The House on Carroll Street

This movie had its moments, but i actually enjoyed it. Hitchcock style film with an interesting plot. If you like hitchcock, you will like this. The cast is good with Kelly McGillis and Jeff Daniels very well casted and Mandy Patinkin is excellent in a rare role.

Brooklyn NY 76 Carroll st my father's Nick name was Jimmy Carroll in the 70s and early 80s then we moved around the corner to Summit Street in my grandmother's building Red Hook Brooklyn when those were the days.

Nick Bamundo Brooklyn NY.

Many of us are too young to remember the McCarthy era, but that doesn't mean we should not be aware of it because many of the actions occurring during that time have been going on the last seven years.

Kelly McGillis, who did a great job in Witness with Harrison Ford, is Emily, a woman caught up in the witch hunt that occurred during that era. Quite by accident, she stumbles on a plot by these same people in power to smuggle Nazi war criminals into the country, using the names of dead Jews, if you can believe that.

Mandy Patinkin plays a great evildoer in the government, and he even looks like the former President that made his reputation during this time.

Jeff Daniels (The Squid and the Whale , Good Night and Good Luck) is very good a a farm-boy turned FBI agent who falls for Emily and helps her uncover the plot.

In the absence of CGI and FX, it was great acting that really made this an enjoyable movie.

The film has good pace, and excellent photography, and is very much in the style of Hitchcock even to the music which, at times, one feels was almost written by Bernard Herrmann. A simple story perfectly developed, with an economical and sharp script.

The House on Carroll Street is a movie that knows what it is like to be a movie from thirty years before it.

It is a delicious throwback to the days of Alfred Hitchcock. In fact, there are only two items in the House on Carroll Sreet to suggest that this movie is NOT a product of that decade. A) the cast of this movie were just being born when Hitchcock was in his prime. and b) there is a bit of frontal nudity. Needless to say, you would never see that in Hitchcock's days (in fact before he made Psycho it was considered indecent to show qa toilet being finished on screen, or so I heard)

The makers of The House on Carroll Street have a great eye for detail, and they recapture the period beautifully. Everything has been carefully assembled, down to the last fat stripped tie. If the House on Carroll Street was released thirty years earlier, it may have been a classic, but by the 1980's the Hitchcock/film-noir formula had become somewhat generic. There are still great movies like Chinatown, but there are a lot of critically bashed items as well such as Brian de Palma's work. The look of this movie took me back, but not the storyline. It feels shallow, derivative and also rushed, so it's not as great a movie as it could've been. It's just a good movie.

Leading the cast is Kelly McGillis. Her performance is not that great, but her screen presence is interesting. She plays the role with a sort of Grace Kelly mindset, and she knows how to act with her face (although the makeup job deserves a bit of credit there too). In terms of character, she doesn't have a whole lot to work with, in fact most of the characters in the film are genre stereotypes. On screen, this film is full of life, but on the pages it could use a bit more strength. The House on Carroll Street is not great, but it's enjoyable.