JUSTICE LEAGUE: CRISIS ON TWO EARTHS (2010), dir. Sam Liu, Lauren Montgomery

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This review was originally published at Cinemaspy.

By now, the Justice League cartoon show has been in syndication and on home video long enough that fans know what to expect: iconic heroes like Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman; threats to human life on a planetary scale; and a serious tone overall. While the new Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths doesn't necessarily exist in-continuity with the previous Justice League cartoon, it does feature a similar art style and storytelling approach in an original adventure that should please longtime fans, even if it may not wow them.

The plot is similar to the Justice League cartoon episode "A Better World" which introduced an alternate universe version of our heroes called the Justice Lords, who declared martial law over Earth in order to protect mankind from itself. Once again, Superman and company cross dimensions and face-off against different doppelgangers; but this time, the antagonists are the Crime Syndicate, who aren't well-meaning-but-misguided so much as mobsters with superpowers. They run illicit enterprises across their world, keeping governments in check by threatening to kill millions.

On this world, familiar Justice League arch-enemies were superheroes until they were systematically wiped out by the Syndicate. Now Earth's only hope rests with Lex Luthor, who as befitting a mirror dimension uses his intelligence for good, not evil. After leaving his world for ours, he convinces the League to follow him home and help liberate his planet. What no one expects, however, is for members of the Crime Syndicate to eventually pay the League's Earth a visit, thanks to an important device this Luthor has hidden at the heroes' headquarters.

That's more than enough plot to sustain a feature-length Justice League adventure. Writer Dwayne McDuffie, a veteran comic book scribe who previously wrote for the Justice League cartoon as well as the monthly "Justice League of America" title, fashions a scenario that suitably requires the combined efforts of the world's greatest heroes. In theory, the league is battling itself, so fans expecting action, action, and more action aren't likely to be disappointed. McDuffie leaves enough room for a little character development as well; however, with an ensemble of more than a dozen protagonists, not everyone gets equal screen time.

Overall, the art and animation exceed the Justice League cartoon: colors look rich and saturated, and character movements are exceptionally fluid (indeed, Wonder Woman appears so dynamic in one pivotal fight sequence that she drew cheers from the preview audience). The action is well-paced and occasionally-inspired—though one could argue none of the principals get to use their abilities in any unique fashion. Highlights include an aerial battle with realistic-looking cloud effects; and there’s a certain wit having the League encounter versions of B-list heroes from their world when they first arrive in alternate Earth, then having the same thing happen to the Crime Syndicate when they cross the breach in the reverse direction.

Another way the Justice League movie possibly surpasses the cartoon is the quality of the voice acting. While some of the cast’s big names seemingly get lost in the shuffle — in hindsight, the producers probably didn’t need Mark Harmon for Superman, since he doesn’t get all that much to do — there are plenty of standouts. William Baldwin makes for a brooding and effective Batman, although he seems to be channeling Christian Bale more than mimicking legendary Bat-vocalist Kevin Conroy, and Gina Torres does good work as the Crime Syndicate’s Superwoman, whom she appropriately plays as Wonder Woman with a seductive side. And James Woods is in a class by himself as Owlman, who might best be described as the Dark Knight minus a human side. An actor known for his feral intensity, Woods dials himself back considerably, and the result is the most memorable villain of the lot.

If I had any qualms with Crisis on Two Earths, they stemmed from how little the Syndicate actually resembles its League counterparts. Sure, their powers are similar: the evil Green Lantern sports a power ring; Ultraman can fly, is really strong, and can shoot lasers from his eyes like Superman, etc. But there’s already no shortage of comic book villains with similar powers as their heroic counterparts, but who have contrasting morals. Flash has the Reverse-Flash; Green Lantern has Sinestro; and the Man of Steel has Zod, among others.

In hindsight, what gave "A Better World" a sense of poignancy is how the alternative universe League of that episode, despite being totalitarian, wasn’t all that removed from our own; they just took the mission of protecting mankind a step too far. But because the members of the Crime Syndicate look and sound so different from Superman, Batman, etc., that aspect is missing here, and with the exception of Owlman and Superwoman, they’re just another bunch of anonymous baddies deserving of a super-slugging. Nevertheless, if you’re looking for a fun escapist yarn (as I often am) or you’ve been waiting for more Justice League cartoons (as I always am), you could do far worse than Crisis on Two Earths.

