Ranting to /dev/null

The Forgotten? Julianne Moore hopes you do.

I went down to Loews Theater at Lincoln Center with high hopes. I saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind last night, and tonight I had a choice between The Forgotten and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. "The Forgotten is about memory right? After seeing Eternal Sunshine, this could make for an interesting contrast," I naively thought to myself, "and besides, it's got Julianne Moore in it who, aside from possessing more than your average level of attractiveness, tends to make pretty good movies. Right?"

Well, kinda. The first thing I did when I got back was hit up her IMDB site. She certainly has done quite a few good movies in her time, but she's also been in some real stinkers. This is what you call Julianne Moore slumming. Most of the time she works with fairly brilliant directors, but she'll also work with guys like this.

I won't give away too much of the plot, because it's supposed to be surprising. They certainly don't advertise the movie in a way that suggests anything to do with the actual plot. They bill it as a psychological thriller, in which a woman has to deal with her own memories of her son while everyone else denies he ever existed. Okay, that's a cool premise for a movie. The director, Joseph Ruben plays with this for a while, but then he hints at a direction that just made me laugh out loud. All I'm going to say is that the phrase "I'm having a National Enquirer moment" is used in the film. Then he tries to convince you that he's not going to go there, and then he does. Which sucked. It would have been a lot cooler if he hadn't. Not to mention a lot less unintentionally funny.

To sum it up, it's pretty much devoid of any human emotion, and for a film that bills itself has having to do with a woman coming to grips with memories of her lost child, this is depressingly absent. The plot twist isn't one of those, "Oh, I did/didn't see that coming," but, "You gotta be kidding. Please tell me you're kidding. You're not kidding. Cut that shit out."

The film did have a few interesting effects, and one or two genuinely creepy moments, but we're talking Butterfly Effect kind of quality, without the obvious cheap emotional shots and exploitative plot devices.

Final analysis: I'm glad Columbia offers discount tickets.

Cool New York style bonus: somebody outside Loews was recruiting people to see an advance screening of Ray next week. How cool is that? So now I've got plans for Thursday night. I love this town.

Posted by ryan at September 25, 2004 01:01 AM | TrackBack