Bad Timing — This Week’s Releases
Posted on February 13, 2009 at 10:00 am
Both of this week’s big mainstream releases are suffering from bad timing. “The International,” inspired by the BCCI banking scandal of 1991, is about a multi-national bank that is involved in everything from weapons sales to political payoffs and even murder. And “Confessions of a Shopaholic,” based on the best-selling book, is about a young woman who loves to shop for extravagant clothes so much she runs up $16,000 in debt. Both are about problems that, even as fiction, seem almost trivial in light of current economic conditions. Despite the awkward insertion of a massive shoot-out in “The International” to make it more exciting and a line of dialogue about the precarious position of the banks in “Shopaholic” to make it seem more timely, both movies have been so overtaken by events that they seem off-key. It will be interesting to see a year from now the way that movies currently in production reflect current economic and cultural concerns and how well they connect to wherever we are by the time they are released.
is the story of a brother and sister (Milland and “The Philadelphia Story’s” Ruth Hussey) who move into a mysterious house on the English coast. A series of eerie clues lead them to a story involving a woman who once lived in the house and her young daughter Stella (Gail Russell), now grown up, who still lives nearby.
. It also introduced a song that has become a standard, “Stella by Starlight.”