Touches You

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

An Exercise In Nonsense

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Bless the Child (2000): Dir: Chuck Russell / Cast: Kim Basinger, Jimmy Smits, Rufuss Sewell, Christina Ricci, Angela Bettis: Stupid film that seems like a terrible ripoff of The Omen. The title suggests ability with Kim Basinger giving her second bad performance of the year. She raises her sister's abandon daughter not realizing that the tyke has special powers that consist of sitting on the floor in a trance spinning dishes on the floor. Jimmy Smits enters as a cop investigating child murders. What he should be doing is investigating parents who allow their children to look this foolish on film. A cult leader has married Basinger's sister because that is the only way that Basinger's life could get any worse. They attempt custody for which Basinger retaliates resulting in a climax that wouldn't be any more laughable than if it came straight from Saturday Night Live. Absurd plot with special effects that are about as dazzling as a second grade art class. Religious elements are blasphemous with horrible directing by Chuck Russell who previously made The Mask. Rufus Sewell is laughable as the cult leader as is Christina Ricci as some moron cult Gothic princess. Angela Bettis plays another of the film's imbeciles in Basinger's whiny sister. In one scene a homeless man is forced to dose himself in gasoline and set himself on fire. That is exactly what should happen with this film. Score: 1 / 10

Omens have no place in Maggie O'Connor's well-ordered, practical universe. Her life revolves around her job as a nurse at a busy New York hospital, until one rainy night, her sister Jenna abandons her newborn, autistic daughter at her home.Maggie takes the baby in, and she becomes the daughter she never had.Six years later Jenna suddenly re-appears with a mysterious new husband, Eric, and abducts Cody.Despite the fact that Maggie has no legal rights to Cody, FBI agent John Travis, an expert in ritual homicide and occult-related crime, takes up her cause when he realises that Cody shares the same birth date as several other recently missing children.The little girl, it soon becomes clear, manifests extraordinary powers that the forces of evil have waited centuries to control, and her abduction sparks a clash between the soldiers of good and evil.....released around the same time as End of days and Stigmata, this film relies on nothing more than shock tactics, not that bad CGI and Christina Riccis head coming off.Basinger isn't that good in her role, she can't really do anguish, and is upstaged by a wonderfully over the top Sewell. halfway through the movie, we realise that angels are helping her, and this is when it all becomes too silly for it's own good.There are some scenes that defy belief, like when she wakes up in a moving car, and the final act where the 'communion' is taking place, which is packed to the rafters from Lost boy rejects from Spielbergs 'Hook'.Nut it's cheesy in a good way,and there is some good support from Smits, but this is nothing new, and Schwarzeneggar had a much better time defeating the devil.

Unbearable schlock. Kim Basinger adopts her sister's child, a little girl who turns out to be the Second Coming or something. Jimmy Smits is the FBI investigator called in on the case when the girl is kidnapped by Rufus Sewell and his gang of thugs. They run an outfit called The New Dawn. It poses as a self-help program but is really a Satanist church.It's all mechanically slapped together with multiple borrowings from "The Exorcist" and "Omen" and their devolved descendants.Everything is predictable except that which is completely arbitrary. Hordes of skinless rats come and go without explanation. Angels appear as fuzzy balls of white light. Gargoyles sometimes fill the sky. Sometimes not.The performances by some of the talent are okay. Basinger doesn't do badly, for instance. But nothing could save this piece of unspeakable crap. Rufus Sewell, as the Satanist-in-Chief, has these goggle eyes. He's so exopthalmic that the whites completely surround the irises. And if he blinks even once during the entire film, I must have missed it because I was blinking at the same time.It's not worth going on about. How do the kids put it? Oh, yes. "It sux."

This was a terrible film. The acting had great potential with the big names that were on the cast list so I blame the direction (or lack thereof) for the lackluster delivery, non-existent screen presences and slow movement.The plot was rambling and predictable; it was only my die-hard film fan friends that encouraged me to stick it out. I thought that it was ending at least thrice only to be disappointed in the final scenes. There was no real denouement, character development or moral lesson as would have been rightly expected from a potentially great script. The effects were hazy and obvious, reminiscent of Technicolor or the bad old days of smoke and mirrors.The character's were clichéd and exaggerated portraying only the obvious arch-types of villain, victim and savior-savant. A pathetic attempt all round, I would recommend this title only for the most devoted fans of the supernatural horror/thriller genre.