Rating: 
Summary: It's not all about his looks
Review: Although Johnny is known for his good looks, he shows his true talent as an artist and plays a not so glamorous writer who is suffering from depression. The story is well written and keeps you guessing...you are constantly trying to put the puzzle pieces together. We went to see it to twice because of the twist at the end. Excellent movie!
Rating: 
Summary: Secret Window Is Foreseeable & Ultimately A Letdown
Review: STORY: I'm starting to think that Stephen King's only motivation for writing now days is so he can cash in on the movie adaptions of his work. The past few movies based on his works have been duds, including this one. Honestly, the only good Stephen King movie was The Shining. In this movie Johnny Depp plays a writer who is having trouble starting his new work of fiction, and to add into the mix he is going through a divorce, which is only there in the plot so the ending can be what it is. One day a tall southern man dressed in black comes by and accuses Mort (Depp) for plagerizing a story of his. The man's name is John Shooter. As the story progresses things start to become more serious with Shooter, and basically that's it for the story until the mildly shocking end. I was mad when I saw the ending (people who know the plot of my script will know why), but don't get me wrong it's a good ending it's just that I thought of it first (Okay, fine, maybe King did publish it before I wrote it down last year). Anyway, the only problem with the ending is that the "idea" is good except the effect is a stinker. The audience will ask at the end of the movie "Okay, now what? Why did I sit through this entire thing?" There is no reason behind the motive, there is really no message to the movie, and usually psychological thrillers have those. This comes across as a thriller without a brain, no smarts included. The movie also contains no jump out of your seat moments, it does however have two or three scenes that will get the heart pumping a bit, but no jumps. Overall a bad movie with a good out of place ending that leaves the audience saying "So What?!"ACTING: This is a one man show here. Like Colin Ferrel in Phone Booth. Without Johnny Depp this movie would be a crapstaviganza. The only thing is that Depp's approach to the role gives some comedic moments to the film, and at some points that changes the tone of the movie, which in the end does not make the story run smoothly. I know why they did it though, because without Depp's comedic charisma this movie would be extremely borring, EXTREMELY! BOTTOM LINE: The movie is a stinker, no doubt about it. The name Stephen King used to hold attention at the movies with such classics as The Shining and Pet Cemetery. Now we have Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital on TV and Secret Window in the movies. Icky Poo! The ending is good but can be seen a mile away and is very out of place in a movie like this, David Koepp who penned the screenplay did not do a very good job of building a "shocker". If you have a bunch of people in the audience saying "I knew it!", then that's a good sign that your movie failed to deliver.
Rating: 
Summary: Depp's Talent Is No Secret In "Window"
Review: By this point in his career, we as audiences have learned that Johnny Depp always picks the roles, some questionable at first glance, that interest, entertain, and delight us. After such films as "Edward Scissorhands", "Benny and Joon" and "Pirates of the Caribbean", his latest project, the at times clumsy "Secret Window", showcases his unique sense of humor, characterization and personality in a performance that is the highlight of an otherwise disappointing film. In "Secret Window", he stars as Mort Rainey, a neurotic writer struggling to overcome his difficult divorce and put his life back into order. Six months after falling out with his wife Amy (played by Maria Bello), he has holed up in a secluded cabin deep in the woods of Upstate New York, refusing to sign the divorce papers and suffering from a bad case of writer's block. However, one day he encounters John Shooter, a strange man from Mississippi who claims that one of Rainey's well-known stories, "Secret Window" (hence, the title) was stolen and plagiarized from him. Shooter even leaves him his manuscript, and Rainey reads it, discovering that it strikes remarkable resemblances to his own story written years before. Although he ignores Shooter's threats at first, Shooter turns out to be much more than he has bargained for, and as his threats turn into violent acts of revenge that grow in severity and meaning, Rainey must figure out how to anticipate and stop him. Not only do tensions rise between Shooter and Rainey, but also between Rainey and Amy's new boyfriend Ted (Timothy Hutton), who also begins to threaten him. As I said before, the highlight of "Secret Window" is the performance by Johnny Depp. He completely absorbs the character of Mort Rainey, giving him a new depth, believability, and suprisingly, humor; something pleasant you don't see often in thriller movies. He brings a crowd-pleasing energy, and still manages to inject his signature personality in his role, which alone carries the film. Had Depp not been a part of "Secret Window" I think I would have given it a much lower rating. John Turturro, as John Shooter, gives a solid and scary performance, bringing back his familiar accent from "O, Brother Where Art Thou?". The rest of the cast is simply mediocre, which does nothing but emphasize the brilliance by Depp. Although Johnny Depp makes a fine effort to save the film, it is not enough, and although "Secret Window" delivers an exciting and suspenseful hour and a half, the last and completely unnecessary twenty minutes completely degrade what credibility the script had earned. The twists and frightful gags are somewhat predictable, and although the movie promises to deliver an eye-opening climax, the actual ending leaves the audience feeling unsatisfied. In my opinion, the film could have ended twenty minutes earlier, and it would be much more chilling and impressive. Although it provides a few good chilling scenes (enhanced by the eerie soundtrack by Philip Glass), the main reason to see "Secret Window" is for the performance by Depp, which, due to his humor and personality keeps this film afloat.
