Film:
What Lies Beneath
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on basement television.
I’m a sucker for people playing against type. Give me Dennis Hopper playing a good guy, or Henry Fonda playing a complete bastard, and I’m in. It’s catnip for me, as is watching someone known for doing comedy excelling at a serious role. So, give me a movie where Harrison Ford is playing a professor who has had an affair with a student who has since gone missing and you have my attention. That movie is
What Lies Beneath, which was somehow co-written by Clark Gregg, best-known as Agent Coulson from the Marvel Universe. It’s a big old world, but it’s folded over a lot.
Norman Spencer (Ford) is an accomplished scientist living in the shadow of his mathematician father. He and his wife Claire (Michelle Pfeiffer) live in Vermont in a large and fairly idyllic house, but the relationship is strained. A large part of this strain comes from Claire’s daughter Caitlin (Katharine Towne) going off to college, leaving Claire and Norman as empty nesters.
