19 January 2009

Sundance Day #5

We attended two movies today. One was with Peter Gallagher, called Adam. It is about a twentysomething who suffers from Asperger Syndrome and must learn to live an independent life. The movie brought much needed attention to this often overlooked disease, but the movie itself was a bit disjointed. The second movie was called The Messenger, starring Woody Harrelson. The premise is a really good one. It follows two Army soldiers whose sole job is to tell military families that their loved one has been killed in the Iraq War. The rules are strict about telling families the bad news. The soldiers must use a guided script when telling families how their love one was killed. The messenger delivering the tragic news is also told to never touch the next of kin who is receiving the bad news. No hug, no handshake-just tell them that their relative was killed in the war and leave. The Messenger started as a great movie with excellent performances. Then something went wrong! Too many story lines was the downfall of what could have been a really good feature film. The story lines became so long, that I fell asleep! I simply could not help it. Closing my eyes and nodding off was the only way I could end my personal misery of sitting through a movie that had sadly lost its focus.