Rating: 
Summary: Curious and suspenseful microworld film
Review: Some films tread on the huge topics: world peace, the nature of God, of good and of evil. Panic Room takes the opposite tact, quickly delivering us into a standoff between a mother and daughter secured in their "panic room," and three thieves after millions of dollars they know to be locked in that very room. The sense of confinement, suspense, and the switching from calm planning to sudden action, are all admirable. All the main characters play their roles with realism, and the mother and daughter are bother delicately, yet powerfully nuanced.Bottom-line: This is strong story, with well-played suspense--worth renting, but not buying.
Rating: 
Summary: good movie, disappointing dvd
Review: i really enjoy this movie quite a bit, but i was extremely disappointed with the total lack of any interesting special features on the dvd. fincher's "fight club" was an example of a great and thorough dvd set, but this one doesn't even try. i couldn't care less about "superbit" video...i'd much rather have a commentary track from fincher & foster.
Rating: 
Summary: Odorless & Colorless Locked Room Mystery.
Review: "Panic Room" is like carbon monoxide: odorless and colorless, and completely inoffensive to the victim until it kills. "Panic Room" is one of those DVDs you see in the rental store on Friday and decide to try out; a week later you can't remember what you saw, exactly. See? Just like carbon monoxide, the movie slaughters two of your finite hours on Planet Earth that you could have been using more enjoyably. Yes, this is a locked-room mystery, where the locked-room in question is a high-tech secret chamber located in an Upper Eastside Manhattan townhouse, and where the mystery is why a normally gifted, edgy director like David Fincher (Se7en, Fight Club) would direct a boring, colorless clunker like this. Jodie Foster plays Meg Altman, a divorcee who with her daughter Sarah (Kristen Stewart, who has three modes: sullen, smirking, and sick) moves into a multi-million dollar New York townhouse. Mother and daughter discuss their mutual disdain for the new digs, eat a pizza, and fall asleep. It's fortunate Jodie toys with the high-tech Panic Room before turning in, because---wouldn't ya know it---along come three villains with the vilest of intentions. Talk about a bad first night in the new pad! It turns out the trio of thugs want the fortune stowed in the panic room by the townhouses's previous owner, and in their bumbling they manage to alert mom and daughter, who scuttle into the little fortress-within-a-fortress. So what you end up with is a 2 hour+ siege movie. Siege movies can be great, or they can be tedious; this movie takes the latter path and with, evidently, no regrets. It doesn't help that two of the three villains are pretty much out for the count when they realize they have to take on real live people holed up in the panic room. Dwight Yoakum plays Raoul, who is the real deal, a determined psycho if there ever was one, and he rallies his team's flagging spirits and the three determine to beg, borrow or steal their way into the high-tech little broom closet. And that's pretty much it. The much-touted CGI enhancement of camera movements in the townhouse is fine, and this is a technically competent movie. It's also a massively boring movie, and imminently forgettable; everything here has been done before, far more masterfully, in an underrated little gem called "Wait Until Dark". Everyone in "Panic Room" seems bored, and it's a contagious emotion, because by the conclusion you'll be bored too. Jodie Foster plays Jodie Foster, who toys with claustrophobia for about 5 minutes but tosses that potentially intereting plot device aside as soon as the going gets tough. She turned down a reprisal of the Clarisse Starling role in "Hannibal" for this? The incomparable and talented Jared Leto ("American Psycho", "Requiem for a Dream")tries to liven up the dull proceedings, and gets a bullet in the head for his efforts. Forest Whitaker cashes a check, and Dwight Yoakum, unrecognizable until the credits, plays the sleepiest psycho in cinematic history. If you're fine wasting two hours of your life on a dead, dull, dismal, and oddly colorless siege movie, then by all means rent "Panic Room." My advice: spend the time going through a brochure to build a panic room of your own---at least you'll get something out of *that* ordeal.
Rating:
Summary: Underwhelming
Review: This is a good, but under whelming movie. The plot is somewhat predictable. Good acting, but nothing out of the ordinary.
Rating:
Summary: Great move. BAD DVD RECORDING.
Review: The movie is one of the best I have ever seen, but the movie was recorded badly because my Toshiba SD-3006 DVD player could not play the entire movie. It continues to stall in the switch layer change. The recording studio should do a better job for recording two-layer disc movies. Every other DVD movies play fine in my DVD player. Not sure if every other new DVD players stall in the switch-layer change for viewing Panic Room. So, I switch to the next chapter of Panic Room and rewind it a little, and I could finish the entire file without any problems at all. Walter Chan
Rating:
Summary: Panic Room Is Okay
Review: Panic Room with Jodie Foster is an okay film for one viewing. It is a suspense film and there is some suspense,but not absolutely riveting. It is a film to rent and you want to be entertained. The situation is plausible. What Jodie Foster's character does in the film can be believed. She doesn't trip and stumble when someone is chasing her etc...I don't think it is a film that you would want to purchase and watch over the course of your lifetime. A good rental. Rent it, watch it and you'll have forgotten it in a year. I recommend renting it. Not buying it.
