And the saga continues. After a number of days of dithering (and the previous movie still unreviewed...) I finally settled on another Peter Sarsgaard movie to watch. This one was not one I was particularly eager to see, but I also felt like watching something more non-committal (watching one of his more acclaimed roles is more of a commitment, in my mind).
This movie was... a bit better than I expected (which is good). I was thinking it was going to be kind of bad, but it turned out to be decent. It's sort of hard to do a decent review without spoiling it, so I'll do two parts. I feel like the movie is ever so slightly worth not spoiling - it's just good enough that I'd say do yourself a favor and watch it instead of reading about what happens. You'll ruin it. 3.5/5 stars.
First things first, for some reason I keep being more surprised than I should be when I watch something where Peter Sarsgaard has somewhat of an accent that's different than his normal voice (in this movie, it's a light southern accent) and I think "wow, it still sounds like him" (through the accent). It really shouldn't surprise me as much as it does... This movie was from 2005 so he was rather young and youthful looking, and thankfully clean shaven.
This is the second movie I've seen of his where it's set in Louisiana. The other one is the movie where he has a small role as a murder victim. I think he's been in at least one other movie set in the south, although maybe not necessarily Louisiana specifically. My associations about Louisiana (unrelated to this movie) : Lots of Republicans (like Texas), alligators, relatives, Mardi Gras, French-American culture, southern-ness.
Non-spoilery review:The premise is that a 25 year old lady, Caroline (interestingly enough, a similar name to one of my relatives who lives in Louisiana) (played by Kate Hudson, who is different than Kate Winslet, who was in Titanic. Kate Hudson looked sort of like Chloe Sevigny in this role), gets a job to take care of an older woman's husband, who has become paralyzed from a stroke. Supposedly. Anyways, she goes to the couple's house and strange things begin to happen. According to google, the movie is supposed to be a mystery/drama movie but I would say there are tinges of the horror genre, a little. Not that I really watch horror movies so I can't really say, but I guess maybe in that it sort of was a little bit like The Shining, in some ways, which apparently was a horror movie. Anyways, the strange/sinister things begin to happen and Peter Sarsgaard's character is involved. There's an interesting twist at the end. I'm more of a fan of the not so overtly horror-esque movies, which I suppose are the genre of psychological thrillers. Which reminds me that I'd better watch Memento again while it's still on Netflix since I decided not to purchase/acquire it on DVD. Will I regret that? Only time will tell. This movie (not Memento, the one I'm reviewing) leaned more horror than sleek psychological thriller.
This movie isn't exactly particularly special in and of itself, but hey, Peter Sarsgaard. And if you're me, that's reason enough. It might not be quite as enjoyable for non- Peter Sarsgaard fans. I was happy to look at him and hear him say things and laugh at some parts that weren't really funny but sometimes when I'm watching my favorite actors in things I just giggle happily about seeing them. That makes me seem really ditzy, I bet, and I promise, I'm not really like that as a whole. Just when it comes to certain actors I can get a little bit so. But I think I have a lot of depth to me in other areas. But one has to allow themselves a bit of indulgence in things, such as chocolate (other people) or fawning over favorite actors (me).
Spoilery comments/review: I had a guess while I was watching the movie about what would be behind the strange things that began happening, and it turned out that I was right! How fun is that! My guess was that the old lady would turn out to be evil, and possibly some of the other characters might be in on it as well. And I was right! Oh, Peter Sarsgaard's character. He seemed so nice. Although I guess it makes sense when you factor in the fact that his character was actually possessed by a spirit of someone who had died a long time ago. So in a way, sort of like Men in Black and Vincent, but way better looking (sorry, Vincent). Probably if you're familiar with this type of movie it would be fairly easy to guess at how things would turn out, but again, this isn't really the kind of movie I usually watch so it wasn't too predictable as to be really boring. It's kind of interesting to think about what the movie would've been like had it been some other genre, such as a sappy drama like The Notebook.
I guess the next logical step is to watch the other horror movie he's been in, where he plays a husband who, with his wife, adopts a child who turns out to be evil. Fun, I guess.
Current Sarsgaard movie rankings, sort of in order: Experimenter (this is first because it was my first), Shattered Glass (good performance, subject matter of personal interest), The Killing (very good performance), Jarhead. These are all actually pretty much equal in my book.
This second part of the list is more... muddled.
The Skeleton Key (main-ish role, decent movie), Lovelace (decent movie; main, but unsavory character), Black Mass (fairly small part but it packed a punch in a movie filled with unsavory characters), Dead Man Walking (very tiny role; I liked it more so for the rest of the movie which is why it's below Black Mass), Man in the Iron Mask (he looked nice, young and youthful in this movie), The Magnificent 7 (this one I'm fairly sure about the position of; I didn't really like the movie)
Yet to come (sometime, eventually): An Education (just freaking watch it already, I know...), Boys Don't Cry (apparently he got quite a lot of female attention for playing a murderer in this movie...), Flightplan, Orphan, Robot & Frank (voices a robot), Jackie, Rendition, Garden State, Pawn Sacrifice, etc....
No comments:
Post a Comment