Rating:
Summary: Not So Much of a Secret After All
Review: I went into Secret Window assuming that I already knew what the mystery of the movie would be. As the movie went on, I still felt like I already knew what the secret was going to be. Then, when the resolution of the movie was shown, I was correct. The solution of the movie was way too obvious. Sometimes I don't care about predictability in movies, if it's a resolution. I did not like the resolution of the movie. It put me down quite a bit. I can't say that I felt like the movie was a complete waste of my time though, because it wasn't. Everyone says that Johnny Depp is awesome in this movie, and I would have to agree. He is. He is very entertaining to watch in this movie. He has quite a bit of excellent one liners and mannerisms that I can say is worth part of the admission price alone. Also, I was quite interested in what was going on in the movie until about the last 15-20 minutes of the movie. So, I gave the movie a 3 because it was okay. I can't say that I disliked it, becase I didn't. I just disliked the last 15 minutes of the movie.
Rating:
Summary: A Mystery Even to Me.
Review: OK, so I saw the film last night in the theatre, my boyfriend and I seated amidst a throng of mostly teenage girls and a couple of their boyfriends. The trailers ran in exactly this order, by genre: chick flick, suspense thriller, chick flick, suspense thriller, chick flick, suspense thriller. Like clockwork I tell ya. Now normally if I'm seeing a film and there are as many as three previews targeted at the Britney demo, no matter how they try to buffer it, I run out screaming in a cloud of popcorn and Sour Patch Kids; but in this case I assured myself that Johnny Depp's mere name on the project accounted for all its associations with projects starring Julia Styles and such-like. I was only there myself because I happened to read the story by Stephen King upon which it's based (by accident, I swear), and I wanted to compare and contrast or something. I can't say I was very hopeful of it being a masterpiece or necessarily, you know, watchable - I'm a veteran of "Maximum Overdrive" - but I had the night to kill so whatever. Anyway, the film starts off right in line with the book, although Mr. Depp naturally cuts more of a bohemian swath than I had pictured for the protagonist, Mort Rainey. Everything is rushed along for time, but the deal in a nutshell is that erstwhile fiction author Mort just got divorced after finding his wife in bed with a third party, and he now spends most of every day sleeping on the couch in his isolated vacation house on the lake, she having predictably landed their primary residence in town. He tries to write but can't; he's obviously depressed, still trying to get over the apparent senselessness of his wife's infidelity. And because he's Johnny Depp, all this is powerful stuff for the teenage girls in the audience, who go crazy over his slovenly, dejected magnetism. I daresay that's one subtext that wasn't present in the book. Then, seemingly just to complicate things for Mort at this vulnerable time in his life, some crazy backwoods lunatic from Mississippi (name of John Shooter) shows up at his door and accuses him of "stealing his story." Mort knows he wrote the story in question and that therefore this guy is nuts, but he can't convince the guy of same. You know where this is going. Before long the guy starts to terrorize our sexy little reject, slaying his pets and destroying his property and threatening further vengeance until Mort "sets things right" by writing a new ending and giving Shooter credit for it. This is one departure from King's short story, in which both men's versions are complete and virtually identical start to finish, and Shooter asks for an entirely new story to be written. But the major departure is the ending, which I'll have the courtesy not to discuss. The movie takes it in an entirely different direction, presumably just to give it a little more punch, but I've still heard all the critics complain that it peters out at the end. And really, it does. Once you figure out the "twist," which could happen at any point in the film because it is the most commonplace plot twist EVER, you probably just won't care anymore, cuz the film doesn't offer much further. I wasn't necessarily "disappointed" with "Secret Window," but I think I mentioned what my expectations were. It was a little more interesting than it might have been, and all else aside, Johnny Depp did a decent job - I didn't expect the character to dress like that and have that particular hair but it never really seemed at odds with him, even added a certain dimension of mild interest. (Actually, imagine if they got somebody as infernally boring as Ben Affleck to play Mort - in that event "Window" would definitively suck, although it would still draw the same audience.) I definitely think they could've picked a much more intimidating redneck to play John Shooter; Turturro scares me about as much as Martha Stewart. I was thinking of DeNiro in "Cape Fear" mixed with oh, the Marlboro Man or somebody. I guess my final verdict would be: see this if you have nothing else to do. But basically that just means: find something else to do.
