Rating: 
Summary: Full of Suspense!!!
Review: "Sleeping With the Enemy" is probably my favorite of Julia Roberts' movies. This film has so much suspense that you immediately get wrapped up in the lives of all of the characters.The story centers around a woman who is in a marriage from hell. Her husband abuses her and keeps her confined in a large beach house. His possession of her mind, body, and spirit is terrifying. She finally gets enough courage to get away from him and leave him once and for all. However, she has to fake her death to do so. She flees and starts over in a small town where her blind mother resides. All is well until her husband discovers that she's not really dead and hunts her down to reclaim her. This is an excellent nail-biter that will definitely keep you on the edge of your seat! I highly recommend this film!
Rating: 
Summary: "You okay?" "I'm gonna be..."
Review: That's the exchange that always stands out every time I see this movie. "Sleeping with the Enemy" is an excellent thriller about a woman, Julia Roberts, who fakes her own death to escape her obsessive and abusive husband, Patrick Bergin. Befriended by a neighbor, charmingly played by Kevin Anderson, she starts to rebuild her life slowly letting go of the fear. To go on would reveal too much, but I can say that not everything that haunts you is a ghost. Even though it creeps me out, every time this movie plays I am compelled to watch it. The characters quickly gain your sympathy (or in the case of Bergin your hatred) and draw you in to this subtle triumph of spirit.
Rating:
Summary: Julia Roberts does just fine in a thriller
Review: The best part of this movie is actually the first third or so, where undertones of something amiss in a marriage are subtly revealed - and Roberts scheming to escape. The premise: an abused and terrorized wife fakes her death by drowning, gets the hell out of Dodge, and starts life over in a town in Iowa. Her psychopath ex figures it out and comes stalking her and her new boyfriend. Good stuff, mostly, but not the best effort of any of those involved.
Rating:
Summary: My reading group says: read the book.
Review: Nancy Price is a spell-binding writer who knows how to dodge every Hollywood cliché, as well as any happy ending Hollywood can imagine. Julia Roberts had only one man to run from-the Sara Burney in this novel has three.
The first man she must escape is her husband, a controlling martinet who wants a child-wife to discipline and abuse. But two other dangerous men wait where Sara tries to hide-every woman in my reading group has met men like these: men who see women as the adversary to be tamed and used. The boy next door craves a sex object. The young professor distrusts women: he wants a housekeeper-wife who will further his career. In the world they see, everyone sleeps with the enemy.
But Sara isn't a child, an object or a servant. She senses her danger and escapes, covering her tracks, leaving no dead man inside her door for the police to find. She's going back, Martin Burney's widow, to claim her happy ending: the home she had to abandon. Sara dreams of it as the book closes-every room's light and scent, every creak of the floor, every dish in the cupboards.
My reading group cheered as we imagined Sara, home safe, ready to look for a marriage not shared by enemies.
Rating:
Summary: You won't have any nails left...just kidding.
Review: This is one of Julia's best movies. The acting is wonderful, the suspense keeps you glued to your seat. I wish they would make more movies that had "real suspense" instead of just horror. I like the mind game aspect. Julia plays the part of a submissive wife (Laura) married to someone who is obsessive compulsive. The towels have to be just so on the towel rack and if not, she gets in trouble. Dinner must be served on time, etc. These elements play out later in the movie and make it just terrifying. When she fakes her death just to escape, we think she is finally rid of him. The problem is, she leaves too many clues. Her husband, Martin, is every woman's worst nightmare. He is handsome, yet within him lurks an evil soul who just wants to control Laura. If you like a suspense without all the horror, this is a movie I can recommend. The house in this movie is so beautiful. Aparently from what I read, it was constructed in about nine weeks. That alone is amazing! Could someone build me one? Just kidding, but the windows are so wonderful. If I lived by the sea, that is the house I would want. The second house Laura lives in is also wonderful with a porch swing. You might dream of living in either, but with a nice husband! Julia is one of the best actresses. I was completely impressed with her performance in this movie. I am watching all her movies one after the other and have a few more to watch. This is perhaps my second favorite after Pretty Woman. She could act in any movie...I am pretty convinced of that!
Rating:
Summary: Scissor-Cut Look at Abuse
Review: With the beginning scene in "Sleeping With the Enemy" of a nice, handsome husband and a beautiful, smiling wife living in a lovely, rich house, this movie soon breaks the stereotype perception of an abusive relationship by showing that everything that glitters is not necessarily gold. Julia Roberts, with a combination of a sense of planning and cleverness, fear and hope, and a desperate will to survive, does the only thing she can - she leaves while faking her own death. (Any abused man or woman will probably be mesmerized by some of the scenes and the feelings evoked in this intense movie.) The new lifestyle she slowly, but surely creates for herself, against the backdrop of her husband piecing together her escape and his savage determination to find her creates a savvy suspense thriller that could be a classic in anyone's home movie library.
