Artie Logan (Charlie Schlatter) is a wannabe James Dean who keeps getting kicked out of school because he is such a rebel. His father, a judge, gives Artie one more chance. Artie can either enroll at Fairfield College or he can go to jail. Artie chooses Fairfield, where he meets and falls for the beautiful and popular Tally Fuller (Josie Bissett). However, no sooner does Artie show up for their first date than someone sets Tally on fire and crashes through a window. Artie is the number one suspect but Detective P.J. Decker (Christopher Walken) still gives him 24 hours to solve the murder and clear his name. Artie investigates and discovers that Tally was not the innocent, all-American girl that everyone thought she was. This leads to a nudity-filled flashback that explains why All-American Murder was an HBO mainstay in the 90s. It also leads to other people being murdered by snakes and hand grenades.
Despite some bloody murders and the presence of Walken and Joanna Cassidy in potentially interesting supporting roles, All-American Murder fails because it asks us to accept Charlie Schlatter as being a charismatic rebel. When Joanna Cassidy tells him that he’s a “renegade,” not even she sounds like she believes it. The murder mystery is intriguing but Artie is so obnoxious that you want him to go to prison whether he’s guilty or not.
All-American Murder was directed by Anson Williams, who is best known for playing Potsie on Happy Days. The Fonz could have framed Ralph Malph for this murder in half the time that it takes Artie to solve it.
With the Oscar nominations due to be announced tomorrow, now is the time that the Shattered Lens indulges in a little something called, “What if Lisa had all the power.” Listed below are my personal Oscar nominations. Please note that these are not the films that I necessarily think will be nominated. The fact of the matter is that the many of them will not. Instead, these are the films that would be nominated if I was solely responsible for deciding the nominees this year. Winners are starred and listed in bold.
(You’ll also note that I’ve added four categories, all of which I believe the Academy should adopt — Best Voice-Over Performance, Best Casting, Best Stunt Work, and Best Overall Use Of Music In A Film.)
(Click on the links to see my nominations for 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, and 2010!)
Best Actress
Katharine Isabelle in 88
Brie Larson in Room
Rooney Mara in Carol
Saoirse Ronan in Brooklyn
Amy Schumer in Trainwreck *Alicia Vikander in Ex Machina*
Inside Out is the latest brilliant film from Pixar’s Pete Docter and it will remind you why you fell in love with Pixar in the first place.
There are no talking cars or lovable monsters in Inside Out. Instead, it’s the story of a very normal 12 year-old girl named Riley (voiced by Kaitlyn Dias). Or rather, it’s the story of what goes on in her head. For most of the movie, Riley deals with experiences to which we can all relate: she moves to a new city, she struggles to relate to her well-meaning parents (voiced by Kyle MacLachlan and Diane Lane), and she tries to fit in at a new school. Inside Out is a film about the small moments of life and how they all add up to create a bigger picture.
What sets Inside Out apart is the way that it tells its deceptively simple story. Inside Out takes place almost entirely inside of Riley’s brain. And it turns out that her mind is gigantic wonderland, one that is so big and complex that not even the characters who live there quite understand how it all works. Bing Bong (Richard Kind), a pink half-elephant, half-cat, half-dolphin creature, spends his time wandering through the halls of memory and mournfully thinking back to when he was Riley’s imaginary friend. Whenever Riley goes to sleep, the actors and directors at Dream Productions film a different nightly movie. Meanwhile, Imagination Land is a fun place to visit but not a good place in which to live and past childhood traumass — like a gigantic stalk of broccoli and a terrifying birthday clown — are locked away deep in Riley’s subconscious, where they are guarded by officious policemen. Zigzagging through this mental landscape is the literal Train of Thought.
And then, above it all, there’s Headquarters. This is where five different emotions take turns “steering” Riley through life. Fear (Bill Hader) is always nervous but, at the same time, keeps Riley safe. Disgust (Mindy Kaling) prevents Riley from eating broccoli and hanging out with the wrong crowd. Sadness, meanwhile, hasn’t had much to do over the past 12 years and, as a result, she spends most of her time standing in a corner and feeling … well, sad. Sadness is voiced by Phyllis Smith, best known for playing Meredith on The Office. Smith proves herself here to be a strong and empathetic voice artist.
Their unquestioned leader is Joy (Amy Poehler). As befits her name and job, Joy is always positive, always upbeat, and always optimistic. For 12 years, Joy has been in charge of steering Riley’s life but that all changes when Riley and her family move to San Francisco. Suddenly, Joy finds it more difficult to keep Riley permanently happy. Memories that were formerly color-coded yellow for happy start to turn blue.
