Film Review: Reviving Ophelia

I'm a sucker for anything Shakespeare-related. Even if, as in this case, someone just happened to have a copy of Hamlet lying around and they just sort of waved the book around a little here and there for thematic spice.

AND EXTENDED METAPHOR.

y'all know how much I love one of them.

This is the movie poster:



If I had seen it, I might not have put the movie on. Already I can tell that short-healthy-BMI-ed-Kate-Middleton is not engaged in a healthy relationship with short-Freddie-Prinze-Jr. Just look at that chiaroscuro in her chin dimple. It very much wants me to feel afraid.

And then there's "Kelli", the blond cousin, staring fearfully at the passionately-embraced lovers. She is the one who reads Hamlet in English class and manages to put together the pieces of her cousin's abusive relationship.

That Shakespeare, so good at alerting us from the past about our bad decisions in the present.

Also, what the hell is up with that athletic jacket font?
Odd, that.

Shall we do this thing then?

The film opens with the mom from Malcolm in the Middle (not, sadly, another Shakespeare reference, although that would be a fascinating way to re-do Macbeth, no?) baking in her expensive and huge and spotless kitchen (I notice these things now that I don't have an expensive, huge, or spotless kitchen of my own) with two teenagers - Elizabeth (healthy Duchess Kate), who is her daughter, and Kelli, (prickly blond) who is her grubby-pawed niece whose early sole function seems to be eating frosting out of one of the 5 bowls of frosting they've got out.


This is going to be one hell of a birthday cake.

Peppy music alerts us to the fact that this should be a happy occasion - Elizabeth's birthday - however, it is quickly sullied (too, too sullied) by Elizabeth's dependency on texting her boyfriend and by Kelli's surly "you're so much luckier than I am/my life sucks" demeanor. Predictably, Elizabeth's beloved Mark shows up to rescue her from eating cake (there were like 242 candles on it; it probably melted before they ate it anyways) and Kelli uses "studying for a Hamlet quiz" as an excuse to make a strategic leave as well.

In Kelli's case, that means going back to her house and partying with three friends - skeevy hot boy whose voice sounds exactly like Mark's, skeevy girl friend who gets what Kelli's lascivious eye gestures really mean, and nice guy who cluelessly doesn't get what's about to happen as soon as he and skeevy girl leave.

Ay, madam, it is common.


Meanwhile, back at Elizabeth's house, Malcolm's mom and her ridiculously blond sister are having their cake and pretending to eat it too. Honestly, who doesn't eat the frosting???

Blasphemers.

They're arguing. That seems to be their dynamic. Malcolm's mom lives a charmed life with a "perfect" daughter and reliably pleasant baking skills while Blond sister made poor life decisions and now has a "surly" daughter and a very busy job at a car dealership.

I'd like to pretend there was more to this storyline but there really isn't. Sibling rivalry, be damned. Turns out, they're both equally shitty moms.

Blond sister returns home to find Kelli acting out Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2 in her living room (only Kelli's assuming the role of Hamlet here). Country matters, indeed! This poor life decision leads to Blond Sister forcing Surly Daughter to spend her afternoons with Perfect Cousin and Da-Bomb Aunt because she can no longer be trusted not to give strange boys blow jobs while mom is at work.

I shit you not. That's how they contrive that.

Of course, her night is bizarrely less nauseating than Perfect Cousin who has gone parking with her Stalker Boyfriend Mark. While sitting in the car, they play a cloying game of "let's name our future puppy children!" right before she promises to give Mark her super-secret-lady-treasure.

But not in the car, like a common girl. In a bed, like a whore.

Much is made of how great friends Surly Daughter and Perfect Cousin used to be, before they turned into angst-addled teenagers battling their own personal inner demons, carved from a lifetime of having to deal with their crazy-bitch-mothers and absentee father figures (one for work, one a jerk).

Good thing they now have to spend so much mother-mandated time together!!!

It takes Surly Daughter very little time to realize that she was headed down a bad path and make a complete life change. It takes her even less time (maybe 2 English classes) to figure out her Perfect Cousin is in a Not-Perfect-Relationship with Stalker-Boyfriend Mark. Seriously, I think her hot teacher says something like "love and death are linked in Shakespeare" and she's all light-bulb-over-head concluding that her cousin is about to die a horrible, horrible death at the hands of her weirdly short boyfriend.