Rating:
Summary: "You okay?" "I'm gonna be..."
Review: That's the exchange that always stands out every time I see this movie. "Sleeping with the Enemy" is an excellent thriller about a woman, Julia Roberts, who fakes her own death to escape her obsessive and abusive husband, Patrick Bergin. Befriended by a neighbor, charmingly played by Kevin Anderson, she starts to rebuild her life slowly letting go of the fear. To go on would reveal too much, but I can say that not everything that haunts you is a ghost. Even though it creeps me out, every time this movie plays I am compelled to watch it. The characters quickly gain your sympathy (or in the case of Bergin your hatred) and draw you in to this subtle triumph of spirit.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Old Berlioz!
Review: Julia Roberts quickly established herself as one of the most luminescent stars in Hollywood. She has a face which, much like
Garbo's, the camera just never tires of viewing. She can use that face to express pensive worry, both spirited and icy determination, and, of course, her smile can melt glaciers. She also has a talent for rising above middling to mediocre material, so you never blame her the artistic shortcomings of the films she's in. Unfortunately, Hollywood quickly caught wise to her amazing "star power" and just as quickly developed
the "Julia Roberts vehicle."
There's something about "Julia Roberts vehicles" which I find annoying. Ulike the "women's pictures" of the 30's and 40's,
starring the likes of Katherine Hepburn, Bette Davis and Joan
Crawford, which featured strong women confronting and overcoming a lot of conflict, "Julia Roberts vehicles" fall generally into two groups: There's the romantic comedy, which is usually a shameless retelling of the Cinderella myth, like "Pretty Woman,"
or there's the shameless feminist propaganda vehicle, like this one. In the latter vehicle, all men are beasts, and even the good ones are not redeemed until they finally learn to submit to Julia's will.
In this movie, Julia plays the spunky beleagured wife of the husband-from-hell, played by Patrick Bergin. Bergin's character is such a control-freak, he's almost as manipulative as this movie is. One day, Julia fakes her own death in a swimming accident, and runs away, back to her childhood home in the Midwest
to start a new life. It's a bit amazing in the way the filmmakers
expect you to believe that husband-from-hell is bright enough to figure out there's something wrong with his wife's "death," but takes 2/3 of the movie to figure out where she's gone. No matter, that gives our heroine time to start a relationship with a somewhat nerdy, non-threatening, "liberated" male played by Kevin Anderson.
The real surprise of this movie (and perhaps the only one) is the way it engages your interest in spite of how obviously manipulative it is. Julia has a lot to do with this, always conveying just the right combination of spirited spunk with disarming vulnerablity. Best part of the picture? The use of
the "Witches' Sabbath" movement from Berlioz' "Symphonie Fantastique" to set up the final confrontation between the forces
of good and evil. It makes Patrick Bergin more menacing than if he wore a Darth Vader suit!
You could do worse.
Rating:
Summary: My reading group says: read the book.
Review: Nancy Price is a spell-binding writer who knows how to dodge every Hollywood cliché, as well as any happy ending Hollywood can imagine. Julia Roberts had only one man to run from-the Sara Burney in this novel has three.
The first man she must escape is her husband, a controlling martinet who wants a child-wife to discipline and abuse. But two other dangerous men wait where Sara tries to hide-every woman in my reading group has met men like these: men who see women as the adversary to be tamed and used. The boy next door craves a sex object. The young professor distrusts women: he wants a housekeeper-wife who will further his career. In the world they see, everyone sleeps with the enemy.
But Sara isn't a child, an object or a servant. She senses her danger and escapes, covering her tracks, leaving no dead man inside her door for the police to find. She's going back, Martin Burney's widow, to claim her happy ending: the home she had to abandon. Sara dreams of it as the book closes-every room's light and scent, every creak of the floor, every dish in the cupboards.
My reading group cheered as we imagined Sara, home safe, ready to look for a marriage not shared by enemies.
Rating:
Summary: Could you come quickly? I just shot an intruder
Review: Very nicely done. Takes a Hollywood look at an abusive marriage, but does it well. Some critics complained that the film was slow after she leaves, etc. but the audience KNOWS her husband is coming back to get her. Why? B/c we live in the real world and that is how things work. You can run, but you can't hide. Why? because whereever you go... there you are. Roberts does a good job as does Bergen and Anderson. NICE
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