ZOMBIELAND (2009), dir. Ruben Fleischer

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This review was originally posted at Cinemaspy.com

Zombieland seems more interested in eliciting laughs than causing goose bumps. It’s quite good at the former, which results in a fun time at the movies overall, and almost makes up for how slight it feels compared to George Romero’s zombie granddaddies or even the more recent films which ushered in the fast-zombie era. To be sure, there are plenty of "zeds" (and to answer your first question, these are the fast models), but the camera only settles on them when they’re devouring a victim or drooling lots of blood and bile. Is it gross? You bet. Scary? Not really.

What’s really terrifying, in Zombieland at least, is the prospect of human attachment. For that reason, the film’s main character Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) was a shut-in long before a Mad Cow-related virus decimated mankind. The erstwhile college student-turned-last surviving remnant of humanity remains highly-neurotic, living by a set of rules advocating safety above all else (Shoot a zombie in the head twice, watch out in bathrooms, etc.), which simultaneously keeps anyone from getting too close. Of course, Columbus secretly longs for the very human contact he avoids; you’d be a contradiction too, he explains, if the first girl you ever let into your dorm room tried to eat you.

Things start to change when he hitches a ride with Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), although it takes a while for their relationship to thaw. The pair are opposite numbers, evidenced when they see a zombie woman devouring a corpse: Columbus remarks that it’s a reminder of how far the world has fallen; his new companion, on the other hand, says it makes him hungry. Tallahassee lives in the now more than Columbus, and indeed, his rules for life include enjoying "the little things," such as Twinkies and bashing a zombie’s head in.

They eventually meet two more survivors: Wichita (Emma Stone) and her sister Little Rock (Abigail Breslin), who are headed for a California theme park located in a town supposedly free of the undead. After some initial conflict, the four characters decide to drive to the west coast together, and on the way, Columbus starts to feel some romantic stirrings. He also makes some predictable observations about his new friends and how his previous outlook on life might not have been the best.

In the classic zombie movies, the creatures are supposed to be reflections of ourselves, but screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick invert the formula. Their message appears to be, We’re as much walking dead as the zombies if we don’t try and live, and that means taking some risks, whether it’s our feelings or, in the case of the final 30 minutes, our very lives. Indeed, between where they initially meet and the theme park, the protagonists encounter numerous obstacles, but the undead are rarely the most imposing. Rather, it’s trust issues or past tragedies. The emphasis on the personal extends to set pieces: in one scene there is a surprise raid on a Native American souvenir shop, and zombies are definitely dispatched. But the real point is for the characters to achieve catharsis by subsequently trashing the shop, and to bond with one another while doing so.

Director Ruben Fleischer doesn’t get around to disclosing everybody’s problems, and that benefits the movie, which zips from one moment to the next with only one scene that drags (It features a certain A-list star and is, nevertheless, hilarious). The build-up to the final act promises to mix zombies and a theme park, and without giving too much away, I can say the filmmakers deliver the goods. Think of your favorite kiddie-land rides and amusement park features; for the most part, they’re here and integrated into some pretty satisfying action sequences.

The cast is uniformly terrific, especially Harrelson and Breslin. After a decade in which his career seemed to go comatose, the former has found his comeback role, the kind of potential scenery-chewer many veteran actors would line up for. But Harrelson wisely plays Tallahassee with utmost sincerity, which acts to ground some of the curious things he does and says. (When the character claims he hasn’t "cried this hard since he saw Titanic," we totally believe him.) Meanwhile, Breslin, barely recognizable from her Little Miss Sunshine days, steals quite a few scenes from the rest of the cast, including one in which she fires a shotgun into the air as a warning, then smilingly remarks on the improbability of it. "All those violent video games," she says.

