I finally got around to seeing Looper. Hmm...
I'm not actually sure what I think about it. There are parts of it, like the acting, that are pretty great, although I'm not the big fan of Joseph Gordon-Levitt that everyone seems to be. I'm just not seeing what the big deal is. Bruce Willis, on the other hand... Well, I like Bruce.
Time travel stories are... difficult. Star Trek is proof of that. I think two things play into it: 1. No one can agree on how time travel would actually work if it's possible. Or if it's possible. 2. Because of that, writers like to use it as a magic wand. It's one of those things I kind of hate in science fiction, when the writer uses some bit of science like it's magic just because no one knows how it works. If you want to write magic, go write fantasy.
Still, all in all, I don't think the time travel was handled too poorly in Looper other than the constant paradoxes that were never addressed. What I have a problem with is being lied to, and, in essence, the movie hinges on a lie, and that really bothers me.
Now, I don't have a problem with being deceived through sleight-of-hand and trickery. The Sixth Sense is so great because Shyamalan never lied to the audience. He laid everything out there for us to see and allowed us not to see it. A couple of movies that are very similar except that one lies and one doesn't are The Prestige and The Illusionist (which I talk about for a bit here). The Illusionist achieves its climax by lying to the audience (through omission) all the way through, which is the only reason we are unable to piece the plot together. I really have no respect for that.
Now, if you haven't seen Looper, there will be spoilers.
The whole story of Looper hinges on the belief by the audience that young Joe dies when he falls from the ladder. At that point, the movie jumps back as if that is the moment that causes the reset. When it starts over, we accept that we are seeing a different time line because of the presentation, and it's not true. It's not like in The Sixth Sense when Crowe gets shot. Afterward, the audience just assumes that Crowe didn't die even though Shyamalan tells us several times, "look, this guy's dead." We just can't see it. In Looper, the truth is never offered until the end, when the lie is revealed, and that's just a cheap way of doing it.
To make matters worse, the director or the writer or someone comes out and tells us that the movie isn't going to make any sense and not to think about it. Young Joe and Old Joe are sitting in a diner together, and Young Joe asks Old Joe about time travel, and Old Joe says, "I don't want to talk about time travel because, if we start talking about it, then, we're going to be here all day talking about it, making diagrams with straws." Rough translation: "Don't think about it; just watch the movie. We can't explain it either." On the one hand, I'm glad they're honest about it. "Look, we just want to tell our story, so don't go trying to logic it, because it won't make any sense." [And it doesn't.] On the other hand, I'm kind of insulted. It says to me that they didn't want to bother with telling a story that makes sense, which devalues me as the audience. And, then, they lie to make it work.
The other thing that really bothers me is that the movie didn't happen, and I hate stories that didn't happen. I hate getting to the end and finding out that it was all a dream or a vision or a whatever. I mean, this was as bad as Next with Nicolas Cage. You get to the end and find out that, really, the movie ended right there when Young Joe kills Old Joe at the beginning of the movie. That's it. End of story. Everything else is just "closing the loop" and doesn't actually exist. I really felt cheated.
Even so, there are some good moments in the film. When Old Seth is trying to get to Young Seth and losing body parts all along the way... man, that's just freaky. It doesn't make any sense from a paradox perspective, but it's creepy enough that you don't care. The horror of that moment as his fingers start disappearing is gut wrenching. Also, I really liked Paul Dano as Young Seth.
There's a lot of humor, dark humor, in the fact that Old Joe keeps beating the crap out of his younger self. There's the urge to slap Young Joe for not listening to his older self, but, then, that's how all kids are, right? And there's the fact that the good guys don't win. How could they? There are no good guys. But there aren't a lot of movies these days where the protagonist (hero or anti-hero) fails, and that's almost enough to make Looper worth watching all by itself.
If you're willing to just turn your brain off and watch and if you don't mind being lied to, Looper is definitely worth your time, just don't ever say, "But why...?"
Oh, also, a big part of why Looper works is the inherent belief of the audience (and that includes me) in the badassness of Bruce Willis. There is nothing in the movie to support Joe being any kind of badass. In fact, he's more of a loser, drug addict than anything else. However, because our image of Willis is that he's a badass, we don't question him single-handedly taking down a criminal organization even though there is nothing in the movie to support this.
Showing posts with label Shyamalan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Shyamalan. Show all posts
Monday, February 25, 2013
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Super 8 or What's Behind My Back?
