The thriller “Untraceable” doesn’t quite know who its villain is: the everyday technology that people assume is there to help; a society so numb to torture and degradation that it welcomes them as spectator sports; or the unbalanced youth who revels in watching his sadistic games become the latest sensation on the Internet. Read more>>

There’s a serial killer on the loose in rain-drenched Portland, Oregon, a predator who tortures his prey on-camera, ramping the grisly, graphic violence with every gawker who clicks on his website to observe what’s happening. A counter reveals the accelerating number of hits as each new agony is unveiled.
One woman is hung, upside-down, from the ceiling and gradually lowered over sharp, rotating blades. A man is trapped inside a tank of water into which sulfuric acid is slowly dropped. When there’s a predetermined amount of Internet voyeurs, the victim – animal or human – is killed in front of millions of viewers.
FBI Special Agent Jennifer Marsh (Diane Lane) is a struggling, widowed single mother working in the cybercrimes division, along with her nerdy young partner, Griffin Dowd (Colin Hanks). Marsh is horrified by the streaming videos on killwithme.com, but this tech-savvy psychopath is virtually untraceable. And when she finally realizes that the anonymous stalker is striking too close to home, she gets help from her supportive mother (Mary Beth Hurt) and a Portland police detective, Eric Box (Billy Burke).
Written by Robert Fyvolent, Mark R. Brinker and Alison Burnett, directed by Gregory Hoblit (“Fracture,” “Primal Fear”) and photographed by Anastas Michos, it’s a formulaic, melodramatic, ultimately improbable cyber-thriller.
Don’t blame the actors. Diane Lane is convincingly conflicted, torn between work and family, and Colin Hanks – Tom’s son – acquits himself admirably, looking for love in cyberspace.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Untraceable” is a geeky, gruesome, repugnant 3. The moral – we’re told – is that the acting of choosing to watch makes us accessories to the crime; without an audience, presumably, there would be no murder. And without an audience, this disturbing police procedural should move quickly to the video store.

UNTRACEABLE is a fine and important movie wrapped in a cheap horror flick. Read more>>

Slapstick spoofs don’t get worse than this wretched, “300”-inspired, extended skit from writers/directors Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, whose previous parodies include “Date Movie” and “Epic Movie.” Read more

Actress Julie Benz took on blisteringly hot weather, malaria-carrying mosquitoes and tough action sequences when playing the lone female character in the new “Rambo” movie. Read more>>

Stallone resurrected traumatized Vietnam-veteran John Rambo after a 20-year hiatus. And if not what’s generally meant by the term “good movie,” the result is the farthest thing from a bland, spineless sequel imaginable: It’s a brutal, insanely excessive successor to grindhouse pictures of yore.Read more>>

Sylvester Stallone’s claim to fame is the iconic characters of “Rocky” and “Rambo,” and he doesn’t tire of recycling both of them. Read more

Finally, the long-in-the-works “American Teen” deal went down late Tuesday night, marking the fourth movie to sell at Sundance in the last two days. Paramount Vantage acquired all world rights (excluding the U.K.) for $1 million to Nanette Burstein’s Indiana high school cinema verite doc. After the A & E Indie Films documentary screened Friday night, Fox Searchlight made a bid which later expired; Sony Pictures Classics also pursued a deal but pulled out Tuesday afternoon, leaving the pic to Vantage, which is promising a significant P & A commitment. Sellers were Cinetic and CAA.

AWFJ highlights films made by and about women Read more

During this tumultuous, strike-hobbled awards season, at least a dozen movies with literary roots have real shots at winning the biggest prizes. Read more>>