Ceticultsot Beautiful, moving film.

Spoonatects Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

Mischa Redfern I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Skyler Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Leofwine_draca Unfortunately THE LODGER is one of those films which loses me from the outset thanks to the all-too-glossy "look" and feel. Given the nature of the subject matter this should be a production crying out for grim and gritty styling, but instead this has a slick sheen of the kind seen in US TV shows like CSI.In addiction, the story is nothing to write home about, despite the promise inherent in the premise. It's an erstwhile remake of the silent Hitchcock movie of the same name, presented in the modern day, with two seemingly separate plot strands: weary detectives are tracking a modern day Jack the Ripper, while a houseowner gets to grips with her mysterious new tenant.Sadly, the detective plot is superficial and largely uninteresting, purely because it's so hackneyed; even a solid actor like Alfred Molina can do little with the material, which I found boring more than anything else. Meanwhile, the 'tenant' plot is equally lame, having been done to death in many a 1990s-era psycho-thriller, and the characters are so underwritten as to be cardboard.Lame attempts to build mystery are all too familiar and the double-twist ending is predictable in the extreme. Sadly, there are all too many of these middle-of-the-road thrillers churned out by Hollywood; they contain zero memorable material yet at the same time aren't bad enough to stay in the memory for the wrong reasons. They're just insipid and entirely forgettable.

Foxbarking This movie fits into my category of a movie that I felt compelled to continue watching but ultimately ended up being disappointing. That does not mean I will withhold a recommendation from the film, however. I did not read very much about "The Lodger" before watching it. I was hoping that this would add an air of suspense to my viewing. It did, but it is possible it may have also led me to criticize it more harshly than I would have if I had known more about the plot.My first problem with the movie came very early on. Detective Manning gets a letter from evidence which is very obviously a facsimile of the "Dear Boss" letter from the Jack the Ripper investigations. This letter was the first of three letters that have been studied along with the Ripper case. "Dear Boss" was the first letter that mentioned the name "Jack the Ripper" and since it mentioned he would clip the next victim's ear and the next victim was found missing an earlobe, it was considered evidence. I am a bit of a Ripperologist, but I am sure that you do not have to be such to recognize this letter. In this movie, however, two more murders have to take place before Jack the Ripper is even mentioned.This movie is way too packed with red herrings. It leads you down a path believing that a lady in the movie is psychotic and imagining that she has a lodger living with her who may be committing the murders. It introduces a tense family situation with Molina's character that adds suspicion. There is a whole situation about the death penalty that is meant to lead you to believe the murders were meant to cause the wrong man to be executed to prohibit the death penalty. There are plenty more I am not going to mention.What I enjoyed most is that this movie was paced perfectly. Even though there were several things that I did not like, I kept watching it because I was drawn in and I wanted the movie to reveal to me what was really going on. Many times when I get aggravated with a movie, I will just look up spoilers to save me the time of watching the whole thing. I did not want to do that with this movie though.However, after the movie ended, I wished that I had looked up the spoilers. The ending made very little sense. The police had a psychological profile that obviously had been written up by someone who did not even have their associates of arts in psychology. All of the things in the movie that were supposed to arouse suspicion were pointless, and the ending became simply as mundane as possible. In writing suspense movies, there are two plot lines that have been overused in recent years and should be abandoned. The first plot line is that the entire thing was set up by one of the main characters who has a dissociative identity. It worked once or twice, but shouldn't be used anymore. The second plot is the one in which you have an obvious scenario that the viewer is pulled away from for a much more bizarre plot. Once the viewer gets involved in the alternate possibilities, at the end of the movie it is revealed that the obvious scenario was real and everything else was there simply so you wouldn't suspect it. It's a disease of writers thinking they are utilizing Occam's Razor to make a story simple, but more fascinating. It doesn't work and it insults the viewer and wastes the viewer's time. TThis movie is of the second plot line and for this reason I recommend that you skip it and watch something else.

Michael_Elliott The Lodger (2009) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Yet another remake of Alfred Hitchcock's 1927 film but this one is set in current day Los Angeles where a maniac is killing hookers. While a detective (Alfred Molina) tries to solve the case, an unhappily married woman (Hope Davis) rents her guest house to a mysterious writer (Simon Baker). One could argue that we really didn't need yet another version of this story but I think they did enough interesting things here to make this version worth watching. I think it falls well short of the 1927 and 1944 versions but I did like a few of the changes they did here. Setting the story in current times allows the filmmakers to use stuff like DNA and other scientific things to try to solve the cases. It also helps that the filmmakers are able to use the Jack the Ripper sideline as someone trying to copy his murders. I will say that the final ten minutes of the movie are without question the best thing in the film because it offers up a couple very nice twists that actually work. I'm certainly not going to give them away but I enjoyed them very much. The performances are also another major plus as Molina is excellent as the detective obsessed with solving the case. Shane West is good as his partner and Philip Baker Hall is also strong as the police chief. Rachel Leigh Cook plays the detective's daughter in a small role. Both Davis and Baker are also good in their portion of the story. I think some of the attempted style is a bit overdone and especially the scenes showing the L.A. freeways. I think less would have been a bit more in regards to the style thrown in by the director. Still, fans of the story will probably want to check this one out and while it's not a complete success it's at least good enough to be worth watching.

chrichtonsworld It could be that I missed something and that I need to re watch this movie. But honestly I already know that I won't do it. "The Lodger" is not a bad movie. It has just enough to make it interesting. A good cast,great cinematography and another take on the Jack the Ripper mythos. Only it suffers greatly from the lack of real suspense and tension. The mystery is there. There are several questions raised you want to be answered. The fact that only a fraction of those questions get explained make it a frustrating affair. Misdirection is a tool often used in thrillers in order to surprise us. And I must admit that the movie does promise a wonderful twist. However the twist is set up in such a way that it leaves too much room for different interpretations which destroys the desired effect. You won't be shocked or surprised,maybe a little bit confused. And such an ending could have been forgiven had the movie been fun to watch. "The Lodger" takes it self so seriously that it undermines the efforts of the cast to make this movie more interesting than it is. At one point you just know how events will play out. The lack of tension,humor and drama only are compensated by your drive to solve the mystery. And the hope that the director succeeded in fooling us in creating one big surprise at the end. But when the credits start to roll you can't shake the feeling that you wasted your time.