Category: Crime

The Girl on the Train (2016) / Z-View

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The Girl on the Train (2016)

Director: Tate Taylor

Screenplay:  Erin Cressida Wilson based on the novel by Paula Hawkins

Stars: Emily Blunt, Haley Bennett, Rebecca Ferguson, Justin Theroux, Luke Evans, Allison Janney and Lisa Kudrowan.

The Pitch: “Let’s make a movie based on The Girl on the Train!”

Tagline: What you can see can hurt you.

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

It’s rare for a movie to have as many unlikable characters as The Girl on the Train.  Get this, we have…

  • An alcoholic, out of work, ex-wife who rides a train daydreaming when she’s not showing up at her ex-husband’s house and scaring his wife.
  • An ex-husband who is cheating with every woman he can get his, uh, hands on.
  • A wife who gained her husband by cheating with him while he was still married.
  • A woman who is living with a man but is cheating on him with a married man.
  • An abusive man with a hair-trigger temper who is living with a woman.
  • A psychologist who is crossing the line with the sexual behavior of one of his clients.
  • Two detectives investigating a murder who seem to have no interest in solving it.

 There’s a murder.  Some red herrings are given.  What you see is not what you think you’re seeing.  The murder is solved.  One of those unlikable characters did it and gets his/her just reward.  The end.

Based on the best-selling book.

Rating:

13 Running Facts About “The Fugitive”

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Eric D. Snider and Mental_Floss present 13 Running Facts About The Fugitive.  Here are three of my favorites…

2. IT WAS ALMOST ALEC BALDWIN INSTEAD OF HARRISON FORD.
Kopelson, a fan of the TV series, had been trying off and on to get the film made since the 1970s. It was finally about to happen in the early ’90s, with Alec Baldwin in the lead role and Walter Hill (48 Hrs.) as director, but Warner Bros. didn’t think Baldwin had enough star power. “With an expensive movie, the consideration is, what star can ‘open’ it,” Kopelson said, “and the studio wasn’t certain at that time that Alec could do it.” (By the way, this was the secondtime Baldwin had lost a role to Harrison Ford, who also replaced him as Jack Ryan in The Hunt for Red October sequel Patriot Games.)

9. HARRISON FORD WASN’T FAKING HIS BEFUDDLEMENT IN THE INTERROGATION SCENE.
To lend more realism to the scene where Dr. Kimble is first questioned by police, Davis had Ford and the other actors do it with only half a script—the cops’ half. Ford, not knowing in advance what the questions would be, had to ad lib responses in character. Naturally, this came across as being defensive and flustered, which was exactly what the situation called for. Acting!

13. THE DAM SCENE COST $2 MILLION, INCLUDING ABOUT $60,000 FOR DUMMIES.
The maze of tunnels leading to the dam were fake, and built in a Chicago warehouse. The last section of the tunnel—the part that opens over the dam, where Kimble and Gerard have their dramatic confrontation—was actually transported from Chicago to the Cheoah Dam in North Carolina, where it was rigged to look like it belonged there. For the big jump, there were no stuntmen involved. Ford himself (secured by a wire) did the shot where Kimble looks over the edge and considers jumping, and dummies were used for the plunge itself. Six Harrison Ford lookalike dummies were commissioned, each costing somewhere between $7000 and $12,000. They did not survive intact, much to the dismay of their manufacturer, who’d been hoping to re-rent them.

7 Real-Life Horror Stories Behind “American Horror Story”

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Kristin Hunt and Mental_Floss present 7 Real-Life Horror Stories Behind American Horror Story.  Here are three of my favorites…

2. THE BLACK DAHLIA
Also during season one, American Horror Story revealed that one of the past guests at the “Murder House” was Elizabeth Short, better known as The Black Dahlia. While AHS suggested a creepy dentist raped the aspiring actress and then let a ghost mutilate her, Short’s real-life killer remains a mystery. A mother and her child stumbled upon her body, which was sliced in half and drained of blood, on the morning of January 15, 1947. Her death became a media sensation, and newspapers quickly dubbed her “The Black Dahlia.” This was supposedly both a play on the 1946 film noir The Blue Dahlia and a reference to Short’s love of sheer black dresses.

Because the cuts on her body pointed to a murderer with surgical skills, the police began searching for doctors. They never identified the culprit, but people are still naming suspects to this day. In 2014, retired homicide detective Steve Hodel produced evidence that his own father was the killer.

5. THE AXEMAN OF NEW ORLEANS
Another NOLA murderer appeared in American Horror Story’s witchy third season. That would be the so-called Axeman of New Orleans. The anonymous killer terrorized the city between 1918 and 1919 by breaking into houses and slaying residents with an axe. In March of 1919, he reportedly wrote to The Times-Picayune, threatening a fresh attack but promising to spare any home that was playing jazz, his favorite music.

Jazz was blared across the city that night, so no one was killed. But sporadic attacks continued until October, when a grocer got the final blow. Although some speculated that the deaths were spurred by Mafia feuds, the Axeman’s motive and identity were never determined. He remains famous for his peculiar letter to the editor, which was recreated on American Horror Story.

6. JOHN WAYNE GACY, KILLER CLOWN
John Wayne Gacy’s crimes filled out two separate seasons of American Horror Story. In AHS: Freak Show, his spirit is channeled through Twisty the Clown, a disfigured children’s entertainer who kidnaps and kills. Later, in AHS: Hotel, the same actor who played Twisty (John Carroll Lynch) returned to play Gacy for “Devil’s Night,” a special Halloween episode featuring other notorious serial killers, including Aileen Wuornos and Jeffrey Dahmer.

It’s easy to see why AHS used Gacy twice, given his backstory. From 1972 through 1978, Gacy sexually assaulted and murdered at least 33 teenage boys. When he wasn’t luring those young men into his suburban home, he was dressing up as Pogo the Clown for kids’ birthday parties. After the police uncovered mass graves in his crawlspace and throughout his property, Gacy was put on trial and sentenced to die by lethal injection. He spent 14 years on death row before he was executed in 1994.