My wife screamed. I mean, she really screamed. I don't remember one time in over a dozen years when she's actually screamed during a movie. Generally speaking, she just likes to cut the circulation off in whichever of my limbs is closest to her during any suspenseful or scary parts. This time, she screamed. Loud. And ended up half in my lap. From a movie seat, so that was kind of impressive. She made me jump. I don't even remember what it was that caused the reaction, at this point, but she followed it up with 3 or 4 lesser screams throughout Super 8. And she squeezed my left arm off. Yes, it fell onto the floor, and I had to have it reattached. It was pretty gross, though. I mean, have you ever really looked at the... goo... on a movie theater floor? Let me just tell you right now, you don't want your arm laying around in it. Fortunately, because we went to a late showing several weeks post release, the theater wasn't very crowded, so there weren't many witnesses to take care of.
My first reaction to Super 8 was very positive. There's a good story there. An actual story about real people. So here's the warning: there will be spoilers. I want to actually talk about this movie and J. J. Abrams, and I don't want to try to do it while dodging around trying not to give anything away about the movie. Also, despite anything negative I may say about Super 8, let me just reiterate that I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of watching the film. It's easily one of the best stories in a movie I've seen this year. Not the best, but, probably, top 5.
I have very ambivalent feelings about Mr. Abrams. The more removed I am from the experience of sitting in the theater watching Super 8, the more my ambivalence towards Abrams extends over to the movie. See, Abrams has this problem: he likes to hide things behind his back to generate suspense. You remember doing that when you were a kid, right? Or, at least, having it done to you? When you're a kid, it's kind of fun. Trying to "convince" someone to show you what he's hiding. It's fun because you know he really does want to show you, so, once you've played the game long enough, he'll give you a peek. Teenagers change this to the "I've got a secret" game, but it's really the same thing.
There are two problems with this: 1. the thing is often anti-climactic 2. sometimes, we already know. Oh, actually, there's one other problem: it only works once. It's sort of a cheap trick in story telling because of that, when the suspense is being generated by just holding the secret behind your back. There's no reason to go back and experience it again, because you already know the secret. As opposed to a movie like The Sixth Sense (and I hate using this, because I don't have much respect for what Shyamalan has become. However, you can't deny that this one film was brilliant. Possibly the most brilliant of its genre) where the secret is really in front of you the whole time, you just don't know it because you haven't figured it out. You can watch it over and over again marveling at how you should have figured it out but just didn't.
That was the biggest issue I had with Super 8; I had flashbacks of Cloverfield, which is a movie I just didn't enjoy. I appreciate what Abrams was trying to do (it was a great idea), but the execution was... well, it was just weak. A movie without a plot with the author holding a monster behind his back that he flashes to us for a brief moment at the end and leaves us saying, "That's it? That was all? Two hours of this just for that?" He applies this same gimmick to Super 8, and, although he gives us a better view of the critter at the end of the movie, I still felt like I'd been kind of cheated. It was sort of like finding out that all he'd had behind his back the whole time was a frog. There was nothing startling about the alien. It was an alien. Big deal.
Abrams' genius lies in his ideas. He comes up with great concepts. Like Cloverfield. He doesn't have the best execution, though. He lets the idea run away with him instead of harnessing the idea. His Star Trek is a great example of this. He has this problem. He needs to re-boot the Star Trek franchise, but he doesn't want to just do the same thing over again. How could he shake things up? Destroy Vulcan. Go off on a whole new timeline. It was a great idea. But red matter? Seriously? That's the best he could come up with? And some guy sitting around in a space ship for decades just waiting? Yeah, it sounds malevolent and all, but, come on, decades? There's bound to be a point where the boredom sets in. Don't get me wrong, I loved his Star Trek. It's the best Star Trek out there, but, in the end, it's still just Star Trek with things like red matter that make my eyes roll.