Rating:
Summary: A nice view from the secret window.
Review: This is what you might call a psychological thriller; based on a Stephen King novella, it is typical Stephen King craziness. Johnny Depp is portraying yet another of his kinky characters. He did some extra good acting in the manifestation scene. Had this movie been considered for the Academy instead of the pirate thing, he just might have won. Most of the time he went around looking like a frazzled, depressed housewife with that unkempt hair; it appears he had not had a haircut in six months and never combed or brushed it. The glasses did not make him look studious, just unattractive. As a frustrated writer, he has isolated himself in a cabin by a lake in upstate New York. The Fall leaves were gorgeous. This lovely locale could have been right out of Tim O'Brian's IN THE LAKE OF THE WOODS. The agitated squirrel in the woods was effective. The dog, on the other hand, was another matter altogether. Poor thing. The quarry where some of the activity took place looked like one here beside Fort Dickerson filled with putrid water. The writer is allegedly stalked by a nasty Southern man from Mississippi -- sure does talk funny. Ted, however supposedly from Tennessee, did not have a Southern accent, did not sound anything like any of our three sections of the state. East, Middle, West TN. all have different accents. He had none of them. Were these tormentors actual or merely figments of his own imagination? Like in THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT, it was hard to tell what was real and not. He was pushed completely around the bend; could it have been caused by the Jack Daniels Tennessee whiskey (which explains a lot)? This was as macabre as Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-tale Heart" and as scary as CHILDREN OF THE CORN minus the children, but with the corn. He seemed as crazy as his harasser, talking to himself and even answering. Apparently he was facing his own demons. He acted out the 'new' ending to a story he was obsessed with possibly copying it word for word from another author. His belief that the ending is the most important part of a story, as in ALEX AND EMMA; he even talked different and looked like a normal person after the conclusion was accomplished. Though the inhabitants of the town considered him a weirdo. We are subjected to gross murder, dead dog, burnt down house in Riverdale and an unfaithful wife. But are they real or again figments of his overactive imagination? You decide.
Rating:
Summary: About as much meat as a boiling pot of corn on the cob...
