by CHRIS BARRY, SARAH ROWLAND and MARK SLUTSKY

Enduring Love

Roger Michell's sophisticated thriller is a classic case of an overtly mad man turning a seemingly sane man into one raging lunatic. The England-based director, who masterfully depicted strained family relations in The Mother, succeeds again at bringing the tension to a slow boil. But instead of exploring familial secrets and lies, he puts a choke hold on the stalker genre.

Based on Ian McEwan's best-selling novel, the story follows Joe Rose (Daniel Craig of The Mother), a yuppie prof about to propose to his girlfriend (Samantha Morton: the bald chick from Minority Report). But before he can pop the question, a wayward hot-air balloon falls from the sky. He and a few others in the park grab the ropes in an attempt to save the cowering boy inside the basket. But when a gust of wind alters the direction of the heaven-bound balloon, it instantaneously changes the course of Joe's life.

Along with the guilt plaguing his conscience (he can't seem to wash the rope burns off his hands), the freak accident brings fellow rescuer Jed (Rhys Ifans) into his world. The scruffy Welshman with the Mulroney jawline feels that "something has passed between them" at the site of the tragedy. And so begins the taunting game of cat and mouse, which puts Joe's relationship and mental health in jeopardy.

Craig is explosive as someone who stupidly tries to control things he can't and Morton is lovely and understated as usual, expressing more with her eyes than most actresses can with their whole bodies. Their talents, and Michell's unerring sense of pace, draw the film to a final, flawless scene of white-knuckle suspense. (SR)

Blood

I hail from a faraway land called Van-cou-ver and if there's one thing I know like the back of my hand, the cream in my coffee and the walk to work, it's junkies, and Emily Hampshire's hair is way too shiny for a mainlining ho. Barring this technical oversight, Jerry Ciccoritti's ambitious dark incest comedy is totally engrossing in a really tactless and brash kind of way.

Hampshire's character, Noelle, is a smacked-out prostitute who desperately needs a willing male partner to fulfill her john's threesome request. Enter long-lost big brother Chris (Montrealer Jacob Tierney). The saucer-eyed recovering alcoholic is a bit of a mess himself but he masks his hedonism behind AA mantras. The whole dialogue takes place in the same four dingy walls, as Noelle tries to convince her sibling that there's nothing perverted about throwing it in your little sister as long as you're getting paid to do so.

Bearing a likeness to a full-figured Parker Posey, Hampshire gives a sassy and biting performance as the conniving black sheep and Tierney (writer and director of Twist) is cleverly delineated as her dimwitted, easily manipulated victim. At times, this CanCon production, which is based on Tom Walmsley's play, can be as obnoxious as watching the star pupils in an elite actors' workshop deliver their graduating project. Yet Ciccoritti overcomes all these magnificent flaws by keeping you tuned in to see if Noelle will persuade Chris to keep it in the family, so to speak. (SR)

After the Sunset

If you're a sucker for big money jewellery heist films, then you'd better get yer non-discriminating ass down to see After the Sunset tout de suite. All bets are on that the latest Pierce Brosnan vehicle won't be in theatres for very long, which isn't to say this movie is as terrible as I guarantee everyone else is going to say it is.

Sure, it's a pseudo-comedic, kinda thriller, kinda romance, kinda buddy film with a plot that is, to put it gently, none too original. But director Brett Ratner, the man behind those highly successful but painfully dumb Rush Hour flicks, appears to recognize the cliché that a jewel-heist flick is bound to be and appears to be having a little fun with the genre. Either that or Ratner has totally lost his mind and I really don't think that's the case here. Whatever the deal, Brosnan (playing the recently retired master jewel thief who just can't say no to a plum jewel thievin' opportunity) and Woody Harrelson (playing the Maxwell Smart-esque FBI agent who chases him down to the Bahamas in the effort to bust him once and for all) actually have pretty good chemistry together. Damn, they may even make you laugh once or twice. Throw sexpot Salma Hayek into the mix, along with a nice, warm, sunny Caribbean location, and hey, who cares if you've seen this movie 10,000 times before. Of course it's far from brilliant, but as mindless entertainment goes, you could do far worse. (CB)

The Polar Express

Tom Hanks plays six characters in this new animated movie by Robert Zemeckis. I say "plays" rather than "voices," as The Polar Express employs fancy technology, where the characters' expressions and physicality actually come from the actor himself. Understanding this science is kind of neat if you care about it, but not really material to the enjoyment of the movie.

Based on Chris Van Allsburg's book, the story follows an unnamed little boy who is just on the verge of losing his faith in Santa Claus. To his surprise, the semi-skeptical kid finds a train outside his house one Christmas Eve, full of other kids of the same tender age. The destination, of course, is the North Pole, but getting there is the fun part of this movie. The CGI imagery is actually pretty spectacular, and Zemeckis indulges in a lot of roller-coaster-style chases, swoops and dips. Stand-out scenes include the one where our hero and a mysterious hobo ski down the top of the train as it goes down a sharp grade, and the sequence involving a lost train ticket that's convoluted and Rube-Goldberg-esque. (I won't reveal anymore, lest I spoil the fun.)

The one thing that the movie doesn't quite succeed at, motion-capture notwithstanding, is animating the human characters. There's still something a little weird about realistically rendering people in CGI. For some reason the stylized approach seems to work better. Still, the kids should dig this nonetheless. (MS)

After the Sunset, Blood, Enduring Love and The Polar Express open Friday, Nov. 12

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