The rants and raves of a teenage cinephile who is just a little bit obsessed with Catherine O'Hara and Hayao Miyazaki.
Showing posts with label Jake Gyllenhaal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jake Gyllenhaal. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Source Code (2011)

I'm not sure if it was the train-centric opening credits, the Herrmann-ian score by Chris Bacon, the enigmatic female performances from Vera Farmiga and Michelle Monaghan, or something else entirely; but while watching Duncan Jones's "Source Code" I could not help but be reminded of an Alfred Hitchcock film. "Source Code" is not really on the same level as most of Hitchock's filmography, but it wouldn't be difficult to imagine the king of suspense making a movie rather similar to it if he was still alive. Needless to say, the film is smartly, stylishly, and suspensefully put together (helped greatly by its brilliant minimalist structure) and makes for an extremely entertaining hour and a half. However, beyond that hour and a half, the film isn't particularly memorable, perhaps because it skirts around the philosophical questions that it seems to want to ask and never really asserts itself visually. The most lasting aspect of the film is, unsurprisingly, Farmiga's performance - unbelievably complex, gorgeously layered and quietly powerful, her eyes say everything the overall film fails to.

7/10