THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW **

 Sometimes it's nice to see a director normally given over to highfalutin literary-based works slumming it which is precisely what Joe Wright is doing here. "The Woman in the Window" is another literary adaptation, (it's from an A. J. Finn novel), but it's a far less po-faced one than Wright usually gives us. In fact, as adapted by Tracy Letts, this is just a slice of grand guignol and it's great fun, referencing Hitchcock, (most obviously "Rear Window"), and film noir in general.

Amy Adams is the agoraphobic former child psychologist who spends her time spying on her new neighbours who all seem to be as loopy as she is and, of course, if you've seen "Rear Window", and who hasn't, you know what happens next; right, murder most foul though it's at this point that things start to diverge from Hitchcock's masterpiece. Did Amy really see a murder or is she as mad as a hatter?

Since we've seen variations on these themes countless times before, this is where the guessing games begin and if the punchline is a little less effective than it might have been you can always chalk it down to that old saying 'there's nothing new under the sun'. Adams, of course, is terrific and is ably backed up by those fine actors Gary Oldman and Julianne Moore, (but don't expect too much from Jennifer Jason Leigh who seems to have been denied permission to speak in this movie). It's trash or at best, pulp fiction; a junk-food movie from a man who, in the past, fancied himself something of a Michelin Star chef and I really enjoyed it.