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434 reviews in total

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3 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
The first time I've regretted the director's cut, 30 January 2005

Author: noogieVS from Victoria BC

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Generally I prefer to see the director's cut of anything. I mean it's their show, not the studio's. We watched it thru then went back to see if the theatrical had a more connected ending. No such luck.

What I don't understand was how this got past a test audience of any one other than mothers. The premise of the crazy mom who has lost a non-existent son was slow to build, and thrown out way before you could really attach yourself to her. OK, so now it's not crazy mom, but elaborate gov't cover up complete with convert sidekick and omnipotent NSA agents. Then when we are starting to chase that line, it's got aliens and all the quick SFX that we can squeeze out of this turnip.

This is where the last wheel falls off. Theatrical ending (think Sigorney Aliens) "I HAD A SON AND HIS NAME IS SAM!!!", confrontation with Alien, who reveals he's on the hook for his test, which he gets pink slipped for...

or

Alternate ending (think i dunno, some thing like warm milk and stale cookies) "I ...had...a...son... " etc etc. explanation by Alien, who reveals that this test is over and...

out of the goodness of their alien hearts give back the kids, the parents, the memories, and probably any thing else they have used in 14 months so that she can get back to her life and be the only one any the wiser.

What bugs me, that any one of the three stories could have played out but never was given a chance. Even the two versions of the ending could easily have been joined and made a stronger finish as it was.

Julianne Moore was at her best when we all thought she was delusional, but as this driver-less carriage wandered from concept to concept, she just got weaker. Gary Sinise was great, we knew he was in on it but wished they built him up more so when his smoke and mirrors were gone it would have impacted Julianne's character better.

Sorry, but it felt like a film directed by a civil servant committee guided by tax lawyers.

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3 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Shocking!, 17 January 2005

Author: christbasher from Eastern USA

This is one of those movies that assumes all audiences are just complete morons, devoid of any kind of common sense and have IQ level of below 50 right from the start.

It's like a movie where the main character has amnesia, and throughout the whole movie he's trying to figure out who he is, and why he is being chased by thousands of secret polices from all over the world, but does not realize until the very end of the movie that all he has to do is look into his driver's license in his pocket.

The basis of this movie is that even the parents can't remember that their own kid ever existed because their memories have been wiped out selectively. But what about their relatives, the kids' friends from school, teachers, their neighbor, their friends, medical records, anyone from their neighborhood who might have seen them, and the kid's personal belongs? I mean is it possible to wipe out every memory associated with kids from anybody who ever interacted with him? There are so many other countless flaws that make no sense at all in this movie that it'll take days to list them all.

This is absolutely the worst movie of 2004.

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3 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Very silly experiment, 26 October 2004

Author: mariogomezg from Madrid, Spain

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

EVERYTHING ON THIS REVIEW IS A SPOILER:

Oh yes, you BELIEVE the bad comments! This movie has a horrid script, hands down. You know the premise: A mother loses her son and one day everyone begins to forget about the kid; pics, videos and everything disappears. Her psychiatrist tells her that she's nuts and must go to a mental institution. She escapes and is later arrested, but the NSA -no less- wants to take care of her, so you know there's SOMETHING ELSE. And what is that "else"? Aliens are abducting children to conduct experiments, and the government is collaborating with them, for the space guys are too powerful to oppose. Wanna know how powerful they are? Powerful enough to see and hear everything that happens at any time, anywhere on earth. They can also change newspapers and records, make all trace of any person disappear and create memories in people's minds. THAT is how powerful they are.

Yet with all their power, all the physical evidence we see of them is people getting vacuumed into the air. Wherever you are in the planet, they can suck you just like that. But, if aliens cand do all that, WHY the hell do they need to use the NSA, or any other earthly power for that matter? Isn't it plainly stupid to chase Julianne Moore the entire movie when they know all the time exactly where she is and they can vacuum her when they feel like it? Not that she and her fellow parent are very adept at hiding: Though they are constantly chased they never worry about changing their appearances a single time. She goes to her husband's workplace (which should be heavily guarded) in a completely careless way, and also goes to the other parent apartment after they become fugitives, though no cop shows (are they incompetent or what?). Speaking of the apartment, aliens can modificate newspapers, minds and whatever necessary, but can't erase a child's paintings from the walls. I guess that just takes too much power, so they just prefer to cover them, though they're easy to discover.