He seems to have a follow through issue, too. Like a cat in a field of butterflies. Alias comes to mind. Another great idea. The first season was exceptional. Hooked me and my wife. We watched the whole series based on that first season. Well, the second season was pretty good, too. Somewhere in the third season, though, he got a new idea, Lost, and left Alias to pursue that instead. And Alias was full of the "what am I hiding behind my back?" plots. Every season. Oh, and everyone was an enemy spy that they would just suddenly reveal "by the way, I have a secret." I haven't watched Lost, but it has sounded like it was much the same. Great concept. It must have been considering how many people flocked to it, but he left it somewhere in there to go do Fringe, which I couldn't watch. I tried. But it was just too Abrams. Oh, and there was Star Trek in there, too, so, really, all you people out there upset about how Lost ended, you can't exactly blame Abrams, because he wasn't there. Other people were responsible for whatever bad stuff happened at the end of the series. Oh, wait. Abrams wasn't there. I guess you can blame him. But, you know, he probably didn't have any idea about how to end it, either, so it probably wouldn't have mattered if he had been there.
Super 8 evokes all of these Abrams issues for me. I can see them all in there. However, 8 has one saving grace: the story is just E.T. With a twist. It's the "what if the government had found the alien first?" version. But it's still a story about a boy that has lost a parent and is trying to cope with his loss. By meeting an alien. If only that was an option available to all boys that have lost a parent. Spielberg gave Abrams an assist on the story, so it's not surprising that that's what we're getting. Just with a lot of explosions and guns and eating humans (because that's really the freakiest moment in the movie, the alien casually munching on a human limb like it's eating a chicken leg). It's a strong story, and I could probably watch Super 8 again for the story, although the suspense surrounding the alien won't be there. My wife said she'd watch it again just to see the train crash again. It is spectacular.
Abrams does an excellent job with the setting. It evokes that sense of nostalgia in people my age and older. Those memories of what it was like to be a kid at that time. It's probably the strongest thing about the movie. It's perfect. Kids riding bikes. Models hanging from ceilings. Star Wars posters and comic books. All those things that are gone from mainstream life today. No cell phones. No computers. Cameras that actually use film that has to be developed. In that respect, I'm not sure how the movie plays to younger audiences. I haven't seen anything from that demographic about it, and we didn't take our kids to see it. I'm pretty sure all the explosions would make up for any lack of connection with the world of the movie, though.
There's even a message. Most movies, these days, don't have messages. Or themes. Nothing beyond the good vs evil. Which is fine, but it can go deeper than that. Abrams doesn't want anyone to miss his message, so he states it plainly for the audience. I'm impressed by this. Not in that he did it, but that people have still missed it. I know they have. I've read more reviews about this movie than any movie in a long time, and they all missed it. I would have thought that stating it the way Abrams did was a bit heavy handed, but, evidently, you have to put it right out there for people to even have a hope of them getting it, and, still, people will miss it. It's like communication with teenagers. Maybe that's where he messed up; he didn't state the message at least three times. Having spent many years of my life working with teenagers, I have experience with the "at least three times" thing. Most of them will get it after three times, although some still miss out and have to come back and ask "what did you say?"
At any rate, it's a good message. So good, in fact, that I'm going to quote it. The whole movie, the whole story, leads up to this one line. From the very first frame, he begins setting up the story, with a true plot arc, to lead up to the one line of the movie that will sum everything up. However, I don't think it will spoil anything to know it ahead of time, because this particular aspect of the movie is about the journey. The journey of a father and a son trying to figure out how to connect with each other after the loss of the wife and mother. It's a touching journey and more grounded in reality than E. T., since the relationship in E.T. is the relationship with the alien. Who, then, leaves. Like Eliot's father left. This time, though, the boy is left with his father and the knowledge, "Bad things happen. Bad things happen, but you can still live."
My first reaction to Super 8 was very positive. There's a good story there. An actual story about real people. So here's the warning: there will be spoilers. I want to actually talk about this movie and J. J. Abrams, and I don't want to try to do it while dodging around trying not to give anything away about the movie. Also, despite anything negative I may say about Super 8, let me just reiterate that I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of watching the film. It's easily one of the best stories in a movie I've seen this year. Not the best, but, probably, top 5.
I have very ambivalent feelings about Mr. Abrams. The more removed I am from the experience of sitting in the theater watching Super 8, the more my ambivalence towards Abrams extends over to the movie. See, Abrams has this problem: he likes to hide things behind his back to generate suspense. You remember doing that when you were a kid, right? Or, at least, having it done to you? When you're a kid, it's kind of fun. Trying to "convince" someone to show you what he's hiding. It's fun because you know he really does want to show you, so, once you've played the game long enough, he'll give you a peek. Teenagers change this to the "I've got a secret" game, but it's really the same thing.
