The movie that was written by Ben Affleck and stars his brother as the main character, Casey Affleck, started off so-so for me.  Right off the bat I noticed that Casey tends to talk like he has marbles in his mouth, and that kind of turned me off to the movie, plus the acting seemed a bit contrived at first.  I wasn’t really sure where this story would go, and had heard from a friend about how the plot got better toward the middle of the movie, and there were some surprises. 

Since I’m a sucker for plots with twists and turns, I figured I should hang in there.  Casey Affleck plays the baby faced guy who’s in his early thirties and happens to be somewhat of a bounty hunter for missing people.  He’s really more of a private investigator.  When he is approached by a little girl’s family who disappeared without a trace, he is hesitant to take on the case since he mostly works to find adults who usually don’t want to be found.

His partner is his girlfriend, and I think that was another part of the plot I had a bit of a hard time with, but I ended up being ok with it.  The story involves several older cops who are of the old world style, and may also be partially corrupt, and the story follows a little girl who is kidnapped from her druggie mother that happens to also not parent her child right.  One example is she was left in a baking car for hours and hours while her mom was out getting high.

You might like this movie, or you might hate it.  Especially the ending, which probably left many movie goers mad.  The first half of the movie contains some fairly incompetent acting, so I’m not sure why Casey Affleck was nominated for an Oscar for this movie.  He’s good, but it’s certainly not an Oscar worthy performance. 

I’m pleased to say my review of the vampire film Thirty Days of Night is a good one.  I love vampire movies, so let’s just preface my full review of Thirty Days of Night by saying that.  I was a huge fan of Lost Boys, Fright Night and a ton of other vampire movies that I grew up with, so I was excited to see that a promising movie that was also based on a graphic novel with a very cool concept was coming out. 

I actually wanted to see this  movie in the theater, but time got away from me and I was forced to Netflix it when it became available on DVD.  The movie stars Josh Hartnett who is not really one of my favorite actors, which I thought would possibly bring the movie down, but in fact Hartnett did a really good job in it.  He plays the sheriff of a tiny Alaska town that, once a year, gets 30 days of darkness. 

Most of the residents leave during this time, but about one hundred and fifty stay back and brave the cold, dark winter.  Melissa George plays who we found out is Josh Harnett’s ex wife who is in town on a routine inspection and flying out the day the darkness begins.  Of course, she misses her flight and is forced to stay in for thirty days since no other charter planes are flying out that day. 

The movie is a bit chopped up at first, and you can’t really figure out who’s who, but they do a nice job of making you care about what happens to most of the characters in the end.  Of course, shortly after the darkness falls, they begin to discover weird things happening that can’t be explained.  All their cell phones have been stolen and burned, their sled dogs have been ruthlessly murdered, and it seems that someone doesn’t want anyone to have contact with the outside world nor do they want them to have a way out.

The movie does a good job of conveying cold desolation and a feeling of isolation and comradery in a town where survival is rough, even though I think it was all filmed on a sound stage and I would have liked it better if it were filmed out in Alaska somewhere to give it a little more realism. 

The vampires are cool looking enough, and they aren’t too splashy.  For example, they are all wearing clothes that look like they are insurance salesman, which adds a bit of an unusal twist to it.  They also aren’t full of special powers, but rather they do have the abilities to climb rooftops easily and a cat like power to leap quickly. 

The movie takes a few comic book like turns, but that’s to be expected.  Other than that, we feel genuinely scared for our characters, and that means that it’s a well done movie in my opinion.  Overall, it’s a well done vampire flick. 

The last episode of Lost, my currently favorite TV show that’s on, may have left some fans a little confused, confounded, or even further mystified by the mystery that is Lost.  Fans may have had some of their theories thrown out the window, or further confirmed by this latest episode.  For me, I’m one of the time warp/alternate dimension theorists when it comes to Lost, because it’s the only plausible explanation that encompasses most of what I’ve seen in the show thus far. 

Although the purgatory themes seemed best at first, because of all the seeming tales of evil acts and redemption as confirmed by most of the character’s back stories, seemed to point to the fact that they all had sketchy pasts and were redeeming themselves on the island.  Although this story line does not really jive with the alternative universe/ time warp theory, it’s all I cling to now when it seems they throw another wrench into pretty much every theory with each episode.

Desmond time jumps several times in the last episode, in increasing frequency toward the end, between what seems like might be his past life and the present time when he and Sayid embark on a helicopter ride back to the ship where the people who have come with Naomi to either resscue them or so something bad, as they are led to believe by the Locke character, who is often a dividing force among the characters of the show, but also a leader in many aspects. 

When the encounter some rough patches and lightning, this is when Desmond begins jumping between his two lives, and he’s confused about what’s going on.  We see that he tries to go back to his long lost love when he is in his pre-island life, and she will not have him and even despises him, and then at the end of the episode, we see that she has been searching for him (as we knew before), so we have to wonder what happened to change her mind in between.

The time jumping is what Lost is known for, but only this time we actually see Sayid jumping between two different times.  Anyone who figures out what’s going on must be granted a genius title! 

Well, I’m usually a big David Lynch fan.  Granted, many of his films appear to be so bizzare that they may be hard to follow for many people.  Heck, still going back now and watching old episodes of his series Twin Peaks, I pick up on nuances that I never picked up on before, and certainly many of his movies tap into the bizarre, and the beautiful likewise, but many times they tap into the underbelly of the human psyche, making us feel somehow dazed when we end the movie.

I’m sorry to say that I didn’t even make it through Inland Empire, his latest movie, which stars one of his favorite actresses who also appeared in Blue Velvet and in Wild at Heart, Laura Dern, who is also one of my favorite actresses for her ability to play a diverse range of characters, but with a depth that seems so real we forget she’s acting.

Not to digress, but that is precisely the problem with Inland Empire.  The movie about halfway through became so disjointed and full of nonsense scenes that it gave us both a headache.  It seemed that nothing made any sense at all, but rather was just one collage of nonsense, as if you were dreaming, and couldn’t make heads or tails of what anything meant.  Throw in an apparent TV show that has people dressed up as rabbits, a French speaking man and woman, and scenes shown about people we don’t even know, and you’ve got one big mess on your hands. 

Now, one thing I will say is that I didn’t give it a chance through the massively confusing middle part of the film, and from what I’ve read in reviews after we turned it off halfway through, the middle is actually the most confusing and disjointed part of it all.  Also, it got a thumbs up from Roger Ebert, which I figure must give it some vote of confidence if he could make any sense out of all of it. 

I have to admit, I’m a little curious now at how it all came together (if at all), or if some of the majorly disjointed scenes were ever explained or given any semblance of meaning.  However, I honestly don’t know if I could subject myself to this movie again.  It left you feeling confused, pissed that you wasted your time, and just wondering “what the hell was David Lynch thinking”.  My boyfriend summed it up perfectly.  It was like a film that was TRYING to be a David Lynch film, but didn’t quite cut it.