Method

I am very interested in the Belle Gunness story , and I had great hopes for this movie before reading the reviews here. I hope its not as bad as I hear. I'll be back to give my opinion. I would like to see some really well investigated movie made on Belles life. I would like questions answered that apparently aren't in this film. Although it is bound to be enjoyable if taken at face value, I got interested in it because it was supposed to be about Belle and the murders at LaPorte.. when I went to look to view it , I find its called something else other than Method and is only loosely related to Bele Gunness after all. Shame . Its called Dead Even outside of the USA. .

The expression "method" was coined by the acting teacher Lee Strasberg to describe his unique interpretation of the acting techniques of the Russian director Constantin Stanislavsky. In the 1950s, Strasberg was the guru of the famed Actors Studio of New York where many great film actors honed their craft with the master. Strasberg's authoritarian style was legendary as he watched the actors perform scenes and monologues and then proceeded to psychoanalyze the actors and their choices.

Mr. Strasberg would be truly appalled by the trite and cliché-ridden "Method." The film seeks to weave two stories in a "play-within-a-play" style. Unfortunately, neither one of the stories is interesting, and the main problem is the script. Much of the dialogue was laughable. Also, the production values of this film seemed amateurish with special effects and scenes of violence that were not credible. Sadly, the good premise of a story about an actress who loses touch with reality and "becomes the character" was not realized, despite the good efforts of the cast.

The classic film "A Double Life" (1947) was successful in developing this premise as the actor playing Othello is so enmeshed within his character that he commits a real-life murder. The screenwriters for "A Double Life" were the brilliant team of Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon, from whom the writers of "Method" could have learned a lesson worthy of the great teacher Lee Strasberg.

A total waste of a rental fee. The story involves a method actress who believes in 'becoming the character'. She plays a serial killer and bodies start turning up. Did she or didn't she?

It's an interesting idea, but why-why, why, oh why--would producers spend so much money on period sets, fine actors, beautiful photography, and then use such an incoherent, cliché-ridden script. My mother and I watched it together, and together we couldn't figure out what was going on half the time. The movie jumps back and forth between the film and the film-within-the-film and the filming-of-the-film-within-the-film (still in period costume, so you don't know at first), and from reality to hallucination. At the end it's not really made clear who killed who, and some of the answers aren't really credible. Why waste a lovely woman like Elizabeth Hurley in such a piece of poo-poo?

Jeremy Sisto and Elizabeth Hurley very earnestly work hard to make this shockingly bad film decent, but they simply can't. It is a maudlin mess of poorly written and directed dreck from Duncan Roy. Plot summary already attached to this film's IMDb posting, I will dispense with much of the redundant plot summary, but when Hurley barks out of the shack door to drifter Sisto's character "Hey, can you mend a fey-ance?" (it is turn of the century Indiana after all, so expect heavy accents), I knew this thing was heading down state in a durn hurry. Perhaps five minutes later, gentleman callers are arranged by mail to come see the impossibly beautiful Hurley to arrange marriage. With heavy brows does our fence fixer Sisto disapprove of Hurley's mail order suitors, referred to as her brother. Do we even need to delve into the budding melodrama of this period piece? Wait! O dreaded gimmicks, worse than a triptych, first person narrative, or chapter supertitles, we are fed a steaming dish of a film within a film. My word, I don't think this kind of thing has ever been done before! Oh wait, well, you know. The only interesting things about Method are Hurley's beauty, Sisto's effort, and the infamous off screen battles between the insane director Duncan Roy and Liz Hurley. The final product, though, stinks to high heaven.

Pretend you are walking up the steps with a few tokens in your hand to play Plinko on "The Price Is Right". You line up token number one, release it and it zigzags down and lands into $0. That is the feeling you get after watching this movie. The story revolves around a famous actress who is back in the limelight and trying to disprove rumors she is more than just a pretty face but can actually act. The movie plays out with the story line moving between the movie being made and the characters involved in that movie production. The movie title Method refers to the type of acting where the actor/actress immerses themselves into a role. This female character plays a 19th century killer thus that mindset plays into the actress in reality. You can guess where things may end up heading. The story is rather muddled, characters are unlikable and unsympathetic and overall, this is not interesting or even visually intriguing. Simply put: avoid.