Joel Schumacher isn’t a bad director; he’s just a bad Batman director, as anyone who sat through the franchise-destroying abomination that was Batman & Robin can tell you (Batman Forever before it wasn’t very good, either). Falling Down and The Lost Boys are terrific, as is Phone Booth and Flawless (the one with Robert De Niro and Philip Seymour Hoffman, not the one with Michael Caine and Demi Moore, though Moore did star in Schumacher’s St. Elmo’s Fire). The point is the man deserves a better gig than this direct-to-video by-the-numbers home invasion job, though at least he got two A-list actors he’s worked with before to slum with him. Trespass stars Nicolas Cage (of 8MM) and Nicole Kidman (of Batman Forever) as a wealthy couple whose sweet pad gets targeted for robbery by a gang of none-too-bright thieves; the subsequent battle of wits (as it were) between captors and captives reveals all sorts of secrets the husband and wife were keeping from each other, including a did-she-or-didn’t-she affair with the handyman (who also happens to be one of the dudes robbing the place). Cage and Kidman are actually both quite good; too bad the unimaginative, tedious movie they’re in doesn’t deserve such fine performances. Watch David Fincher’s Panic Room instead.
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New On Netflix: Trespass