Like Shaun of the Dead before it, Zombieland is an offbeat, unexpectedly sanguine entry to a niche genre. Some viewers may have problems with the last act: at the preview screening I attended, I overheard audience members questioning why anybody would choose to awaken a theme park at night, since the end result would be lots of lights and noises that would attract zombies. Their argument is totally valid, but I would point out the rumor of no zeds in that part of town, as well as the movie’s overall theme that fun often goes against self-preservation.

WORLD'S GREATEST DAD (2009), dir. Bobcat Goldthwait

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This review was originally posted at Cinemaspy.com

Comedian Bobcat Goldthwait might be best remembered for his voice, which resembles a perennially-stalled car engine, but he’s developed into an accomplished director who can generate laughs and pathos from problematic material. His 2006 Sleeping Dogs Lie revolves around an act of bestiality, and his latest features auto-erotic asphyxiation as a plot point. But in World’s Greatest Dad, he also dares to show the parent-teenager relationship as the simmering pot of antagonism that it can be, and adolescents for the borderline-sociopaths they often are.

Robin Williams plays Lance, a failed writer whose day job is teaching a sparsely-attended high school poetry course. He’s also the single dad of Kyle (Daryl Sabara), who as offspring go, might embody the nightmare of every remotely-dorky thirty-something contemplating whether to procreate. Kyle shows little intellectual potential, and his knee-jerk response to any cultural activities is mean. ("The only thing more queer than music are the people who listen to it," is a typical Kyle-ism.) Apparently, his only interest is pleasuring himself in strange and potentially-lethal ways. When such an adventure goes terribly wrong, Lance frames it as a suicide, going so far as to fabricate a good-bye note.

However, being the writer he is, Lance can’t help but embellish a little bit, making Kyle out to be smarter, more tortured and less of an asshole than he really was. Luckily, aside from the one student who was Kyle’s only friend (Evan Martin), no one else knew him well enough to say otherwise. But when the note gets out, Kyle quickly becomes an object of obsession among the entire school, romanticized by the Goth girls who scorned him, even embraced by the principal, who was a half-step away from expelling him.

Lance doesn’t help matters by faking his son’s supposed memoirs, and painting him as a closeted genius who loved Emily Dickinson. But one gets the feeling that if he had said Kyle admired Fred from Scooby-Doo, the kids would have all shown up the next day wearing orange-colored ascots. Goldthwait, who also wrote the screenplay, has something to say about how we idealize the dead, and how we tend to try drawing connections between tragic figures and ourselves. Why do we do it? In the case of Kyle, it’s a lot easier than getting to know him when he was alive. However, in filling in the proverbial blanks with false details and their own imaginations, Kyle gradually turns into the opposite of what he had been in real life.

We get treated to many, many shots of Kyle’s likeness reduced to a brand, but there are also a few scenes showing students taking genuine inspiration from his made-up story, and I would have liked if the film’s second half spent a little more time arguing why Lance should consider keeping up the ruse. Instead, everyone around him becomes self-absorbed, at which point it’s easy to root for him to call it all off. More screen time could also have been given to the Evan Martin character, who represents the real victim of Lance’s fraud: he wasn’t just Kyle’s only friend; it was true the other way around, too, and now his memory is the one that seems to matter the least.

But overall, World’s Greatest Dad pulls off the trick of being very funny with pretty dark material. Williams, who gives his best lead performance in years, manages to shoulder the entire second half by being largely reactive; one of the movie’s assets is his impish grin, which in scenes where peripheral characters wax touchy-feely about how "being a parent is the toughest job you’ll ever love" or his late son’s gift for prose, seems to take on a life of its own. At the same time, Williams imbues Lance with weighty and tangible sadness, which is surprising until one recalls he did the same in The Fisher King and Good Will Hunting.

As for the first half, it flies by on the relationship between father and son, which feels genuine in its propensity for emotional scarring. I give Goldthwait and Sabara equal credit for their keenly-observed, perfectly-executed teenage misanthrope, who proves thoroughly unlikable, but not in a cartoon way. The key was making Kyle pathetic. In a terrific scene early on, he instigates a fight wherein he gets his ass handed to him, but adding insult to injury is the other student isn’t even the jock Kyle accuses him of being. "I’m not a jock. I don’t even play sports," Kyle is told while being held down and struck.

