Good heavens, there's been an awful sameness to the reviews I've been doing for CTmovies.com in the not-yet-a-month since that web feature went up. My first review was of Against the Ropes, a boxing movie co-starring and directed by Charles S. Dutton -- and my third non-video web-originated review was of Secret Window, which co-starred Charles S. Dutton. My second review was of Twisted, a serial-killer movie which plays on the idea that the protagonist might be committing murders in her sleep -- a potential scenario that is also raised in Secret Window. Now, my fourth review is going to be of Taking Lives, yet another serial-killer movie ... and it has music by Philip Glass, just like Secret Window! Aaaaaaaugh!

Anyway, I caught Taking Lives tonight, and I have to say it was one of those awful experiences where you start out thinking, "Hey, this could be a pretty darn cool moody kind of movie -- one of those movies where it doesn't make sense that the cops always walk around with flashlights instead of turning the lights on, but you don't care because it all FEELS so cool." But then, after about an hour of the police-procedural stuff, the movie suddenly, sharply, quickly spirals into silliness -- a silliness which grows increasingly tedious. Sigh.

U2 fans will be especially dismayed to hear 'Bad' play over the proceedings.

On the bright side, it is always cool to see a Hollywood movie in which the Canadian dollar bill used in the 1983 scene is the exact kind of dollar bill that we had back then (nobody uses dollar bills any more, of course), while the 5-dollar bill used in the 2002 scene is the exact kind of 5-dollar bill that we now use nowadays. I remember someone once said that one of the most startling things about Atom Egoyan's Exotica was Seeing Bruce Greenwood Pay The Babysitter (Sarah Polley) With Canadian Money -- it's just not something we're used to seeing. (I think the first X-Men also had a scene where we see Canadian money, in the bar where Rogue first meets Wolverine -- who is, of course, Canadian himself.)

Hmmm, come to think of it, how can 'Bad' be featured in the 1983 scene (along with The Clash's 'Should I Stay Or Should I Go', which came out on 1982's Combat Rock) when the song did not come out until the 1985 (or was it 1984?) album The Unforgettable Fire?

Anyway, I am just dying to find out what the critics in Quebec make of this film -- Marie-Josée Croze, she who had her first big hit with Maelstrom and who stole the Best Actress award from Nicole Kidman at Cannes for her performance in The Barbarian Invasions, has a minor role as one of the Montreal police force's medical examiners; but the main cops are played by Tchéky Karyo and Olivier Martinez, both of whom are from France, not Quebec, and therefore, for all I know, may not sound or act like authentic Quebecois.