ANONYMOUS Review (2 out of 5 stars)

I felt lost throughout ANONYMOUS: its editing is a train wreck, and its characters (and their loyalties) are easy to confuse, since they're referred to interchangeably by their titles and names. The roles of England's neighboring countries (Ireland, Spain, France) are perplexing. And the story's so poorly written, I couldn't keep track of who the actual genius playwright in the story was supposed to be, given the film's allegation that Shakespeare was a fraud.

The idea that Shakespeare didn’t write the material attributed to him is an interesting theory to ponder, but Sir Derek Jacobi's onstage soliloquy (as part of a modern, fictionalized play — Anonymous — presaging the tale to unfold) fails to support the claim with adequate context. Is this fantasy — an Oliver Stone-like conspiracy theory reshuffling of history for entertainment’s sake? Or is it credible speculation based on scholarly facts? You’ll have no idea if you didn’t read up ahead of time. And while the gaps in what we know of the great bard's life story may call his authorship into question, negatives still don't prove a positive — this abstrusely detailed "what if" is made up of guesses, coincidences and fictions...

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THE SKIN I LIVE IN Review (4 out of 5 stars)

We see a woman in a body stocking receive her meal by dumb waiter in a hermetically sealed room. Is she suffering from a rare disease? Is she a wealthy eccentric? Thus begins the torrent of questions you'll inevitably have in the opening moments of THE SKIN I LIVE IN, Spanish auteur Pedro Almodovar's newest creation.

The sprawling tale of murder, revenge, passion and surgical nightmares it unspools — from present day to years ago and back again — will answer each in time, drip drip. And while the big twist, which is one for the books, is presented in a less plausible way than can be imagined (which robs SKIN of some of its power), you're sure to be riveted, the marvelously unique story ensnaring you in a sticky web. Unsurprisingly, Spain's award-laden director has again summoned so much cream-of-the-crop talent to his side, including a trio of his favorite actors from work past...

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THE THING Review (2 out of 5 stars)

Finally, here it is: the prequel to John Carpenter's cult-classic 1982 horror film, the identically titled THE THING. The new one doesn't quite match up in quality, and its marketing materials' giveaway of so many adrenaline-pumping surprises doesn't help matters. (So don't watch them beforehand.) But it does cleverly and methodically set the stage for the Carpenter film, itself a remake of 1951's THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD, based on John W. Campbell Jr.'s 1938 novella, Who Goes There?

In the '82 film, an American team explores the burned-out wreckage of a Norwegian camp — the prequel tells the Norwegians' story, and it ends with the Carpenter film's iconic beginning, in which a Norwegian helicopter chases the alien (in wolf form) to the American outpost.

At the start of Dutch director Matthijs van Heijningen's feature film debut, the Norwegians follow an ominous radio signal into the wilds of Antarctica until their vehicle crashes through the ice, lodges in a crevasse and illuminates a spacecraft below.

Enter young paleontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, listening to Huey Lewis in the one sign that this is the 80's). The Norwegians recruit Kate to help extract the craft's survivor from the ice nearby, its talons just visible beneath the surface. They haul it to camp, where cocky lead scientist Dr. Halvorson (Ulrich Thomsen) drills through the ice it's encased in for a tissue sample. Which is a bad move: the resulting cracks and building's higher temperature enable the beast to break free and begin to stalk, absorb and then replicate the camp's international denizens one by one. And so this team of Norwegian, American, French and British scientists and their helpers must carry out the nerve-wracking task of rooting out and destroying the alien within their ranks...

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