When both Joy and Sadness are accidentally expelled from the Headquarters, it’s up to the three remaining emotions to try to keep Riley well-balanced until they can return. However, the journey back up to the Headquarters is a long and dangerous one, full of some of the most imaginative (and metaphorical) imagery in Pixar’s history. Joy and Sadness will have to work together to make it.
And really, that’s what makes Inside Out so special. It’s the rare family film that acknowledges that allowing ourselves to feel sad is often as important as being happy.
Inside Out is a brilliant coming-of-age story and one of the best films of the year. It’s a film that will make you laugh and cry and will remind you of why you fell in love with Pixar in the first place. Kids will love the humor and adults … well, adults will probably be trying to hold back the tears.
Tonight’s Gotham picked up where the “Pilot” left off and that’s the fallout from the murders of Thomas and Martha Wayne. We find out during the episode that the Wayne family was considered one of the two pillars of the Gotham community which kept the city’s order and status quo. The other pillar being Don Carmine Falcone was a nice touch by the writers. It was this little piece of world-building information that is gradually selling me into this series even this early in it’s freshman season.
The history of Batman, the Wayne family and the underworld which permeates Gotham has been told and retold so many times that it’s hard to imagine that anything new could be added to keep things fresh to hardcore fans of the character and the world. It’s actually been a major problem for comic book and film screenwriters when it’s time to come up with something new and not have it become such a major deviation from the character canon to alienate fans.
Showrunner Bruce Heller must’ve seen something within the backstory and history of some of Batman’s adversaries because he looks to be setting up Carmine Falcone and Fish Mooney as the two main antagonists for season 1. In the comics and in the films we don’t really get to explore these two characters very closely. They’re described as underworld mob bosses and, at times, seen as brutish thugs who just happen to be the heads of their criminal enterprises.
“Selina Kyle” is the title of tonight’s episode though we don’t really see the title character until much later in the episode. The episode itself dealt with a new case for the Gordon and Bullock duo who are still feeling their way around each other. It doesn’t help that Bullock seems to be getting tired of Gordon’s “holier-than-thou” attitude towards him and the rest of the force considering he and many in the force think Gordon killed Cobblepot in the previous episode. We, the audience, know better, but Gordon knows he has to continue to sell that assumption made by everyone.
While tonight’s episode wasn’t as overly busy with cramming as many Batman characters and locations it was still quite packed. In addition to building on the Gordon and Bullock relationship, we also have the episode’s main story about teen runaways being grabbed off the streets by unknown parties. Then there’s still the Wayne murders which the pilot episode showed wasn’t really solved. Will the murders of Bruce’s parents take up the bulk of the first season (I sure hope it doesn’t) or will it get a good enough resolution to help move the season’s narrative towards other more interesting storylines.
It’s in the last twenty or so minutes of the episode that we finally get to see Selina Kyle. Camren Bicondova has such a unique look that it’s a bit jarring seeing her, at first. Yet, it’s the actress’ very exotic-look that hints at Bruce Wayne and Batman’s one true love turning into quite the seductive beauty. Yet, tonight’s episode just portrayed Selina Kyle as a tough, street-savvy runaway whose major role this season is the fact that she knows who really killed the Waynes.
Now, what really made tonight’s episode keep the series on an upward trend would be the two characters mentioned in the beginning: Carmine Falcone and Fish Mooney.
These two characters have become more interesting in just two episodes than throughout all the thousands of stories told about Batman through the comics, films and cartoons. As played by John Doman and Jada Pinkett Smith respectively, Falcone and Mooney make the show really interesting. These are not costume wearing villains or mentally-scarred antagonists. They’re hardcore criminals, but who have learned how to work within the system that is Gotham’s elite society. Where the show pushes forward that the Wayne family has been and continues to be a longstanding pillar of Gotham community, the show also seems to intimate that it does so with a sort of tacit acknowledgement of the seedier side of Gotham.
John Doman’s performance as Carmine Falcone continues to impress. There’s an almost paternal quality to the character but one that never tries to hide the brutality that’s made him the boss of all of Gotham’s criminal underworld. There was such a nice transition from polite businessman to sociopath mob boss in a space of a heartbeat during Falcone’s impromptu meeting with Mooney that one had to rewatch the scene more than once to pick it up.
