Fractured Flickers
Images of death haunt photographer in ho-hum 'November'

The twist ending is a time-honored movie tradition. Greg Harrison's ambitious mystery/psychological thriller has a twisty ending, all right; what it lacks is a suitably complex and compelling movie up front to make the payoff worthwhile.

Courtney Cox plays a photographer who's waiting outside in the car when her boyfriend (James Le Gros) is killed in a random convenience store robbery. Cox broods in her apartment (where sepulcheral David Lynch-type music is always in the air), visits a shrink for headaches and surviovor's guilt, lunches with her glamorous mom (Anne Archer). And struggles to get a grip when photos from the robbery pop up in her slide carousel in her photography class and on her computer screen at home.

Harrison is clever in choosing a grammar of creepy images, and recurring, slightly altered details in flashback. But unlike obviously influential movies like Mulholland Drive or Memento, the story isn't rich or layered enough to bear so much scrutiny; it tumbles like a house of cards by the time we get to the simple-minded resolution of Benjamin Brand's script. There's a lot of style up onscreen for such a short, no-budget shoot, but the whole thing would work better as a 10-minute student film, or a half-hour episode of Twilight Zone.

NOVEMBER With Courtney Cox, James Le Gros, and Anne Archer. Written by Benjamin Brand. Directed by Greg Harrison. (R) 78 minutes. (**)
Review published in Good Times, August 25, 2005