Click here for the review of The Raven

SPOILERS must be tagged with the "SPOILER" tag!

"The somewhat thankless role goes to Luke Wilson, who growls his lines as if trying to impersonate Christian Bale's Batman. "

I think you meant Luke Evans

This looks incredibly listless and mediocre, no interest whatsoever.

Remember when John Cusack actually TRIED? It's sad, really. "Max" and "The Ice Harvest" are the only halfway decent films he's done over the last 10 years.

Agreed, I always found Cusack slightly overrated, and even i'm depressed to see him doing films like this.

I'll probably see this. I like John Cusack and Edgar Allen Poe. Not expecting anything great, but it could be fun.



It is unfortunate, especially since I think he's got more range than his last decade of films indicates. High Fidelity was arguably his last truly great film, back in 2001, and even I admit that I hold that one in a much higher regard than most people. I guess Identity and 1408 were passable, and I suppose Hot Tub Time Machine had a few nice moments, but it's tough to find many positives otherwise. He needs another Being John Malkovich.

Cusack was one of the most dependable actors in film for a long time. America's Sweethearts was probably the first really bad film I saw him in. About the only good thing in it was Catherine Zeta-Jones.

Is it me or does Cusack seem miscast here? I mean a side from Identity and 1408 in which he was excellent in both, especially 1408, Cusack is usually at his best in comedies or light drama.

I think James had some fun with alliterations on this one:
confined in a coffin
know Poe from the Pope
period piece murder mystery

I thought he did some of his best straight acting in Grace is Gone. Of course, I'm a huge fan of High Fidelity (I wish I had enough girlfriends to organize them in lists like he did), and I thought that both 1408 and Identity were very good horror films (perhaps the latter more so) but I didn't care much for Hot Tub Time Machine at all. Cusack wasn't all that bad (although he was clearly on autopilot) but Rod Corddry (or whatever the fuck his name is) annoyed me to no end!

Back in 2007, John Cusack had starred in the low-key indie film Grace is Gone, which won strong reviews (James had given it a solid 3 stars). I'm surprised that no one seems to remember this performance when judging Cusack's career as of late.

Oh yeah, I temporarily forgot about that one. But I suppose we'll have to give up on our hopes for another "Grosse Pointe Blank"/"High Fidelity" type of film from him.

That one slipped my mind too. I never saw it, but I remember watching the trailer and getting a little misty-eyed. It was one of those films that probably had too small of a release to generate any kind of Oscar buzz for Cusack's performance, which is too bad, because from all indications it sounds like he knocked it out of the park.

lol

I do this sort of thing in a lot of reviews. No one ever notices, though.

Well this turned out to be a rather pleasant surprise. It's actually quite good and quite gripping and Cusack is excellent in this.

The only thing I didn't like about the movie was who the killer turned out to be. But otherwise, I found it to be quite compelling.

As far as James McTigue's body of work, it's not nearly as great as V for Vendetta but it's most definitely a massive improvement over Ninja Assassin.

I actually enjoyed Ninja Assassin more then V for Vendetta.

I thought Ninja Assassin sucked for a couple reasons: it was so darkly lit, it was hard to see sometimes, especially a lot of the fight scenes. And the CGI blood was terribly distracting.

Well I thought the fight scenes were pretty well done, it was a cool throwback to the ninja films of the 80s, Rain was pretty good in the lead role, and Sho Kosugi was terrific as Lord Izuno, I can understand people being bothered by the CGI blood, but I didn't mind it.