Nobel Son (2007) released 2008

This is worth seeing if only for Alan Rickman's (all the Harry Potter movies, Sweeney Todd (2007), Sense and Sensibility (1995), and, the movie that started him off, Truly Madly Deeply (1990), though it was not his first) deliciously detestable Professor Eli Michaelson. I didn't realize when I saw it that director/co-writer Randall Miller and his co-writer Jody Savin had the same jobs on the delightful Bottle Shock (2008), also featuring Rickman and Bill Pullman. This one is playing now, despite its 2007 completion year. The son, Barkley, is played by Bryan Greenberg (Prime (2005)), the creepy guy is Shawn Hatosy (whom I will always remember as the poor prep school kid in Outside Providence (1999) but who was also creepy in Alpha Dog (2006)), and the luscious ladies are the talented Mary Steenburgen (dozens of credits, my favorites being Life as a House (2001) and What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993)) and Eliza Dushku (she was in Bottle Shock, too, but to me she'll always be the gymnast-turned-cheerleader in the tween hit Bring It On (2000)--sorry, I never saw a frame of Buffy), one of whom is sane, one not. This is hard to follow, not exactly chronological. I went with 2 friends to a matinee at the mall theatre yesterday, and, since we were by ourselves, we talked ("Huh? When is it now? Is it before? After?"). But it all works out rather nicely in the end. There is a gruesome bloody thing right in the beginning, so be prepared to look away if that's what you do (I put my hand up to cover the middle of the screen so I can see the edges and know when it's cutting away). But he cuts back to the gore way too many times. So to speak.