Don't listen to the negative reviews

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Blistering performances.

It seems that a lot of users like to bash a movie and talk about how predictable a mystery is, just to show everyone else how smart they are. Talk about what's wrong with the direction even though they don't really know a thing about directing. This is a smart movie with good actors. Some think the villains made illogical and unreasonable choices. Well, most criminals aren't as smart as they think they are and do illogical things when everything starts to unravel. Most criminals aren't smart and don't keep a cool head under pressure. That's why they get caught!This is perceived as a movie about an agoraphobic and everyone is incredulous when she leaves her apartment in the climax. Abigail's doctor has told her she's agoraphobic, but he's in on the con and doesn't want her to have any contact with anyone but him. Remember that she chose to disappear for a reason. She had the privacy she wanted so she had no reason to leave her apartment - and her life was purposefully controlled. People choose fight or flight when threatened. When Abigail comes under extreme threat, she chooses both flight (nowhere to run except OUT of her apartment) and fight (for her fortune without which she could not exist).The doctor's choice of henchmen seems flawed, but what kind of people are you going to get for something like this? First person I would ask would be an ex-con, which by definition is a loser. Greed can fuzzy your thinking. The closer they got to the money, the less logical they became. They kept thinking "just one more person out of the way and we'll have enough money to run where no one can find us".Another user spoke of how dumb the police were. They had already zeroed in on Ray owning both apartments. One user said it was not believable that Abigail was leaving without an identity. She had already transferred her money somewhere. She could by her own plane and pilot. She knew how to disappear - she had done it before.I really liked the acting by Kevin Pollack and Jason Lee. Ribisi always brings a sense of intelligence and also naiveté to his characters. His partner's character could have added humor or at least something with better lines and actor - Samm Levine would have been great as the partner rather than the bank manager.

When I accessed the reviews for Columbus Circle, I couldn't believe all the negativity surrounding this production. Apparently, after this was made, there was no studio willing to release it theatrically. It went straight to video. I sometimes don't listen to the multitude of reviews that surround a certain film, preferring to make my own opinion. After viewing this, I found it to be a surprisingly good and watchable film with a good story, good acting and good directing. This was an original story which had a good denouement, very satisfying. I suppose that there was not enough sex and violence in this production to serve the prurient tastes of the mass audience. Tastes have changed much in recent years and I guess that there isn't much of an audience for a film that does not rely on CGI effects or gratuitous sex and violence. I even liked the main title sequence, which would not have been out-of-place on a suspense film made in the fifties or sixties. Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I liked this.