Can you see where this one is going?

First off, we get to learn all the cool new stalker tricks. Not only can your psycho stalker find you via your phone's GPS, but he also can text you constantly, call you when you don't answer his texts, and climb your drain pipe to sneak into your bedroom when you're not around at his beck and call. All of these things will be important later.



We also get Mark's backstory: his mommy is gone. Perfect Daughter translates this as "she's dead" but Mark assures us "She left". If we try desperately to apply this to Hamlet, we put Mark in the central role here (obs.) and his Mom is either Gertrude, shacking up with his uncle, or Old Hamlet, deadish but still a-hauntin'.

Either way, it means Mark's got issues.

Let's ponder the greater implications of the title next, shall we? Since, you know, clearly the writers and producers failed to do so. If we are meant to think Mark is Hamlet, why the hell was Kelli's head in her boyfriend's lap? And her dad is actually gone. She's the much better pick here! But she isn't. She just points out Mark's ex "went kinda crazy" - so it seems young stalker boy has a history of turning bitches into Ophelias.

Do me a solid, Lifetime, read Hamlet before you rely on it so heavily for metaphor.



Meanwhile, back in Elsinore, Malcolm's mom still hasn't figured out that her daughter isn't Perfect. Even though Kelli tries to warn her. It takes one terrible lie about a car accident followed by her child getting hit by Mark in front of witnesses for Malcolm's mom to finally act hurt and get indignant.

Perfect Daughter still wants Mark. Mark, Mark, Mark.

In case you forgot about Surly Cousin, let's bring it back to her for a moment. Because this film LOVES foiling, she is also having her own relationship right now with the nice guy who left her alone to orally pleasure the skeevy guy. Turns out, Surly is a poet! A bard, one might even say.


If one were drunk. Or confused.

Kelli's fledgling relationship hits a low note at the beginning when she tells her new would-be-beau that she won't go down on him (take that, Hamlet! Ophelia, REVIVED!), but I think the relationship really hits its stride when, at the beginning of their date, Nice Guy asks her who her "paradigms" are.

I just about peed myself.

It's like when you're a sophomore in high school and you want to sound SO smart so you write an essay about Romeo and Juliet or whatever and you thesaurus the crap out of it. Instead of two feuding families, you get twain vigilante ancestors.

AND YOUR ENGLISH TEACHER LAUGHS HER WAY THROUGH YOUR C-.

But Kelli isn't an English teacher, so she merely swoons over Nice Guy, compliments his swell diction, and then lists some truly useless "role models" or "bands she digs" (a.k.a. paradigms). Everybody keeps their clothes on and we revel in the magic of two teenagers having a normal, pretentiously idiotic conversation in between abusive Mark and Elizabeth episodes.

Which is good because in the Lifetime school of juxtaposition that means Elizabeth has to get hit by Mark now that Kelli is on her way to healthyland. Enter Mark who suspects that Elizabeth is flirting with a fellow chemistry classmate and slaps her so hard that the blood comes out already dried to her perfect-Kate-Middleton face.

Honestly, I'd like to pretend I paid real close attention here, but I didn't. All I know is that somebody apparently took a picture of our heroine after she gets hit by Mark, slapped a caption on it, and threw it up on Facebook for her (AND THE WORLD) to see. The caption?

Wherefore Art Thou, Romeo?

I can't even.

Look, as an English teacher, I think it's bad enough that they're traipsing all over Hamlet like it's not one of the most famous plays in all of literature. But that line ain't even from Hamlet! This isn't REVIVING JULIET! It's REVIVING OPHELIA! GET WITH THE PROGRAM, PEOPLE. And, when you use "wherefore" to mean "where" instead of "why", well,  it just frosts all my Elizabethan cookies.

Wherefore art thou so fucking stupid, Lifetime Movie. WHEREFORE?!?!

Seriously, Google that shit first, would ya?

There are a few more subplots here: Surly Daughter manages to get some self pride and writes poems that her new nice boyfriend turns into songs for his shitty band to play, Perfect Daughter goes to therapy and googles "How do I know I'm in an abusive relationship?", and Mark stays out of prison until he shows up in Perfect Daughter's bedroom and threatens to hug her until they both die or she takes him back.

I wanted to see how he handled going potty.
But, alas, Poor Yorick, it wasn't meant to be.


