I rather feel I shouldn’t have liked this film, since so many people have slated it utterly. However – I kind of enjoyed it! It was certainly atmospheric, and I rather liked the the tale of obsession, combining two of my favourite things – numbers and books!

The numbers bit – everything coming back to 23 – was very, very silly, but the whole decent into paranoia worked all the better for me because of it. I confess I was intrigued with the mystery aspect, and I didn’t see the twist coming. Was it great? Hmm. I suppose that’s where most people hate the whole thing, but… meh!

Oh yeah, and Jim Carrey’s tattoos in the Fingerling scenes were kinda cool :)

As a fan of the intellectual and psychological thriller/drama (eg, Se7en, Pi, Magnolia) I had high hopes for this movie. The opening credits succeeded in drawing me in, with a number of “coincidences” being stated as fact, all making connections to the number 23.

I really thought this was going to be a great movie. In fact, the story started out with pretty good potential. Unfortunately, this movie suffers from the same telegraphing symptoms of other high-budget let-downs, like the DaVinci Code, or Secret Window. Every twist is seen coming far in advance, and the plot is paper thin. It’s a story about a story.

I think it’s a sign of a weak writer when you write a story about a story, making that sub-story out to be great. It’s as if the writer imagines his story as great, but knows it’s not, so he has to write a story around it to cast it in a better light. Well, that’s how it looks to me, anyway.

STOOPID! And too much bondage sex.