Crappy film

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

The opening credits feature puzzle pieces floating around the screen along with a catchy soundtrack. Eventually the pieces begin to fit together. The meaning is obvious, and it is a nice beginning.The beginning scene shows an elderly lady, Mrs. Hilary Lonnigan (Bette Beatrice), stalked and murdered by an intruder in her penthouse apartment in a Columbus Circle (Manhattan) high rise. Some will claim that she had fallen down the stairs, but the viewers know she was killed. Across the hall, in the only other loft penthouse apartment, lives a 35 year-old recluse heiress, agoraphobic Abigail Clayton (Selma Blair), who has not left her luxurious apartment for 17 years. The famous daughter of a wealthy, alcoholic, and abusive industrialist, Abigail withdrew from her intrusive family (and the press) on her 18th birthday. During years of her self-imposed isolation, Abigail has had contact with only two people: (1) Dr. Raymond Fontaine (Beau Bridges), a long-time family friend and her sole confidant for most of her life, and (2) Joseph Klandermann, (Kevin Pollak), her building's concierge, with whom she communicates only by notes that he slips under her front door. After the death of Mrs. Lonnigan, Abigail is distressed to find NYPD Homicide Detective Frank Giardello (Giovanni Ribisi) outside her door, asking to question her. Reluctantly she allows him into her residence for a few minutes. Note that Abigail's introductory scenes see her apartment almost completely shadowed by darkness, which is slowly peeled back like onion skins the longer she is forced to endure the detective's questioning. By the end of her questioning, her apartment is covered in full light, signifying the shift that her insulated life has been dragged irretrievably into the world.Meanwhile, having futilely tried to acquire the dead woman's now vacant apartment to ensure her privacy, Abigail is further upset when her requests go unanswered and new tenants, Charlie Sanford (Jason Lee) and blonde wife Lillian (Amy Smart) move in. Abigail intently monitors her new neighbors from the safety of her front door's peephole. But her well-ordered world begins to unravel when the two almost immediately engage in vicious arguments that ultimately involve Abigail, because Lillian gets physically bruised and is subsequently allowed inside Abigail's apartment to shelter her from further abuse. (But why does Charlie look into her peephole from the outside?) Anyway, the young couple has a sinister agenda, along with conspirators. Meanwhile we learn that Klandermann is a wanted felon whose real name is Nathaniel Muskit; Dr. Fontaine too is not what he seems. Then the body count begins to rise. For the time being Lillian tries to deceitfully bond with Abigail for her own purposes, but Abigail soon becomes wise to the ruse. Before long, Lillian, looking like Abigail, enters the Waters Bank to close out a huge account. At this point, my narrative ends, and I will not reveal any spoilers. The central story is engaging, and the story-line's premise does deliver an element of intrigue. On the other hand, the plot fails to live up to its potential. The movie cannot sustain the kind of consistent tension or unpredictability that the best thrillers of this genre boast. Also the character development is generally weak while the script - written director George Gallo and actor Kevin Pollak - makes several jumps in logic that are hard to overlook, especially during a most absurd conclusion. Still, the film remains good enough to be watchable, and Giovanni Ribisi's performance is solid in a relatively small role.

Before watching this movie I wanted to like it. Being a fan of many of the actors in this movie I thought it had the potential to be unknown yet good movie, unfortunately that is not the case. The premise was interesting a murder takes place in the room opposite from a woman with Agoraphobia and hasn't left her apartment in 11 years and from then on the direction of the film follows around this character. From then on the movie starts to fall apart, some of the acting verges on being poor,many of the films concepts become implausible and the films conclusion is just embarrassing. However, the film isn't a complete loss, the story is enough to keep the movie at least quite interesting and is filled with many twists some of which lead to the films finest moments. Also, Kevin Pollak and Giovanni Ribisi put in performances that are at least rather good which is a shame due to their limited screen time.In the end the film is so concerned in throwing as many twists as possible into it that it forgets in how to carry a story and in the end is left in a mess. In my opinion the movie is watchable yet but not good and I would be shocked if anybody were to find this movie anything higher than good. If presented with the opportunity of watching other movies viewers should look into taking a chance elsewhere.

When I accessed the reviews for Columbus Circle, I couldn't believe all the negativity surrounding this production. Apparently, after this was made, there was no studio willing to release it theatrically. It went straight to video. I sometimes don't listen to the multitude of reviews that surround a certain film, preferring to make my own opinion. After viewing this, I found it to be a surprisingly good and watchable film with a good story, good acting and good directing. This was an original story which had a good denouement, very satisfying. I suppose that there was not enough sex and violence in this production to serve the prurient tastes of the mass audience. Tastes have changed much in recent years and I guess that there isn't much of an audience for a film that does not rely on CGI effects or gratuitous sex and violence. I even liked the main title sequence, which would not have been out-of-place on a suspense film made in the fifties or sixties. Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I liked this.

I am one of those people who will buy a DVD if Selma Blair is in it, because she intrigues me. Even though she really comes from Michigan and is not from the East Coast at all, she nevertheless manages convincingly to come across as an East Coast preppie. I am not sure how she does that, especially as she did not attend university where she could have honed her skills at preppie-ness. A film preppie of an earlier generation is Stockard Channing, and in her case she was from the East Coast and attended Radcliffe, where she even achieved summa cum laude. So she is a real 'natural'. Perhaps the most famous preppie-on-film was the character Annie Hall, played by Diane Keaton in Woody Allen's ANNIE HALL (1977), but Keaton is a California gal, which is ever further west than Michigan, or so they say (is it all in the mind?). Yet another convincing film preppie when she wants to be is Michael Michele, at least as she appeared in the excellent TV series CENTRAL PARK WEST (1995), and she comes from Evansville, Indiana. So how do they do it, these hicks from the sticks (by which I mean girls who come from faraway and obscure places like California, Michigan, and Indiana)? How do they 'prep'? In fact, what is a preppie anyway? I used to wonder that very thing when I knew a lot of them long ago, in the days when they all wore identical tartan wraparound skirts held with gigantic safety pins and white socks, and earnestly pressed their clipboards to their breasts as they walked between classes at university. Preppies are above all a tribe, and to defy the tribal dress code is to invite ostracism. But never mind, let's get back to the film. (Or did we never even start on the film?) So there we were, Selma Blair is being a preppie again. This time she is a neurotic rich-girl recluse who is hiding out in style in a luxurious penthouse apartment overlooking Columbus Circle in New York City. She has agoraphobia and cannot go out. Then she becomes targeted by unscrupulous folk who, surprise surprise, do not love her for herself alone but who want her money. Who ever heard of such a thing in NYC? They work on her vulnerabilities and are incredibly clever and devious in their plan to steal all her money. It is hair-raising stuff. Written and directed by George Gallo, this film could really have clicked, but it falls short of being a convincingly tense mystery thriller in the latter part of the film. Selma Blair is entirely convincing as the girl, and was the perfect choice for the part. But the script really needed more work and thought. A miss, not a hit, but still worth seeing.