Selma Blair Movie:

				Salesrank: 162422
		Used Price: $2.99
		MPAA Rating: R (Restricted) Media: DVD

Editorial Review:
This modern-day teen update of Les Liaisons Dangereuses suffered at the hands of both critics and moviegoers thanks to its sumptuous ad campaign, which hyped the film as an arch, highly sexual, faux-serious drama (not unlike the successful, Oscar-nominated Dangerous Liaisons). In fact, this intermittently successful sudser plays like high comedy for its first two-thirds, as its two evil heroes, rich stepsiblings Kathryn (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Sebastian (Ryan Phillippe), blithely ruin lives and reputations with hearts as black as coal. Kathryn wants revenge on a boyfriend who dumped her, so she befriends his new intended, the gawky Cecile (Selma Blair), and gets Sebastian to deflower the innocent virgin. The meat of the game, though, lies in Sebastian's seduction of good girl Annette (a down-to-earth Reese Witherspoon), who's written a nationally published essay entitled "Why I Choose to Wait." If he fails, Kathryn gets his precious vintage convertible; if he wins, he gets Kathryn--in the sack. When the movie sticks to the merry ruination of Kathryn and Sebastian's pawns, it's highly enjoyable: Gellar in particular is a two-faced manipulator extraordinaire, and Phillippe, usually a black hole, manages some fun as a hipster Eurotrash stud. Most pleasantly surprising of all is Witherspoon, who puts a remarkably self-assured spin on a character usually considered vulnerable and tortured (see Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Liaisons). Unfortunately, writer-director Roger Kumble undermines everything he's built up with a false ending that's true to neither the reconceived characters nor the original story--revenge is a dish best served cold, not cooked up with unnecessary plot twists. --Mark Englehart

Cruel Intentions [Region 2] Reviews:
Cruel Intentions
2009-11-24 - I loved this movie in High School and I still love it today. On Blu-ray absolutely everything looks great. And of course it is always fun to see Sarah Michelle Gellar and Joshua Jackson (that's right, he is in this!) out of their usual roles. Love it!

"A Cat and Mouse Game!"
2009-09-09 - "Cruel Intentions" is a delicious cat and mouse game between two teenagers living the high life on Fifth Avenue in New York City. The movie depicts how two step-siblings play mental games with one another with the intention of destroying the other. I have to admit this is a fun movie because it's always neat to watch those that are rich who have nothing to do but to destroy people's lives. The movie is well-known for the excellent acting by its leads. Sarah Michelle Gellar (from TV's "All My Children" and the "Buffy" series) and Ryan Phillippe star as the dastardly duo. The bet the two make is that if Sebastian (Phillippe) beds the headmistress' daughter of the school that Kathryn (Geller) attends, Sebastian can then bed Kathryn. If not Kathryn gets Sebastian's most prized toy. The headmistress' daughter is played by future Oscar winner and wife of Phillippe, Reese Witherspoon. The DVD comes with a collectable booklet and a ton of bonuses including 6 deleted scenes, audio commenatary, music videos, and trailer, plus much more. Subtitles are in english and language is 5.1 Dolby Digital. There are also two fantastic sequels to this film called "Cruel Intentions 2" and "Cruel Intentions 3" that are just as good as the original. NBC News says the film is "a wild, daring new spin on the classic tale of love and betrayal".

Strictly for the uninitiated
2009-08-27 - If you're familiar, even in passing, with Christopher's Hampton's stage play Les Liaisons Dangereuses (based on the 18th century novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos) or its subsequent (and very popular) film incarnation, Dangerous Liaisons starring the insanely brilliant Glenn Close as the black hearted Marquise de Merteuil and, in my lonely opinion, the miscast, if compelling, John Malkovich as the lascivious and callous bon-vivant, Vicomte de Valmont than you can easily forego seeing this rather inept and not surprisingly insipid modernization and blithely go about your business. Something has definitely been lost in translation and it extends far beyond period costumes and Bach's keyboard concertos. Though a teenager's ability to descend the depths of cruelty is well known and documented, rarely is it of the sophisticated and viciously calculated variety, such as is the case here. Furthermore, we're not dealing with pawns that live within the sheltered environs and cloistered walls of 18th century France, but rather modern adolescents living rather privileged existences in one of the world's most modern and sophisticated cities, New York. They're hardly as gullible as pious 15 year old girls reared in convents. Pulling the wool over their collective eyes is going to take considerable effort not to mention near Machiavellian craftiness. In this retelling, both the plot and characters reek of artifice and you don't know whether to laugh or take the film seriously. It has nothing to do with the performances but rather with everything leading up to them, primarily a script that aches to be modern, yet is often times burdened with some stilted and archaic dialogue as if it's trying to hearken back to and somehow channel its original source. I mean, how many 16 year olds nowadays do you know of that write actual letters? I don't mean emails or text messages, I mean physical letters? In short, the film, more often than not, suffers from an identity crisis. The actors were more than decent and they did their best considering the material they were given and the soundtrack isn't at all bad, either. In closing, the movie is hardly dreadful and it can be rather entertaining but, again, if you're familiar with the 1988 Stephen Frears' film or to a lesser extent Milos Forman's Valmont of a few years later, you'll find yourself squinting through Cruel Intentions, vainly and understandably searching for remnants of either film and their respective characters and will be left feeling somewhat frustrated by the exercise.