In another standout moment, after his father purchases him an expensive new computer monitor, Kyle’s sullen response is, "It’s not even the biggest one." While it’s painful seeing this bratty kid’s combination of entitlement and ingratitude, we know that’s part of what adolescence is all about. In fact, these scenes underscore the sadness of what eventually transpires, because we watch Sabara play this petulant bastard early on and think to ourselves, "He’s just going through an obnoxious phase." Sadly, he never gets a chance to grow out of it.

A CHINESE GHOST STORY (1997), dir. Andrew Chen

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Overall rating: ** (out of ****)

This seems more like an attempt to compete with Walt Disney than Hayao Miyazaki, and that’s unfortunate since Miyazaki’s Studio Gibli effectively set the new gold standard for hand-drawn animation during the late 90’s.

Indeed, films like “Princess Mononoke” and “Spirited Away” sported gorgeous drawings and impressive storytelling. However, they were also characterized by ambitious, occasionally epic storylines that utilized elements of Japanese mythology, executed in a mature fashion that appealed to all audiences. And therein lies the big difference between Miyazaki’s films and this one, produced by Hong Kong action master Tsui Hark; although “A Chinese Ghost Story” does touch on some grown-up themes, it does so in a restless manner that’s heavy on the eye candy. It’s as if Hark believed success depended solely on getting children into the theater.

Based on a story that inspired a live-action film and several sequels, the main character of “A Chinese Ghost Story” is Ning, a wandering tax collector with a broken heart. He was too busy earning his way in the world to keep his lover, who is mostly shown via flashback, from marrying someone else. When night falls, Ning ends up in a ghost city, which looks normal except for all the green tentacle-bearing creatures walking around (and that the city is lit up like Los Angeles in “Blade Runner”). What also distracts him is a beautiful woman named Shine; he falls in love with her at first sight, and it’s not long before she takes an interest in Ning herself.

Little does our protagonist know that Shine, who is also a ghost, works for a powerful entity named Trunk, who needs to eat human souls to maintain her beauty. After helping Ning out of a jam, Shine starts to coax him back to her master; however, a series of events happen which thrust the pair into the wilderness and toward each other. They include appearances by rival ghost hunters: on one side, White Hair and his apprentice, who resemble traditional action heroes; versus the more grizzled-looking Red Beard, who is about 70-percent facial hair and 100-percent gristle. There is also another female ghost jealous of Shine’s prominence among their fellow spirits. Finally, Shine has to beware the daylight, which can reduce her to ash, so Ning carries her around in an umbrella.

I can’t help thinking Miyazaki would have made a charming love story out of a young man with an umbrella that turns into a woman. To its credit, the film does reveal that Shine has a boyfriend – another ghost who has been away for years – and the idea that faithfulness is a shared trait among the protagonists makes their pairing all the more appealing. But screenwriter Hark, more known for kinetic, frenetic martial arts movies like “The Blade” and the “Once Upon a Time in China” series, barely lets the characters be alone together before propelling them into another fast-paced action sequence. The film manages to end before exhausting us, but what we take away isn’t the story and characters, it’s all the gimmicks aimed at the kid set.

Like a lot of the animated American movies of the 90’s, there is a pet sidekick providing comic relief (including a timely urination joke), some forgettable musical numbers, and strange moments of anachronism, including a ghost whipping out what amounts to a cell phone. In addition, characters all seem to try solving their problems by breaking out magical weapons, shooting at one another with electric eye beams, or the coup de grace: activating a giant robot with rocket boosters on its legs, and is clearly made out of computer graphics. At best, children will ooh and aah at the tumult of stimulation, but since nothing looks particularly innovative on a design level, adults are more likely to dismiss the giant robot as an inevitable toy product tie-in, or to wish for tighter editing during the elaborate throwdowns.

Kids may get a kick out of “A Chinese Ghost Story,” but those looking for sophisticated animated fare will probably be bored.

