J. EDGAR

Written by Dustin Lance Black

Directed by Clint Eastwood

Starring Leonard Dicaprio, Armie Hammer, Naomi Watts and Judi Dench

Annie Hoover: Edgar, I would rather have a dead son than a daffodil for a son.

Considering Clint Eastwood has lived to witness most of what he chooses to depict in his J. Edgar Hoover biography, simply titled J. EDGAR, it is an awful shame that so much of it feels lifeless and false. Eastwood’s Hoover accomplishes great things, like taking fingerprint technology nationwide and forensic science to new heights, but he does so with very little fanfare, subsequently inspiring even less interest in his audience. Fortunately, incredible performances by Leonardo Dicaprio and Armie Hammer, as the notorious FBI director and his rumoured romantic partner of many years, Clyde Tolson, elevate the picture high enough to overshadow the drab, washed out stiffness of Eastwood’s former America. Dustin Lance Black’s script is smart not to focus solely on Hoover’s sexuality, but unfortunately, the film only truly comes alive when it does.

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Black Sheep @ The Box Office

The mad party continues this weekend at Paramount Studios. Not only have they replaced themselves at the top of the Box Office but they now lay claim to both the best and fifth best October openings of all time. Now, I was under the impression that audiences would have found a sequel to PARANORMAL ACTIVITY to be a little too much but audiences have once again proven that I don't know them at all. Instead, the film opened to $41.5 million and an impressive per screen average of more than $12K. JACKASS 3D follows in second with a strong second week take of $21.5 million for an $87 million haul. It has already outgrossed both of the previous JACKASS films.

I saw the first PARANORMAL ACTIVITY. I admired what they were able to accomplish on such a small budget but truly felt the gimmick was pretty thin. Whatever they did to beef up the scares in the sequel must have worked because the $41.5 million take is almost double what the first film did on its biggest weekend. So now that the film has proven its franchise possibilities, the only question remains whether it will repeat its other greatest feat from last year - stealing all the Halloween gore freaks away from SAW, which bows in its supposedly final installment next weekend. Question: If it isn't Halloween if it isn't SAW, and SAW is gone after this year, does that mean this Halloween will be our last?

There is very little activity, paranormal or otherwise, below the Top 10 this weekend but Clint Eastwood's HEREAFTER makes its inevitable leap from 24th place on just 6 screens last week to a modest fourth place finish. Mixed reviews seem to have left audiences almost as cold as the film itself. Still, at $12 million, HEREAFTER is $4 million ahead of what Eastwood's last directorial effort, INVICTUS, did on its opening weekend on a similar amount of screens. (Click the film title for the Black Sheep review.)

NEXT WEEK: Even though the SAW franchise crashed and burned last year, the last installment, SAW 3D, opens unopposed next weekend on 2700+ screens. I'm betting the 3D element and the closing of the series will give the franchise the edge it needs to beat PARANORMAL ACTIVITY this year. And sneaking onto 130 screens is that pesky girl again. You know the one I'm talking about. This time, she's THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET'S NEST.

Source: Box Office Mojo

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HEREAFTER

HEREAFTER

Written by Peter Morgan

Directed by Clint Eastwood

Starring Matt Damon, Cecile de France, Bryce Dallas Howard and George McLaren

Billy: A life that is all about death is no life at all.

It’s no secret that Clint Eastwood is getting up there in years. He has been churning out films on an almost yearly basis in the last decade as if he is trying to cram as much work as possible into his legacy before he can no longer do so. It seems then a natural choice for Eastwood to take on the afterlife in his adaptation of Peter Morgan’s screenplay, HEREAFTER. In many ways, it is one of his most organic works but aside from acknowledging that an afterlife exists, Eastwood is nowhere closer to any insight on the subject.

It is also no secret that I am not a big fan of Eastwood’s work as a director. I find he often oversimplifies the problem and renders complicated scenarios into clichéd lessons about what it means to him to be a good human being. The idea of him tackling something as complicated as the passage between life and death was frightening at first, even if the writing was in Morgan's hands, THE QUEEN and FROST/NIXON scribe (click the titles for full reviews). In HEREAFTER, Morgan tells three separate stories about three different people around the world who are dealing with death in different ways. A French reporter (Cecile de France) is recovering from her brush with death; a young twin boy in England (George McLaren) has just lost his brother; and Matt Damon plays a genuine psychic in San Francisco who has retired in hopes of finding a normal life. While all reasonably compelling separately, their plights never come together, which leaves the film feeling cold and detached.

There are moments in HEREAFTER that are genuinely engrossing and memorable, including an opening so intense, I felt I might soon know my own afterlife. Eastwood lets go of his ordinarily tight grasp on the picture to allow its characters to speak for themselves and its often-haunting imagery to be just that. At first, I was pleasantly surprised but then I realized that without Eastwood playing God that there was really no direction in HEREAFTER at all. Subsequently, I wasn’t able to connect with a film about an experience that connects us all.

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