Mindscape

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.

This movie has one of the best openings ever, thrilling,containing a lot of suspense and well directed, which could also be said about the movie as a whole. The lead actors were quite excellent as well. The movie effortlessly keeps you on the edge of your seat throughout...going into one dimension into another,demanding your focus and attention. So it isn't wishful thinking to expect a great ending leaving an impact on you, but I guess it was. The series of plots and twists in the movie can become a bit too much towards the middle,but it gets on its track later...only to fall over a cliff and crash into the ground at the end. Yep,that's how bad it gets!! Psychological thrillers require a bit of in-depth thinking and attention to enjoy and so does 'Anna'...a great ending could have made this movie a masterpiece but it wasn't meant to be. I would still recommend it if you are into psychological thrillers but do not have high expectations.

Anna, or Mindscape as the original title goes, rides heavily on the presence and acting capabilities of its two main leads, Mark Strong as John, a psychologist with mind reading abilities, and Taissa Farmiga as Anna, his young and eerily disturbed patient. The film itself revolves around the idea that certain humans have developed their latent psychic abilities to such a degree that they can read the minds of others and thus help them overcome traumas and illnesses of the mind. Yeah, it's a bit Inception-esque, but it's different enough in style and atmosphere that you won't mind.

Still, the best part about this film is Mark Strong. His quiet dignified performance holds almost all of the scenes together and his interactions with Farmiga are very interesting to witness. Farmiga's performance suffers a touch from her relative inexperience, at least compared to Strong. You can definitely tell that she's acting in the earlier scenes, but she gets better quickly and her character as a whole nails the eery wonder child trope.

Plot-wise the film is nothing special, being relatively easy to predict and offering no real twists, but it's more of a moodpiece in any case. I would have liked for the actual mindscape scenes to be a bit more creative and the story as a whole to be a bit more overreaching in scope, but those lacks only mean that the film is merely good instead of great.

Mindscape is worth a watch if you're looking for a thriller with a more thoughtful tone and lacking in excessive brutality and gore.

Summary: Mindscape is a decent thriller that delivers some twists and surprises. 70/100 (B-)

A man with the ability to enter peoples' memories takes on the case of a brilliant, troubled sixteen-year-old girl to determine whether she is a sociopath or a victim of trauma. I saw some of the trailers and they were very interesting to me, however in spite of its boring trailers, I saw the movie and I really liked it. It may be predictable for some people but not to me. The premise is interesting and the cast did an awesome job during the whole film.

The entire cast is so damn talented, Taissa Farmiga (American Horror Story) and Mark Strong (Kick-Ass) did an amazing job here. Moving on, the concept is awesome and original to me but I have some issues with the script, because some of the dialog was predictable and the film becomes somewhat silly in its third act. Anyway, the most interesting elements in Mindscape are all the "visions" that the film shows us, some of them are very disturbing and strange.

The movie cares about its characters and their previous story. In addition, all of these characters are very well developed. I actually felt sorry for Anna's character, her story is quite sad; also, Taissa Farmiga does an excellent job performing Anna's role. Moving on, the film keeps you guessing the whole time and I liked that; you don't trust in some of these characters and you don't know if Anna is crazy or she's just an innocent girl.

It is entertaining and it makes sense. Another thing that I like about it is the ending, Mindscape ended up being entertaining, interesting, different, well filmed and superbly acted; in spite of some weak dialog and a messy final act. Its final act has its ups and downs, but the last 5 minutes are quite good, the ending is perfect and well done. I also loved the art design of the end credits. I think that it deserves at least a 7/10 rating, it's a very underrated flick. (B-)

Based on the reviews of this movie that I read on this site, I went into this film with high hopes. 90 minutes later,I was truly perplexed as to what all the buzz was about. Maybe films today are so bad that even "average" rates as "very good"? Well, I don't know, and while the film was not a total waste of time, it had little to offer,and was not as half as interesting as the reviews had lead me to believe it would be. The good: The beginning of the movie is very well set up: the movie takes place in the not too distant future where there are people who have the ability to recover and view the memories of others. The protagonist of the movie is a broken down memory reader in need of money and so he goes back to his old employer in search of a job.He is given a "simple" assignment: get a very precocious teenager to eat. But said teenager is *very* smart and not what she appears to be... Both the male lead (the returning memory recovery expert) and female lead ("Anna",the teenager) are played very well. The bad: Very convoluted plot, which devised to make the movie intriguing,in the end was a little over the top and maybe too clever for its own good. The ugly: The ending. Much ado about nothing. I was surprised that after all the complex twists and turns in the move it all came down to (what was in my opinion) an ending that is simple but unfortunately didn't really make much sense.