Lots Of Fun!
2009-08-24 - Cruel Intentions
This is a fun story that takes the audience into the world of rich, spoiled, sophisticated and manipulative young adults.

Loved Reese Witherspoon! Ryan Phillippe played this role perfectly. It's unpredictable and has a great cast and soundtrack. I liked it.



So there's your psychoanalysis, Dr. Freud. Now tell me, are you in... or are you out?
2009-07-25 - Kathryn Merteuil (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and her step-brother, Sebastian Valmont (Ryan Phillippe), two jaded Manhattan teenagers, make a bet. After reading an abstinence manifesto in seventeen magazine -- "Why I Plan to Wait" by Annette Hargrove, Kansas City, Kansas -- Kathryn bets Sebastian that he can't seduce this paradigm of chastity and virtue. It just so happens that Annette Hargrove (Reese Witherspoon) is their headmaster's daughter, and she will be in town visiting. If Sebastian fails he has to give Kathryn his beloved 1956 Jaguar XK140 OTS (Open Two Seater), but if he wins he gets something he has wanted ever since their parents were married but could never have: Kathryn.

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Kathryn: So there's your psychoanalysis, Dr. Freud. Now tell me, are you in... or are you out?
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Sebastian keeps a journal detailing his and his step-sister's conquests and deceptions. It is titled Cruel Intentions, an apt description if ever there was one. They seduce for the sport of it, merely because they are bored. Innocence and good reputations are destroyed for their amusement. Sebastian is even more treacherous than he is attractive. Every woman he has successfully pursued has regretted it. His therapist, Dr. Greenbaum (Swoosie Kurtz), is dismayed to learn that Sebastian has seduced her daughter Marci (Tara Reid) and posted the results on the Internet. Bunny Caldwell (Christine Baranski) didn't fare much better when her daughter Cecile (Selma Blair) fell into the half-siblings' orbit:

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Kathryn: Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. When I'm through with Cecile, she'll be the premiere tramp of the New York area.
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The scene where Kathryn teaches Cecile to French kiss ranked the film at #32 on Entertainment Weekly's "The 50 Sexiest Movies Ever" (issue #1023, November 28, 2008). Cecile is played by Selma Blair, recently seen on the canceled sit com, "Kath & Kim," as Kim Day, alongside Molly Shannon, as her mother, Kath Day. In real life, Selma is good friends with Reese Witherspoon, and was also in Reese's film, "Legally Blonde." Selma has the luscious full lips of a Liv Tyler and also share's Liv's ability to play ripe for the plucking, but none too bright ingénues. As Cecile Caldwell, she is putty in Sebastian's hands:

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Cecile Caldwell: This sure doesn't taste like an iced tea.
Sebastian: It's from Long Island.
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For the viewer, a big part of the fun is speculating about the personal lives of the actors and actresses, and comparing and contrasting what you know about them with the characters they play in CI. Ryan Phillippe and Reese Witherspoon were married, and by all reports they made a great couple; but have since divorced, allegedly due to Ryan's infidelities. Could the fact that Witherspoon's career was going so much better than his have been a factor? She won the Oscar for "Walk the Line" while he was nominated for a Worst Actor Razzie for "54." Phillippe had this to say about working with her in "Cruel Intentions:"

"It was great. I'm the luckiest guy in the world. Not only personally but professionally. She was an asset to the movie and we begged her to do it. She didn't have as colorful a role as Sarah's and mine, but she did an amazing job. Really elevated the piece."