And what's the reason behind all? The EXPERIMENT. What's the experiment, you ask? The alien guy explains it: "We can measure a mother's love for his child (Oh yeah? HOW?), but we can't quite understand it. So we try and see if we can break the bond between them". And for what in the world? Remember, these aliens can see and hear it all, can abduct anyone in a second, we couldn't ever dream of challenge their power. So why would they ever care about breaking the mother-child bond? They do it out of boredom? And why is Julianne the only one who doesn't forget? Well, it's because... er... because she's very stubborn! No kidding, that's all the explanation we get! Every other parent in the world can be a lousy forgetful bastard, but not Julianne, she could never do that!

So that's the end of the experiment, the bond can't be broken, right? Wrong! The alien is getting nervous because if she doesn't forget, "the experiment will be a failure" Pardon me?! The point of an experiment is to OBSERVE results, not to provoke them! If you want to achieve concrete results, then it's a project, not an experiment! Can't the writer even tell this simple difference? Anyway, he erases Julianne's first memory from her baby, so that's it! But no, it's useless, she remembers again! So the alien guy is vacuumed as a punishment. Serves him right!

In the end the cold heartless aliens become suddenly benign and decide to give everyone's children back, just like that (in return for ruining their experiment?). The little ones don't remember a thing and go on happily with their lives (just ignore the fact that more than a year has passed in the rest of the world!). Even more, no one remembers anything at all, just Julianne (she's stubborn!) But who cares about the terrible truth she's discovered, she's got her son back after all (would they also return the photo albums?), smile and enjoy!

And that's about it. Now you judge if you want to pay to see THIS.

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4 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
Stinker, 27 September 2005

Author: truchannuts from United States

This movie was awful. I thought it would be a cool psychological thriller, but it twisted into a stupid ALIEN movie. I told my husband halfway through this film that if it turned out to be aliens that I would leave. Unfortunately, I didn't leave. This is the stupidest movie I've seen all year. The ending left more questions than answers, and it reminded me of cop-out endings like when the main character just wakes up from a dream at the end. This always happens when an author can't figure out how to get his/her characters out of the mess they're in, and I'm pretty sure that's what happened with this crummy flick. If they would have just messed with the psychological part that they invented in the first half of the movie, I think it would have been much better. And the people flying through the air looked absolutely ridiculous.

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4 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
What's Not to Like?, 12 February 2005

Author: Dan Phillips from Texas

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

To be brief, I really don't understand the negative reviews, unless they're the usual "this apple doesn't taste like a strawberry, so it's bad."

The acting was good, the plot got right underway, the characters were involving and likable. This feeling of puzzlement, turning to dread, started early and mounted. Oh sure, a certain among of suspension of disbelief is required, but that is true of everything except National Geographic nature documentaries. (Well, on consideration, even those are not exempt.)

Plus, this movie gave me one genuine jump unlike any I can remember in a movie for years, plus a few other memorable moments. We totally enjoyed it.

SEMI-SPOILER WARNING: As an afterthought, there is one plot development that is so profoundly pro-life, that I wonder how many of those involved reflected on the fact, and what they made of it.

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2 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
Something best forgotten., 17 November 2007
Author: strafenkinder-1 from Philippines

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

The Forgettable by Doy Ariola

Poor Julianne Moore. Everyone thinks she's out of her mind. She thinks she has a son who died in a plane crash and nobody -- not even her husband -- believes her. Her shrink (Gary Sinise) tells Moore that it's her mind playing games. But she knows otherwise. She's in a gag/game show. And if she becomes Nancy Drew long enough, the prize is her son.

