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Rating:  -
This movie is very different as people have said. However, it is representative of how people are in relationships. Paranoid and hopeful and scared. Despite some of the unrealistic twists, I felt that this movie rang true to real life.
Rating:  -
In this movie we are introduced to a young woman named Stacy and her boyfriend Derek. Stacy secures a job on a daytime talkshow, hosted by Kathy Bates. She is befriended by a co-worker named Barb, who plants seeds against Stacy's relationship with Derek. Stacy begans to spy on him, using his Palm Pilot, and finds out he has many secrets. However, Barb turns out to be anything but a friend and Stacy is betrayed, turning her entire world and those of others unside down.
The story takes many twists and turns and I suppose if one were to get anything out of it, it would be just to be honest with whoever you are in a relationship with, especially if you are planning a future with that person. Nothing remains a secret forever.
Rating:  -
As one review of this movie noted, before all its reviews mysteriously disappeared, you have to be VERY MUCH into Carly Simon to be very keen on where this movie is ultimately going, as foreshadowed by how it runs into the ground the song "Let the River Run". Since I'm no more down on Carly Simon that I am a huge fan of hers, and I do find some of her songs more worthy of repeated listenings than "Let the River Run", I wouldn't be ready to dam any river that this movie might be fixated on, and I might give this a second star, except...... Except that the main body of this movie, before we are so sure what an idol Carly Simon is to its main character, is one of the most tedious cinematic endurance tests I've ever been tempted to walk out of. At least one of the colorful reviews that I hope will be back soon described it in an inimitable style that I won't attempt to rival. Suffice it to say that the main character herein must endure a seemingly unending nightmare of horrid and unfunny characters that set her up, double cross her, and exploit whatever hints of unfaithfulness they can find in her boyfriend. Brittany Murphy, as that main character, tries to make it likeable, but the obnoxious and unfunny characters ultimately spoil any hope of the story being one we'll care about.
Rating: -
I was surprised to see so many negative reviews to this Film.
It was a sweet, fun, and INTERESTING time at the Movies--
In fact, I have the DVD on pre-order.
Its not Citizen Caine, for sure--but it is a treat to watch unfold from formula Comedy Film to an honest look at the addiction to relationships and the 'I'll Do Anything For A Promotion' 2004-2005 reality in corporate America.
There's Holly Hunter--Kathy Bates--Brittany Murphy and Carly Simon's Music helping getting all this done.....and more.
5 stars and 3 thumbs WAY UP
Rating:  -
You probably should skip this one. This movie's main plot (if main means the one taking up most of the screentime) seems mainly a red herring distracting us from what is really the movie's theme. In this subplot taking up must of the movie, we see the protagonist, Stacy, played by Brittany Murphy, working amongst some very unpleasant people, where she is urged to spy on her boyfriend to see if he is faithful. She does so and finds a complex array of ongoing entanglements between him and former girlfriends. The subplot is also a set up toward an awful climax. Through all this, we'd suspect little of what the suprise short main plot was, which the movie was really leading up to, except for Stacy and her friends talking of how they are fans of Carly Simon, and for one of Carly Simon's songs playing in the background. Not just any of her songs, but a song that won an Oscar for most original song back in 1988 (well, actually in 1989, for movies of 1988.) All in all, some of us have good reasons to feel that this movie resurrects a song better left unresurrected. That song is called "Let The River Run". In 1988 the same year when it came out, a controversial movie called THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST was drawing vehement protest from many Christians for its unorthodox take on the Christian story. They succeeded in causing that movie to have such a stigma attached to it that nearly all video stores around where I live declined to stock the movie, and it remains hard to find to this day for any wishing to see for themselves what all the uproar was about. Meanwhile back in 1988-1989, there was no protest that I've ever been able to learn of to the Oscar winning song, "Let The River Run". Therein lies a propensity for a lot of Christians to sometimes strain at proverbial gnats while swallowing elephants. I'd far rather see alternate interpreters of the Christian story propose honest dialogue as they did with THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST than slip in an utter trivialization of one of the most absolute of Christian images, in the guise of a lilting song in a totally secular movie. The latter is just what happened in "Let The River Run". That song occurred at the end of a movie in which a young woman in the corporate world, because her immediate boss was so mean, assumed she was justified in impersonating that boss while the boss vacationed in Germany. While so impersonating her boss, the movie's protgonist was able to come up with ideas that so impressed higher-ups in the company that she was able to pull off a coup and really take over her immediate boss's position, when the latter returned and suffered complete humiliation. And then, soon after, as the movie ends, the song proclaims "The New Jerusalem". What is The New Jerusalem" for Christianity? Near the end of the Book of Revelation, there is a vision of events after the final battle against evil has been won, when "God shall wipe away every tear". That means a time of no more suffering. No more mean bosses being humiliated even. In THAT context, The New Jerusalem, a paradisial city, descends from Heaven to be the new dwelling place for those who enter into the new world of no evil or sorrow, as absolute an image as is to be found in Christianity. It is rather unfathomable that no Christians seemed to wince at seeing that ultimate paradisial image being invoked to close a story where someone in the corporate world used deceptive tactics to defeat and humiliate her admittedly nasty boss. A prominent film critic, Roger Ebert, managed to avoid the issue altogether by asserting that The New Jerusalem was a concept first started by William Blake! Although it all happened in the the year before I was born, my uncle has old tapes of "Siskel & Ebert" from back then, and he has played that for me. Yes I know there ar those who would remind me of freedom of expression and act as if we should never protest anything. Well, I do believe in freedom of expression, which is not the same as never protesting anything. For better or worse, a lot of Christians did protest something that year. And if they were going to protest anything, it made no sense that this trivialization of The New Jerusalem was not high on their list of gripes. The song, "Let The River Run" has been invoked repeatedly since then. In the past few years it was featured in none other than a TV advertisement for the U.S. Postal Service. In that case, it seems, somebody exercised better judgement than to let the lines about The New Jerusalem get into the song. Now in the present case, In LITTLE BLACK BOOK, the song is run by us repeatedly like a thing for reverence, in a movie where we had no reason to suspect this was what we'd encounter. I'm not somebody who has never enjoyed any of Carly Simon's songs, by the way. I occasionally listen to her with interest. But the first and longer portion of this movie features such overkill of what probably ought to be her most controversial song, with the protagonist and her friend paying repeated homage to her. Even by then if you're not a worshiper of Carly Simon, you might be starting to get tired of this theme. But even if you are one of her biggest fans, is enduring the long and mostly unpleasant first part of the movie worth it, the part where Stacy is trapped in a nightmarish job? Well maybe only huge fans of Carly Simon would know the answer to that question. But to me it was too long a wait through the largely dismal main body of the movie to imagine that the last part could redeem it all, no matter how much I liked Carly Simon. Well, Stacy does get out of her nightmarish job at last, and then the surprise ending comes. Guess I shouldn't give it away, but remember, Unless you virtually worship Carly Simon, you still might have trouble relating to Stacy's story.
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