There are two problems with this: 1. the thing is often anti-climactic 2. sometimes, we already know. Oh, actually, there's one other problem: it only works once. It's sort of a cheap trick in story telling because of that, when the suspense is being generated by just holding the secret behind your back. There's no reason to go back and experience it again, because you already know the secret. As opposed to a movie like The Sixth Sense (and I hate using this, because I don't have much respect for what Shyamalan has become. However, you can't deny that this one film was brilliant. Possibly the most brilliant of its genre) where the secret is really in front of you the whole time, you just don't know it because you haven't figured it out. You can watch it over and over again marveling at how you should have figured it out but just didn't.
That was the biggest issue I had with Super 8; I had flashbacks of Cloverfield, which is a movie I just didn't enjoy. I appreciate what Abrams was trying to do (it was a great idea), but the execution was... well, it was just weak. A movie without a plot with the author holding a monster behind his back that he flashes to us for a brief moment at the end and leaves us saying, "That's it? That was all? Two hours of this just for that?" He applies this same gimmick to Super 8, and, although he gives us a better view of the critter at the end of the movie, I still felt like I'd been kind of cheated. It was sort of like finding out that all he'd had behind his back the whole time was a frog. There was nothing startling about the alien. It was an alien. Big deal.
Abrams' genius lies in his ideas. He comes up with great concepts. Like Cloverfield. He doesn't have the best execution, though. He lets the idea run away with him instead of harnessing the idea. His Star Trek is a great example of this. He has this problem. He needs to re-boot the Star Trek franchise, but he doesn't want to just do the same thing over again. How could he shake things up? Destroy Vulcan. Go off on a whole new timeline. It was a great idea. But red matter? Seriously? That's the best he could come up with? And some guy sitting around in a space ship for decades just waiting? Yeah, it sounds malevolent and all, but, come on, decades? There's bound to be a point where the boredom sets in. Don't get me wrong, I loved his Star Trek. It's the best Star Trek out there, but, in the end, it's still just Star Trek with things like red matter that make my eyes roll.
He seems to have a follow through issue, too. Like a cat in a field of butterflies. Alias comes to mind. Another great idea. The first season was exceptional. Hooked me and my wife. We watched the whole series based on that first season. Well, the second season was pretty good, too. Somewhere in the third season, though, he got a new idea, Lost, and left Alias to pursue that instead. And Alias was full of the "what am I hiding behind my back?" plots. Every season. Oh, and everyone was an enemy spy that they would just suddenly reveal "by the way, I have a secret." I haven't watched Lost, but it has sounded like it was much the same. Great concept. It must have been considering how many people flocked to it, but he left it somewhere in there to go do Fringe, which I couldn't watch. I tried. But it was just too Abrams. Oh, and there was Star Trek in there, too, so, really, all you people out there upset about how Lost ended, you can't exactly blame Abrams, because he wasn't there. Other people were responsible for whatever bad stuff happened at the end of the series. Oh, wait. Abrams wasn't there. I guess you can blame him. But, you know, he probably didn't have any idea about how to end it, either, so it probably wouldn't have mattered if he had been there.
Super 8 evokes all of these Abrams issues for me. I can see them all in there. However, 8 has one saving grace: the story is just E.T. With a twist. It's the "what if the government had found the alien first?" version. But it's still a story about a boy that has lost a parent and is trying to cope with his loss. By meeting an alien. If only that was an option available to all boys that have lost a parent. Spielberg gave Abrams an assist on the story, so it's not surprising that that's what we're getting. Just with a lot of explosions and guns and eating humans (because that's really the freakiest moment in the movie, the alien casually munching on a human limb like it's eating a chicken leg). It's a strong story, and I could probably watch Super 8 again for the story, although the suspense surrounding the alien won't be there. My wife said she'd watch it again just to see the train crash again. It is spectacular.
Abrams does an excellent job with the setting. It evokes that sense of nostalgia in people my age and older. Those memories of what it was like to be a kid at that time. It's probably the strongest thing about the movie. It's perfect. Kids riding bikes. Models hanging from ceilings. Star Wars posters and comic books. All those things that are gone from mainstream life today. No cell phones. No computers. Cameras that actually use film that has to be developed. In that respect, I'm not sure how the movie plays to younger audiences. I haven't seen anything from that demographic about it, and we didn't take our kids to see it. I'm pretty sure all the explosions would make up for any lack of connection with the world of the movie, though.
