Diabolique (1996)

A remake of a 1955 French thriller about a murder at a boarding school that creates and sustains a thick, oppressive atmosphere. There are some superb camera movements that heighten the drama or elevate the uncertainty. It’s not unfair to say that it’s a little bit Hitchcock.
Sharon Stone occasionally slips into melodrama but mostly she does a fine job, and it goes without saying that Kathy Bates is always good, but for me it was the fragile Isabelle Adjani that stole the show.
It tries a little too hard to make the twists at the end extra twisty but that didn't detract from the quality performances of the three women that got the story to that point.

3½ baptisms out of 5

Analyze This (1999)

De Niro takes the NY gangster persona that Scorsese gave to him and sucks all the gravitas out of it. He plays it for laughs. It felt insulting at first that he would disrespect the genre so dismissively, but as it went on I stopped caring. He plays a mob boss with crippling emotional problems. He believes they can be solved by going to see a shrink. Billy Crystal, the shrink, drifts through the film and thinks he’s in a Woody Allen production much of the time. He was more irritating than irritated. It spawned a sequel. I won't be watching it.

2 hits of the pillow out of 5