The Wire's Dominic West plays the disconnected drunk who can't seem to place a finger whether or not he has a daughter. That is until Moore pays him a visit and starts ripping out the wallpaper to show him that something's amiss! Dominic West then becomes Moore's Hardy Boy. Better yet, he becomes the Scully to her Mulder.

Sleeping With the Enemy director Joseph Ruben weaves a yarn that looks and feels like an "X-Files" episode with some "Days Of Our Lives" thrown in for good measure. This movie has nothing really original going for it, let alone a plot that makes you care about the characters. Maybe this is because everyone's either grim or amnesiac!

"The Forgotten" has the trappings of a psychological thriller. Establishing the idea that the main character as delusional and amnesiac may be curious. We've seen that before in "Gothika". But, in effect, the result sounds more like a ratings stunt for a soap opera than a movie premise.

To those who have seen the trailer, we are more curious about that scene where that guy from "Oz" gets sucked up into the ceiling. I guess you can say that characters being sucked up into the ceiling can be original. After watching it, one senses a similar effect after reading a National Enquirer article. You feel the producers of the movie is just being weird for weirdness' sake.

In all stories, characters are reduced to pawns to progress the story. However, Ruben and his writers may have taken this a little too literally! It was actually morbid fun to see a criminally underused Alfre Woodard being sucked up into the sky like a puppet being unceremoniously removed from the play. This not only makes the story ludicrously implausible and so easy for audiences to scoff off. That stunt made my suspension of disbelief -- that's been hanging on a tenuous thread for quite some time -- to snap.

Julianne Moore is as always a dependable actress who can carry a movie. The first thirty minutes is an example of this. It delves on her supposed mental state and how the people around her are reacting to it. While she's quite evocative, everything else is awfully blah. The scenes are pure melodrama. Something that's good enough but pretty forgettable.

What's more, Julianne Moore seems to start looking like herself in most of her movies. For a moment there, I thought she was Agent Starling!

Halfway through, the director thankfully enough changes gears. He segues to a series of chase sequences between the main characters against the G-men who wants to capture them. But you're not pulled into the story. It goes on and on up until Woodard and Sinise's characters usher the movie to the twist. At that time, my mind was already wandering and dinner had more allure to me than these characters' adventure.

There would have been many opportunities to make the ho-hum plot into something new. But Ruben isn't interested to redeem himself. Trying to be PG-13 safe seemed more important than rousing the audience. It's like he was making this as a primetime TV movie. Maybe that's why this movie failed to interest me: the lost opportunities.

Though I will not spoil the ending, be forewarned that this movie embodies what most movies of this year are guilty of: i.e. a clunky plot that justifies an anemic climax. Mind you, everything's explained in a neat package in the end. But if you're one who's willing to invest your attention to the entire thing, don't expect fireworks. You probably would have appreciated an ambiguous X-Files type of revelation and it dawns on you that you might feel cheated out of the ending. But let's just say that "The Forgotten" portrays aliens as really bad psychoanalysts.

I recommend that you sit this one out and wait for the movie on cable. If not for the cast, The Forgotten may as well be an episode of X-Files or supernatural TV movie of the month. Two movies of its ilk -- Richard Gere's The Mothman Prophecy's and Halle Berry's "Gothika's" -- have more spooks per minute and thereby, more entertaining. So, catch those instead.

By the way, if you want to see Moore on a similar genre, with a story that's more satisfying, check out Todd Haynes' "Safe".

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2 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
What happened to everybody?, 6 February 2006

Author: jtur88 from Michigan

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

The thing that made this movie unsatisfying was the huge gaps in the plot that were left unaddressed by either of the main characters or by the screenwriter. The principle players were a very handsome man and a very attractive woman, who meet each other under the circumstances of having lost a child, a fact that somehow seems to be erased from the memories of almost everybody. With superhuman dedication, they resolve to find their own children, but it never occurs to them to seek out the parents of the other four children were also killed in a plane crash. Not even with the objective of sorting out clues as their own mystery, and even less out of concern for the parents, whether grieving or forgetful. And then at the end the lovely couple meets again, everything seemingly back in its rightful place. But wait a minute: Doesn't she have a husband? Who has now presumably been relieved of the forgetfulness which seemed to be the focus of their estrangement? The movie just ended, with most of the cast simply written out of the script and the protagonists grinning in a vacuum. Which is unfortunate, because this picture had a good and believable cast, and the parts were played quite respectably.

