Where She Is Now I Can Only Guess
Posted on | June 22, 2008 at 9:51 am | Comments Off
It’s time again for Movie Review Sunday (spoiler-free this week), when readership drops off anyway…
I’m still catching up on some of last year’s Oscar-nominated movie fare. Though it didn’t win anything and had only one nomination, Gone Baby Gone (which I keep wanting to call Gone Daddy Gone after the Violent Femmes song) still feels like an Oscar movie. I felt it was more worthy than No Country For Old Men, at least. (Okay, I’ll stop stepping on that horse soon, I promise.) N and I watched the rented BluRay of it last night and found it very interesting, though the plot twists and somewhat convoluted story keep you on your toes. Casey Affleck was good as the boyish-looking missing persons investigator with the inner strength and anger, who takes on a case of a missing little girl, which is not quite his usual thing. Michelle Monaghan didn’t have as much to do as his partner/girlfriend, although her part does become more important at the end of the story. Amy Ryan’s Oscar-nominated Best Supporting Actress performance as the missing girl’s mother was good, but she wasn’t really in that much of the movie (hence the “supporting” I suppose). Ben Affleck’s directing debut was a shining one, and maybe he has more of a future as a director (and screenwriter) than as an actor. Or perhaps he’ll turn out to be one of those old-school types who can do both well, like Sydney Pollack (RIP). The cinematography was appropriate, and the HiDef presentation showed off those gritty working class Boston streets well.
Some of the plot twists seemed a bit far-fetched, and ended up not always making sense if you thought about them too much (the final one, involving Morgan Freeman, especially). And sometimes we weren’t quite sure what a character here or there was really trying to do, but that might be cleared up on a second viewing. But the movie is a good one to see with someone else and talk about after it’s over. There’s lots of opportunity for moral debate: “Would you have made the same decision that Casey Affleck’s character made at the end?” Sometimes, movies should make you think. (But not always.)
Latre.
Pet Peeve of the Day: Heat.
Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “wearing glasses for the first time how to tell my friends”.