Fresh and Exciting

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

"Raising Cain" is often cited as minor DePalma but surely even minor DePalma is often so much better than the best of many other minor directors and even minor DePalma can be a lot of fun. His critics call him a plagarist and his many homages to Hitchcock, (some call them rip-offs but I don't), could, in other hands, become tiresome but Mr DePalma elevates them to the level of art. The plots may often be silly and he doesn't always bring out the best in his actors but the set pieces are gloroious if sometimes a little too obvious.Here "Psycho" gets the full-on treatment right down to the car in the swamp and the psychiatrist's explanation and, as in "Vertigo", he gives us the big reveal quite early on. But it's those set-pieces, in this case a slo-mo climax during a thunderstorm, that carry the picture and, of course, there's always John Lithgow pulling out all the stops and then some as a distinct first cousin of Norman Bates.

Raising Cain (1992) *** (out of 4) Jenny (Lolita Davidovich) believes that her husband Carter (John Lithgow) is the perfect man but what she doesn't realize is that his father messed with his mind a little too much and now his past is going to come back and haunt him.Brian De Palma's RAISING CAIN was always a very disappointing movie to me because I felt it had so much potential but it never fully came out in the film. Director Peet Gelderblom would eventually re-edit the movie in a cut known as RAISING CAIN RE-CUT and director De Palma would praise it saying that this version is what he originally wanted to do with the film but he regretted changing his mind at the last second. Now this "Director's Cut" is available on Blu-ray and we can finally see this film for what it was meant to be.I'm not going to give away any major spoilers but it should be said that the Director's Cut contains every frame that was in the Theatrical Cut. The only difference between the two is the way that they are edited and I must say that it's really amazing how much better the Director's Cut is. In fact, after viewing this version it becomes a complete nightmare why someone as great as De Palma would turn in the Theatrical Cut because it just doesn't play very well and a lot of the build up in the suspense department is just lost.What is also more apparent in the Director's Cut is the flow of the film. If you're familiar with De Palma's work then you already know that he loves to keep a certain style and flow in his films and it's much more clear in this cut of the movie. The opening scenes really set you up for the thriller that is going to follow and I thought the entire movie played much better. It certainly helps build up the suspense as the madness of the Lithgow character slowly builds until he eventually breaks. The "clues" that De Palma gives off are a lot more shocking when they finally reveal themselves as well.The one great thing about whichever version you watched was the performance of Lithgow. He's playing multiple characters here with multiple personalities and he perfectly brings them to life and really creates a rather creepy and mentally disturbing character. I thought Davidovich was a bite too light here but we get some nice supporting performances including the one from Steven Bauer and Frances Sternhagen.Most people considered RAISING CAIN a major disappointment but I would ask, or beg, those people to give the movie another chances in the Director's Cut. It really goes to show how important editing is and how a bad edit of a movie can ruin it.

