Ralph's Movie Reviews: HEREAFTER

Saturday, October 23, 2010

HEREAFTER

Drama
Some dialogue in French with English subtitles

PRINCIPAL CAST MEMBERS
Cécile De France: vacationing French television host Marie LeLay
Thierry Neuvic: her producer/lover Didier
Frankie McLaren: 12-year-old Marcus
George McLaren: his twin brother Jason
Lyndsey Marshal: their mother Jackie
Matt Damon: factory worker George Lonegan
Jay Mohr: his older brother Billy
Richard Kind: Billy’s business associate Christos
Bryce Dallas Howard: George’s cooking class partner Melanie

REVIEW
After a spectacular opening sequence the stories of three people whose lives have been impacted by death begins to unfold but without any obvious connection with one another until the last twenty minutes or so. Telling three separate stories takes a lot of time, in this case over two hours. And frankly, none of the stories is that compelling so it seems to drag on far too long.

Some of the shoot locations are beautiful but it is the Swiss Alps that are particularly stunning. The acting by Matt Damon comes across as real , less so by the twins.

CLASSIFICATION

for mature thematic elements including disturbing disaster and accident images and for brief strong language.

FOR NITPICKERS ONLY
• Marie returns from vacation landing at Charles de Gaulle airport; this is not one of Virgin Atlantic Airways approved destinations, not even with code share flights.
• While talking with George in his kitchen Melanie’s locket changes position between shots although she never touches it.
• Marcus highlights his typed entry to a Google search, hits enter and gets the results. In reality when you press enter with text highlighted it disappears so you would not get any search results.

No comments:

Post a Comment

my ratings system

I've always thought that telling too much about a movie or warning someone about a "twist" at the end deprives the person the pleasure of seeing it as it unfolds, so I don’t do it. You may not always agree with my rating of course, but at least it is an unbiased opinion unlike some of the full time professional reviewers who are on the studio’s payroll.

A few movies you won’t see any review from me:

Scary movies: I’m the world’s biggest chicken and just hate getting the crap scared out of me. I can handle an unexpected door slam, that kind of thing, but a movie that keeps you on the edge of your seat…not for me. Sorry.
Movies geared to the young teen and pre-teen crowd with dialog comprising mostly of crude remarks, awful jokes and lots of rude, socially unacceptable body noises. "The Spy that Shagged Me" comes to mind. (I wonder if the kids know what the British verb to shag someone really means? They probably do; I bet you it’s the parents who haven’t a clue).
Sometimes Hollywood gets on a roll and they produce a series of movies that are all very much alike. For example movies about the CIA were very popular and so we had The Bourne Identity and Bad Company and The Sum of All Fears. They all had the same basic theme and it becomes repetitive. I will see some, but not all of them.

FYI this is my rating system:

0 stars = Terrible: so bad it’s not worth talking about; in fact, I’d pay you not to go
= Lousy: I actually got up and walked out before the end it was just that bad (no kidding)
= Not so good: thought about walking out but hung in just in case it got better (but it didn’t)
= A so-so good movie: I enjoyed it somewhat but wasn’t all that crazy about it
= A really good movie: I recommend seeing it
= An excellent movie you just got to see! I suggest you put it on your "To Do List" it’s that good.

some favourite websites

For those into it, Nitpickers at

has more movie mistakes than you could ever imagine. My contributions can be seen if you check out the Nitpickers Registry and click on the link Nitpickers Listed by Nitpicker Number, select the group 45,401 - 45,500 and drill down to number 45411. Although I have 56 nitpicks to my credit, some have almost 2,000. You wonder sometimes where they find the time to do it.