Of course, many will point out that Jada Pinkett Smith as Mooney was just as good, but in a much more showier fashion. No disagreement in this corner. Smith’s performance is the opposite of Doman’s and it will be interesting how the power play between the two bosses will develop and how it’ll affect the rest of the cast of characters on Gotham.
This show still has growing pains to go through, but tonight’s episode was a good way in working through it while still trying to tell a compelling story. One thing Heller seems to have gotten right (whether by accident or deliberately) with this show’s writing is that he’s made the villains more interesting than it’s supposed heroes. That’s always been the case with Batman outside the comics and this show just continues to perpetuate it.
“Gotham stands on a knife’s edge” — Carmine Falcone
It’s one of 2014’s most-anticipated new series. The world is superhero crazy right now and it was only time before DC dipped back into the Batman well to base a live-action tv series on their most-successful property.
Gotham doesn’t actually take the usual tack and bring in Batman himself as it’s main character. The show uses one of Batman’s most important allies as the focal point of the show. Jim Gordon has always been one of Batman’s staunchest friends throughout every story ever told about the Dark Knight. This show looks to explore Jim Gordon’s early years as part of the Gotham City Police Department. We still get to see Bruce Wayne as a child and his character and who he will become still loom large over the pilot and, I suspect, the series in general.
The pilot episode was written by the show’s executive producer Bruno Heller and it’s actually too paint-by-the-numbers. It literally tries to introduce as many of the Batman rogues gallery in it’s less-than-an-hour running time. We get a quick intro to not just the Riddler and the Joker, but we also get the early beginnings of the Penguin, Catwoman and Poison Ivy. Don’t even get me started on Batman’s more traditional adversaries in Fish Mooney and Carmine Falcone.
It’s difficult to judge a series on it’s pilot episode since the show is still trying to find it’s identity. We saw this with last year’s other comic book series, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and how it took literally 2/3’s of it’s first season to finally find it’s stable footing before it could even figure out what show it wanted to be. Gotham may just have an easier time to find its way in the superhero entertainment landscape since DC has confirmed that the series will not tie-in with it’s cinematic universe the way Marvel did with it’s own series. This should give Bruno Heller and his writers a much more free hand in molding the show into what they want. Yet, there’s a danger in that freedom in that too much of a drastic deviation from the Batman source will rile up the character’s rabid fanbase.
The first episode does arrive with some very good performances from it’s leads. Ben McKenzie as Det. Jim Gordon commands the stage whenever he’s on the screen. He’s able to convey not just the man of integrity we know Jim Gordon to be, but also inject a bit of a darkness to the character that we rarely saw in the films and cartoons, but comic book fans are very well aware of. McKenzie’s Jim Gordon definitely a bit more rougher around the edges but still idealistic than the Gary Oldman take on Jim Gordon who was more seasoned, but also more cynical about the best way to combat crime in Gotham.
Donal Logue as his veteran partner Harvey Bullock does a good job in becoming the bridge for the audience between the principled Gordon and the more corrupt, underbelly of law and order that is Gotham. We’re not sure if he’s a corrupt cop or just one who has learned how to navigate the dangerous waters of the criminal underworld as one of Gotham’s protectors. Time will tell if this version of Harvey Bullock becomes more of the Batman Begins analogue Arnold Flass or the cynical, but loyal cop of the cartoons.
Now, a show about Batman’s hometown wouldn’t be able to call itself by that city’s name if I didn’t mention the rogues gallery that will end becoming Batman’s (and to an extent, Jim Gordon) reason for being. We don’t see colorful costumes or even the recognizable look of Batman’s villains in this pilot episode, but as stated earlier they do try to cram as many of them in this series premiere as they could. It’s almost like a convoy designed to remind audiences that the show will explore not just Jim Gordon’s early days before Batman rises from the shadows, but also the time of the villains before he arrives.
Of all the bad guys the show tries to push at the audience in this pilot it’s Fish Mooney as portrayed by Jada Pinkett Smith that stands out most. Her crimelord brings a certain amount of flair to the episode that hints at the over-the-top villainy that will come about once Bruce is all grown up and takes up the mantle of the bat. There’s hints of a past relationship between her and Logue’s Bullock that could turn out to be interesting. Robin Lord Taylor as a young Oswald Cobblepot aka the Penguin is ok, but something in his performance looks like someone trying too hard to bring out in this series the Penguin’s quirky mannerisms that the character looks to be the most cartoony of all introduced in the episode.
