It’s almost the time of year when all the interesting movies come out in time for awards season, so I figured I should get these last few reviews off my chest before then.

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– HEREAFTER – (2010)

Dir: Clint Eastwood;  Star: Matt Damon, Cecile De France
Clint Eastwood’s latest movie features three parallel story lines following characters who have experienced near-death. There’s a young boy in England whose brother gets hit by a car, a woman in France who almost drowns in a tsunami, and Matt Damon, a psychic in San Francisco who gives up his profession of speaking with the dead for a shot at a normal life. If you can see past the new-age psychic garbage, which I was barely able to, it appears as if Eastwood and screenwriter Peter Morgan are trying to address the timeless question: What happens when we die? It’s a tired subject that has been examined countless times before by far more adroit filmmakers. It’s all rather forced and insubstantial; Morgan has his characters just say what they think happens when you die, rather than evoking thought in the viewer through character’s actions as filtered through the cinematic medium. It’s to the afterlife what Inception was to dreams: not a noticeable source of any significant insight. I believe the film’s greatest flaw, however, is the casting of an A-list star for one of the story lines, with unknown and comparatively boring actors filling the other 60% of the movie. It’s the kind of thing that makes you really appreciate how talented and eminently watchable Matt Damon is, since you begin to grow restless when you have to pay attention to everyone else.

– THE SOCIAL NETWORK – (2010)

Dir: David Fincher;  Star: Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Rashida Jones
The story of the founding of social networking site Facebook and the subsequent legal troubles faced by founder Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg). Aaron Sorokin’s fantastic screenplay is actually about the compromises between personal success and friendship, as well as entrepreneurial motivation, within the entirely relevant framework of a mostly true business story. It’s dialogue-rich and lightning fast, aided by a great performance by Eisenberg in a roll he was seemingly born to play. Director Fincher does marvels to keep the pace ultra taut and the focus on the motives behind every impacting decision. Judging by the crowd in the theater in Berkeley on opening night, this movie is the epitome of relevant to the college student, who checks Facebook in class, on the bus, and in the bathroom, 24/7. It would be, since the whole point of The Facebook was to increase the efficiency of the essential networking on college campuses, where who you know builds your future. A speech driven tour de force by the production team and cast, with cinematography, editing, scoring, and vision that’s simply unmatched at rousing the desires of competition that drive the character’s ruthless motivations.  The great success of The Social Network is that it works tremendously and is thoroughly engaging  regardless of its relevance to a demographic, because the themes it intelligently expounds upon are applicable to anyone who has ever wanted to succeed.

– RESTREPO– (2010)

Dir: Tim Hetherington, Sebastian Junger
Documentary following one platoon stationed at one of the deadliest valleys in Afghanistan for a year. Most of their time is spent waiting nervously for whatever happens next. A very compelling look at an unenviable job that works very well in putting a very human face on the mystical “soldier” we keep hearing about in the news.