Beginners (2010)

Written and directed by Mike Mills, Beginners is a film about loneliness. It is about people who seek loneliness, who are also looking ways to alleviate their loneliness. Evading love and human touch, they finally give in and embrace what life offers in companionship and loyalty. Theirs is a life of contrasts.

Thematically, Beginners works really well, but its execution ocassionally fails. And that is because it is too self-aware and clever for its own good. Mills' stylistic touches more often than not fail to hit the mark and the film (and the premise) feels gimmicky and pointless.

The Ghost Writer (2010)

The Ghost Writer (2010) is the closest that director Roman Polasnski has come to recreating the thrilling magic of Chinatown (1974), and as such, could be viewed as something of a modern classic. It stars Ewan McGregor as The Ghost, a writer brought in to salvage the memoirs of former British Prime Minister Adam Lang, a thinly veiled stand-in for Tony Blair portrayed by a fired-up Pierce Brosnan. The memoir’s former writer recently died a mysterious death, and with Lang in the news for suspicion of war crimes, the publisher (an almost unrecognizable James Belushi) is in a rush to get the book out.

So McGregor’s Ghost is whisked away to Lang’s current compound on Martha’s Vinyard, a place isolated by the ocean, the grey winter season and a chilly personal workforce. Almost immediately he’s sucked into a vacuum of international intrigue and betrayal, and shortly thereafter finds himself dangerously deep in noir-ish waters even the most capable investigator would struggle to navigate.

Capable The Ghost is not. A writer incredulously curious by nature, McGregor’s protagonist resembles Nicholson’s classic Chinatown detective – a man smart enough to put the pieces together, but never wisely nor quickly enough. He’s foolhardy and naive, often frustratingly so, and that’s precisely why he’s chosen for the task...