(Note: “A Chinese Ghost Story” was directed by someone named Andrew Chen, but based on the opening credits, you’d think it was Hark. Known for using directors as vessels for his own cinematic visions, he’s gotten most of the credit for movies he’s produced. As such, it only seems fair he gets the brunt of the criticism this time.)

NOWHERE TO HIDE (1999), dir. Myung-Se Lee

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Overall rating: *** (out of ****)

Imagine “The French Connection” with Wong Kar-Wai and such luminaries of Japanese cinema as Seijun Suzuki and Shohei Imamura at the helm, and you’d end up with something like “Nowhere to Hide.” Although frequently over-the-top, this Korean-language thriller’s highly-stylized nature is what makes it so unique, even if one can never take it very seriously. Meanwhile, it features a terrific performance by Joong-Hoon Park as a violent slob of a cop in the Popeye Doyle tradition.

The slaying of a gangland leader puts the Homicide Division’s best detectives, Woo (Joong-Hoon) and Kim (Dong-Kun Jang), on the trail of an assassin named Sungmin (Sung-Kee Ahn). As one might expect, the two cops are yin and yang: Kim is a conventionally-handsome, introspective family man, while Woo is a blustery, mean-tempered bear of a cop whose first instinct is usually force. But saying he’s tough would be an understatement. In the film’s opening montage, Woo takes on an entire gang of hoods in a warehouse single-handedly, displaying an agility that would make Sammo Hung nod in recognition.

Writer/director Lee liberally cuts back-and forth from that pitched fight to Kim and the others from the Homicide Division, who strut around carrying metal pipes, which they use to check the air in criminals’ heads. They resemble a pack of vigilantes more than police, and that, the filmmakers seem to argue, is the reason they’re so effective at their jobs. Like many classic cop movies, success in “Nowhere to Hide” requires tossing out the proverbial rulebook and resorting to excesses like torture and beatings; however, there are blackly-humorous touches that take some sting out of the brutality (at one point, the entire division decides to beat up on a suspect, but in their unbridled enthusiasm, they trash their headquarters, too).

The subject matter has the potential to be thought-provoking, but the story occasionally gets lost amidst the hyperactive visuals. “Nowhere to Hide’s” first third is a seemingly-non-stop tumult of freeze frames, slow-motion, punk rock guitar riffs and sound-mixing straight out of a spaghetti Western. Now don’t get me wrong; the blitzkrieg of sight and sound does get the adrenaline pumping to a certain extent, which is probably Lee’s intent. My only criticism is it doesn’t ebb and flow the way, say, Kar-Wai’s equally-playful “Fallen Angels” does; rather, it talks in a steady stream of exclamation points as a Michael Bay flick might.

Luckily, once the central investigation kicks in, the visual excesses seem appropriate, what with the lengths Woo, Kim, and the others are willing to go to collar their killer. Moreover, especially during the second half, Lee actually seems to tone things down, as if realizing the performances and plot were now sufficient to maintaining his audience’s attention. The movie continues to be inventive, albeit in ways film buffs may find derivative: the occasional emphasis on powerful images over continuity, a la Suzuki; voyeuristic first-person tracking shots similar to Imamura.

Although “Nowhere to Hide” concerns the Homicide Division as opposed to narcotics, like “The French Connection,” the plot involves surveillance and pursuit (including a memorable set piece involving a train) and cops who play close to the edge. Detective Woo has the same distinctive hat-wear and smile suggesting a punch to the face that Gene Hackman packed, and once the film races to its conclusion, it leans more heavily on Joong-Hoon, who conveys surprising depths to this unapologetic thug. As he explains to a beautiful co-conspirator (Ji-Woo Choi) of Sugmin’s whom they hope to bring around to their side, he knows his job, and that’s nailing the bad guy by any means necessary.

Woo is so convincing at not being self-delusional that the denouement – one of those “waiting by the side of the road, hoping for the woman whose boyfriend you just served justice to will give you the time of day” shots, seemingly borrowed from “The Third Man” – is rather poignant.

