James McTeigue’s The Raven, a thriller set in Baltimore during the last days of Edgar Allan Poe’s life, is a handsome-looking thing, with fairly grand period costumes and reasonably lavish sets. So much for production values: In every other way the picture is stiff and unyielding, hampered by a clumsy plot and diorama performances. The whole thing has the feel of a second-rate living-history exhibit.
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In this week's The Raven, John Cusack brings 19th century author Edgar Allan Poe to life in a mystery-thriller that envisions Poe locked in a battle of wills against his biggest fan: a serial killer murdering in the style of Poe's most twisted stories. The piece is a paradox in itself, literary-minded meta-meditation masquerading as a pulpy mainstream entertainment; between genre beats and moments of Sherlock Holmesian heroism, Cusack and director James McTeigue leave provocations to be found or ignored, depending on your inclination. Whether or not audiences choose to dive in, Cusack just hopes they take the film on its own merits: "If you want a very different, quiet, Masterpiece Theater version of this, someone will go make that movie. But this is what we made. We made a dream about Poe."
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Movieline received many varied submissions in our John Cusack-themed 10-word review contest, inspired by films from Say Anything... to Grosse Pointe Blank to Bullets Over Broadway and beyond. "Alas!" quoth the raven. "There can only be one winner!" (That's how the old Edgar Allan Poe saying goes, right?) Hit the jump to read the winning submission and congratulate the lucky Movieliner that gets to attend the L.A. premiere of Cusack's The Raven next week.
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John Cusack dives into the twisted psyche of 19th century author Edgar Allan Poe in this week's The Raven, a fictional adventure-mystery that blends the writer's real life with the kind of dark, macabre tales he wove -- and Movieline has your chance to catch it before it opens on April 27! Enter Movieline's 10-word review contest (critiquing any film from Cusack's nearly three-decade career) and you could win a pair of tickets to the Los Angeles premiere and after party for the film. So turn on the hot tub time machine and crank up the high fidelity, tapeheads and grifters and America's sweethearts, because, um, the cradle will rock over Broadway. Or something. It's a sure thing! Oh, just say anything... [UPDATE: Contest is now closed. Thanks for playing! Winner will be announced shortly.]
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The last time we saw John Cusack onscreen, he was turning back time in a hot tub. Now, Cusack returns to the multiplex to travel much deeper into the past -- far beyond embarrassing '80s ski suits and Rick Springfield singles and into the 1800s, where as Edgar Allan Poe, he helps search for a serial killer who uses Poe's own gothic stories as inspiration for his murders. Take a look at the first eerie trailer for The Raven below.
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When Oscar-winner Francis Ford Coppola took to Comic-Con to present his new horror project Twixt, he blew minds in Hall H by live-editing footage from his iPad. Now you can watch the first trailer for Twixt to get a taste of what Coppola's got cooking with his Gothic murder-mystery tale about a hack novelist named Hall Baltimore (Val Kilmer) who befriends a ghostly girl named V (Elle Fanning) while searching for his next story in a small California town.
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