Transsiberian; Boy A

Transsiberian (Brad Anderson, 2008) - B+

Fortunate enough to see three fantastic movies in a row over the course of two days -- this, Vicky Cristina Barcelona (see last entry), and Boy A (below). The remarkable thing here is Anderson's flair for evocative bleakness, also on display in The Machinist. Everything constantly straddles the line between beauty and menace: Eduardo Noriega's good-natured drifter, Emily Mortimer's reformed bad girl (Mortimer is wonderful, by the way), but most of all the snowy, foreign desolation of the Siberian setting -- the heart of the film. Some of the plotting is a bit unlikely, and Anderson should have gone easy on the explanatory flashbacks to events we've already seen, but the plot is really just a function of the scenery, which is a moody, malevolent character all its own. A few amusing points: casting Woody Harrelson as a genial yokel, Ben Kingsley teaching Harrelson Russian pronunciation. But mostly scary and haunting; left me in a sad, unsettled funk. Anderson clearly cares more about mood and (sometimes inarticulable) emotion than about story, but he's so good I'm actually cool with that.

Boy A (John Crowley, 2008) - A-

Immensely powerful, and almost a masterpiece; the reason it's not is the overly schematic nature of the crucial subplot involving Mullan's son, with Crowley hellbent on forcing a thematic parallel to the A-story. (I kept wondering why the son was in the movie, and rolled my eyes when it became clear.) The rest is gold; a thoughtful, understated rumination on punishment, forgiveness, and the criminal justice system's (and the media's) insistence on letting juvenile convictions haunt people for the rest of their lives. Maybe the most impressive thing about it is that it doesn't pull any punches about the protagonist's crime -- he did what he did, and note that the movie provides the sexual abuse "excuse" to his psychopathic friend, but not to him. Garfield's performance is as awesome as everyone says, in a hugely difficult role. The last few minutes are a masterfully manipulative knock-out, bringing me to tears. One of the best films of the year; go see it immediately.