FIRST SNOW
FIRST SNOW
March 29 2007, Regal Pioneer Place Cinema
Self-centered New Mexico salesman Jimmy Stark (Guy Pearce, who I used to love - but after this movie, I'm not so sure anymore) visits a trailer-park psychic (J.K. Simmons, last recognized as Peter Parker's boss in the SPIDER-MAN movies) on a whim, and receives some exciting, then frightening news about his future. At first, Starks shrugs it off as hucksterism, but as the psychic's predictions start to come true, Starks becomes increasingly desperate and paranoid and doesn't manage to shake his asshole persona much, until he has the inevitable paranoid freakout alone in a hotel room, not sleeping for days with a chair under the doorknob. Piper Perabo is quite good as his beleaguered girlfriend, but it's a thankless role and she's more of a symbol than a character. In fact, all of the "characters" are symbols so clumsy and blatant that it made my eyes roll like monster truck tires. And the "twist" (or was it a "shocking reveal"?) is about as shocking as a bag of stale corn chips.
This seemingly promising thriller, reminiscent of Pearce's starring vehicle MEMENTO, suffers from predictability masquerading as inevitability, unbelievably amateurish editorial padding (it's not fucking haunting when we just saw the same fucking footage five minutes ago), and completely unsympathetic people. Boring and a flagrant waste of my time. I only sat through the whole thing because I had to write a newspaper review of it, and I wanted to see if it was ever going to get better. It didn't.
March 29 2007, Regal Pioneer Place Cinema
Self-centered New Mexico salesman Jimmy Stark (Guy Pearce, who I used to love - but after this movie, I'm not so sure anymore) visits a trailer-park psychic (J.K. Simmons, last recognized as Peter Parker's boss in the SPIDER-MAN movies) on a whim, and receives some exciting, then frightening news about his future. At first, Starks shrugs it off as hucksterism, but as the psychic's predictions start to come true, Starks becomes increasingly desperate and paranoid and doesn't manage to shake his asshole persona much, until he has the inevitable paranoid freakout alone in a hotel room, not sleeping for days with a chair under the doorknob. Piper Perabo is quite good as his beleaguered girlfriend, but it's a thankless role and she's more of a symbol than a character. In fact, all of the "characters" are symbols so clumsy and blatant that it made my eyes roll like monster truck tires. And the "twist" (or was it a "shocking reveal"?) is about as shocking as a bag of stale corn chips.
This seemingly promising thriller, reminiscent of Pearce's starring vehicle MEMENTO, suffers from predictability masquerading as inevitability, unbelievably amateurish editorial padding (it's not fucking haunting when we just saw the same fucking footage five minutes ago), and completely unsympathetic people. Boring and a flagrant waste of my time. I only sat through the whole thing because I had to write a newspaper review of it, and I wanted to see if it was ever going to get better. It didn't.