★ 6 / 10
Mark Strong isn't bad, usually, as the baddie
CinemaSerf
Mark Strong isn't bad, usually, as the baddie or the sidekick but I'm afraid that as a leading actor he isn't really very, well, strong. He is "Washington" in…
Mark Strong isn't bad, usually, as the baddie or the sidekick but I'm afraid that as a leading actor he isn't really very, well, strong. He is "Washington" in this thriller about a man who can plumb the depths of other people's memories and get to the bottom of their problems. This particular "memory detective" has been recovering from a personal tragedy of his own when he is summoned to a stately home to meet the sixteen year old "Anna" (Taissa Farmiga) at the behest of his boss "Sebastian" (the sparingly used Brian Cox). She's a troubled girl but what concerns her parents most is that she is refusing to eat. His job is just to chat with her, put her at her ease and convince her to have a sandwich. If only it were to be that simple, though. As the two begin to chat, he begins to suspect that there is something ghastly lurking in her sub-conscience. Is she downright malevolent or is she, perhaps, the victim of someone else's behaviour. As the story unravels, he finds himself caught in a maelstrom that tests not just his skills but his own strength of character. He struggles to differentiate between truth and fiction and not just in her mind, either. So far, the concept is quite intriguing but I'm afraid the execution isn't great. It's written as if it were a sketch, with little attention to any detail to fill out the characterisations and Strong has little in his armoury to compensate for that. The denouement is hardly a surprise and I was a bit disappointed in the whole thing. It's watchable enough, but I doubt I will remember it next week.
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★ 7 / 10
Beautifully made, if a bit over complicated
NateWatchesCoolMovies
Mindscape, given the less tantalizing title 'Anna' upon release, is a thinking person's thriller, and perhaps a little bit too much so. In the near future, or…
Mindscape, given the less tantalizing title 'Anna' upon release, is a thinking person's thriller, and perhaps a little bit too much so. In the near future, or perhaps some alternate reality, some humans have evolved into pseudo clairvoyants who can enter the memories of other people and interact with their subjects within them. This talent has been trademarked by law enforcement, who employ 'memory detectives' to psychologically resolve conflict or retrieve otherwise out of reach information. Mark Strong is one such man, but his talents have dimmed a bit following the deaths of his family and a crippling stroke. Hauled out of retirement by his former boss (Brian Cox, sly as ever), he finds himself tasked with navigating the labyrinthine mind of Anna (Taissa Farmiga) a girl accused of murder and deemed a potential sociopath pending diagnosis. The film is deliberately dense and elliptical, not standard Hollywood fare at all, which is nice to see, but it also trips just a little bit on its own cognitive aspirations, especially in the third act. It's one of those pieces that's less like The Cell, and more like Vanilla Sky or Danny Boyle's Trance (two absolute favourites of mine) where so much of the story wades through muddy mindgames that at a certain point we think to ourselves 'well who's to say if any of this is actually real if it's gotten so complex', and indeed it's very difficult to piece together what has transpired here, especially with a conclusion that would require multiple viewings to even get an inkling. It's stylish as all hell though, given a clinical, steely grey palette punctuated by flourishes of startling red to show the capacity for violence lurking just out of sight within the opaque and enigmatic human psyche. The acting is top tier as well; Strong is reliably committed and intense, Farmiga is deeply disconcerting as the most fascinating and ambiguous character, showing blossoming talent that I look forward to seeing more of, while Cox steals his scenes as per usual. The film trips over itself a few times and like I said, overly convoluted, but it's one mesmerizing effort for the most part, albeit after a second or third viewing.
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80%
AUDIENCE
6.4/10
27K
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guys please do seed