Thankfully, around this time, Ophelia has had just about enough of Hamlet's mood swinging and abuse. She's even able to look at his puppy dog eyes and not take him back (THANKS FOR THE SHITTY ADVICE, WORST FRIEND EVER!!!).

But Mark still is wandering free, so we best resolve that issue right fast. WWHD (What would Hamlet do)???

Nothing. He'd be in England by this point. He'd have killed her dad and lost the remainders of his marbles. Then Ophelia would have made some nifty flower necklaces and attempted to play undersea mermaid palace in the icy Denmarkian undertow. End scene.

Obviously, that is not how it is going to play out here.

I figure Mark will get a gun and pretend to shoot their imaginary puppy children. Instead, he gets a gun and threatens to shoot Ophelia while she's out at a coffee shop-musical event hosted by her cousin's new boyfriend Laertes.

Just kidding. That's not his name.

SHOULD HAVE TURNED OFF YOUR PHONE'S GPS, OPHELIA.



but this is Lifetime, so happy ending it is. Mark gets arrested and shouts "I WAS JUST PLAYING! I NEVER WOULD HAVE REALLY KILLED YOU! BELIEVE ME! WE CAN STILL HAVE PUPPIES TOGETHER!!" and then Ophelia bakes celebratory cookies, healed magically from whatever defect caused her to obsessively love Mark to begin with and ready to make amends with her new BFF Surly Cousin.

BECAUSE IT IS JUST THAT EASY.

the rest, thank god, is silence.

Life As We Know It - Film #14

So...apparently, the key to blogging success is to somehow incorporate the words "blue lagoon," "awakening," "pregnant," "sex scene" and "sand" into any blog post from here on out.

See what I did there?

I'll get more creative about that.

Maybe not palm frond and rustic tree branch creative, but definitely less overt.

In other news...today sort of sucked. By which I mean I learned exactly what noise a dragged muffler makes two small children in the backseat of your car make. 

Like a fisher cat on a rollercoaster. That's broken.

Anyways, I wasn't in the mood to be cheered. I was in the mood to feel condescended and pandered to by a female protagonist who wants us to think she's strong and independent but who really just needs a man to love her.

That's right, I worshiped at the altar of Katherine Heigl. 

In case you missed it, Katherine Heigl has one character. That character is:

1. always female

2. always a little too pretty to be the girl next door (but she tries hard to be anyways)

3. entitled, but in a down-to-earth, relatable sort of way. if you're in a high-powered, wealthy lifestyle.

4. part-bitch, part-emotional wreck

5. kind of an insufferable know-it-all

6. a bad drunk

Heigl is at her most convincing when she taps into her character's OCD. She is less convincing as a baker and homemaker.

I'm pretty sure her idea of "baker" was "Martha Stewart" here.

Pre-prison, more uptight Martha Stewart.

Then, there's Josh Duhamel, aka Fergie's husband. 

He looks like the love-child of Bill Hader and Timothy Olyphant.

Only with faker looking hair.

He is the yin to her yang, the acid to her base, the oil to her vinegar...

the penis to her vagina.

and what a penis he is.

First, I'm pretty sure he has an undiagnosed sex-disorder in this film. Second, he says wonderful things like "Hey, baby, at your age, you're not single, you're 'complicated!'"

It's almost like the filmmakers were unaware of the age and gender demographics of their target audience...

I mean, I don't know many under 25 year olds who clamor for the new Katherine Heigl flick.

You know?

The plot from here is pretty much the plot of Baby Boom, except they don't buy a money pit and learn to make organic applesauce (Heigl's character already knows how to do that!), and, instead of falling in love with the cute doctor, she ends up realizing her loins burn for the philandering television sports director guy. 

And Heigl is no Diane Keaton, although she certainly is trying!

Don't get me wrong, it had some cute moments here and there, but overall it was sort of a mixed bag over cliched whining as the two leads figure out how to change a poopy diaper and fall in love at the same time.

Duhamel's shit-eating grin is the best part of this scene which involves Heigl's uptight lady protag getting feces on her too-well-kempt to really "not be sleeping" face.

I did love Melissa McCarthy as one of the neighbors. And whoever the lady playing the caseworker was. She's got a gift.

Unfortunately, the rest of the movie flounders hopelessly around the forced chemistry of its two leads. By the very end, I was sort of rooting for the hot doctor.