Gotham had a good and interesting introductory episode that laid enough stones on the series’ foundation as it moves forward. With only 16 episodes instead of the usual 24 most full-length tv series get Bruno Heller and the show’s writers has less time to create this version of the Gotham and Batman world we’ve come to expect. Will they manage to inject some new blood into a world that’s been adapted and reimagined through decades of comics, tv and film work or will the series just try to appease the hardcore comic book fanbase thus alienating the wider general audience.
We shall see and future review installments will tell if this site buys into the series with wholeheartedly or end up getting off the ride before it’s over.
Unless you’ve been living in total and complete isolation, you know that Sharknado 2 premiered on SyFy last night. And of course, I watched and live tweeted it. Now, when it comes Sharknado 2, it seems like everyone has one question: Was it better than Sharknado?
The answer?
Yes. Yes, it was.
Here are 10 reasons why Sharknado 2 was sharktastic!
1) Action! Action! Action!
Sharknado 2 didn’t waste any time getting to the point. From the minute the film started with Ian Ziering and Tara Reid sitting in an airplane that’s hit some sharknado-related turbulence, Sharknado 2 was all about sharks falling from the sky. The film didn’t waste any time revisiting the events of the previous film or trying to explain, for a second time, how a bunch of sharks ended up in a tornado. And you know what? If you were worry about the logic of the situation then you really weren’t the right audience for this film. Sharknado 2 was a movie for those of us seeking nonstop shark mayhem and it delivered!
2) Plenty of New York Attitude
When the first sharknado hit Los Angeles, we were presented with a portrait of a town that deserved to be destroyed. I mean — really, Los Angeles? A little bad weather and a few sharks and your entire population is screaming and fleeing? New York, however, knows how to handle a sharknado. It didn’t matter how many sharks fell from the sky — the citizens of New York refused to allow it to stop them from enjoying baseball games, visiting the Statue of Liberty, and seeking out a good slice of pizza. New York, you’re the tops!
3) Tara Reid Showed Us How To Handle Losing A Hand
I don’t know about you but if a shark fell out of the sky and bit off my hand, I would probably freak out. Having watched Sharknado 2, I can say that I am definitely not as strong as Tara Reid. Though she may have lost her hand early on in this movie, she never let it slow her down. Not only did she defiantly walk out of the hospital but she also managed to drive a fire truck with only one hand! I’ve got two hands and I don’t think I could do that. Finally, as a perfect example of how to make lemonade out of lemons, she even replaced her missing hand with a radial saw that, as it turns out, was perfect for fighting sharks. You go, girl!
4) Ian Ziering Gave It All He Could
In the first Sharknado, Ian seemed almost annoyed to be there. You got the feeling that he felt that somehow, by appearing in a movie about flying sharks, he was somehow damaging his career. In Sharknado 2, however, Ian brought a lot of conviction to his role. Though it may be hard to understand if you haven’t seen the actual film, I’ll just say that you looked at and listened to Ian and you believed that this man had indeed been inside of a shark.
5) The Statue Of Liberty Lost Her Head
And you better believe that head went rolling down the streets of New York. I am a little bit disappointed that Ian never found a moment to stare up at headless Lady Liberty and shout, “You blew it up! Damn you to Hell!” but oh well.
6) Cameos Galore!
Seeing as how the first Sharknado became a bit of a pop cultural phenomena, we should probably not be surprised that a lot of celebrities agreed to do cameos in the sequel. What should surprise, however, is just how well the cameos were integrated into the film. Whether it was Kelly Osbourne getting eaten by a shark or Matt Lauer and Al Roker arguing over the proper name for the storm (eventually, Matt did call it a sharknado and you can see just how happy Al was; it was a touching moment), all of the cameos worked brilliantly and, even more importantly, they didn’t distract from all of the shark mayhem.
To be honest, the entire cast brought their A game to Sharknado 2. Everyone from Vivica A. Fox to Mark McGrath to Kari Wuhrer to Tara Reid to Judd Hirsch to well, everyone seemed to understand that for this material to work, they had to be willing to say some of the most ludicrous lines imaginable with a straight face. If a single member of the cast had tried to wink at the audience or play up the film’s inherent campiness, the entire film would have fallen apart. Instead, everyone brought a lot of conviction to their roles. Instead of mocking the film and their dialogue, you could tell that they were instead having fun with it and, as a result, the audience had a lot of fun as well.
9) Kelly Ripa Stamped On The Head Of A Hammerhead Shark
Proof positive that high heels can be a girl’s best friend.
