Ten Quick Thoughts on...Hereafter

1) We got this from Netflix something like two months ago and it has been sitting on the shelf down in the basement for all that time. I know I pretty much need to watch anything by Clint Eastwood at this point (hell, man, the guy could keel over any minute now), but this one wasn't calling out to us. And now I know why. The film was just OK.

2) There's a three-proinged story going on here. You have the story of a French journalist (Francophile actress Cecile De France) who has a near-death experience while vacationing in Indonesia around the time of the epic tsunami. There's a lapsed psychic toiling away at a factory job in San Francisco (Matt Damon). Then you have a young boy (played by both Frankie and George McLaren) from a shattered home who falls into despair when his twin brother is killed in a horrible car accident. The stories progress as threads of a whole that come together in the final act. These sorts of movies rarely work for me because I am always becoming more involved with one aspect of the story over the others and then I keep just wanting them to return to the one I am enjoying. In this case, the one I became engrossed in was the Damon story. The French one I didn't enjoy, probably because the actors were all so...French, and the one with the kid was just really dull.

Time for a Random List: Ten 2011 Movies that Haven't Come Out Yet That Probably Won't Suck

So far this year, I count two movies that actually grabbed my attention and made me want to go see them - Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life and Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris. Otherwise, the stuff that has been coming out of Hollywood has been pretty awful. Then again, I don't get to the movies much anymore. So for all I know, The Smurfs could have been the shizznit. Anyway, here is a list (in chronological order) of ten flicks that will come out between September and the end of December that certainly seem like they have the potential for "decent status."

1) Contagion (Sept. 9)
It is directed by Steven Soderbergh (Traffic, Out of Sight) and stars luminaries Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet, Jude Law, and Laurence Fishburne. Soderbergh's recent output has been the definition of uneven (The Informant!) if not WTF (The Girlfriend Experience), but with a cast like this it is hard to believe that the medical outbreak thriller does not satisfy.

2) The Ides of March (Oct. 7)
This film about an idealistic political newbie who gets involved in a perspective-shattering Presidential election has another virtual sh*tload of great actors in it (Ryan Gosling, George Clooney, Paul Giamatti. Philip Seymour Hoffman, Marisa Tomei, et al), and it's directed by Clooney, who may not hit a home run every time (Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Leatherheads), but has come up with at least one sublime creation (the unfortunately punctuated Good Night, and Good Luck.).