There's even a message. Most movies, these days, don't have messages. Or themes. Nothing beyond the good vs evil. Which is fine, but it can go deeper than that. Abrams doesn't want anyone to miss his message, so he states it plainly for the audience. I'm impressed by this. Not in that he did it, but that people have still missed it. I know they have. I've read more reviews about this movie than any movie in a long time, and they all missed it. I would have thought that stating it the way Abrams did was a bit heavy handed, but, evidently, you have to put it right out there for people to even have a hope of them getting it, and, still, people will miss it. It's like communication with teenagers. Maybe that's where he messed up; he didn't state the message at least three times. Having spent many years of my life working with teenagers, I have experience with the "at least three times" thing. Most of them will get it after three times, although some still miss out and have to come back and ask "what did you say?"
At any rate, it's a good message. So good, in fact, that I'm going to quote it. The whole movie, the whole story, leads up to this one line. From the very first frame, he begins setting up the story, with a true plot arc, to lead up to the one line of the movie that will sum everything up. However, I don't think it will spoil anything to know it ahead of time, because this particular aspect of the movie is about the journey. The journey of a father and a son trying to figure out how to connect with each other after the loss of the wife and mother. It's a touching journey and more grounded in reality than E. T., since the relationship in E.T. is the relationship with the alien. Who, then, leaves. Like Eliot's father left. This time, though, the boy is left with his father and the knowledge, "Bad things happen. Bad things happen, but you can still live."
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
I just missed your heart...
In the past week or so, I've come across several lists of the toughest chicks in fiction. Some of these were for chicks in movies. Some for television. Some for both. Some from literature. None of these lists included Hanna, and for that, I think they are all lacking. Yes, even the literature lists should have included Hanna; she's that kick butt! In fact, she's so kick butt, I'm sure that that's where that movie came from. Someone said, "Hey! Let's make a movie about a young girl that can kick butt like no body's business!"
Someone else tried to ruin the party by saying, "But, wait, why can she kick so much butt?"
And that's where it all fell apart.
The movie, Hanna, is strung together on the very thinnest of plots. I mean Run, Lola, Run thin, but that one works better, because that's all the movie's supposed to be about. But the makers of Hanna, evidently, wanted the movie to appear as if it contains substance, so they tried to write a story as to why Hanna can and does kick so much butt. And I say makers, because I have no idea who might be at fault for this ill-conceived notion. Was it just bad writing from the start? Did the director dispense with the story in favor of the action? Did the producers demand it? Also, speaking of Lola, and I didn't time it, but I would guess somewhere close to 1/3 of Hanna is actually just music video of (mostly) her just running. Or crawling. Being chased, at any rate. Sometimes it's Erik.
Having said all of that, if you like a good action flick and don't need much story, it's a great movie. My friend, who took me to see it, certainly liked it much better than I did. The fight scenes are well done, and there's plenty of suspense wrapped up in the action. And running. Lots of running. And I bet the director or the writer or someone thought they were being very clever by wrapping the movies ending up in a circle to tie it back to the opening. Oh, but wait, I'm letting my antipathy for the story slip back in there.
The biggest issue with the story is that it resorts to the "big reveal" in order to explain the story all at once because it failed to provide the viewers with enough information as the movie progressed to figure anything out on their own. Really, I hate this. Especially since they could have allowed us the information throughout the movie by cutting out 10 minutes of running.
Let me just say, though, that I'm not dissing "the big reveal" in and of itself. It's often a necessary plot device, especially in mysteries; however, if done poorly, it can ruin what might have been a good story. Here's an example from a couple of similar movies that were released back-to-back:
1. The Prestige (Oct, 2006): A movie about two magicians obsessed with learning how the other has performed a career-making trick. The clues are provided throughout the movie. If the viewer pays attention, s/he is able to put the pieces together and figure it out in advance. Or, at least, parts of it. When the big reveal (the prestige) comes, it is only to fill in viewers who may not have caught all of the clues. Very well done. [I own this movie, by the way. Hugh Jackman is excellent. It's also the type of movie that is better on a second or third viewing as you can see how the puzzle pieces are being put together.]
