Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Is Malice one of the last films of the 1980s?Strange question for a movie made in 1993, right? But no ... I think movies take a long, long time to get made, and they reflect what was in their creators' minds at the time of the creation. Easy to think that Malice was a product, literally, of the late 1980s.What I saw was Yuppies. Doctors and Lawyers and College Deans. Big city apartments, waterfront houses on the point. That 80's hair and 80's clothes. Not a sighting of (soon to be de rigueur) flannel shirts to be seen. No beards. No trust fund or startup company kids starting grunge bands.I also saw an "end of the 80's" message, tiny, a little veiled, but there. Let's get to that (and it is our tiny little spoiler). The 1980's was about conspicuous consumption, of stretching the limits of experience in everything, fine clothing, fine automobiles, interesting food, wine, drugs, etc. It didn't really matter how you got there, so long as you were a consumption machine, consuming the finest of everything ... you were "King of the 80's".SPOILER ABOUT TO HAPPENSo, just as 1987's Gordon Gekko said "Greed is Good" and we were starting to doubt that truth ... Bill Pullman's character let's slip a final nail in the 1980's Yuppie coffin. This is right at the end of the movie, where he needs some ice for a wound he received: "I'll have mine in a glass with some scotch...single malt, nothing blended. Blended whiskey is crap. Someone told me that once."But the way he said, "Someone told me that once" comes off as very dismissive. It is said with a little tiny bit of derision. Enough to say, F the scotch, let's drink a Busch beer, jump in the mosh pit, and get the 1990's grunge scene rolling ...Where Ordinary People (a 1980 film) is one of my early 1980's films, the transition from the 70's to the 80's ... Malice is now my transition to the 1990's film, or at least the last of the 1980's films.I hope comments from you and others may improve upon my judgment here. I came of age in the 1980's, graduating high school in 1985, and the good and bad of that decade are really interesting to me ... especially as we become the rulers of the universe, for real, this time. Are we going to bring our bad or our good 1980's ideas with us?

If you have never seen this movie before and you don't know the plot, do not under any circumstances watch the trailer - it spoils nearly everything! It even has a scene with one character saying "So it was all a setup?" and another revealing shot of two characters kissing (maybe you shouldn't read this comment before seeing the film, either, but hey - I did click the spoiler box!). "Malice" is slick and watchable, but also by-the-numbers and conventional; Harold Becker directs with professionalism, but he rarely does anything out of the ordinary. The film does benefit from strong performances - Nicole Kidman is in her prime and Alec Baldwin's "God Complex" speech is terrific. And the final scene with the boy next door adds a perfectly ironic touch. **1/2 out of 4.

Andy Safian (Bill Pullman) is the Associate Dean at a local college. A serial rapist attacks a student and the new hot-shot brash doctor Jed Hill (Alec Baldwin) saves her life. Andy realizes that Jed is a popular former high school classmate. Andy's wife Tracy (Nicole Kidman) is a children school teacher and his former student. Andy rents out their third floor to Jed but he's a bad tenant. Andy finds the dead body of student Paula Bell (Gwyneth Paltrow) and detective Dana Harris (Bebe Neuwirth) sees him as a suspect despite being his friend. Tracy suffers a rupture of an ovarian cyst. A drunk Jed operates and mistakenly takes out both ovaries as well as causing a miscarriage. Tracy blames Andy for allowing it to happen as she sues Jed.The movie is overloaded with red herring, blind twist and subplots where a serial killer actually dead ends to nothing but a random guy. At some point, I wonder what this movie is really about. It has so much plot that it sinks under its own weight. It may hurt Aaron Sorkin physically but he needed to simplify the story. Alec Baldwin is chewing up the dialog and is a full-on arrogant douche. In a simple story about Jed, that would be a powerful scene. However it becomes just another big writing scene in a movie full of wild writing.

I am a mystery/thriller fan and Malice is the kind of first-rate thriller that rarely comes along any more. One that truly challenges the expectations of the audience and involves red herrings and misdirection.Set in an upper scale New England college town, Malice focuses on happily married college dean Bill Pullman and wife Nicole Kidman. The town is reeling from a series of serial murders by an unknown killer and Kidman is more than a bit perturbed when Pullman decides to rent their upstairs room out to school buddy and egocentric surgeon Alec Baldwin.If you think that you know where Malice is going from that synopsis, then think again. There are several plots at work in Malice and the one that we think will be the main focus becomes a rather neat little red herring. The film is cleverly written, adeptly acted and Harold Becker (of Sea of Love fame) provides tight direction. It is a joy to re-watch the film to see how adroitly the filmmakers and writers use our expectations against us.The film also keeps us guessing. It provides us with a set of characters who seem to fit neatly into the thriller genre and then sets about to confound us. For instance, Kidman's character seems destined from the opening moments to be the quintessential damsel in distress. The cuddly, well-meaning heroine whose world is invaded by an untrustworthy and unwanted boarder, who may be far more malevolent than even she believes. However, the film turns that assumption on its head and allows the actress to run the gamut from A to Z. And she does so admirably - this is arguably one of her best and most underrated performances.Pullman is quite appealing as the ostensibly nice guy dean. Baldwin nails his role as the swaggering surgeon with a major God complex. His mid-film meltdown under a cross-examination is really quite marvelous to watch, as is Kidman's droll comeback to his posturing. Bebe Neuwirth also scores a memorable turn as a local cop investigating the deaths. Gwyneth Paltrow has a brief part as an irresponsible student. Plus we get well-delineated cameos by George C. Scott, as Baldwin's former mentor, and Anne Bancroft, hamming it up in a surprise role.The film has genuine thrills, but it also keeps the audience consistently guessing as to who is doing what to whom and who is responsible for what. There are double-dealings and double-crosses, but all of them seem completely credible, and the film is also refreshingly free of gory violence.If the film has any real flaws it is merely an over-reliance on melodrama in the latter fourth. Additionally it seems unlikely that the mastermind behind the main plot would fall for such a suspicious snare as gets laid out in the climax. However, these seem relatively minor quibbles for a film that so astutely knows how to manipulate viewers and confound their initial impressions.