by MATTHEW HAYS and JOANNE LATIMER

The Human Stain This was one of the Gala presentations at the Toronto International Film Fest, and I attended the screening with bated breath. This, after all, is based on the novel of über-author Philip Roth, directed by competent Hollywood director (and screenwriter) Robert Benton and starring Sir Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman. Where could things go wrong?

They do go wrong, though not with entirely dire consequences. The story involves Hopkins, who plays a traumatized university prof, and Kidman, who plays a battered wife with a tortured past of her own, after they embark on an odds-defying romance. Everyone's repressing something, it seems, and that's what makes this couple's relationship tick: through their own private, horrific, dormant pasts, the two understand each other. I can't give away what it is these two are repressing, however, or I ruin the movie. But better than the movie, I'd suggest you just read Roth's book instead.

The trouble here, frankly, is the casting. Though Kidman can be wonderful, I think she's often overrated (really, weren't they just giving that Oscar to the prosthetic nose in The Hours?). She's not very believable at all, here playing a working-class washwoman. And though I can't say why Hopkins defies all credulity in this performance (it's that not-giving-stuff-away thing I have programmed into me again), the idea that he was assigned this specific role is basically borderline hilarious. If and when you see, you'll agree, trust me.

Having said all that, The Human Stain is certainly nice to look at. And it's not rotten - far from it, in fact. I see it as adding one more title to the hefty list of not-quite-right page-to-screen adaptations. (MH)

A Problem With Fear Alternate title: Laurie's Anxiety Confronting the Escalator. A Problem With Fear is an underwhelming comedy from Calgarian Gary Burns, who can do better. Don't get me wrong, there is occasion to chuckle sweetly. But is that what you really want to do? Isn't it better to wince while belly-laughing, as we did during Burns' caustic trio, Kitchen Party, The Suburbanators and waydowntown?

A Problem With Fear is about a shop clerk named Laurie (Paulo Costanzo) who spends all day managing his hang-ups. He's phobic and, thus, the perfect bate for something called Early Warning 2 Safe System. It's a PDA software bracelet to advise its owner of impending danger. Right. His sister (Camille Sullivan) works for the Safe System company, where they're trying to cover up a glitch. Clients' fears start coming true, causing a fear storm to ravage the city.

Meanwhile, Laurie's girlfriend (Emily Hampshire) is afraid of being taken for granted and gets paranoid about strangers stealing her sense of style. It's an annoyingly subplot that can only be viewed as time filler, since her Betty Rubble-at-the-thrift-store look is dead boring. Laurie undergoes a series of trials, trying to find some backbone against his phobias, while singing TV jingles. That's more like it. Television is, in fact, the best place for this movie. (JL)

My Life Without Me Some critics were heralding this movie as a truly deep emotional trip, some kind of breakthrough for Sarah Polley, who plays a trailer-bound gal with a sweet hubby and two young kiddies, who learns she's dying. There's no way out, no cure: now Polley must simply prepare herself for leaving this world, a nasty exit that means leaving her two kiddies and ever-so-sweet spouse behind.

A Spanish-Canadian coproduction, My Life Without Me was directed by Isabel Coixet and coproduced by Almodovar. Despite the Spanish injection, this movie felt Canadian in that rather grim way, what with people sitting around thinking about the fact that they're going to die and how utterly depressing that is. Good Christ, could things get any more sad? I found this sad though, more in a Beachcombers kind of way than a Douglas Sirk kind of way. Basically, Polley just wanders around looking like someone who's feeling moody about the fact that she's going to kick off sooner rather than later. In other words, this movie is a reeaaaaaaally goooooooood time.

My Life Without Me's only potentially redeeming quality, without any doubt, is dear old Deborah Harry. Here, the Blondie frontwoman plays a down-and-out trailer dweller and mom to Polley. Harry's acting career is one of the strangest ever, from projects like David Cronenberg's Videodrome to John Waters' Hairspray to James Mangold's Heavy, and here, waxing philosophic about Barry Manilow, she's been handed her best role in years. (MH)

In the Cut One of my favourite filmmakers, Jane Campion (Sweetie, The Piano) took it upon herself to tackle the serial killer movie with In the Cut, her latest. Frankly, I found virtually every frame of this movie to be insufferable. Meg Ryan (who took over from Nicole Kidman, who sensibly got herself out of acting in this thing) plays a teacher living in Manhattan who finds that she's being stalked by some kind of evil killer. She's soon embarked on a rather slutty affair with cop Mark Ruffalo (and what sensible gal wouldn't) - who, as it turns out, just might be the killer himself! Can you imagine? What a twist!

Campion works overtime to create an otherworldly sense with In the Cut, a sense that she's taking this admittedly phallocentric sub-genre (I learned that term in a women's studies class I took once) and turning it upside down, showing it to us from a woman's perspective. Hell, I love the idea, it's just too bad Campion hasn't managed to pull it off. In the Cut is one of those ambitious films that feels less experimental than simply messy. What a waste. At the screening I attended at the Toronto Fest, in a crowd of approximately 100, at least 30 people were hissing during the closing credits. Though I wasn't one of them, I felt their pain - so much so that I actually cancelled my spot on the Campion round tables. I couldn't face one of my cinematic heroines after seeing this; I'll wait for the next one, knowing that every great auteur deserves a respite for making the occasionally lousy movie (hey, even Scorsese had After Hours and Bringing out the Dead). (MH)

The Human Stain, A Problem With Fear, My Life Without Me and In the Cut open Friday, Oct. 31, Halloween

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