New Movie Watch Download: mental illness

Asylum

Natasha Richardson glides through the film version of Patrick McGrath's novel "Asylum" in various states of fear, desire and undress, a swan among Yorkshire frumps. As this placid tale of mad love unfolds, charting an affair between the wife of a mental hospital administrator and her brooding, Heathcliffy lover, Richardson—who is 5 foot 9, according to various unimpeachable Internet sources, but in "Asylum" looks to be about nine feet tall—towers over her repressed lessers, a lightning rod in summer whites. Set in 1959, the story begins as Stella Raphael (Richardson) arrives in her grim new surroundings alongside her tightly buttoned husband Max (Hugh Bonneville) and their solitary 10-year-old son, Charlie (Gus Lewis). The marriage iced over years ago. We hear of Stella's past indiscretions, which Max clearly hasn't forgotten or forgiven.Any hope of newfound peace is shattered by a charismatic aesthete in Stella's midst, sculptor Edgar Stark (Marton Csokas), pet patient of one of Max's associates. Playing Dr. Peter Cleave, a subtly devious character specializing in "sexual pathology and its assorted catastrophes," Sir Ian McKellen finesses the tiniest of pauses like someone who deserves a second knighthood just for his timing.

The Number 23

Walter Sparrow (Jim Carrey) is leading a seemingly normal life with a seemingly normal wife, Agatha (Virginia Madsen), and a seemingly normal son, Robin (Logan Lerman). (It's necessary to throw in a "seemingly" here and there because of the nature of the production.) Everything changes the day his wife purchases a copy of a book entitled The Number 23 at a used bookstore. The book is about the obsession of the main character, a detective named Fingerling, with the number 23 in its various permutations. Walter becomes obsessed with the book. He senses an eerie connection between himself and Fingerling and, like the protagonist, he believes there's something important about how often 23 appears in his life. A psychologist friend (Danny Huston) suggests that he sees 23 everywhere because he's looking for 23 everywhere, but Walter ignores this sensible advice and begins to imagine conspiracies and murders.