Laurence Fishburne is Captain Miller; Sam Neill is Dr. Weir, who is taken over by the evil of the ship; and Kathleen Quinlan (who is terrific) is medical technician Peters. The movie has perhaps too many climaxes, but it is a very interesting and creepy combination of science fiction and the supernatural with an excellent premise. Good special effects.

Verdict: Stay out of the airlock! ***.