Hereafter

I started wondering earlier today if my lack of posts on this blog is a direct result of a lack of ideas or if I'm just not that interesting. I'm hoping it's the lack of ideas. I'd like to think that there are some good thoughts that roam through my head from time to time. Maybe it's pure laziness. Now that I think about it, laziness seems more like a viable option.

I get to see a lot of movies for my job. Apparently I'm a member of the press so I get all of the invites that real movie reviewers get. I'm not complaining. It's actually my favorite perk that comes along with my job. I love going to the movies but I certainly wouldn't go anywhere near as often as I do now if I actually had to pay for all of them. There's something powerful about sitting back with a bag of popcorn and leaving reality for a couple of hours.

I do run into a lot of actual movie critics and I like to get into conversations about films with them. Discussions like what they do and don't like about movies are usually the hot topic. Generally, I find that we never agree but sometimes the stars align and we can enjoy the same films. There's one critic in particular that I really respect. She has an amazing knowledge of movies. My one major complaint with her is that I think she has lost sight of what people are looking for when they go to the theaters.

She will often say things to me like, "I didn't like it but I think it's right up your alley." At first I wasn't sure if that was an insult. Basically saying she thinks I'm a simple person and I don't care about the art in movies. I should be offended by that right? I am to an extent but not fully. I think I know what she means. I find enjoyment in some of the movies that she would find to be dumb. She would rant and rave about The American with George Clooney saying how brilliantly done it was where I would say that The Expendables was the best movie of the summer. OK, I wouldn't say that exactly but it's a movie that proves my point.

The American was boring and very uneventful. Not the kind of movie that the vast majority of people want to see when they spend $10 at the theater. When I went to see it, I fell asleep for a few minutes. My friend actually leaned over at one point to tell me that she was bored and she had to wake me up just to say it. That's how boring it was. Most Americans felt the same way as it did horribly at the box office yet most critics gave it phenomenal reviews.

Now The Expendables was a poorly written filled with horrible acting but it kept me glued to my seat for the entire 90 minutes. It was pure fluff and entertainment. Even Sylvester Stallone said that was what he was going for. He wanted to make a movie that was a throwback to the old style of the 80's action flick. I think he achieved superbly and so did the public. It was #1 at the box office for, I think, 3 weeks in a row. The movie critics did not agree. It did not garner very good reviews and some critics even said that they felt their intelligence was insulted by it. I think those critics have been insulting our intelligence for years.

Commercial success does not always prove that a movie is good (ie the Twilight series) but a good review doesn't either. Critics don't seem to understand that we just want to be entertained. We don't care that the director used a different kind of lens for the first 30 minutes of the movie then switched over to show a different shade of light. We want to escape our lives. We want to laugh, cry, ooohhh and ahhhh at the screen. Sometimes we want to think but it's more likely that we don't.

That rant brings me to the point of this posting. I went to see the new movie from Clint Eastwood starring Matt Damon. I had been under the impression that Clint Eastwood just couldn't miss. He was behind movies like Million Dollar Baby, Mystic River and Gran Torino. All really great films and some with Oscar winning performances. This movie breaks that trend. The opening sequence of Hereafter is amazing. I had goosebumps and was absolutely riveted for the first 10 minutes or so. I thought Eastwood really put together a great intro but unfortunately he blew his wad too early and the rest of the movie was a bit of a let down.

It follows the lives of 3 different people and their struggle with what comes when you die. The first person you meet is a woman that has a near death experience in a giant tidal wave during the intense opening sequence. The second is a young boy in England who loses his twin brother in an accident. Then comes Matt Damon who is a psychic who can supposedly speak to the dead but looks at this as more of a curse than a gift. At first you're drawn in because each character has a very intriguing story. Then as the movie progressed, I started to get more and more impatient as I tried to figure out how he would tie them all together. I'm not going to give anything away but the payoff isn't worth the wait. It has some very interesting moments but overall it comes across as being disjointed. Almost like it was thrown together at the last minute. That theory is very possible considering no one even knew it was coming out until about a month ago. Whenever I spend a good amount of time asking myself the question, "Why do I care about this" I think the movie has missed something.

Do I think it was a bad movie? No. Do I think you need to rush out to the theater and see it this weekend? Absolutely not. Wait until it hits DVD. You could even wait until it hits basic cable in 3 years. I don't think you're going to miss anything.