Entries tagged with “Thrillers”

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Roughly halfway into Gone Baby Gone, Ben Affleck's directorial debut, the movie is finished. The plot involving a kidnapped youth has been apparently, tragically resolved.

But the movie still has an hour left, a clockwatcher will tell you. And even if you're not a person regularly calculating how the anticipated remaining X plot will unfold in the remaining Y minutes, you know that there's plenty left to come. So what will it be? What will this movie be about, having dispensed with what appeared to be its primary story?

One of the great joys of cinema is a movie that genuinely surprises you — not with a twist ending but by being something different from what you expected or (even better) different from what you've previously experienced. (Surprise endings are so obligatory in thrillers nowadays that the only real surprise is their absence.)

So I was seriously jazzed about Gone Baby Gone at its midpoint, wondering where it would take me and excited that it seemed to be a nearly honest drama about missing children. It might actually substantively explore grief, responsibility, repercussion, community, and healing.

It didn't take long for it to disappoint me, for it to choose the false path I should have expected.

My first thought after watching Joel and Ethan Coen's No Country for Old Men — amid groans from others in the theater — was that I understood why some people hate it.

This was prompted by something I'd read earlier that day, an item from Roger Ebert's Movie Answer Man column:

"I went to see No Country for Old Men with a group of my friends. I was absolutely fascinated and riveted by the film and think it is the best film I have seen thus far this year. My very good friend, who also happens to be a very smart guy, thought the film was terrible. I was shocked. Should I debate the merits of the film with him? Is it even worth debating such a wonderful film when the person you are debating with has no appreciation for it, and does it pose a risk to the friendship?

It's a fair and fascinating question, but Ebert's reply was unfortunately glib:

"As Louis Armstrong instructs us, 'There are some folks that, if they don't know, you can't tell ’em.'"

I might accept that dismissive response if he were talking about Transformers or some tony, repressed period romance; we all have things that we just don't like, no matter how well they're done.

But No Country for Old Men subverts audience expectations at just about every turn, and despite its considerable pleasures and a straightforward chase-the-drug-money plot, it's a willfully difficult film. In that context, why wouldn't you want to argue about it? It's the rare movie that's open enough to foster malleable opinion; thoughtful people who dislike it initially can be won over if spurred to look at it differently.

In an admiring but fundamentally dismissive review, Matt Zoller Seitz argues that Children of Men's subject matter necessitates a treatment more rigorous and pointed.

The implication is that movies that recall real-world horrors have some responsibility to them, and I don't necessarily buy that. A film shouldn't trivialize suffering, but serious politics (and shameful history) shouldn't be off-limits for entertainments.

Alfonso Cuarón's film weaves serious themes into what's fundamentally a lightweight work. The movie doesn't lack a coherent vision; it simply has nothing insightful to say.

Plus: Casino Royale and Borat.

I was complaining to a friend about the final half-hour of Martin Scorsese's The Departed, and he suggested I was looking at it all wrong. If you see the movie as a serious cop-and-gangster thriller, it does fall apart, with its escalating body count and that blunt-instrument final shot, juxtaposing unattainable dreams with vermin.

But if you see it as a comedy ... .

It's a tempting reading, because the movie holds together slightly better. An absurdist futility pervades the film, and the bleakness is so complete that it approaches being funny. (But without, you know, actually being funny.) The last act of The Departed reminded me of Adaptation; in both, the writer (here William Monahan) gave up and caved in to his basest inclination. In Adaptation, it was done with a wink.

In Scorsese's movie, though, the tone is fatalistic instead of comic.

Neil Marshall's The Descent approaches being a perfect terror movie. And because terror is unique to cinema among art forms — it doesn't translate well to the page because the narrative has to slow down for the reader, and it doesn't translate at all to any other medium — The Descent approaches being a perfect movie, period. (Commentary track features Culture Snob and Bride of Culture Snob.)

In Inside Man, director Spike Lee and screenwriter Russell Gerwitz announce early that nothing too traumatic will befall any of the characters, and then they keep that promise; they implicitly give the audience permission to enjoy the film. Especially considering the potential for violence in the premise, this is an exceedingly gentle movie — and I mean that as a compliment.

The disappointment of Christopher Nolan's enormously entertaining — and slyly provocative — The Prestige comes in its closing minutes, when it adds a fourth act to its illusion: the final reveal. As any magician will tell you — as the movie itself reminds the audience — knowledge of the secret robs the trick of its power and allure.

The true subject of Albert Brooks' Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World is that fact that most people don't find Albert Brooks funny.

That sounds sour, and it sells the movie short, but it's fundamentally true. While The Aristocrats endlessly repeated a single dirty joke to expose the gears and springs of comedy, Brooks uses a single comedian — himself — to explore the often fragile bond between a performer and the audience. The issue: Why do some people laugh at a joke that leaves other people cold? Disguised as a narrative fiction, Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World is an essay on the nature of humor.

Plus: V for Vendetta.

The film's subject makes it bluntly political, yet Syriana nearly demands multiple viewings to even understand its plot, let alone its meanings. It is intended to illuminate that the business of oil is a dirty one, yet even people who pay close attention to the movie will come away from it more confused than enlightened.

A History of Violence is a bizarre, challenging film dressed up as a mainstream entertainment, a subversive work bordering on parody yet also deadly earnest. The movie confirms that David Cronenberg has grown into one of cinema's most sophisticated, rigorous, and probing filmmakers.

I shan't belabor the point — apples and oranges and all that stuff — but how in the hell do The Jacket and The Grudge score roughly the same with critics?

The Constant Gardener is about a guy who finally finds a spine. And he's part of a film that never does.

Carl Franklin's Out of Time most closely resembles a roller coaster. The first 45 minutes are a long, clunky, and agonizingly dull climb up the hill, and the last hour is all momentum, action, and thrills.

I liked 2002's The Bourne Identity a lot, but I didn't think the character/premise could sustain itself over a series. I was wrong.

The subject of Intacto is "luck," which is not to be confused with the random workings of "chance." In director/co-writer Juan Carlos Fresnadillo's vividly imagined movie from 2001, luck is a tangible if not quite quantifiable thing that certain gifted people harness, steal, collect, and gamble. That they have nothing to gain from it is something they don't seem to recognize.

The adjective "competent" is a faint compliment if it's praise at all, but it's all the enthusiasm I can muster for Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 2. The movie is about as good as superhero movies get these days, but that's not saying much.

You're watching The Plumber. This setup is awfully familiar. You know the plumber's a violent man, capable of unspeakable deeds. You know the wife, Jill, is in trouble. It's an act of trust.

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