Hereafter is a very serious film about a very serious topic, death. Following three separate but ultimately connected stories, the film attempts to explore death and the question of what happens after death from three different angles — intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. I really wanted Hereafter to be a great film. So did the film’s makers, which is precisely why Hereafter fails.
The intellectual consideration of death is represented by the character of Marie (Cecile De France), a French journalist who, at the start of the film, drowns in a tsunami and is, for a few minutes, clinically dead. Before she is eventually revived, she has a classic near-death experience: the bright light, the people waiting to greet her, the whole deal. After this experience, Marie is compelled to investigate whether or not there truly is such a thing as an afterlife. As she does so, Marie finds herself shunned by her resolutely secular friends and grows increasingly distant from her skeptical (and rather condescending) boyfriend.
The emotional response to death is represented in the story of twin brothers, Marcus and Jason (played by Frankie and George McLaren). The two boys live in London with their drug-addicted mother and share a strong (and, to be honest, kinda creepy) bond. Jason, while simply trying to return home with some drugs for his detoxing mother, is roughed up by some bullies and ends up running out into the middle of the street. Naturally, since this is a movie, Jason is hit by a truck as soon as he steps off the curb. Jason is killed and Marcus is taken away by social services and put into a foster home. Marcus continues to carry Jason’s cap with him and soon starts tracking down local English psychics in an attempt to talk to his brother again.
Finally, the spiritual aspect is detailed in the film’s most interesting story. This story features Matt Damon as George Lonegan, a psychic who can speak with the dead. After years of being a minor celebrity, George burned out and went into a self-imposed exile. He now works at a factory while his brother (Jay Mohr, who looks incredibly puffy in this movie) keeps trying to find ways to convince George to get back into the business of talking to dead for fun and profit. After George reluctantly gives a reading to Richard Kind, he finds himself being dragged back into his old life.
A lot of viewers and critics have compared Hereafter to Alejandro González Iñárritu’s 2006 masterpiece, Babel. Both films follow three separate but connecting stories and both films are concerned with the theme of death and how it connects us all. As well, Babel featured Brad Pitt in a serious role and Hereafter features Matt Damon. The main difference, however, is that Babel was a great film but Hereafter is basically an uneven mess.
Whereas Babel featured three strong stories, Hereafter features 1 compelling story (that would be Damon’s) which is compelling solely because Matt Damon is a talented enough actor that he can apparently perform miracles. He’s probably about as likable as he’s ever been in the role of George but he also wisely plays the role as being just a little bit off. Even though the film makes the mistake of never really going into the details of just what exactly caused George to give up being a psychic, Damon is so good in the role that you’re willing to take him at his word that he had a good reason. Probably the highlight of the film (and one of the few sections to really inspire any sort of real emotional response) is an extended sequence where Damon befriends and the manages to alienate an insecure, single woman played by Bryce Dallas Howard. Damon and Howard have a scene that involves eating while blind-folded that manages to be both powerfully erotic and wonderfully romantic at the same time. If the entire film had been about them, Hereafter would have been a much better movie.
Unfortunately, we’ve got to slog through two other stories.
Cecile La France gives an excellent performance as Marie and the opening tsunami scene is truly terrifying. For someone like me, who cannot swim and risks having a panic attack if she even stands near the deep end of a swimming pool, the tsunami scene was almost impossible to watch. I had to put my hands in front of my eyes and watch the scene through my fingers. However, once she drowns, Marie sees a vision of the afterlife that — as a harbinger of things to come — is rather dull. I mean, with everything that can supposedly be done in movies today, the best that Hereafter can give us is a bland white light. Once Marie returns to Paris and starts her investigation, La France remains a sympathetic presence and the film actually does a pretty good job of showing just how condescending most supposedly “liberal” men are whenever a woman starts to stray from the established orthodoxy. But, unfortunately, her story is just never that interesting. Marie decides to write a book about the afterlife. As a writer myself, I have to say that there is nothing more boring than watching someone else write.
As for Marcus, I was shocked just how little I cared about him or his attempts to contact his brother. I come from a very close family and I have a very strong bond with all three of my sisters and, among them, I am notorious for crying at any movie that deals with that sort of sibling bonding. Yet I sat through the saga of Marcus and Jason without shedding a tear and I felt terrible about it. I really wanted to cry. I really wanted to have some sort of emotional response to the story but I just never believed it. I hate to say this but honestly, a lot of this was due to the fact that the McLaren twins are such bad actors. Director Clint Eastwood has said that he specifically cast them because they weren’t professional actors and therefore, they wouldn’t introduce any false “sentimentality” into the mix. But dammit, it was a sentimental story. Sentiment is not necessarily a bad thing and just because something is sentimental, that doesn’t make it false.
