"Hereafter" (Matt Damon, directed by Clint Eastwood) Grade & Discuss

[Aragorn]

Limited release last week, wide release this week with some midnight showings tonight, so here's the thread.

A supernatural thriller centered on three people -- a blue-collar American, a French journalist and a London school boy -- who are touched by death in different ways.

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcgnvRbIHLg[/yt]


The good reviews:

Clint Eastwood's Hereafter considers the idea of an afterlife with tenderness, beauty and a gentle tact.

The movie will divide some Eastwood fans, conquer others. The naysayers will be grateful that, from this healthy, workaholic actor-director, there is always the promise of a good movie -- if not here, then hereafter.

Eastwood's directorial output, from Mystic River on, constitutes the 21st century's first cinematic marvel, and Hereafter is among the best things he has ever done.

Hollywood once upon a time made films exploring these kinds of issues, but in today's climate only a filmmaker like Eastwood, determined to never do the same thing twice, would have the nerve and the clout to take it on.

Hereafter makes no grand statement about life after death. It's just Eastwood pondering the subject, as any thoughtful person might, and inviting us to think along with him. It's hard to pass up so sincere an offer.

The bad reviews:

The movie drags, yet it feels like it's missing an hour. It features three characters on three continents who barely interact with one another. And after 130 minutes, it stops without concluding.

Hereafter is a solemnly reassuring film made by major talents working intriguingly outside their comfort zones.

Multiple story lines cross international borders to mix personal tragedy with post-9/11 existential terror: Hereafter is a mawkish mondo mistico, obvious, schematic, and sometimes subtitled.

The only thing more disconcerting than seeing an action-disaster sequence open a Clint Eastwood drama is watching the 80-year-old auteur channel M. Night Shyamalan.

Either you buy their Vaseline-lensed visions of the hereafter, or you watch in stony silence, as I did, wondering why there's no one to care about.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Re: "Hereafter" (Matt Damon, directed by Clint Eastwood) Grade & Discu

"Hereafter is a solemnly reassuring film made by major talents working intriguingly outside their comfort zones," doesn't seem like a bad review. Was there more to that?