But even he gives up on Heigl in the end.

Not my favorite film to date and certainly no Blue Lagoon: The Awakening, but not a bad way to pass an afternoon if the earlier part of the day was spending listening to the dulcet tones of 150 dollars worth of automobile grinding along the 99 degree highway.

Plus the baby was wicked cute. 

Blue Lagoon: The Awakening - "Film" #13

You know what this world needs more of???



The Blue Lagoon!!!

Thank GOD! I had just healed my retinas from the last sequel starring Mila Jovovich; they were in need of some permanent re-scarring!



I mean, did anyone else forget her sweet virgin diaper???

Blue Lagoon: The Awakening is the touching story of Dean (aka "Holden Caulfield") and Emma (aka Molly Ringwald/The Prom Queen).

Dean is a rebel without a cause. But with a knife. That he carries in school. Because that's so cool.

And phallic.

And Lord of the Flies.

And illegal.

None of which the movie concerns itself with.

Emma is an overachiever who hates to be off-schedule. Her friends think she needs to sleep with the quarterback.

And you know what???

She really does.

But she won't, because there's a price on virginity in these things.

Long story short, they go to Trinidad on a school trip of spirit and giving. And alcohol. Somehow, they both end up on a boat raver that gets busted by the cops. As the cops yell the VERY fitting and slightly portentous "you're about to be boarded", Emma falls out of the boat, gets into a dinghy with Sk8r Boi, and the two drift off into the deep blue sea.

I'm pretty sure Thomas C. Foster would have a lot to say about this movie's use of water.

Regardless, somehow, the dinghy with two hungover kids on it makes it to an island while their teacher, played by the aged first generation Blue Lagoon "Adam" figure Christopher Atkins, finally realizes he is missing two of his students in what can only be described as the worst teachable moment ever.



I hope I never have to explain to a parent that I let her daughter get on a dinghy with Danger Boy on my watch.

"Don't be sorry. Just help us find our children."

Gah.

I'm pretty sure they don't rehire you after something like this.

That shit just would not fly.

I also hope I never need money so badly that I'll revisit a movie chain that has long since played to death the whole "return to innocence" bull that this smut purports to.



Tangent: I wonder when loin cloths are going to come back in style???

Dean and Emma, meanwhile, take to island life like two kids in a candy store.

If the candy store sold palm fronds, playful monkeys, and rogue panthers instead of candy, of course.

Here are my main ruminations/concerns upon watching this "film":

1.There is a serious dearth of loin cloth-age going on here. Even Mila got the aforementioned diaper. This version's Adam and Eve are practically clothed. What the heck, Lifetime! How are we supposed to know they're pre-fallen if they are too ashamed to be naked??? She wears either a blue bikini or blue tank top and cut offs. He is usually shirtless, which is, I think, his main function in the film. See photo:


I'm pretty sure the blue is supposed to highlight her virginity/parallel to Virgin Mary/etc. I'm also pretty sure his abs are supposed to highlight the fact that most men do not work out nearly enough to compete with the Australians.

Seriously, what do they feed them down there???

2. 

Don't worry, that's not virgin blood. Or even menstrual blood (who could forget THAT scene from Return to the Blue Lagoon!). Nay, good folks, that's motherfucking PANTHER blood.

Now, here's a good rule of thumb for all y'all: if you hear growling in a jungle, don't hunt it. Particularly if you have nothing to hunt with. Dean hears growling, then chases it down, until he catches up with a panther. Who then proceeds to chase him. Now, I don't know much about animals, but I do know this general tidbit: I don't care how cut Dean is. He cannot outrun a panther. But he almost does! until he trips on a rogue log and the panther pounces on Dean who somehow manages to get his illegal pocket knife out and kill him with one mighty stab to the panther heart.

That's right.

Little Dean gets to use his knife.

In case we missed it during all the weirdly quiet, gentile porn on the island...

He's a real man now.

3.  And what about the sex? Because they're Adam and Eve. They get to have sex with no consequences. It's a rule!

(Hey, Lifetime, it's Adam and Eve, not Emma and Dean!)

First, it feels creepily voyeuristic. But yet also masterfully tasteful. This movie may suck plot-wise but it gets an A+++ in strategic palm frond/tree branch placement. At one point, we even get to see through a little makeshift sunroof in their thatched hut of lovemaking joy. At another, a barky limb obscures the naughty bits. It's like Austin Powers without the winking.

