Touches You

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

The Glass House (2001) is a pretty average thriller. Some aspects of it scream stereotypical, where as other parts are original. First of all, I did like the casting decisions and I thought the actors did a pretty good job with their roles. The plot was intriguing to me, the whole idea of them taking in orphaned teens for the WRONG reason really interested me, and there were scenes where I think they succeeded at creating creepiness and tension in the atmosphere, like the undressing in the hallway scene, or the pool scene for example. The writing is average, not laughably bad, but not all that great either. I think personally, my favorite part of the film was Diane Lane, Leelee, and the tense scenes, including the ending. I give The Glass House a 6/10, there are better thrillers to view out there.

I started off watching this movie with generally high hopes of it being a decent film. Very quickly though it became apparent it wasn't. It was just so clichéd and boring. Also a lot of stuff happening in the film didn't make sense. For starters when Ruby goes and sees the lawyer and tells him about all the problems she is having at the Glass home, he goes on about how if she doesn't stay with them she and her brother become wards of the state. This does not make sense since Ruby and her brother have an uncle who would be more than happy to take them in they set this up right at the start of the movie. the lawyer does send a social worker to check out the house though, but at the end of the movie you find out he had warned Mr Glass about her coming. Last time I checked isn't breaking attorney client privilege illegal? or at least will get you disbarred? Also in the movie you find out Mr Glass killed the parents of the children, so he could get guardianship of the kids and have access to their 4 million dollar trust fund. This really doesn't make sense when you consider that the parents moved away the Glass's 10 years ago, so we are meant to believe that in 10 years time the Bakers (the parents) never updated their will? Mr Glass plan all rested on him and his wife still being the legal guardians of the kids when their parents died. In the end it was just a boring movie with lots of plot holes and a lot of moments that didn't make sense.

What confirms this movie as a watchable thriller are two things: its fairly artful adherence to the best conventions of the genre, and the far above average performances of its principals, with a good villain an especially important requirement. I have hitherto been unimpressed with the work of Leelee Sobieski (spelling?), but here she does well, perhaps because her character is so distressed that Sobieski's standard expressionlessness comes off here as depression that is appropriate to her character. Diane Lane and Stellan Skarsgard put in skilled and nuanced performances which elevate the movie more than a few notches. Daniel Sackheim's pacing and montage are uncommonly good. This is a fine popcorn movie.

On the whole, this is a fairly predictable suspense/thriller with the expected twists and turns thrown in to try to throw the viewer off and keep us guessing, but in reality there was really only one plot point that I was really guessing about (revolving around the estate lawyer and where and to whom his loyalties really were) and that particular plot point wasn't really at the heart of the story. The movie introduces Ruby (Leelee Sobieski) as a bit of a troubled kid, whose troubles become much more complicated when her parents are killed in a car accident, and she and her brother are sent to live with the Glass family - friends of their parents (played by Stellan Skarsgard and Diane Lane.) And, yes, the Glasses live in a house that seems to have a lot of glass - too cute by a longshot.The suspense is around the Glasses. What are they up to? They haven't been especially close to Ruby's parents in recent years, and there's a certain creepiness to them (and especially to Skarsgard's Terry) right from the start. That builds to the point where the Glasses become downright dangerous to the kids. However, there really isn't much mystery about what the Glasses want. (It's revealed fairly quickly that the kids have a large trust fund and that Terry needs money to pay off a loanshark he's in trouble with.) So there's no real suspense around motive, and you pretty much know that although it's going to be a rough ride the kids are going to end up OK (because they always do in this kind of movie.) So the story isn't really that compelling. The performances (mostly from Sobieski, Skarsgard and Lane) are decent, but I didn't think anyone in the cast was truly outstanding.Two things worked really well in the movie. Director Daniel Sackheim did a good job of gradually turning the Glasses from just a creepy couple into a dangerous couple. (At first, Terry's interest in the 16 year old Ruby was truly creepy - it seemed physical more than financial, a suggestion that was let go of fairly quickly in favour of the financial motive.) The other thing that worked well was the setting in the house. Yes, the play on words was a bit too cute, but the big house with its somewhat confusing design and all sorts of windows both inside and outside so that the characters (and the viewer) could often catch a glimpse of what was going on was effective. But, still, a suspense/thriller that's almost entirely predictable and that therefore has no real "edge of your seat" moments can't be considered truly good. (5/10)