Review: While I'm glad I was able to catch the film, I was quite annoyed by the experience of seeing it at the Mall (big surprise). Of the twenty or so other people in the theater for the Saturday night late show, 16 of them were teenyboppers. It might as well have been a packed house, though, with all of the distractions. There were conversations galore (why do people have to carry on melodramatic conversations about dumb high-school romances and bad hair DURING a movie?), and no less than FOUR times did LOUD cell phones ring (different cell phones from different people with different ring tones -- "Ride of the Valkries" was only one of them)!!! Still, I enjoyed the flick. It was interesting (though somewhat predictable), and Johnny Depp was a joy to watch, as usual. He looked like he was having fun with the role, and that made it a bit better than it probably would have been. The film was less graphic in the violence than I expected. While it hints at the violence, it doesn't actually show a lot of it -- just bits and pieces. There's some gore, but it's not over-the-top. Of course the film is like a regurgitated The Dark Half. I've never read the original short story here, so I'm not sure how similar the film is to the actual story, but I found it odd that Stephen King would revisit the same territory so obviously similarly. Interestingly, Timothy Hutton was cast in a somewhat major supporting role in Secret Window, and he was the main character in The Dark Half, Thad Beaumont/George Stark. I think, perhaps, the film bordered on boredom (say that three times fast). Depp gave it a little comic relief (i.e. his disheveled appearance, quirky mannerisms, and wild looks every time he catches himself doing something odd) made the character less caricature and more realistic than he probably would have been in the hands of a less-accomplished actor. Depp took a one-dimensional character and blew it full of air (sometimes hot air, but air nonetheless), and he managed to make something interesting out of it. One the other hand, while John Turturo as the mysterious "Shooter" was equally interesting, he was less believable and not as threatening as he probably should have been. His quirky demeanor was at times creepy, but he lacked any semblance of villainy and therefore seemed far less menacing than King's similar haunted writer/doppleganger, George Stark. Hence, it seemed as though the film was holding back. It's not in-your-face spooky and it's the subject matter is not sufficiently explored toward it's most disturbing end. Instead, the movie plays a bit like a cross between a made-for-tv USA thriller and an episode of Tales from the Crypt. It's fun to watch, mostly because of Depp, but it's got about as much meat on its bones as exists in a boiling pot of corn on the cob. Gone are the classic King films like Pet Cemetary, Cujo, The Dead Zone, Salem's Lot, Children of the Corn, The Shining, etc... Instead, we're left with shaky and wobbling attempts at thought-provoking cinema from King like the more recent cinematic flop Dreamcatcher, the television monstrosity Rose Red and other mixed-bags of bones like The Langoliers. It seems King's best film adaptations in a long time rest with The Green Mile and Hearts in Atlantis, but perhaps it's fair to say that the strength of those films, like this one, lie less in the script and more in the exceptional thespians who bring the characters to life. I find it difficult to blame King for the film's weaknesses however. I wasn't impressed by David Koepp's screenplay nor his direction. I thought it lacked the umpff of some of his earlier work vis-a-vis Stir of Echoes and The Trigger Effect (both of which he also wrote and directed). Instead, this film was about as exciting and predictable as his Panic Room (which he wrote) -- in other words, it was at times quite flat. I give it two stars. It's good for a matinee or a short wait for the dvd.
Rating:
Summary: depp carried it
Review: sadly this movie was not what i hoped. i guessed the whole movie before i even saw it! depp did really great acting but the script didnt give him anything to work with....sadly it didnt deliver...o well...
Rating: 
Summary: Wow!Johnny Depp at his best...
Review: This movie really has a nice plot to it and I love susspenseful movies and this one tops it off big time!I took a day off from college on Friday, March 12, 2004.I went with my friend Ryan, my rooomate at TCU.We went to the movies and saw this.I thought it was scary and had a good swing to it.Of course, this is based on a Stephen King novella, and Stephen King comes up with these ideas like "It" and "The Green Mile".I really likje this movies since my major is writing, but I also want to be a director.John Turturro is also at his best.I liked John in Mr.Deeds and Anger Management, but I would of never pictured him in a thriller like this.And Johnny Depp is a great star in this movie.He was also good in, "Pirates of the Carribean:The Curse of the Black Pearl", "Edward Scissor hands, and "What's Eating Gilbert Grape."Anybody with a thing for scary and suspenseful movies, SEE THIS!!!!
Rating:
Summary: Not Great..but Worth Seeing for Depp!
Review: I saw this movie yesterday and I left the theater neither extremely satisfied or dissapointed. To tell you the truth, most people walking out said they wished they had waited to catch it on HBO for free. If it weren't for Johnny Depp's star power and his weirdly interesting performance in this film, I could see this as a made for T.V. movie. Stephen King is a great writer, but this was one of his weaker stories and I wasn't expecting much going in. So in the end I really did enjoy it much more than I thought I would. *Spoilers* The ending is similar to the movie Identity and everyone in the theater saw it coming a mile away, especially if you have seen the other movie I just mentioned. Which was okay, but it left more questions than answers as did the ending of Identity. John Turturro is usually a great actor, but I found him unconvincing and even slightly annoying at times, as he tried to play the sinister stalking madman. If you are the mood for a solid thriller with a few scares and another fine performance from Mr. Depp, check this movie out if you dare.
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