I'm not even going to touch the fact that they engage in their premarital sexcapades because they find a crusty skeleton buried in their hut and the thought of their impending mortality creates some sort of psychological downward spiraling that culminates in Emma getting sand in her very special lady crevices. Sure, it's yet another blatant homage to the inexorable link between sex and death, but, damn.



Chester Copperpot should not inspire this much teenaged fornication.

Don't Dean and Emma know...

GOONIES NEVER SAY DIE!

Sigh.

Relax, the sex is not that graphic.

I mean, by Lifetime standards, it's Skin-a-max. But for the average viewer, it's politely untamed.

Beforehand, it's a lot of stolen glances and strutting around in varying degrees of clothed-ness. There's a lot of slow-mo involving Dean jumping and frolicking like a punch-drunk seven-year-old at the desert island gymnastics class.

But the eventual act(s) itself...very...quiet. I mean, pretty much she bites her lip and he puts his head down and we're supposed to just "know" that something magical has happened. And then they talk about how mindblowing the experience was for both of them. Before and after she does that insipid girl thing of asking him to 1. rank her performance among the mighty pantheon of his myriad sex partners and 2. tricks him into telling her all about his uber-sketchy first time with a junior in college (while he was a sophomore - which, if he didn't stay back, makes him at most SIXTEEN at that time and her well-past the age of legal adulthood) and 3. confesses that she gave him her most special chaste treasure.

He is, as all boys are in these things, overjoyed at how fortuitously things worked out for him in the virginity department while she is relieved to have someone pre-trained take care of all that awkward deflowering.

Just how God intended.

4. "Honey, we need to talk..."



After several vanilla sex scenes (and, yeah, Christian Grey, THIS is vanilla), we get a scene where pretty, perfect Emma starts vomiting.

Dean: Do you think it's the fish?
Us: No, Dean. We do not think it's the fish.
Emma: Maybe, it did smell a little funny.
Dean: Do you think you could...you know? Be pregnant?
Us: Yes, Dean. We do think it's a VirginBirthMiracleIslandBaby!
Emma: NOOOOOO. I am NOT pregnant.
Dean: Good. Because I have the emotional maturity of a toddler. Sure I have very handy knowledge about the appropriate berries to eat and not eat, but fatherhood? Man, that some heavy shit!
Us: Couldn't have said it better ourselves, Dean!
Emma: I want kids someday. With you. Maybe.
Dean: Me too, Emma-kins. Me too.
Us: Vomit!

And then she's not pregnant!!!

WTF, people!

The last time two young, good-looking kids had that much sex and DIDN'T get pregnant, this happened:



I guess Jenny was right, Oliver. Love means never having to say you're sorry you didn't know how to fasten a makeshift condom out of jellyfish skin.

Seriously, Lifetime. You of all people should know the importance of having tangible repercussions for this type of behavior! Now every teen who gets stranded on a desert island with her local resident bad boy is going to have non-stop sex for days and find themselves woefully unprepared to give birth in a sandpit! We should be getting ready to watch a very special episode of I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant: Island Edition, not heaving a collective sigh of relief at their blameless (babyless) wild abandonment.

5. What happened to Denise Richards's face?


None of the adults in this film have understood the concept of "growing older gracefully"...Denise's character has clearly had her lips and nose done. Her husband had hair three shades too dark. And you already know how I feel about the Atkins diet.

Sadness.

6. "WHAT ABOUT PROM, BLAINE???"


I hope I'm spoiling this for you: Dean and Emma get rescued. That's why she couldn't get pregnant. Paradise island babies/tangible symbols of hope for an unruined future can only exist ON THE ISLAND. Didn't we learn anything from Lost??? If they're going to get off the island intact, an impending baby turns their story into an episode of Teen Mom and that's a whole other TV movie right there. So, they get rescued and escape the shackles of an 18+ year commitment.

Score.

And, predictably, life off the island is not as idyllic for these two sex fiends. Emma returns to her life of popularity and overscheduling. Dean becomes once more otherwise ignored. Despite his efforts to keep their thang going strong, the two drift apart like two dinghies in the night.

Until prom.

