I knew pretty much nothing about this movie beyond the basic premise, so I had been steeling myself for something pretty unremittingly bleak. The first half hour or so pretty much lived up to expectations (protagonists deliver bad news, a series of guest actors take the news badly, repeat ad. inf.), but after it ran through all the different bad-news-delivering scenarios, it turned into a pretty interesting movie. Mostly I was just glad to see Samantha Morton. I had no idea she was in the movie, so that was definitely a pleasant surprise. I shouldn’t be surprised by now to see Harrelson deliver a good performance, but it’s always a little unexpected when he delivers a serious dramatic turn. The film got into some weird pacing toward the end – Morton’s character disappears for so long that I thought she’d moved out of town while off-screen – but, aside from that, I don’t have any real complaints.

Low expectations here, so this was a pleasant surprise. Bridges and Gyllenhaal are both impressive, and, despite my personal (and completely unwarranted) hostility to T-Bone Burnett, I must say the music is awfully good. Bridges’ singing voice is pretty much what I’d have expected, but I was much more surprised by Farrell’s voice, which sounded pretty much exactly like a mainstream Nashville guy ought to sound.

I was also kind of intrigued by the parallels to Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. I mean, a lot of it was probably just how much Bridges was looking like 70’s era Kristofferson, but it was a story of a single mom who takes up with a Kristofferson-looking guy, then leaves him over a disagreement over how to treat her child. I guess it’s representative of the climate change that now the worst thing you can do to someone’s kid is to let him wander a mall by himself instead of beating him.

I think my only real quibble here is that the movie probably should have been set in the mid-80’s (when the book was written) in order to make the ages and musical styles match up with actual country music. Either that or actually cast Kristofferson (though that would make for an even creepier age difference).

I don’t know why I put off watching this one so long. I might have lost a little of my enthusiasm for James Gray after watching The Yards and Little Odessa, neither of which did much for me, but this was fantastic. Phoenix’s performance is probably one of the best I’ve seen in years. I don’t actually think his announced retirement from acting is for real, but, on the off-chance it is, this is a heck of a film for him to end his career on. This character could so obviously have been done horribly – a lot of actors would read a script about a mentally imbalanced young man who lives in Brighton Beach with his parents and gone for some horrible Woody Allen-inspired caricature, but there is none of that at all here. I was less impressed with Paltrow’s performance, mostly because I’m just not a big fan of hers in the first place, so I initially had a hard time really buying her as an irresistible object of desire, but Phoenix managed to sell me on that as well (particularly in that second rooftop scene).

Just as good as Phoenix’s performance is Gray’s decision to effectively remake We Own the Night as a romantic drama. I mean, obviously, it’s not the same note for note, but the main character’s arc is very similar. It’s particularly interesting given Gray’s interest in films that attempt to work against their narrative (which he gets into a bit in this interview from a few years back). It does seem to be pretty much impossible not only to make an anti-war movie, but an anti-violence revenge movie (judging by the misreadings of Taxi Driver, The Godfather, and We Own the Night). Here, though, it’s almost impossible to imagine an audience cheering for this ending. It’s completely heartbreaking, even if it’s visible and inevitable for the last half hour or so, in almost exactly the same way We Own the Night was, but there is no conflict in the audience at all. I mean, I get what he’s going for in We Own the Night, and that ending is completely heartbreaking, but there is still so much genre convention pushing the audience toward the pleasure of seeing revenge meted out, that at least part of us doesn’t care how much Bobby is destroying his life in its pursuit. Here, freed from the genre constrictions of that film, the conflict disappears, which is really kind of fascinating. It almost feels like Gray made this film just to prove a point.

I don’t want to spend too much time trying to put my thoughts on this film into words, mostly because I already can’t wait to watch it again. I love that the first act is basically the Matheson story, which is enjoyable and Twilight Zone-y, but then, having run out of source material, Kelly just goes completely off the rails. I know some people complain about his return to water imagery for no particular reason (or, rather, for reasons he’s not really capable of coherently explaining to people with words), but I am very fond of Kelly’s complete unwillingness to compromise. I am honestly stunned (but pleased) that he’s able to convince anyone to give him money to make these movies.

Actually, I know I said I wanted to not get into this too much, but there’s one aspect of the movie that, combined with some of my TV viewing earlier in the week, I kind of want to get down before I forget it. There’s really no particular reason for this movie to be set in the 70’s, except that people of our age (I’m a little less than two months younger than Kelly) seem have a very weird relationship to the era of our childhood. Unless I’m forgetting something, our generation seems to be the first to regard our childhood less with nostalgia than with dread. We don’t seem to be producing a lot of Stand by Me sorts of films, but we do seem perfectly willing to use our childhoods as a source of terror, confusion, and general unearthliness (with my immediate examples here being not only this film, but also the queasy archival footage of the Dharma Initiative on Lost and the day care center/experimental facility on Fringe). I mean, I’m sure viewing the adult world as confusing and scary as a child is a fairly universal experience, but I am wondering whether the adult culture of the United States in the 70’s was a little more confusing and scary than that which came before or after. I have weird, dim memories of shows (news reports?) about faces manifesting in data coming from the stars that continue to perplex me to this day, and clearly Abrams (who, admittedly, is a little old for this theory, so maybe credit should go to Lindelof, Orci, and Kurztman) and Kelly have similar issues. I don’t really get the sense that generations earlier or later have these kind of feelings about their childhoods, and I have no idea how viewers older or younger than me respond to these elements, but I can say that they certainly resonate well with me.

