Maxcyjen

I just saw Richard Linklater's Before Midnight his newest and third film about Jesse and Celine the couple who meet as young adults in Before Sunrise and re-meet as adults in Before Sunset (one of my five favorite films).

This is simply brilliant film making: funny, raw, emotionally honest and complicated. The couple (Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy who both co-wrote with Linklater) are now in their 40s and face some very real challenges to their menage. I started laughing and crying within about 3 minutes and both emotions kept up until the very end. Everyone sat through the credits so they could wipe their faces clean. Brilliant acting . . .

This film gives one hope for the state of American film making and reminds you that Linklater is one of our most underrated auteurs. I sincerely hope he continues and I live long enough to see the couple well into their senior years.

Even if you have never seen the first two movies, do not miss this one.

Let's face it, great scary movies are hard to make. How many truly terrifying ones can you actually name? How many can sustain the terror and tension over the course of the film? The opening sequence is near perfect and so is the first hour. nearly. The tension does fall apart as the haunting continues. This is due largely to repetition of haunting sequences. Somehow what was once scary becomes a tad boring.

On the other hand there are some very fine performances, notably by Donald Southerland.

The efeect are very good and well within a framework that works for both the 19th century setting and a 21st century viewer s expectations.

All and all this is better than so many films that haunt the multiplexes

I am sure the die hards will hate my assessment, but the film is very thin. Unless you happen to enjoy Keeler's self conscious winking at the audience in a "shucks-aren't-I-amusing" kind of way the movie will fall flat. This is the intellectual equivalent of HeeHaw, just for a different demographic. The plot is hackneyed, and nothing much really happens.

There is some increbibly fine acting, and the scene between Marylouise Burke, Virginia Madsen and L.Q. Jones is some of the best acting I have seen in many a day. It is amazingly moving. Lohan, Tomlin and Streep all comport themselves beautifully and take turns warbling in pleasant ways. Madsen's character is the most interesting thing on screen, and one wishes she had many more scenes.

If this were the best film of the year, as one commentator suggests, this is a very weak year.