The Watcher

When I was in my mid 20s, my sister and I made a cross country trip for college and ended up in a Colorado motel where the beds were placed at odd angles in the room. We were tired from driving all day, and took the room anyway. A decade later we read the Gay Talese article about a motel where the owner had watched people have sex in their rooms, but it wasn't until the Netflix series that we realized we had probably been victims of the peeping Tom, Gerald Foos. Then we realized the beds were placed so he could see us.

Whether he actually watched us or not, I will never know, but knowing that something like that could happen added to the creep factor of watching this movie for me.

In the movie, the characters played by Cage and Tunney buy a motel in the desert after a family tragedy. The isolation doesn't do anything to heal their marriage and they sink further into an unhealthy and depressing relationship. As his wife sleeps, the Cage character seeks solace in watching the guests in the rooms.

At this point in the film, it isn't quite clear that the motel is a metaphor for hell, but it will do until one comes along. Everyone in the town seems to be engaged in S&M sex or sex with hookers. The sheriff seems to either be the devil or someone who does a good job acting like him. And, of course, the desert is hot as hell.

In many ways, the images in the movie reminded me of "The Sentinel," a 70s film about a woman who must guard the gates of hell. They made me uneasy, which is what a movie like this is supposed to do.

And the minie helped Nic Cage work off a little more tax debt, and that is a good thing. He's a fine actor, and this movie is one more step to try to get back to acting in real films,

Nothing anywhere near perfect, or even super logical, but I still enjoyed watching 'Looking Glass'.

It builds up the tension and darkness well, with the ghost town feel to everything. The cinematography, particularly the lighting, is rather nice. The premise and its execution, while intriguing, does have problems, but the two leads are fun to watch.

Nicolas Cage (Ray) and Robin Tunney (Maggie) make for a good pairing, both give satisfactory performances. Marc Blucas is, I thought anyway, pretty decent in his role as Howard; though the writing does let his character down. Other negatives for the film include the average music and crappy opening credits.

Overall though, I felt suitably entertained by this.

What would you expect from a Hotel that Nicolas Cage is overseeing? Madness, pure madness ... actually it is not even as mad as one might expect. It has some colorful and interesting characters ... and some storylines that do not accumulate to anything. It was nice seeing Robin Tunney again .. especially because I did a revisit to the original Craft movie she was part of. I was surprised that she got naked for this - not sure if that bothers or enlightens you, that is up to you to decide.

The movie generally speaking has some sexual undertones and depravities - depending on your moral viewpoint of course. Characters may not always be who they seem to be, but I don't think the twist here is very surprising. Still and even if you got fed up with Cage in movies like this one, it is not that bad (or maybe I'm being too nice again)

It's one of those movies that, when you are clicking through 572 channels of useless brain numbing odd cooking, weird sporting, reality programming, infomercials, you suddenly land on a movie ... you watch for a few seconds and realize it's one you've seen 6 times already so you keep clicking, then land on THIS movie and you watch for a few seconds, and settle in and enjoy the whole darn thing because, even though it's a bit odd and melodramatic, i't's GOOD! And then you go on imdb and talk about how everyone dissing it is wrong because you just really enjoyed it.

The next day you realize it was 2am and you always enjoy whatever you finally find to watch after clicking through 572 channels.

But it isn't too bad. Nic is always entertaining if nothing else, and usually he adds something else.. oh ya, great acting because no matter how bad the movie is he always shines.

I give it a 5 because when combing through bad movies to get through a few hours, this is a good bad movie to watch.

I have to say that I don't think it was as bad as some of the other reviews say, I kept watching it till the end. However, it wasn't a movie I'd say "Hey, go out and see Looking Glass!" to someone. It is a slow movie that's definitely missing a lot of explanations, along with many plot themes that are plain unrealistic and things don't really add up at times. Many actions are unnecessary and make you wonder why they even threw them into the movie at all. Like I said, the movie wasn't great but it wasn't a complete waste of time, it was free and I was bored so it gave me something to do. If you just want something to occupy your time and it's free, check it out.