I tend to like Chris Smith’s movies, but it’s a little hard to justify a movie that is quite so shameless in lifting from another movie. It’s one thing to be inspired by Fog of War, but it’s kind of something else to completely mimic it, right down to the faux-Philip Glass soundtrack. As a movie, it’s pretty indefensible, but Michael Ruppert is really compelling, which makes it certainly worth watching. I actually didn’t connect that Ruppert was the author of From the Wilderness, whose web version I’ve read on several occasions. I know most people tend to walk away from this movie with a feeling of dread and despair (which is why I’d been putting off watching the movie), but none of Ruppert’s doomsday predictions were particularly new to me, so I was fine. In fact, I was more struck by Ruppert’s optimistic words about the possibility of creating a new and saner society based on paradigms that actually correspond to reality instead of unending growth. He’s actually got a cheerier outlook on our species’ future than I do, so I thought this movie was perhaps a little Pollyanna-ish. I am also aware that I am probably in the minority on this front.

I realize, after watching this, that I have a special mental category for Gilliam, Del Toro, and Burton. All three of them, I get the sense that I understand what sort of movie it is they are trying to make, and I want to see that movie so I’ll see pretty much anything they do, but I don’t think any of them have quite reached their Platonic ideal. I think Gilliam has actually come the closest of the three (with Time Bandits), but Imaginarium is probably the most Gilliam-y thing I’ve seen from him in quite a while (particularly that scene with the policeman’s chorus line).

The whole thing’s kind of a mess, and I’m not sure losing Ledger mid-shoot is really to blame (the swapping out of other actors in the CGI-scenes seemed more natural than I would have guessed). The CGI is certainly part of the problem. Cheap CGI looks a lot less personal and compelling that cheap model work, and I’m not sure it’s really a great match for Gilliam’s aesthetic. Even setting that aside, there’s the issue that I’m not entirely sure what this movie was about. Parnassus won a series of bets with the devil based on people choosing imagination over something? In most of the scenes where people were choosing one thing over another, I couldn’t figure out which choice represented which side. Maybe I shouldn’t really complain about a movie not ploddingly explaining every little detail, but there was a bit of a clarity issue here. On the other hand, it did give the whole film I kind of fuzzy quality that kind of worked, so maybe it was entirely deliberate.

I wasn’t aware until the film was over that this was a spin-off of a TV series, but, looking back, it kind of makes sense. There is sort of an expected familiarity with the Malcolm Tucker character (and, especially, with his henchman) that was a little odd for those of us not familiar with the series. It didn’t really detract from my enjoyment of the film. The film is perhaps a little hamstrung by the premise being heavily inspired by the rush to war in Iraq, but determined to be non-specific. Everything feels a little more vague than it really should. I understand they don’t really want to be hemmed in by historical facts and don’t want to feel dated, but it kind of makes the film feel rootless instead of timeless.

I’m going to have to address this movie in a couple distinct chunks, mostly because I have to deal with the opening ten to fifteen minutes separately from the rest of the film. It’s a moving segment, but it sort of seems like a low blow to open your film with a “you will find the love of your life, then she will die leaving you old and alone.” I mean, it’s certainly effective, but it seems a little unearned to basically do that in the credit sequence.

It’s especially odd since the film then turns to light hearted adventure and pairing-of-opposites comedy. It’s hard to shake off the air of melancholy from the credits, which I guess is sort of the point, but it sort of clangs a bit with the hyperactive young boy. It’s like being hassled at a funeral by a cheery youngster.

Again, I guess that’s sort of the point. We’re supposed to allow the excitement of youth keep us out of despair and loneliness, but it doesn’t seem like there’s really much of a mourning period (for the audience, at least. I couldn’t tell how much time had passed between the credits and the first proper scene of the movie). Anyway, were it not for the sense of melancholy and resentment from unearned heartstring-pulling, the remainder of the movie would have been pretty enjoyable. I have a low tolerance for the freneticness of modern animated films, but this didn’t grate too badly.

One of my biggest problems with Liam Neeson is that I watched Darkman way too often as an impressionable teenager, so it’s virtually impossible for me to watch him in any sort of serious role without picturing him screaming “Take the fucking elephant!” at people. He doesn’t really get a lot of work where that sort of behavior seems in character, so I was very pleased to watch him go to town as a remorseless revenge machine here. I read Charlie Huston’s Hank Thompson books a while back and have been discussing them with my dad, and I think Bryan here is on roughly the same moral footing as Hank; there is virtually no act repellent enough to stand between him and his goal.

I wonder if this is perhaps a better projection fantasy. The viewer may not have the particular training to become a secret agent, but she can always imagine that she possesses the will to pull the trigger without hesitation that sets someone like Bryan apart.

I think this film suffers a fair bit from the later reputation of the Broken Lizard troupe. If it’s possible to judge the film on its own (nearly impossible to do, given the packaging), it’s actually a fairly well-done (if very low budget) sweet little independent romantic comedy. I can certainly see how it would have done well at festivals, but, had I seen it at the time, I would have been stunned to see the same guys come up with Super Troopers. Overall, the filmmaking is kind of rough, and it gets a little slow at times, but I still liked it, even if it bears very little resemblance to the rest of their work.