Capsule Reviews: 'Gray Matters' and 'The Number 23'

"Gray Matters" — If you've heard of this movie at all, it's probably because of its hyped-up girl-girl kiss between Heather Graham and Bridget Moynahan. And it is hot — probably the best scene in a movie that's otherwise sitcommy, forced and forgettable. Graham and Tom Cavanagh play brother and sister who both fall for the same woman in this homage to 1940s screwball comedies. The first film from writer-director Sue Kramer is crammed with quick banter, elaborate dance sequences and cutaways to the glittering Manhattan skyline. (And the clothes are fun, all romantic dresses and classically tailored suits.) Trouble is, Kramer left out the chemistry that made those movies so great, though Graham and Moynahan have a bit more than Cavanagh and Moynahan do. But aside from Graham's character's anguish over coming out (or whether she's actually gay in the first place), very little is believable about these people. Alan Cumming has a couple of cute scenes as the cab driver who's secretly in love with Graham, but Sissy Spacek goes to waste as the ditzy therapist who gives her clients advice while bowling or rock climbing. PG-13 for language and sexual content. 92 min. One and a half stars out of four. • Christy Lemire, AP Movie Critic "The Number 23" — One of the many mysteries about the number 23 is why Jim Carrey and director Joel Schumacher thought audiences would share their fascination over the mysteries about the number 23. Their thriller is a one-note — or one-number — affair, straining to build an engaging story around a man's conviction in the mystically diabolical power of that digit. Schumacher and screenwriter Fernley Phillips just pound the number into viewers' brains, overloading the scenery with instances of 23. Carrey plays an easygoing animal-control officer whose wife (Virginia Madsen) buys him a self-published novel as a gift, the tattered manuscript spinning a pulp murder tale with eerie parallels to his own life. Soon, Carrey's sharing the novel protagonist's obsession that the 23 enigma controls his fate, the movie presenting some nice visual flair in film-noir fantasy sequences but playing out in a prolonged series of predictable plot twists. R for violence, disturbing images, sexuality and language. 96 minutes. Two stars out of four. • David Germain, AP Movie Writer