Anya, Jace, and I went and saw "The Manchurian Candidate" last night. I must say that I was pleasantly surprised at how creepy the movie is. The whole movie really made me feel paranoid and uncomfortable.

Jonathan Demme is a master at filming via a character's point of view so that it feels like the characters are talking directly to you by looking directly into the camera.

Denzel and Meryl were brilliant as always. I don't think it's in them to give a bad performance. Even on their bad days, Denzel and Meryl are still better than most other actors. But in this movie, Denzel Washington was absolutely brilliant. This is one of his best performances of recent years.

Liev Schreiber really deserves a lot of credit also. Although it's Denzel's movie to carry, Liev had the more difficult part. Denzel's character was just different variations of crazy, while Liev had to run the gamut of emotions.

The movie was beyond creepy though. I don't think a movie has ever made me that uncomfortable to sit in a darkened theater. I kept thinking that I should be looking around and getting the heck out of dodge before the big, bad corporation came and took over my body.

The movie had a few holes which I guess are mainly due to extensive editing. Characters that you thought were going to mean something just kind of fizzled out.

The only major gripe that I have is that a corporation doesn't have to implant chips into people to gain access to the White House. Money works just fine and is a whole heckuva lot easier. ;-)

I think that it's a pretty good remake. The original is one of the all time great political thrillers, and I have to say that this one ranks right up there with it.

I give it an A-

matt out