(Let me first make a little side note that I am agoraphobic myself.)The beginning of the movie, opening credits, some people may say that the puzzle pieces are symbolic of you having to put all the pieces together throughout the movie, some people would say it's just what the film makers decided to do. Personally, I think it's more of an Abigail bit; when you're agoraphobic and don't leave the house, as you can imagine there's not many choices of what to do with your time. I, along with some agoraphobic friends I've met on patientslikeme, spend a lot of our time working on puzzles. Something that keeps both your mind and your hands busy, something that you can watch progress, especially the 200+ piece puzzles.When detective Jerry Eeans of the NYPD went to first visit Abigail her timid reaction and keeping her distance is very understandable for someone with agoraphobia or social phobia. I found the arachnophobia comment rather funny, it's a natural reaction for people to try to understand each other and being told phobias others have is actually another very common thing for agoraphobics to receive, as someone's way of trying to get them to let down their guard since they can relate. I watched this movie with my mother, who doesn't truly understand my diagnoses yet, and she made the comment of how gross it was for Abigail to sniff the china cup he used, and then take a sip from the same place that he drank from. Just like with any other phobia, agoraphobics don't LIKE their fear of the outdoors, they don't CHOOSE to stay indoors all day with the blinds shut and the door locked. Every creature craves interaction, and for those with disabilities it's harder to get that interaction. But even if someone won't leave their room, or their house, they still want people to interact with. They still want to feel loved and love someone else, they want to feel the warmth of another's touch. She felt an interaction with that cup, not only had someone come into her house, but they touched and drank from something she owned.Many people have a hard time with change, they like their same routine and change will cause any range of emotions from fear, to anger. Abigail wants to purchase the apartment across from her, not so she can have more space, but so there is no change in her life. There's no new neighbors to get used to, and no chance of them being any different from Katherine, her deceased neighbor. Since she can't leave her apartment I would doubt she'd ever step foot into the apartment if purchased, or put any of her stuff in there unless she got her long time family friend, and believed psychiatrist, Dr. Ray Fontaine, or her concierge to do it for her. And from the movies actions, I would say her purchase of the apartment would have been just what she needed.Feeling sympathy for those in trouble, especially if you're A- a woman (I am too, just stating a fact, not generalizing) or B- been through the same situation, often times puts a lot of people in trouble. Abigail should have just called the police, but hearing the beatings of Lillian in the hallway triggered her PTSD and gave her flash-backs of her very own beatings. She felt the strong urge to help this woman, not just hide away from it. Bringing her in and caressing her while her believed husband beat on the door was her own way of caressing the beaten child of her past.Then begins the part of the movie that my title refers to. I only came to watch this movie for my agoraphobia, but the only thing that got me through the movie was my OCD not letting me quit out on it 47 minutes in when Lillian was walking Abigail out of her apartment and down the hall. For someone who hasn't gone into the hall for more than 11 years, that is absolutely AMAZING work! I was actually in tears watching her do something so brave, and having - who was thought to be - a good friend help her through that.I'm not really going to nitt-pick the rest of this movie, in fact, I'm going to skip a huge chunk and go to the last scene, the scene that so many people are discussing in FAQs and on yahoo answers and on goodreads, and I'm sure many more websites.Abigail and Lillian meet-up in the bank. How someone with such severe agoraphobia could go from barely making it down to the table closest to the elevator, could make it downtown Manhattan to one of the busiest banks in the state. Betrayal made her do one of the bravest things any agoraphobic could do, and not only did she take it on with such strength, but she did so without a single hyperventilation, or puking session - HUGE. Many people say that this has "cured" her agoraphobia. That she's starting her new life in someplace safe and warm and will live on a normal life. WRONG. Getting up the courage to leave the apartment once to save her name and save herself from the public's eye does not in anyway mean she's cured of her agoraphobia. My guess is if they kept the camera's rolling, she'd get on the plane, have a mini panic attack, get a new place, find a new home-visit psychiatrist, and never leave the house again for years.

I am one of those people who will buy a DVD if Selma Blair is in it, because she intrigues me. Even though she really comes from Michigan and is not from the East Coast at all, she nevertheless manages convincingly to come across as an East Coast preppie. I am not sure how she does that, especially as she did not attend university where she could have honed her skills at preppie-ness. A film preppie of an earlier generation is Stockard Channing, and in her case she was from the East Coast and attended Radcliffe, where she even achieved summa cum laude. So she is a real 'natural'. Perhaps the most famous preppie-on-film was the character Annie Hall, played by Diane Keaton in Woody Allen's ANNIE HALL (1977), but Keaton is a California gal, which is ever further west than Michigan, or so they say (is it all in the mind?). Yet another convincing film preppie when she wants to be is Michael Michele, at least as she appeared in the excellent TV series CENTRAL PARK WEST (1995), and she comes from Evansville, Indiana. So how do they do it, these hicks from the sticks (by which I mean girls who come from faraway and obscure places like California, Michigan, and Indiana)? How do they 'prep'? In fact, what is a preppie anyway? I used to wonder that very thing when I knew a lot of them long ago, in the days when they all wore identical tartan wraparound skirts held with gigantic safety pins and white socks, and earnestly pressed their clipboards to their breasts as they walked between classes at university. Preppies are above all a tribe, and to defy the tribal dress code is to invite ostracism. But never mind, let's get back to the film. (Or did we never even start on the film?) So there we were, Selma Blair is being a preppie again. This time she is a neurotic rich-girl recluse who is hiding out in style in a luxurious penthouse apartment overlooking Columbus Circle in New York City. She has agoraphobia and cannot go out. Then she becomes targeted by unscrupulous folk who, surprise surprise, do not love her for herself alone but who want her money. Who ever heard of such a thing in NYC? They work on her vulnerabilities and are incredibly clever and devious in their plan to steal all her money. It is hair-raising stuff. Written and directed by George Gallo, this film could really have clicked, but it falls short of being a convincingly tense mystery thriller in the latter part of the film. Selma Blair is entirely convincing as the girl, and was the perfect choice for the part. But the script really needed more work and thought. A miss, not a hit, but still worth seeing.