Do not be too quick to judge Hereafter when you see it. I was about an hour into it and I was thinking; “Man, this is slow. I do not like it.” I had changed my mind completely by the end of this ponderous, mystifying and remarkable effort from Clint Eastwood.

This is a film, if you are prone to thinking about movies,  that you will like far more after you see than when you are watching it. This sounds like faint praise but it makes me think about films like The Passenger-- Slow and plodding but with images and ideas that stay with you. It leaves a great deal of the plot open to audience interpretation and audiences, American audiences anyway, are usually repulsed and angered when a filmmaker does this (i.e. when a filmmaker requires them to think). It leaves so much blank canvas for the viewer’s mind to fill in it is astounding. But Eastwood somehow manages to make characters who we connect to as well, at least if we can connect with imperfect people with imperfect lives.

When the credits rolled an old man behind me, and make no mistake I was a solid 25 years younger than the majority of the audience, started talking about how a kid in the movie was “ugly”. As if a Macaulay Culkin look-alike was called for in the role of a disadvantaged and morose child of the English lower class. He also commented that French actress, Cecile De France, had nice hair but he didn’t like her teeth and then commented on how the French didn’t have good teeth.

Man, if you are going to be a bigoted idiot at LEAST get your stereotypes right. The ENGLISH have bad teeth; the French eat cheese and surrender to everyone.  

I bring this gentleman up to illustrate not only that old people can be as annoying as teenagers at the movies but to illustrate that this movie is going to go right over some people’s heads. If you think all child actors should be “cute as a bug” you are not going to like this movie. If you are a religious zealot you are going to leave unsatisfied. The film is also open to valid criticism but these criticisms are matters of taste as much as anything else.  A filmgoer or critic who cannot abide slow pacing will hate this. Likewise anyone who wants plots neatly tied up will hate it.

I expect atheists will, without seeing this film, will jump on it for not conforming to their beliefs (in much the same way Christians jumped on the inspiring and spiritual The Last Temptation of Christ). Likewise I imagine some Christian believers will walk out disappointed. This film does not affirm faith but rather asserts that there might be some undefined something after death. It offers no answers. In this way it called to mind The Knight asking Death about what comes after in the Seventh Seal. Death has no answers either.

As time passes this film will be regarded as a serious piece of filmmaking from Eastwood, even if for now it seems to only hint at greatness.

Last weekend I went to see the film Red. I didn’t write anything on it because it really only made me think of two things. First I thought of how my love for Mary Louise Parker is undimmed despite what appears to be extensive “work.” I think I love her voice or something like that. Second, I thought about how I pitied movie reviewers who had to write about a film like Red. There is just so little there: so little humor, so little plot, so little action and so little room for good actors to spread their wings.

So I gave it a miss.

This weekend I saw Paranormal Activity 2. I was inspired, sitting in the theater to think of an old Crosby, Stills & Nash song.

“Teach, your children well, teach them to shut the fuck up in the movie theater…”

It goes something like that right?

I do not mind people screaming in a horror movie. I do not mind the odd “Oh my God!!!” But I do mind “talk talk talk….giggle giggle giggle…talk talk talk…giggle giggle giggle” through the entire movie. When something happened there was even louder talking and giggling. Hell, I would even be less irked if I hadn’t seen that the kids were with their friggin PARENTS. They irritated my 13 year old so it isn’t just old fogey-ism (not that old fogeys cannot be irritating too. I also saw Hereafter in an audience full of geriatrics some of whom were incessantly hacking things up).

Paranormal Activity 2 doesn’t make a big mistake that other sequels of low budget films often make. It doesn’t try to go too far beyond the first. It is a unique sort of prequel/sequel that dispenses with unnecessary dialog. Most films would feel the need to explain what is happening which is totally pointless. Most of the audience have seen the first film and do not need much explanation. Even if you haven’t seen #1 you will get what is going on pretty quick (unless you have never seen a horror movie). It is sort of surprising that mainstream audiences like this movie, or the first one, because they are so subtle. No zombie with blood spewing from its mouth leaps out and bites off anyone’s face in this film. There are no vampires languidly pondering their immortality while fighting werewolves. The scares are more spine tingling. You see a door move. You see a shadow creep over a sleeping girl. You hear loud BANGS that cannot be explained.

I also marvel at the use of a very young child in this film. It must have required extraordinary patience to shoot the scenes with the child alone. Everyone who has been around a young child will feel a chill because kids that age do stare off at things that are “not there” all the time. Who KNOWS what they are reeeallly looking at!

A movie with this basic plot could easily turn into Poltergeist 5, The Spawning. It doesn’t. It maintains its rather slow pace throughout. It ends and leaves room for an immediate sequel without having to do back flips with the plot. Paranormal Activity 2 isn’t the scariest film I have seen in the past few years (that honor goes to the Spanish film, Rec. I broke my TOE watching that movie). But it is a rare horror sequel that changes from its predecessor subtly but remains true to the vision of that film. I am curious as to what the third installment brings because it cannot be more of the same; for one how do you, for a third time, justify the presence of cameras? Maybe it could be a documentary about the various disappearances?

Regardless I am looking forward to finding out.

The previews to The Town made me think; Hey! The Departed II.  My instincts, in this case, (as opposed to when I decided it wise to pay $9 to see The Time Travelers Wife) were correct. The Town is The Departed Light.  It isn’t bad, everyone in it is decent but there is pretty much no character development. You don’t like anyone. You don’t hate anyone. On a positive note, you don’t really notice this until you stop to think about it later and thinking about this movie later really isn’t necessary.

