I spent a lot of time at SIFF screenings this week and got a chance to watch Populaire, The Spectacular Now, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, V/H/S 2, The Way, Way Back and The East, the later of which are awaiting embargo lifts for reviews,as well as Star Trek Into Darkness. For the most part it was a rather exciting and busy couple of weeks at the theater so I didn’t have much time to watch much at home.

Jack Reacher (2012)

A tireless slog of a film that was dated the second it hit theaters, Jack Reacher finds a way to squander Tom Cruise‘s good-natured charm with exceedingly dull characters doing exceedingly dull things. From the tired action low-tier sequences to the un-ironically foreign villain, there is nothing original about it. Every beat is straight out of the neo-noir playbook but so misinterpreted and tepid, that it’s no wonder this flat-lined at theaters.

The eponymous Reacher has the appeal of a wet dog and his renegade mannerisms are more obnoxious than cool. This is your grandfather’s kind of hero: boring, grumbling and boring. Did I mention it was boring? Even a faithful defender of Tom Cruise like me can’t stand behind this DOA coal lump.

D

4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days (2007)

Exceedingly difficult to watch, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days is so scarring and confessional that it wouldn’t be a surprise if the anti-abortion camp scooped this up as the centerpiece of their political campaign. Following two college-aged girls through the traumatic throes of undergoing an illegal backroom abortion in 1980’s Romania, this is a bleak and depressing narrative seemingly not driven by a veiled agenda. Rather than take a side, director Cristian Mungiu just presents the facts.

  Pitch black though it may be, it is a powerful feature with strikingly potent staying power. The desperate pain of the subjects is palpable as is the lurking sense of danger surrounding this already traumatizing event. Although this is not an easy film to recommend, it is an undeniably well made feature with an awfully disturbing title (once you figure out what exactly it’s referring to) that will be sure to haunt your thoughts going forward.