Rating:
Summary: Other than being horribly contrived, kind of interesting
Review: Summary:
Meg Altman (Jodie Foster) and Sarah Altman (Kristen Stewart) have just decided on a massive new house to move into following Meg's divorce from her extremely wealthy husband, Stephen Altman (Patrick Bauchau). On their tour of the house the real estate agent shows them one of the perks of a house so big and expensive - the panic room. The room is supposed to be impenetrable and allow the occupants safety while emergency personnel arrive in case of any troubles. During their first night in the home three burglars break in, Burnham (Forest Whitaker), Raoul (Dwight Yoakam), and Junior (Jared Leto). What Meg and Sarah don't realize is that the burglars are not after them but after what the previous occupant left in the panic room - several million dollars. Meg and Sarah make it to the panic room and are able to seal themselves in before they are caught, leading the burglars to attempt numerous ways to crack the defenses of the panic room. All of the plans are devised by Burnham, who happens to be the person who designed the room. Meg and Sarah probably would have been fine if it didn't so happen that Sarah is a diabetic and forgot to bring her insulin, etc. Eventually Meg has to break her way out to get the insulin, but in the process gets locked out with the burglars locked in with her daughter. Sarah gets her insulin, but Meg is on the outside. The only plus is that Raoul dropped his gun in the scuffle and now Meg has it. Eventually the burglars find what they are looking for and try to get away, but Raoul and Meg don't plan on making it that easy. Raoul knows that the Altman's have seen his face and now he wants to kill them. Meg still doesn't know exactly what the burglars were after, but she isn't very happen with them and wants to catch them. In the end Raoul, who happens to be the sociopath of the group, nearly kills the Altmans except Burnham intervenes and kills him instead. The Altmans survive and the millions of dollars hidden in the panic room are lost when Burnham is captured by the police. My Comments:
The major problem with this movie is how contrived the story is. First, Burnham has access to a bunch of information about the house and is supposed to know that no one has moved in, but for some reason Meg and Sarah moved in early and he wasn't aware of it. Second, when given the chance to notify the police, Meg decides not too (this is really what did it for me, at this point I lost all respect for the movie). If she had notified the police then the movie would have ended before a final confrontation could take place, and of course that can't happen. Third, Sarah has diabetes? Come on! The only reason for this coincidence is so Meg has to leave. And last, Meg thinks she can take on two beefy men, one of whom is a sociopath that doesn't mind killing people? Give me a break. I can understand some suspension of belief in movies that require it, but this was just pushing things much further than I was willing to go and is the reason that I rated the movie as low as I did. What about the acting? Well, it isn't actually too bad. Jodie Foster did pretty good with what she had to work with. The rest of the cast was also pretty good. I'm actually quite impressed with Dwight Yoakam who seems to be finding a niche for himself as a villain (Sling Blade). The only person I really had a problem with was Junior - he was just too much the overly stereotypical, rich spoiled kid, blah, blah. Otherwise, the acting isn't too bad. Overall, I just couldn't bring myself to give this movie a good rating because I kept thinking about how silly the plot reversals were. Anybody with half a brain would have done things dramatically different and there were just too many coincidences to make this a believable film. I should also note that despite trying to make the movie tense, it isn't really all that 'on the edge of your seat' thrilling. Anyway, it's an okay film if you can give the characters a lot of leeway for the really stupid decisions they make and the number of coincidences that take place. I don't think I would recommend it, but some people may like it.
Rating: 
Summary: Boring, slow, boring, boring
Review: This movie was a yawn-fest. Not suspenseful, not intense, not anything but a waste of time. Do not waste your money on it and advise your friends to do the same.
Rating:
Summary: it's a dog!
Review: Should be 45 minutes shorter, and would be more believable if the characters weren't such fools. Screen an old Hitchcock film instead.
Rating:
Summary: It's not what I was expecting
Review: When I watched the trailer for this movie I imagined something really scarey and due to the blue flame shot in the trailer I expected something supernatural by the end of the movie. Nothing of the sort. As far as thrillers go, it starts out fairly strong then in my oppinion kinda comes up short. It's one of thoes things... Now we're in the indistructable box, now we get an hour of the bad guys trying to break into it. I felt pretty secure for the people I was supposed to be feeling scared for. However, I did like the acting in the movie, which is why I gave it a 3. Everyone in the movie was at the top of their game for this one. Made it into a nice drama with a little heart pounding action, but not really the thriller it tried to look like it was. It has rewatchability if you like it, so my recomendation is to rent it, see if you like it, then go out and buy it.
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