The Glass House (2001)

The Glass House (2001): Dir: Daniel Sackheim / Cast: Leelee Sobieski, Stellan Skarsgard, Diane Lane, Bruce Dern, Chris Noth: Typical thriller that shatters into formula. Title refers to a family that owns a big house, the Glass couple. It is also made of glass as well. One could also interpret the title as a relationship to fragility. Leelee Sobieski plays a rebellious teenager who arrives home one evening to the news that her parents were killed in a car accident. She and her brother are secure in terms of money yet they are put under custody of the Glasses. From there Sobieski feels threatened over sexual hints by Mr. Glass, and Mrs. Glass is found with a needle in her arm. This all arrives at a pointlessly violent conclusion when Sobieski and her brother plot escape. Director Daniel Sackheim does a fair job, and the house gives off a nice ominous appeal, but the screenplay is a joke. Sobieski holds her own in a struggle to find escape and refuge before the laughable climax. Stellan Skarsgard as Mr. Glass is an idiot from the first reel. Diane Lane plays his fragile wife who perhaps could have taken measures than she did. Bruce Dern plays a crooked lawyer in what amounts to one of his dumbest roles. Chris Noth plays an uncle who is one of a long list of people not able to communicate with these kids. Pointless bore that shatters to bits within its first thirty minutes. Score: 3 ½ / 10

THE GLASS HOUSE is another over-plotted, overwritten and entirely overblown Hollywood thriller that goes over age-old ground without ever finding its own original standing. It's a sanitised, teen-friendly movie with a teen lead and a narrative that hints at plenty but never once approaches anything remotely dark.The story goes that the youthful protagonist (played by the utterly cold Leelee Sobieski) and her younger brother are sent to live with some family friends after they're orphaned in a car accident. The girl soon realises that something's seriously wrong in their new home, a sinister situation embodied by an overacting Stellan Skarsgard (a guy who seems to be typecast as the bad guy in Hollywood).That's a halfway decent premise, but THE GLASS HOUSE wastes its potential as it goes on, ending up mired in a muddled middle and uninspiring climax. You can literally work out everything that's going to happen in the first half hour, and there are no surprises or genuine shocks. There's no decent acting, either; bringing in Bruce Dern as the family lawyer doesn't do much, while Daniel Sackheim's direction is staid and uninspiring. It's best to give this one a miss.

Our friend Donna had bought this as a used DVD and we watched it last night. The title has two meanings. After the two kids lost their parents in a car wreck their old neighbors, the Glass family, took them in so they lived in the "Glass" house. But the house also has lots of glass in it, so you can often see people in different rooms, and this plays into the story also.Leelee Sobieski was probably 17 during filming and plays 16-year-old Ruby Baker. Diane Lane is Erin Glass who in effect becomes her stepmother. Stellan Skarsgård is Terry Glass. Trevor Morgan is Ruby's kid brother Rhett Baker .As the two youngsters begin their new lives with the Glasses, in a fancy house on a small bluff above the ocean, things don't appear 'right' from the very beginning. It soon is very clear that the Glasses have some sort of sinister agenda. How Ruby and her brother cope with this is the movie.It was just 'OK' for us, we certainly would not see it again. It is filled with first-rate actors, so fault must go to the script and direction.SPOILERS: To cut to the chase as they say, the kids' parents were thrifty and had an approximate $4 Million estate, the Glasses were in a big bind and needed that money. Terry Glass had 'loaned' the parents a car that fateful night and we conclude that the car was rigged to crash and kill them so that the Glasses could get custody and, ultimately the $4 Million for their own use. Ruby is wise beyond her years and eventually gets the upper hand, Erin dies from her own drug overdose, Ruby ends up running over Terry after a car chase on the Pacific Coast Highway.

I couldn't get into this one. The chief reason being the wooden acting done by Leelee Sobieski.I couldn't get to like the expression on her (or expressionless) face and her low mumbling voice. You need to put in at least some character into the part you're playing, but this is high school stage play level of acting. I couldn't feel any life out of her at all. I have other things I'd like to say about her but I wouldn't get into it.With the star so out of it, the story had no chance of survival, and the supporting actor's weren't anything to mention about either. In fact I hated them.Production people of this movie must have been morons, to put together such a lifeless dud.