Prom is magical. It's when ugly ducking little sisters who are not named Ducky get to go to prom with the prettiest girl in whole world and then get dragged off to dance by a non-Kristy Swanson "hipster boy" thus leaving the more attractive date unattended and ready for some rekindling.

And the good friends who once thought "Hot Steven" would be the ideal bedroom/prom/life date are all now rooting for the former freaky loser boy and the prom queen to get their romance on.

In the rain.

While her friends watch on (because he still doesn't have any), shit-eating grins plastered to their smarmy little faces.

Yes, sir!

7. The Green Flash/Light


Hey, Dean...Gatsby also believed in the green light...the orgastic future (that's WAY different from your orgasmic one). Stop using played out metaphors for the American Dream and the power of hope and nostalgia in your Lifetime movie, please!

Wait, did we talk about Dean's mother???

The movie attempts to flesh out Dean's character (because, let's face it, a 12 pack set of abs does not a troubled past make!) by giving him a sordid backstory involving his dead mother, that he may or may not have accidentally killed in a poorly timed game of "Warp Speed!".

Or something.

And what, you might ask, does every boy stranded on an island with a half naked hot chick think about constantly?



His mother.

She is the green flash, the guardian angel, the creepy overlord of Dean's emotions, and the catalyst for sexual exploration.

It's so very wrong indeed.

8. "Should we feel guilty?"


Yes.

I mean, that is SORT of the whole point here, right, Genesis fans?

Again...

Sigh.

This movie gave me sand in weird places.

Or crabs. I can't tell which.

Look, if I could leave you with one wish for this movie, it's this: watch this movie for the people in the background who clearly think NO ONE is watching them.

They are the true makers of music, the real dreamers of dreams.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - The Daniel Craig Edition (Film #3)

how did an agoraphobe with two small children and no inclination to procure a babysitter find herself watching david fincher's latest opus?

i'll never tell.

let's start off with the basics. i've read the book (SHOCKER), i've seen the swedish version (MANDATORY), and now i've watched the american version (NATURAL EXTENSION OF THE CYCLE). when i read the book, the ENTIRE time, i kept saying, "dude, if they don't get daniel craig to play this guy in the movie, they're off their rockers!"...

...which must have been annoying to the seven people who read my goodreads review on the subject.

so, imagine my bliss when i heard about wee danny craig getting cast over some less stellar choices - johnny depp (let's all remember how well he played a writer in "the secret window", shall we?), george clooney (who is too cary grant winky for the role), and brad pitt (who historically can't do accents, see "Snatch", "Troy," etc.). and i get it, some of you all had "misconceptions" about the casting because daniel craig is super-mc-dreamy as james bond and y'all want to double-o his seven. i get that. he's not the action star here; that job is up to lisbeth. and he lets her do her job, so that he can do his.

and he does it well.

even if you never see him look like this:

so, i guess the big question other reviewers struggle with is: was this film necessary? didn't the swedish picture kinda-sorta hit it out of the park on greatness of awkward rape/sex/attempted murder scenes?

and i guess my answer is: no.

yes, the swedish version is intense and amazing and noomi rapace is SO much better in that film than she is in the new "sherlock holmes" (review to come) BUT there's no daniel craig, no christopher plummer, no charles widmore, no robin wright (post-penn), and perhaps the greatest flaw, no stellan skarsgard.

can we just put this out there: the whole word needs to thank god for the existence of stellan skarsgard (who not only gives the CREEPIEST performance ever in this movie, thus totally redeeming himself for that whole "pirates of the caribbean" thing but also for giving us alexander skarsgard in all his viking-esque glory).

fincher is really successful at manipulating the creep factor. another horrifying score by trent reznor (worst shout out in the film: plague's NIN shirt) augments the pervasive terror. the sleek, austere scandinavian decor - all teak and glass and white and minimalist - also feed into the slow brewing horror. it's clinical and yet totally tweaked - exactly the tone of the book.

there are some changes here - most of which i agree with and none of which i'll spoil - the narrative feels less clunky than the book and therefore more successful. we never, for example, have to sit through an awkward intermission while blomkvist goes to prison to think about why it's wrong to libel someone for a month or three. the film partly succeeds because it edits down the novel so that stories open and close together without any lingering doubts or concerns. the end is heartbreaking.

3.5 stars. i really have no impulse to ever watch this movie again, but i'm curious to see the next one.