BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

Humbersi The first must-see film of the year.

Hayleigh Joseph This is ultimately a movie about the very bad things that can happen when we don't address our unease, when we just try to brush it off, whether that's to fit in or to preserve our self-image.

Lela The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

blanche-2 I found "Columbus Circle" highly entertaining. I figured it out, probably pretty early on, but I watch this kind of thing constantly.The story concerns an agoraphobic woman, Abigail Clayton (Selma Knight) who is actually from a hugely wealthy family. Her disappearance made news years earlier; she has changed her name, never goes out, and slips notes under her door for the concierge. Her only contact is with her doctor and family friend, Dr. Fontaine (Beau Bridges).When the elderly woman next door dies, Abigail wants to purchase the apartment; then she would be alone on the penthouse floor. To her chagrin, the apartment is leased to a couple, Lillian and Klandermann. Meanwhile, Abigail has been bothered by the police because, though the woman supposedly fell, it looks to Detective Frank Giardello (Giovanni Ribisi) that she may have been murdered.Things get worse for Abigail when it turns out that Lillian is a battered woman who begs her for help.This probably could have been a great movie in different hands. As it is, it's pretty good and also fairly typical of smaller films. Selma Blair reminded me a lot of Lara Flynn Boyle back in the day. I won't say the acting was Oscar-worthy but I've seen much worse.Having lived in New York City for 30 years, I'm not really sure why Columbus Circle was chosen for this fabulous apartment building. It added nothing to the story. It's not the ritziest neighborhood in the city. I would have chosen something near Bergdorf's, which is directly across town on Fifth Avenue, or the Lincoln Center area, or Central Park West. Anyway, a good movie to rent.

Oslo Jargo (Bartok Kinski) Okay, so start up with a good setup and premise, and instead of working it slowly, the film crams everything down our throat so that it doesn't make much sense at all. Add to it some terrible acting (Selma Blair, Giovanni Ribisi as a cop?, Kevin Pollak, Jason Lee), some terrible editing and incredulous scenes, and by the end, it is so utterly stupid that it drops two grades.What could have been an intriguing Neo-noir thriller tries too hard to "surprise" us with wrong turns and detours. Instead, it becomes below-standard rubbish.Recommended: Experiment in Terror (1962) U Turn (1997) Blood Simple (1984) Who'll Stop The Rain (1978) Red Rock West (1993)

k-hill I watched this film without having read any reviews or heard anything about it. The fact that it contained Selma Blair, Amy Smart and Kevin Pollack was enough of a recommendation for me. Unlike some of the other reviewers, I was not disappointed. In fact, I was somewhat startled by the number of negative reactions. I guess they are fans of shoot em ups while I like a more atmospheric, intellectual movie. This is not a great movie but it is a good movie. I thought of it as a homage to the psychological thrillers of the forties and fifties. Pollak, as always, is superb and both Blair and Smart do credible turns. The twist at the end is fairly predictable but at the same time satisfying. Well worth watching, at home, on a chilly evening.

robert-temple-1 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.