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2 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
Oy!, 25 October 2004
Author: geophyrd from North Woodmere, NY

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Has anyone gone to see The Forgotten? Jesus...this was a movie that seems to have been made first by an excellent director and then edited by committee.

Make no mistake the first 90% of the movie is excellent, gripping, remarkable. There were a few points that scared hell out of me.

But the ending! (light spoilers) Oh! The ending!

I have a theory. I believe the movie has a different ending somewhere, something in keeping with the entire rest of the movie. It is cool and subtle and probably didn't end very well. It was entirely believable and made you want to continue falling in love with Julianne Moore. That's the ending I'm hoping is on the DVD.

The one I saw...must have been shot after a test audience of morons voted something different. It made sense with the rest of the movie but damned if it didn't completely jump the tracks! Any other opinions?

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3 out of 4 people found the following review useful:
Could have been much better without the mother's dense character, 14 December 2006

Author: Bryce David from Psychotronic land

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

The concept behind THE FORGOTTEN is actually pretty cool and if it had been handled a bit better, it could have been a classic. Alas, the producers took the easy way and in the end the film is nothing more than an expanded X-FILES episode.

The thing that really kills this story (and like so many other films these days, such as DARK WATER or SILENT HILL) is the main character's obsessiveness in finding her son, played all too perfectly by Julianne Moore. I understand the whole concept of the mother's love for her son and the story is basically an attempt to show how far reaching this love can go but the problem is that when faced with the existence of an alien culture or at least beings which are powerful enough to erase the memory of the son from dozens of people, you'd think the mother would stop for a while and try to see things their way or be at least affected by the mere presence of these beings. But no, the mother seeks her son, completely oblivious of the amazing things happening to her. Dammit, she just wants her son back so she can cook him breakfast and send him to school. I mean, who really cares if people have been whisked away in front of her god only knows where or who cares about a race from another world or another dimension, a race which has these extraordinary powers. And who cares if she remembers all of this after all this is resolved, remembers that Alfre Woodard's character might be dead now. The mother can go on living her daily existence like before, like nothing had happened. As if her kid had only been lost at the mall.

In the end, THE FORGOTTEN (and other such films) is not a film about a mother's love for her kid but more of a sad showcase of an oblique desire for the mundane, even at the expense of other people's lives. The primary objective: the mother's happiness. Nothing else matters. Because of this, the mother ended up being more scary than the unseen force.

Writers these days have really lost touch with common human behaviour.

(I would have given THE FORGOTTEN even less points if it hadn't been for those two effective jump scenes, the one in the car and the one at the cabin)

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3 out of 4 people found the following review useful:
A story of a mother who is sure to have lost his kid but who have kidnapped her !!, 13 February 2006

Author: teteblonde from Canada

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Totally awful, a movie of two part the first seems to bring the audience to a psychological movies but the directors doesn't seems to look it this way so in the middle of the movies we see a total turn at 90 degrees and the movie take another turn because they start to talk about sciences fiction.

The movies is , besides, well directed for some part you seem to go on a thriller with some special and stunning scene but the screenplay is so speeding that you can stay focus on the story and it seems that they want to put the solutions like there was only this : who might have stole our children if it isn't the government ?! the aliens of course what the alien what the heck happens to the writers at this point they were so in miss of imagination to put this... ah I was so angry at this point that I almost throw my pack of pop-corn and the rest of the movie is in this point so if you have a chance to help someone in a movie store tell him not to rent this even if he is the no1 fan of Julianne Moore who is not at is best !!

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