Culture

When viewers first see the trailer or hear the plot for The Roommate, the new psychological thriller starring Leighton Meester and Minka Kelly, the first thing to come to mind is the 1992 film Single White Female. The films feature similar plots, leading some to wonder if The Roommate is actually a remake of Single White Female. But no, it's not… but it probably would have been better if it actually was a rehash.
When Sarah (Kelly) starts her freshman year at the fictional University of Los Angeles, she's assigned Rebecca (Meester) as a roommate. The two become fast friends, going to gallery openings together and even bringing in a stray cat named Cuddles to join them in their dorm room. Little does Sarah know, Rebecca tends to lean toward the obsessive, psychotic side and by the end of the first semester Sarah will be begging for a normal roomie with faults like forgetting to take out the trash.

For the past few days, I've been wondering if I could, under any circumstance, cut off my own arm. I mean, maybe if I had a light saber and I was super-duper drunk and a group of doctors was standing by my side and someone was going to pay me an offensively large sum of money as part of a demented bet… then I might be able to do it. But, given that light sabers don't exist (yet) and I have awful heath insurance, it's quite unlikely that such a scenario would present itself. So, no – I would not be able to cut off my own arm and I doubt you would either.
But you know who did cut off his own arm? This guy named Aron Ralston, who fell into a canyon in 2003 and had his arm trapped beneath a boulder and then wrote a hilariously titled (but not hilarious) book about it called Between a Rock and a Hard Place. That book has now been adapted for the screen in Danny Boyle's Best Picture-nominated film, 127 Hours, starring actor/author/filmmaker/student/genius James Franco in what might be his best non-soap-opera role to date.

It's not a good sign when an exorcism movie pulls down a PG-13 rating. This means the amount of blood and/or cursing is probably insufficient, especially for this overworked subgenre. Such is the case with The Rite, a vehicle for a demonic Anthony Hopkins who once again glints his eyes, rattles off cantankerous innuendoes and sinister wisecracks in heavy makeup as CGI-enhanced veins pop out of his skin. Think Hannibal Lecter, but even more possessed.
Billed as “based on true events,” this flick treads on thin demonic ice. Tired conventions abound, such as with the father-son (Rutger Hauer/Colin O'Donoghue) funeral home scene. Here, an attempt at creepiness is merely dull – peppered with generic horror movie lines like, “We live with dead people in our house, how much worse can it get?”