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Annette: How can someone so charming be so manipulative?
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Perhaps being manipulative is a way to charm. At any rate, all the actors in CI gave great performances, relishing the chance to play such charming, though admittedly manipulative, rogues. Phillippe and Witherspoon, in particular, were so into their roles that at one point she slapped him, unexpected and unscripted, and the director left it in the final cut. After this very intense scene, as soon as the director yelled, 'cut,' Ryan Phillipe went behind the set and threw up. An early role of Ryan Phillippe was in the soap opera "One Life to Live" as Billy Douglas (13 episodes, 1992-1993). This was somewhat of a groundbreaking role, because Billy Douglas was one of the first gay characters on a soap opera. Of course, I am not insinuating anything about Ry here, not that there's anything wrong with that.

Sarah Michelle Gellar, with the other juicy, colorful role, also gave a great performance as Kathryn. She is perhaps best known as Buffy Summers, from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (145 episodes, 1997-2003), but she is also an Emmy Award winning actress for the soap opera, "All My Children" as Kendall Hart Lang (25 episodes, 1993-1995). She is married to actor Freddie Prinze Jr. Sarah was in at least 6 movies with Prinze. Two Scooby Doos and in "She's All That," she is unaccredited Girl in Cafeteria. Both she and Ryan Phillippe were in 1997's "I Know What You Did Last Summer," along with Jennifer Love Hewitt. For some reason I can never resist the temptation of saying "Jennifer Love Hewitt."

Same goes for "Swoosie Kurtz." Swoosie Kurtz has the distinction of being in both "Dangerous Liaisons" and "Cruel Intentions," two films based on the novel "Les liaisons dangereuses" by Choderlos de Laclos. She was also in "Reality Bites." Tara Reid, besides being a major party girl and friend of Paris Hilton, was in "The Big Lebowski" where she played Bunny Lebowski.

Roger Kumble, the director, did a fantabulous job. He wrote the script, based on the book by Choderlos de Laclos, in only 12 days. CI is fluff, but the 'project is elevated' by the high caliber acting. Besides those already mentioned Louise Fletcher, who has over a hundred film credits and an Oscar for playing Nurse Ratched in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1975), was Helen Rosemond. Right from the first frames of CI to the last you are impressed with the stylish look, the witty dialogue, and the taut directing.

There is also great music by Placebo, Blur, Counting Crows, The Cardigans, The Verve, Johann Sebastian Bach, Skunk Anansie, Marcy Playground, Fatboy Slim, Aimee Mann, Faithless, and, in an homage to Stanley Kubrick's "Clockwork Orange," "Symphony #9 in D Minor, Op. 125, 'Choral'" Parts of this film look like music videos, but that is not a put down. The opening in particular, is a visual feast. The closing is not bad, either, with The Verve's "Bittersweet Symphony." Did you know that it was written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, though the lyrics were by Richard Ashcroft and it was performed by The Verve? Actually, Richard Ashcroft sampled the strings from The Andrew Oldham Orchestra's version of "The Last Time." The Rolling Stones sued, and though Ashcroft had layered lots of stuff over it, for instance, the violin lead part, the judge ruled that they had used too much, and gave Mick and Keith 100% composer credit. For Ashcroft, it was a bittersweet symphony indeed, and a fitting close for "Cruel Intentions."

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Sebastian: Why can't we be together?
Annette: You wanna know why? Because I don't trust myself with you.
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Walk the Line (2005) .... Reese Witherspoon was June Carter
Crash (Widescreen Edition) (2004) .... Ryan Phillippe was Officer Tom Hansen
Vanity Fair (Widescreen) (2004) .... Reese Witherspoon was Becky Sharp
Legally Blonde (2001) .... Reese Witherspoon was Elle Woods and Selma Blair was Vivian
The Big Lebowski - 10th Anniversary Edition (1998) .... Tara Reid was Bunny Lebowski
Playing By Heart (1998) .... Ryan Phillippe was Keenan
54 (1998) .... Ryan Phillippe was Shane O'Shea, and nominated for a worst actor Razzie
I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) .... Sarah Michelle Gellar was Helen Shivers and Ryan Phillippe was Barry William Cox
Dangerous Liaisons (1988) .... Swoosie Kurtz was Madame de Volanges
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) .... Louise Fletcher was Nurse Ratched

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Kathryn: Everybody loves me, and I intend to keep it that way.
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