Insidious

In this straight horror film, we see a very normal family comprised of a man, his wife and their three children moving into a new house. Expectedly the house is old and beautiful. Things begin to get strange and scary right away when one of the young boys will not wake up one morning and while he is in a comatose state, his mother begins to see strange things happen around the house. Can they save the boy before he is lost forever?

　

I found this film quite scary, which is somewhat rare for me. Like most horror films, however, this film starts well, builds up momentum, and then poops out at the end. Although this film relies heavily on cheap scares, it does a good job at it, and some of the visuals are very effective. I liked the fact that this film takes the safety away from the daylight and makes it a place for horror as much as the night. After that, however, there’s really not much more good news. The acting is not good and the story is not very original, but hey, by and large horror flicks have not exactly been paragons of film originality and quality, they are just for fun!

　

My opinion in a nutshell:

　

Entertainment: 7- This is a very fun movie. I would have really liked to see a better ending, it felt like they wanted to take Poltergeist to the next level, but the old horror rule rears its ugly head, “Never show the monster completely because it will always be a disappointment.”

Hanna

In this mystery action flick, we see a girl of about 16 named Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) is raised by her father Erik ( Eric Bana) in the frozen forest to be a perfect assassin. When she decides she is ready, she and her father enact a plan tailored all of Hanna’s life to kill the woman who killed Hanna’s mother. When Hanna kills a woman she believes to be the killer, Marissa( Cate Blanchett) she treks across Africa and Europe to meet with her father one step away from Marissa and some very scary people as she tries to solve the secrets of her mysterious past.

This film is directed by Joe Wright, the same director of Atonement, Pride and Prejudice, and The Soloist. At first glance, this violent action film seems like a vast departure from the heavy dramas he had made in the past. However, Hanna fits into Wright’s repertoire much better than expected, and that is why I am still not sure if I liked it or not. Yes this film has the intricate action scenes and suspenseful chase scenes expected from the previews, but the true focus of this film is on a girl exploring her sense of self and identity. She is not just trying to discover her past, but who she is as a person and how she connects to others. She has spent her whole life without a personal identity outside of her mission. When she believes she has accomplished that mission, she is faced with herself as a girl who is both self-sufficient and helpless as a baby.

I went into this film thinking I was going to see a fast-paced action film similar to The Bourne Identity. Instead, what I got was kinda weird. The action scenes are juxtaposed between scenes from a European coming-of-age film. The villains in this film are also strange. A pitiless southern woman with a hidden agenda. A whistling, German, fetish strip-club owner with severe sociopath tendencies and his two cronies. These are the adversaries that Hanna and her father must evade and ultimately confront. When you add the action, self exploration, mystery, and odd villains the film just feels mismatched and forced together. The mystery is not completely solved also and there are still lots of questions left when the film is over. I think there are some great pieces here and if the film had focused on the action, mystery, or coming-of-age aspects there could have been a really good film here. Instead it’s just weird.

My opinion in a nutshell:

Entertainment: 5- This film promises a lot and doesn’t really deliver. The cast is fantastic and the acting is quite good. The action scenes are well done, but are few and don’t seem to fit with the rest of the film. The mystery is well set, but does not answer all questions. The self-exploration is sympathetic, but interferes with the flow of the film and also does not reach a conclusion.

Award-worthy: 2- This is an award-winning director, but this is not his best work.

Source Code

In this drama thriller with a sci-fi twist, we are thrown directly into the action, and confusion, for main character Cpt.Colter Stevens(Jake Gylenhaal) as he wakes up on a train he has never been on in a body that is not his and in a conversaton with a woman he has never met.  Within the first five minutes, the train explodes and Colter wakes up strapped into a chair in some sort of capsule with only the image of a woman named Goodwin(Vera Formiga) as his direction through confusion and disorientation. As the secrets are revealed one at a time, Colter returns to the train again and again to relive the last eight minutes of another man's life in order to discover the bomber's identity and prevent the next attack.  In the process he predictably falls in love with the woman in the next seat(Michelle Monaghan) and she soon becomes his motivation for trying to save everyone.  Will Colter acomplish his task and save the girl too?

I was pleasantly suprised by this movie.  Time travel and quantum physics can be a minefield for filmmakers to try to mauever.  Although never truely without loopholes, the tighter the logic, the better the film will be.  This one lacks any major loopholes to distract the viewer and the ones that are there are minor and appear later in the film once you are already invested.  The exposition is complicated and a little redundant as the same things are re-explained several times.  As a result, I found the begining of the film to drag in an annoying way, and it wasn't until about a half hour into film that I felt like it really got going. 

A lot of that drag was due to the character of Colter himself.  I found myself getting very irritated with his slowness to catch on to the situatin.  He is supposed to be a seasoned and decorated soldier but in the begining of the film we see him blatantly question authority in the middle of a mission and is reluctant to perform even after key elements are explained.  I found myself mentally screaming "Just get it done and ask questions later!"  I also thought a lot of his initial decisions on the thrain were made in haste and panic without being thought through.  Later in the film when he started to get the hang of it, that is when I really started to get into the movie.  I was, however, a little annoyed at how quickly he fell for Christina, the girl in the next seat.  It has become so expected that it will happen, that they don't even give good reasons why anymore.  Forming an attatchment to her makes sense, she's nice enough, but to risk everything just for her when you have only spent the same eight minutes with her maybe a dozen times, doesn't really satisfy me.  But, whatever!  It is what it is. 

Jake Gylenhaal does a fine job playing the protagoist here and Vera Formiga also presents a compelling character, but aside from that, all the other characters come across quite flat.  This is definately a story-driven film.  Although the ending was easily predictable, how he gets to it is interesting enough.  I laughed, I cringed in suspense and said "Ah-ha" at the little plot twists.  I was definately along for the ride on this one.  You would think that a film consisting of eight minutes on a train and a man locked in a capsule, that the film would feel cramped, but the way Colter moves around the train and sometimes gets off at the stop really gives a sense of space to this film that I think could have been easily lost.

My opinion in a nutshell:

Entertainment:  6- The entertainment value is definatelythere, but I found some of the charaters too obvious, and I found the ending, including the villain, quite anticlimactic but the story is compelling and the directing is very good.  A fun way to spend a couple hours.

Award-Worthy:  4- Unlikely, but have fun anyway!