THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES (2002) ***1/2 Many directors can set you up to be startled by a monster jumping out of the dark. Some directors are so good that they can scare you with a ringing telephone. Mark Pellington is the only director to make me jump out of my seat with a leaky water faucet. Pellington and Fred Murphy play every scene perfectly, disorienting shots are an integral part of it, but not so much as to allow you to prepare for them; the green and red spectral electronica is the realization of a value unlaminated by Jean Luc Goddard. Richard Gere is at the absolute top of his game, there are so many scenes that could have been laughable with a lesser actor in the frame...instead the intensity builds to essentially unbearable levels...the result is an audience in every bit as much fear for itself as it is for the actors. Alan Bates is at least Gere's equal, the dialogue between the two is esoterica for the ages if at a diletantte level, and Bates' refusal to go any further is a warning that we might heed even if Gere does not. Laura Linney and Debra Messing are the ladies who perpetually orbit Gere anytime, onstage or off, and for once he is not let down by his leading ladies: even several of the actors in roles so peripheral as to be described as "extras" are so effective and striking as to linger on the palette of the mind. I'm not going to lie about it-it helps to have a construct of reality, like my own, flexible enough to be open to the possibilities of dark and prophetic giants moths, but this film is for absolutely anyone who considers cinema an art, entertainment, or morality compass (good or bad). A large part of the power is, in fact, the enhanced sense of reality that you're left with.
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