"Raising Cain" is a thriller that's so misguided in its direction that I'm not 100% sure if telling you about the premise is a spoiler or not. I'm going to say that it isn't because there's a casting choice early on that makes the "twist" incredibly obvious but I apologize in advance if for some reason you feel like I end up ruining the movie for you. Like I said, I don't think this is spoiling anything when I tell you the movie is about a guy with multiple personality disorder that is kidnapping children for his father's experiments. OK, maybe that's a big vague. Let's back up. John Lithgow plays Carter Nix, a respected psychologist that is taking time off from his practice to help raise his daughter while his wife Jenny (Lolita Davidovich) keeps working. There's something not quite right about Carter though. The attention he gives to his daughter borders on obsessive and when his "twin brother" suddenly appears outside of his car window, Cain reveals that the two have been working on a sinister plan fit for a mad genius. Their father, long-thought dead (also played by John Lithgow) is looking to collect children so that he can experiment the effects of abuse on their minds. He wants to kidnap children, traumatize them and study them afterward, hoping to create examples of multiple personality disorder and document what his "research" uncovers. That's a pretty crazy story, but what is really affecting Carter is Jenny's old flame Jack (Steven Bauer) has suddenly re-entering her life. Her marriage vows are looking a lot less appealing now that this hunk has bumped into her and with this added stress, it's enough to drive a man mad!While watching the movie, I was just confused. Is casting John Lithgow as multiple members of his family supposed to be done so that we think they're real people, or are we supposed to think they're hallucinations? If it was supposed to be a twist that he and his brother are in fact, the same person, why not cast other people in the role? There's nothing about their relationship that makes them being "twins" necessary, so why this choice? Most thrillers dealing with imaginary friends, little voices in people's heads telling them to go bananas or multiple personality disorders choose two different actors to play the roles in order to avoid suspicion. If it's not supposed to be a twist, why do they play it as a big revelation that he's a crazy person? There are some casting choices here and some revelations in the end of the film that support the idea that it's supposed to be a twist and others that say it isn't, making the movie very difficult to review without spoiling anything. Maybe that's just me though. Maybe I'm a dummy and I just read somewhere that this movie was about a multiple personalities and just didn't catch all of the red herrings, or maybe this movie was meant to be so obvious that it would throw people off. Even if that's the case, the movie directed very strangely. There are multiple scenes where characters are shown doing some pretty extreme things that would shock the people they know and love, but then they turn out to be dreams. Then the next scene turns out to be a flashback, followed by another dream. There's no way to determine what is what and who is sane in this movie so it just becomes confusing and annoying.If you watch the film, you will really question the behavior of some characters. The police are particularly ineffective in this film and jump to all sorts of crazy conclusions when it's convenient for a character to be captured, but when someone needs to escape or get away so that they can confront another character or make a dramatic entrance later in the film, the security becomes incredibly lax. There is a pretty cool escape sequence where Carter manages to sneak out of a building unnoticed, but even then he drops the ball by removing his shoes and just walking around barefoot. Yes he changed his clothes so no one would recognize him, but walking around without any protection for your toes? That's just a bad move. Was he concerned that the police would recognize his footprints, but not his face? There are some minor plot holes you can point out too, but it's not the little details that make this movie bad, it's the overall story, the way it's set up and particularly the casting. John Lithgow does a fine job, even when his role calls for some embarrassing stuff. Throughout the film, it just feels like something is wrong though. It feels like certain roles were chosen to be played by John Lithgow not because he suited the role, but because it would make for a "shocking reveal" later in the movie. It's not his fault he's in a mess of a film, it's the casting director's, and Brian De Palma's for letting him/her get away with it.I realize I'm being overwhelmingly negative about the movie, but it really isn't all that bad. It's just profoundly misguided and overall not anything special. I can't quite recommend it, though if you've seen it ahead of time and you want to really screw with your friends' minds, watch this one back-to-back with a movie where a character has multiple personalities and it's a genuine twist. Watch this one second and watch their brains deflate like a balloon out of confusion. It's never boring, that's something good to be said about it and there are some genuinely thrilling moments here too, but it's just nothing you should rush out to see or will remember very well once it's all over, except maybe for the last shot of the movie, which is particularly ridiculous. (On DVD, January 19, 2014)

Jenny finds herself doubting if she is happy when her ex comes back into town... she reminds herself that she is married to the perfect man, an excellent psychiatrist who's taken time off his own practice to spend more time with their daughter, Amy. He is getting somewhat obsessive about it, though... almost like he's... studying her. De Palma goes so far in this homage to Hitchcock that the entire film is one big tribute to the master, and he plays with the camera as he also loves to do(we get a couple of long takes, one of them 4 full minutes, and one sequence has great use of slow-mo... not quite the subway scene in The Untouchables, of course), and we get a tension-packed, suspenseful psychological thriller(light, in the way that it uses the Hollywood approach to mental problems; it is actually a brutal, disturbing, bloody and violent piece with some strong sexuality... also setting it apart from Alfred's pictures - then again, he might have gone this far if the censorship laws had allowed for it, considering stuff like Frenzy), with a lot of the power coming from Lithgow's inherent creepiness(and he's perfectly cast, if some of what he's asked to do here is awkward... and do not look at the IMDb listings before watching, it will spoil a lot). The characters aren't bad(nothing spectacular, but likable and interesting enough), and the acting is plenty solid. This has a lot going on, especially as far as the plot goes(you may want to give it a second viewing just to make sure you picked up on everything that happened), and not only for a fast-paced movie that doesn't break 90 minutes. The chronology can really confuse you, as well as the score of surprises(and several fake-outs!). And at the end of the day, this is mainly meant to entertain you, and it lacks the kick of credible flicks. The DVD comes with a trailer. I recommend this to any fan of the director, star and the man whose body of work provided the inspiration. 6/10