THE OTHERS [2001]

Tesis director Alejandro Amenábar's English language debut, The Others, is a good old fashioned Gothic ghost story.
Nicole Kidman plays a troubled mother of two ill children who live in a big ol' isolated house which plays host to a series of supernatural events.  Kidman is at her best when she's playing slightly mad people and here she excels, with the help of some impressive child casting, the always mildly creepy Fionnula Flannagan and some truly creepy photography.  Instead of needing flashy FX or rapid edits, The Others slowly chills the bones with it's slow-burning reveals and quiet but really eerie atmosphere.  I love me a good ghost story and this one delivered the goods with full satisfaction.

4 foggy days out of 5

TESIS [1996]

aka Thesis

Spanish director Alejandro Amenábar made an impressive debut with the tightly wound thriller Tesis.
By telling the story of a university girl who stumbles upon a genuine snuff film of a former student, the film dissects the human fascination with violence, it's many different forms and reactions to it and the United States' violent effect on the rest of the world's cinema.  It starts off as a clever observation on it's subject matter then slowly twists into an effective thriller packed with some impressively frightening scenes and just enough humor to not become completely repulsive.  I loved trying to guess who the murderer was and it did a fantastic job at making you second guess every single character every two minutes or so.  For a film so absorbed in violence it never resorts to anything overly graphic but those searching for that sort of thing have the supremely inferior 8MM to turn to.  

4 Birthdays Of Infanta out of 5