EVIL (2003), dir. Mikael Hafstrom

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What is “pure evil?” According to this searing Swedish drama, it’s causing pain to others simply because one is bigger, or has the protection of the authorities. It’s bullying, and it’s even worse when the bully is reasonably intelligent. Stand up to this kind and they may leave you alone temporarily, but all the while, they’ll be plotting any manner of alternative ways to get at you.

At the beginning of “Evil,” public school thug Erik Ponti (Andreas Wilson) is accused of being exactly this sort of psychopath. He scraps with his classmates, has been suspected of stealing, and despite what glimmer of academic ability he has shown, there is little chance he’ll be admitted to college. What Erik’s critics don’t know is the physical abuse he’s endured at the hands of his stepfather; only Erik’s mother knows, and in desperation, she sends him off to a private boarding school called Stjarnsberg, pleading with him to save what’s left of his future.

From the outside, Stjarnsberg looks like any other preparatory institution for sons of the rich and prominent. Despite being 17, Erik is roomed with younger, fresher-faced students, and his roommate is Pierre (Henrik Lundstrom), an affable dork who brings him up to speed on how things are run. Here the upperclassmen police the lowerclassmen, punishing infractions such as public cursing with some physical reprimand – for example, one student gets struck over the head with a spoon. But it goes further: basically, the lowerclassmen have to do the upperclassmen’s bidding, and when Erik balks, he finds himself at odds with Silverhielm (Gustaf Starsgard), who proves one heck of a sadistic senior.

Pretty much the entire Stjarnsberg upper class sets out to make Erik submit. When he won’t clean a pile of their mud-encrusted shoes, they make him dig ditches in the yard and other forms of hard labor. As for the headmaster, he generally turns a blind eye to whatever the older students do to the younger. Worse, there is a boxing square where lowerclassmen can be challenged to fight, but it’s always two-to-one in favor of upper-classmen, meaning it’s really a place for bigger students to beat smaller, weaker boys into pulp. Erik would be the exception; however, he refuses to engage in fisticuffs out of his promise to his mother to stay out of trouble.

Viewers will figure out early that Erik gets off the sidelines (note the scene where he and Pierre bond over their mutual love of “Rebel Without a Cause,” and the latter says his favorite scene is when James Dean is standing over his best friend’s dead body). To be fair, “Evil” doesn’t telegraph itself quite so cleanly, and it’s pretty good until about halfway through, when a plotline involving Erik’s swimming ability – which gives the underclassmen their first opportunity to steal some glory from the uppers – gets abandoned in favor of escalating antics (although nothing quite tops the use of a bucket containing human waste during the film’s middle).

What lesson are we supposed to take away from all this? Authority figures with absolute power can corrupt absolutely, be they favored students or step-parents? That’s all well and good, but as far as I can tell, the movie never presents or proposes any solution to this problem (and “Evil” does seem to think it’s that). If Erik is to be our example, the only real hope appears to be enduring indefinitely or getting oneself a good attorney. True, he does get a love interest for distraction, but their relationship is strangely underdeveloped, although one scene which amounts to, “You appear to have hypothermia. Let’s have sex,” is pretty funny.

The movie does try to say something about how abuse can shape us, either as individuals or as a mass: Erik was a thug because his stepfather would verbally and physically hurt him; meanwhile, Pierre points out that when Silverhielm was an underclassman himself, he probably had to endure atrocities similar to what he dishes out now. When the movie does allow Silverhielm an explanation, he says Erik’s defiance in and of itself caused him a “living Hell.” This implies the cyclical nature of bullying at Stjarnsberg breeds peer pressure; poor Silverhielm must make his charges fall in line, or else.

However, the most telling scene about the effects of abuse might be when Erik gets one of his tormentors alone, acts like he’s going to kill them, and starts explaining how he will commit the murder and get away with it. It all sounds half-baked, but the victim breaks down and starts begging for their life, at which point Erik looks at them, genuinely half-surprised. “You really thought I was going to do it, didn’t you?” he says, and the answer is: Of course they did. When a person has spent so much time around human beings at their absolute worst, what else would they expect of anyone but the same?