2. The Illusionist (Sept, 2006): Another movie about a magician pulling off an extraordinary illusion. The illusion is, in effect, the plot. The key to the movie. However, the movie fails to provide the information needed for the viewer to figure out the puzzle, so, during the big reveal, there are flashbacks with allow us to see all of the pieces that were not actually shown the first time through. Basically, the audience is not allowed to figure it out in process but thrown all of the left out pieces at the very end in order to see the whole picture. I find this to be a very cheap trick. Basically, the writer could not figure out a way to seed the story with the pieces needed so just withheld them all. This is the tactic Hanna uses.
Just a note: I think the best usage of the big reveal, at least in any recent movie, was The Sixth Sense. In fact, Shyamalan did it so well in that movie that it has sustained him for more than a decade of increasingly worse movies. That was free.
There was one other very positive aspect of Hanna: the acting. Eric Bana and Cate Blanchett are both excellent. In fact, they are the two characters that give the movie any sort of depth and weight. Saoirse Ronan (Hanna) does a fine job, but I haven't seen her in anything else, so I'm not sure if it was acting ability or just the way she is.
Well, I hope you still had your pop culture hats on from last time, but you can take them off now. At least, for a little while.
Someone else tried to ruin the party by saying, "But, wait, why can she kick so much butt?"
And that's where it all fell apart.
The movie, Hanna, is strung together on the very thinnest of plots. I mean Run, Lola, Run thin, but that one works better, because that's all the movie's supposed to be about. But the makers of Hanna, evidently, wanted the movie to appear as if it contains substance, so they tried to write a story as to why Hanna can and does kick so much butt. And I say makers, because I have no idea who might be at fault for this ill-conceived notion. Was it just bad writing from the start? Did the director dispense with the story in favor of the action? Did the producers demand it? Also, speaking of Lola, and I didn't time it, but I would guess somewhere close to 1/3 of Hanna is actually just music video of (mostly) her just running. Or crawling. Being chased, at any rate. Sometimes it's Erik.
Having said all of that, if you like a good action flick and don't need much story, it's a great movie. My friend, who took me to see it, certainly liked it much better than I did. The fight scenes are well done, and there's plenty of suspense wrapped up in the action. And running. Lots of running. And I bet the director or the writer or someone thought they were being very clever by wrapping the movies ending up in a circle to tie it back to the opening. Oh, but wait, I'm letting my antipathy for the story slip back in there.
The biggest issue with the story is that it resorts to the "big reveal" in order to explain the story all at once because it failed to provide the viewers with enough information as the movie progressed to figure anything out on their own. Really, I hate this. Especially since they could have allowed us the information throughout the movie by cutting out 10 minutes of running.
Let me just say, though, that I'm not dissing "the big reveal" in and of itself. It's often a necessary plot device, especially in mysteries; however, if done poorly, it can ruin what might have been a good story. Here's an example from a couple of similar movies that were released back-to-back:
1. The Prestige (Oct, 2006): A movie about two magicians obsessed with learning how the other has performed a career-making trick. The clues are provided throughout the movie. If the viewer pays attention, s/he is able to put the pieces together and figure it out in advance. Or, at least, parts of it. When the big reveal (the prestige) comes, it is only to fill in viewers who may not have caught all of the clues. Very well done. [I own this movie, by the way. Hugh Jackman is excellent. It's also the type of movie that is better on a second or third viewing as you can see how the puzzle pieces are being put together.]
2. The Illusionist (Sept, 2006): Another movie about a magician pulling off an extraordinary illusion. The illusion is, in effect, the plot. The key to the movie. However, the movie fails to provide the information needed for the viewer to figure out the puzzle, so, during the big reveal, there are flashbacks with allow us to see all of the pieces that were not actually shown the first time through. Basically, the audience is not allowed to figure it out in process but thrown all of the left out pieces at the very end in order to see the whole picture. I find this to be a very cheap trick. Basically, the writer could not figure out a way to seed the story with the pieces needed so just withheld them all. This is the tactic Hanna uses.
Just a note: I think the best usage of the big reveal, at least in any recent movie, was The Sixth Sense. In fact, Shyamalan did it so well in that movie that it has sustained him for more than a decade of increasingly worse movies. That was free.
There was one other very positive aspect of Hanna: the acting. Eric Bana and Cate Blanchett are both excellent. In fact, they are the two characters that give the movie any sort of depth and weight. Saoirse Ronan (Hanna) does a fine job, but I haven't seen her in anything else, so I'm not sure if it was acting ability or just the way she is.
Well, I hope you still had your pop culture hats on from last time, but you can take them off now. At least, for a little while.
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