Conviction (DVD/Blu-Ray) - Dir. Tony Goldwyn. Starring Hilary Swank, Sam Rockwell, Minnie Driver.True story about a life spent fighting the system.
Hilary Swank plays Betty Anne Waters, a Massachusetts woman whose white-trash brother Kenny (Sam Rockwell) is convicted of the brutal murder of a neighbour. Refusing to believe he is guilty, she puts herself through community college and law school in an attempt to overturn his conviction personally.
The film avoids giving us a whole lot of reason to believe in Kenny's innocence up front - his trial defense and subsequent appeal aren't shown at all - but you can imagine where this is going. Nobody makes a movie about a woman who fights for 18 years to get her brother out of prison only to find out that - oh! - he was actually guilty after all.
Conviction is a feel-good movie, which means it omits some of the rain clouds that pesky reality cast over the real happy ending. Even so, Hollywood could hardly have asked for a more genuine heroine than Betty Anne Waters or a better expression of family loyalty than her two-decade obsession. If this were a Lifetime Network drama, it might be criticized for its sappiness, but little of it is actually exaggerated. The story is the real deal.
Director Tony Goldwyn (did you know the bad guy from Ghost is a director now?) brings a utilitarian, almost movie-of-the-week style to the project. It's unadventurous, but well-suited to a film trying to present reality. Goldwyn and his editor show skill in keeping the narrative clear as it jumps between the 1960s, 80s, and 90s.
Conviction's most noteworthy achievement is probably its cast. Swank and Rockwell's considerable talents come through, but Juliette Lewis's minor role as a ruined, toothless drunk - one of Kenny's old girlfriends - is the most impressive transformation of the film. To think that this is the actress who played Johnny Depp's only-slightly trashy girlfriend in What's Eating Gilbert Grape.Rated R for annoying accents4 out of 5
Let Me In (DVD/Blu-Ray) - Dir. Matt Reeves. Starring Kodi Smit-McPhee, Chloe Moretz, Richard Jenkins.
Moody remake of a classic Swedish horror film.
For centuries, horror writers have realized that there's nothing creepier than children, with their freaky giant heads and their beady little eyes and their retractable razor-sharp claws. Some of that might be specific to children in horror movies; I don't know very much about kids.
Let Me In knows about this fear all too well. In it, Owen (Kodi Smit-McPhee) is an awkward, friendless boy living in a low-rent apartment complex with his mother. When an even stranger girl (Chloe Moretz) moves in next door with her father, a series of ritualistic murders begins happening around town.You know Let Me In is a horror movie even when nobody's being mutilated because everyone talks in whispers and stares eerily at everything for way too long and the music is full of horns going "bwaaaaa." The cinematography is twisted and unsettling so that somehow even bright daylight shots have an air of foreboding about them. Plus it's set in Reagan-era America.
It's all quite tasteful and restrained until certain people start morphing into badly-animated versions of Gollum and munching on people with a sound like they're biting into a candy apple. It all happens far from the camera in the shadows, but it shouldn't happen on camera at all.
My point is that Let Me In has a lot of good atmosphere wasted on lame gore and a horror premise that was worn out a hundred years ago. I might as well tell you it's about vampires - the traditional, non-sparkly kind that burst into flames in sunlight.
Still, Let Me In at least has greater aspirations than most horror films, and where it makes an attempt it generally succeeds. The kids (and particularly Owen) are both strong characters played by capable actors - they need to be, since we rarely even see the faces of the adults around them.
Putting a child in the role of the monster is used for more than cheap shock value; it sets up an ongoing dilemma for the viewer between a picture of evil and one of innocence, with our ultimate impression being of something like the guiltless brutality of a wild animal.
The film also has statements to make about toxic relationships and the self-perpetuating cycle of violence. These are levels of depth you don't usually see in a movie about gnawing on people's necks.Rated R for unhealthy vampire relationships3.5 out of 5