Overall rating: ** (out of ****)

INNER SENSES (2002), dir. Chi-Leung Law

Ever since “The Sixth Sense” came out almost a decade ago, various movies have tried following in the footsteps of M. Night Shymalan’s supernatural-themed drama, mostly by packaging boogedy-boogedy tales with twist endings. The made-in-Hong Kong “Inner Senses” starts off as such a retread, but doesn’t take very long before finding its own way. The path it takes may be more romantic and mainstream than “The Sixth Sense,” yet the film is entertaining nonetheless, even without the twist ending, which is actually more like a twisted middle.

As in Shymalan’s film, “Inner Senses’” main protagonists consist of a fragile soul who claims to see dead people, and a haunted-looking psychiatrist who tries to help. It should be noted that the predecessor starred Haley Joel Osment as a young boy whose “I… see… dead people” quickly became a popular catchphrase; “Inner Senses” star “Karena Lam,” on the other hand, is an extremely beautiful young woman. My point is we don’t expect the “The Sixth Sense’s” surrogate father-son relationship so much as a romantic one, especially given how good-looking a couple she and co-star Leslie Cheung make from the outset.

However, before these two can ride off into the sunset, they have to deal with the problems of Lam’s character Yan, who claims she isn’t sick but really does see ghosts. We first glimpse her ability shortly after she has moved into a spacious but creepily drab-looking apartment, and a man appears in a room one moment and is gone the next. Having already seen numerous doctors to no avail, Yan ends up with Cheung’s intelligent, rational-seeming, and thoroughly workaholic Dr. Jim, who gives university lectures on how ghosts are merely the result of years of cultural stimuli.

According to Jim, Chinese culture is especially steeped in the supernatural. “We use ghosts to teach things,” he says, giving an example of how parents often tell their children, “Do this or don’t do that, otherwise a ghost will get you.” It is interesting that, in a Hollywood ghost-related film, the supporting cast is typically composed of non-believers, but almost the opposite is the case here – Jim is practically surrounded by superstitious, spirit-appeasing characters. In one scene, a respected colleague admits he will not take Yan in, despite being married to her cousin. Is it because Yan thinks she sees ghosts? On the contrary, it’s because she might actually see them, and both this rational-seeming medical professional and his wife are terrified of ghosts.

“There are already so many people in Hong Kong. Where would the ghosts live?” Jim asks his colleague. Nevertheless, in typical cinematic psychiatry-fashion, he and Yan manage to develop a close friendship over a short period of time, as he attempts to unearth the repressed memories responsible for her specters, including being abandoned by her parents when very young and rejected by a boyfriend after getting too possessive. But is burying the past and boosting her self-esteem really all Yan needs? Meanwhile, what’s up with the strange changes the good doctor appears to go through, including insomnia and flashbacks that initially seem connected to Yan’s childhood?

Like “The Sixth Sense,” there is a mighty twist, only it happens about an hour in as opposed to the last five minutes. As such, “Inner Senses” is a movie of two halves, the first carried along by scare scenes and the burgeoning relationship between the two leads, the second by recycling the first half’s themes of repression, trauma and suicide, and amping up the stuff going bump in the night. Unfortunately, the latter represents the film at its weakest; “Inner Senses” has some creepy-effective moments early on and in the middle, as we wonder if Jim’s problems are purely psychological, the result of a fear of intimacy. But as soon as the horror gets more visceral, the movie just gets grosser and goofier. On the bright side, it culminates in what could be the most touching necrophilia scene ever committed to celluloid.

But at least the first half sets up enough clues that we don’t feel cheated once the twist kicks in. We also come to care about the protagonists; Kam and Cheung convey vulnerability well, and Cheung’s performance is particularly great, the actor practically embodying such qualities as intelligence, decency, and empathy. He also shows a wealth of versatility in scenes I won’t get give away, except to say they could be compared to Mickey Rourke in “Angel Heart,” which I mean as the highest compliment. It should be noted that “Inner Senses” was the last movie Cheung worked on before committing suicide, and watching him try to help someone with their personal demons seems highly ironic, knowing how he ultimately couldn’t outrun his own.

Overall rating: *** (out of ****)