The Town moves along, guns are fired, crimes are committed but there is very little attempt to show how the crimes are planned. Nor is the environment that leads the particular neighborhood to lead the nation in armed robbers explored in anything but a cursory manner. Sure, there is a diagram and a few scenes and sentences on the ”hows” but nothing that gives any insight.  The Irish hooligans grab their machine guns, boost a car and head to the bank. If that is how it is done then our banks need to really rethink their security practices and maybe get some third graders to draw up some new procedures. The film gives the impression of being written by people who know what goes on in the Charleston section of Boston and assume everyone else must too.

We do not. And maybe that is just me giving them a pass writing that. Maybe it was laziness.

This movie isn’t awful, it just isn’t much. There is lots of gunfire but not much of anything else. It is pretty unfair to compare it to a Scorcese movie. Ben Affleck doesn’t embarrass himself directing this (although maybe he and his co-WRITERS DO).  There are tons of worst heist movies out there. In fact they all tend to be worse than this these days. But not completely sucking shouldn’t be considered as praise.

This is one of those films that is difficult to really say much about. The actors I am familiar with in the film are usually decent, excepting the sometimes wooden Affleck (who also occasionally pulls a good performance out of the air). They just don’t have much to do here aside from being stereotypes. How about getting a little more into the Irish robber who doesn’t drink part of this? How about the florist who seems to run things? I say “seems to” because it is not explored in any way at all. There were lots of roads to take in this basic plot. They just didn’t bother to drive down them.

 

There are some nice flourishes and additions to the American remake of Let  the Right One In.  At the same time it doesn’t desperately try to distinguish itself from its forbearer to the extent that it becomes unfocused. This film may even be more “focused” than the original.

It shortens some distracting side-plots (such as a woman who, bitten, develops unfortunate symptoms). Let Me In also tries to keep the dreariness, desolateness of the Swedish film intact but it does so without duplicating shot for shot. Whereas the first film’s jungle gym is all blank, snowed-in whiteness, in this film it has the sickly pallor of an off white streetlight.

Another part of this film which is striking is the marginalization of the mother. You never see her face. She is passed out, back to the camera or out of frame in every shot.  It is a very cinematic way of letting you know she doesn't matter.

There are also explanations in this movie—more so than in its Swedish sibling—but these are told with looks and old pictures rather than in any dialog. The character reiterates that she is not a girl more in this film. You can interpret this in different ways depending on if you have read the book or not.

One thing I always ask about any remake is; why remake it aside from money? I know money is what matters and that no foreign film, especially a horror/suspense film, is going to do the numbers you get when that same film has actors who speak American. In an ideal world you only remake if you are going to add something to a film and this one does and it does it in very subtle ways. I feared it might be ham fisted and cheap but it isn’t that at all.

It is shot very well, as suggested above. It has a dark feel but you can still see everything, I do not know how a camera person and cinematographer team up to do this but they can be proud of this film. Usually when you say something "is dark" you just mean you cannot SEE anything.

And where are all these good kid actors coming from? First Case 39 then this film. Even the bit parts are solid actors, a bully who conveys both rottenness and empathy, a stoic boy with no friends who is stone faced but who melts in a scene by himself, talking on the phone.

If you are going to remake a recent movie, please be sure to do it at least this well ok?

 

On the weekend when Social Network appeared (and I am a big Aaron Sorkin fan), I went to see Case 39, which turns out to be a fairly tough movie to write about. Even getting an impression of the movie that remains with you, a day later is tough. And this isn’t because it is bad.

It is a slow moving, old fashioned, suspense movie that is reasonably well acted. Renee Zellweger does a very good job as the social worker trying to do the right thing. Most of the other grown-ups are not given a great deal to do (except die). But Jodelle Ferland, as Lilith, the troubled young girl is very good. In one particular scene with Bradley Cooper, she makes the hair of on the back of your neck stand up. That scene is the best in the movie and points out some of the movie’s big issues. One of these issues is the insertion of several disconnected “by the numbers horror movie” scenes that are yawn inducing.

Hornets coming out of a guy’s nose? Not scary. Steely-eyed, soulless pre-teen, scaring the piss out of Bradley Cooper? Scary. Ferland is an excellent young actress who will hopefully be doing more than just horror films like this, Silent Hill and an upcoming appearance in the Twilight series.

And then there is the jump from “disbelief” to “belief” in this movie. People go from not believing there is anything supernatural going on to feeling murder is justifiable based on static-y phone calls.

There is no attempt to establish supernatural rules. What can a vampire not do? How do you kill it? We all know-- stake to the heart, chop off the head. Everyone is aware vampires do not like garlic or holy water. But what about ghosts, demons, possessed people? They can read minds? Is it all the time? What is their weakness? How do they do their evil? If they can smash one door to splinters why not all doors?  If they need to call some people on the phone to get to them or need to hear a person’s fears to do the same, why not ALL people? It is the little things that make a tolerable horror movie good or a good one great.

This film is somewhere between tolerable and good and if they had kept this a little less Hollywood they could have made it really creepy. Some of the CGI stuff looked pretty silly. Remember Angel Heart? Where, at the end, they make Robert Deniro’s eyes glow, just because they think some portion of the audience might be too stupid to have realized yet that he is the Devil? There is some of that in this film, especially in the final scene. If the evil creature in question had retained its habitual form it might well have added a disturbing ambiguity to the film.

One thing that is really irritating is how misleading the previews are. Even after the release they seem to include statements that are not in the movie. Before the release the previews included clips that wound up on the cutting room floor. Misdirection previews are fine but lord; I hate the ones that include cut footage.