If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Much has been made of films which use past decades to set their stories in, but much less praise has been directed at those which emulate the style originally employed in that period. There has, of course, been many failures to replicate the successful Alfred Hitchcock formula. "The House on Carroll Street" is not one of those. It falls into neither common failing of such films - there is no attempt to graft an anachronistic approach to an older style, nor to bring that older style into a modern decade. This film understands that such a style cannot be separated from the emotions and perceptions of the time.Peter Yates, a director who generally creates for the present time, does an unexpectedly excellent job at recreating this lost world. He uses cinematographer Michael Ballhaus (who went on to photograph "Quiz Show", another 1950s recreation) to wonderful effect, letting him capture his scenes in a manner that never once strays from the older approach. Yates shows us how thrilling the suspense and big set-pieces can be when not buried in special effects and quick cuts. Yates proves why he's one of the great overlooked talents.Jeff Daniels and Kelly McGillis have very much that 'star chemistry' valued for this sort of picture. McGillis, especially, brings a lightness and intensity most modern actresses could only pretend at. Patinkin is appropriately menacing. Jessica Tandy was my favorite performance, a tiny role nonetheless brightened by the nuances she brings to it. Christopher Buchholz provides an engaging, fearful, yet somehow innocent performance to the character of Stefan.Imagining that "The House on Carroll Street" were somehow released during the era in which it is set, I have little doubt it would be considered one of the great classics. Films such as "North By Northwest" have all the same limitations and plot implausibilities, yet are no more or less thrilling than this one. I see nothing of lower quality to be found here, only a picture made in a period where it couldn't be recognized. If you love the classic thrillers, you should certainly love this one as well.

Emily Crane, a photo editor at Life Magazine, refuses to turn over to a Senate committee the names and files of a civil rights organization she's associated with, she doesn't realize she'll soon be out of a job and probably the cause of a young German being stabbed to death. That's not the least of it. Soon she'll be refusing a great hamburger while a senior Senate committee staff man uses catsup on a white dining clothe to illustrate the red menace. And finally, she'll find herself clambering over the interior catwalk of New York's Grand Central Station dome, high above the floor, while killers try to insure she trips. To my mind, The House on Carroll Street is a solid and talented, if not exceptional, child of Hitchcock. The year is 1951 and anti-Communism hysteria is in full bloom. Congressional demagogues, black-listing and secret FBI files abound. When Emily (Kelly McGillis) loses her job, we learn she's under FBI surveillance. Agent Cochrane (Jeff Daniels) has been assigned to take secret photographs of her, find out who she talks to and to follow her about New York. He observes when, in need of a job, she is interviewed by Miss Venable (Jessica Tandy) to read to the old lady. And one afternoon, relaxing in the townhouse garden of Miss Venable's home, she overhears part of a conversation in German coming from the next house. Naturally nosy, she moves closer through the bushes, glimpses the face of a young German fellow she accidentally met a day or two before on the street...and then sees the face of the Senate staff head, Ray Salwen (Mandy Patinkin). Salwen was responsible for hauling her before the committee. Something is not right. A few days later she follows the German to a Jewish cemetery and finds him writing down the names of dead Jews. He seems scared. Before long, she is helping him escape from the house on Carroll Street, only to see him stabbed death in front of her. By now, FBI agent Cochrane not only realizes something is very off, he realizes Emily Crane has nice legs, is quite likable and may be in danger. He's puzzled when he is warned off by his superiors and then taken off her case. In solid Hitchcockian style, we have been following this nice and nosy woman while she slowly discovers skullduggery and then realizes that she has placed herself at great risk. And in equally solid Hitchcockian style, we have met the man in agent Cochrane who with persistence and humor will attempt to keep her from danger while joining her in uncovering a plot that deals with German war criminals and powerful men in high places. The movie has well-directed set pieces, ranging from a covert meeting in a huge, dim Greenwich Village book store to a spooky breaking-and-entering into the now abandoned house on Carroll Street (where Emily meets a man with a knife) to the exploration of the tunnels below and the girders high above the Grand Central main station. Most of all, it has two instantly appealing main characters in McGillis and Daniels. Both are completely natural in their portrayals. They have guileless faces. We immediately like both of them. Daniels in particular shows the kind of open-faced honesty that makes the movie so satisfying. The caveat I have is Mandy Patinkin. He is a forceful, intense actor. Patinkin makes Salwen a creature of such supreme self-confidence, such repellent humor that Salwen doesn't just stand for the evils of the period, he disgusts us. Patinkin's self-serving, power-justifying Salwen, full of phony patriotism and contemptuous high spirits, in my opinion very nearly overbalances the movie. Patinkin is just an inch away from becoming a caricature. Added to that are two speeches that Patinkin is given to justify his actions. Unfortunately, they move over into manipulated melodrama. The speeches are so over-the-top they tend to place the movie on hold while Patinkin gives them. However, the screenwriter is Walter Bernstein, a talented man who was black-listed for years. I'm more than willing to cut him some slack. I think The House on Carroll Street is a well-crafted semi-romantic thriller which doesn't use explosives (well, there's one), cynicism or cumbersome back stories. It has two attractive and likable leads, a plot with a message or two which keeps moving along and a bit of humor. It also has a happy ending which, in one regard, may be unexpected.

Jeff Daniels(Fly Away Home,Dumb and Dumber,Speed) and Kelly MCGillis(Witness,Top Gun) star in thriller set in New York City in the summer of 1951. Emily Crane (McGillis) uncovers a plot by the U.S goverment to secretly bring Nazi war criminals to the U.S. But she has a man to watch for her!Jeff Daniels plays Cochran a federal agant sent to protect her. Eventually the two people fall in love. Then they must flee for their lives as the government knows that they know of the secret Nazi criminals coming over to America. The love story is OK for the movie , I just wish they would of shown us the criminals coming over , instead all we get those already here!!If you like love story thrillers, you might like this movie!!Or if you are either fans of Jeff Daniels or Kelly McGillis, you might like this movie!!If you decide to buy it, rent it before you do!!!It 's an average love story set during the era of post World War 2!!It has had neat ending , but i'm gonna give it away!!!So remember rent it before you buy as it may not be everything you though it was going to be!!!

In the tradition of "The Front" and "Guilty By Suspicion", the "House On Carroll Street" is little more than Hollywood's latest attempt to rewrite the history books about the "McCarthy" era in which all those accused of communist sympathies were innocent as the driven snow, and all accusers were really closet Nazis at heart. Well, too bad for the fantasy weavers but the factual record still shows that there were more people in America who licked Joseph Stalin's boots at a time when he murdered tens of millions, and even went so far as to commit treason on behalf of the Soviet Union (Alger Hiss, Julius Rosenberg, Harry Dexter White, and a score of other government employees now linked to espionage through both American and Soviet files) than there were anti-communists in Washington who harbored Nazis during America's Cold War struggle (i.e. a big fat zero. Indeed, one can argue that this movie borrows a page from the McCarthy handbook of using a false accusation to smear a group of people even more than the the McCarthyites themselves did in real life toward Hollywood communists!).