So, what exactly went wrong with Hereafter? The film opens strongly with a terrifying tsunami and the final 30 minutes are also undeniably touching (if also a bit contrived). It’s everything that happens in between those two points that ruins Hereafter. Director Eastwood, obviously looking to avoid that dreaded curse of being sentimental, keeps the whole film very low-key and realistic. Other than the opening tsunami, there are no big wow moments but to be honest, isn’t that what movies are for? If you’re going to make a movie that specifically shuns the wow moment, you better have something compelling (a perfect script or an entire cast giving a compelling performance as opposed to just a handful of them) to take its place. Hereafter doesn’t and, as a result, the movie drags. This, honestly, has got to be one of the slowest, most boring movies I’ve ever seen. If director Eastwood’s westerns and actions films can all be seen as homages to Sergio Leone and Don Siegel, I think Hereafter must be an homage to some of Andy Warhol’s intentionally dull films. Whereas Warhol, at the very least, gave us Joe Dallesandro to look at, Eastwood gives us Jay Mohr. It’s not a fair trade.
I don’t know how much of Hereafter should be blamed on Eastwood and how much should be blamed on the script written by Peter Morgan. Here’s a quote from Morgan that appeared in The Hollywood Reporter:
“It’s quite spiritual material, and quite romantic, too. It’s the sort of piece that’s not easy to describe and in the hands of different filmmakers could end up as wildly different films. Quite unlike some of my other material, which I think there were only certain ways that you could shoot it. It’s really not just another boring Hollywood movie with the same old boring Hollywood actors, although I see the point that the public and sick of paying $10.00 to see a movie with same old faces and the same gramma of story telling.”
And to that, all I can say is “Shut up, Peter Morgan!”
This is not spiritual material as much as it’s just a bunch of vaguely New Age platitudes being delivered by a mainstream screenwriter who apparently doesn’t have the guts to come down either firmly for or against an afterlife. This is the type of feel-good BS that leads to thousands of people every year giving up their life savings to some fraud who claims he can deliver messages from beyond. Morgan’s script goes out of its way not to actually define the afterlife. Is it heaven or is it Hell? Is there a God? Do the worthy go to Heaven? Are souls saved? Or are they just ghosts who are waiting for us to be willing to let them go? These are all questions that would have been considered by a good film but Hereafter doesn’t consider them. Oh, don’t get me wrong. It pretends to bring them up but only so the movie can shrug and go, “I guess nobody knows.” And to that I say, either take a position or don’t expect everyone else to pay money just to listen to you duck the question because you’re too scared of alienating mainstream critics or audiences.
(Myself, I do believe that those who love us are always with us in some way even if I don’t believe in a literal afterlife. And while I know that answer might seem vague, you should also consider that I’m not the one spending millions of dollars to make a movie celebrating that vagueness.)
Morgan’s script also make its a point to incorporate real-life events into his contrived narrative. As a result, the London Subway bombings and the Thailand Tsunami are both used as convenient plot points in much the same way that The Curious Case of Benjamin Button used Hurricane Katrina. I felt it was ghoulish when Button did it and, the more I think about it, it’s equally ghoulish in Hereafter. It’s hard not to feel that the film’s saying, “Too bad all those real people died but what’s important is how these events impacted the lives of a bunch of fictional characters.”
Hereafter’s main problem is that it simply tries too hard to be great. You get the feeling that every scene and line has been calculated to make you go, “Wow, what genius!” As a result, even the scenes that work still somehow feel very dishonest. The end result is a very insincere film about some very sincere concerns.
Artie Logan (Charlie Schlatter) is a wannabe James Dean who keeps getting kicked out of school because he is such a rebel. His father, a judge, gives Artie one more chance. Artie can either enroll at Fairfield College or he can go to jail. Artie chooses Fairfield, where he meets and falls for the beautiful and popular Tally Fuller (Josie Bissett). However, no sooner does Artie show up for their first date than someone sets Tally on fire and crashes through a window. Artie is the number one suspect but Detective P.J. Decker (Christopher Walken) still gives him 24 hours to solve the murder and clear his name. Artie investigates and discovers that Tally was not the innocent, all-American girl that everyone thought she was. This leads to a nudity-filled flashback that explains why All-American Murder was an HBO mainstay in the 90s. It also leads to other people being murdered by snakes and hand grenades.
Through the Shattered Lens 