When a movie is based on an unsolved murder, it's tough to avoid an anticlimactic ending. After all, there's a reason mysteries are also called whodunits. That's why "The Alphabet Killer," inspired by the 1970s slayings of three Rochester, N.Y., schoolgirls -- all with double initials -- is ultimately so unsatisfying.
Although it offers an intriguing main character in Megan Paige (Eliza Dushku), a police detective whose inability to solve a young girl's brutal rape and murder leads to a mental breakdown, the perpetrator concocted here is too predictable to come off like anything more than the token conjecture he, in fact, is.
It's too bad there was no way around the story's inherent deficit since this effectively unsettling film, directed by Rob Schmidt ("Wrong Turn"), chugs along quite well for a while, at least until Megan's emotional baggage overtakes the clearly dead-end investigation.
Dushku and supporting players Timothy Hutton, Cary Elwes and Tom Malloy (who also scripted) turn in proficient performances, as do Melissa Leo and Martin Donovan in brief cameos.
-- Gary Goldstein
"The Alphabet Killer." MPAA rating: Unrated. Running time: 1 hour, 38 minutes. Exclusively at Laemmle's Monica 4-Plex, 1332 2nd St., Santa Monica, (310) 394-9741.
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Sexual escapades with no feeling
In regard to gay themes, Israeli cinema has long been one of the most progressive in the world. It typically treats sex, gay or straight, with a matter-of-fact candor. When it comes to sex, Yair Hochner's "Antarctica" pushes the envelope to just this side of hard core.
Its key character Omer (Tomer Ilan) is facing 30, which causes him to realize his life lacks purpose, but then he is distracted, as are his many friends, by a never-ending series of sexual encounters with men as young and good-looking as he is. Meanwhile, his sister (Lucy Dubinchik) has decided to break off an engagement to marry and pursue her feelings for her employer (Liat Ekta), proprietor of a trendy coffeehouse. The pleasure-seeking world of Omer is much the same as that of "The Bubble," but in that superb film the realities of the chronic Israeli-Palestinian conflict intruded in an inspired manner. The best that Hochner can come up with to give a little substance to his romantic comedy is to invent a ditzy novelist (Rivka Neuman) with very bad hair who insists that aliens are going to land in central Tel Aviv.
