Anna

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.

I need to stop reading IMDb reviews for this type of movie. I skipped all the ones who had possible spoiler alerts, but everyone else saying you had figured it out before he did, and the last 20 minutes are useless and so forth did jade me. And reading the reviews did a funny thing, I thought I knew exactly what was going on and I was wrong. So I guess reading the reviews gave me the wrong ideas. Which was actually quite funny because I kept waiting for my version to come down and it never did. So I missed the obvious because I was sure that was not the story. Okay the movie was enjoyable. It was well done. It was a fun thriller/mystery. I thought the acting was good. I liked the concept, and I think I may of really liked it better if I did not read the reviews first. It is not sci fi at all, just the idea of going into someones memories is a cool concept, but the movie was a straight up mystery/thriller. Just watch it and enjoy it with a bag of popcorn and have fun!

This movie has a 6.4 rating as of May 2014 which is slightly too low I think. I give it a 7.5 out of 10. I have noticed that thrillers, unless they are great thrillers like The Usual Suspects etc.. are scored very low because of two reasons. Firstly thrillers are general slow paced at first and build suspense and tension. Some people lose interest quickly. Secondly, some people just don't get it. Due to the audience not following the dynamics of the thriller they score it low.

The title Anna is a better title than Mindscape in my opinion because the story is a personal story about the character Anna and the main character's memory of his past love also named Anna.

The main concept of Anna is not original and there are little things in the movies that require you to suspend belief etc etc etc...like all movies it is not perfect...but I really enjoyed the movie..I think the acting was great from Mark Strong and the support cast..I didn't know that the young girl, played by Taissa Farmiga, is the younger sister of Vera Farmiga. She is excellent.

I think the story was predictable and I would have done something slightly different to make it less predictable but I can't explain further without spoiling. Having said that I still really enjoyed the movie. It is much better than most thrillers out there, some with much bigger budgets.

Some reviewers have posted on the message board that they didn't like the details..I loved the details, this is what elevates the movie above most..it may not always be believable but Hey! we are watching a movie about a guy who can enter peoples memories, what was everyone expecting...

It is a really interesting thriller that is well acted and despite being predictable it has a very clever plot versus underlying plot script...I recommend it above the majority of thrillers out there....great work!

Memory detectives have the ability to enter their client's memories. The largest memory detective agency is Mindscape run by Sebastian (Brian Cox). John Washington (Mark Strong) is one of the best but he had a break down. He needs the money and returns for another job. Sebastian gives him the supposed easy case of gifted Anna Greene (Taissa Farmiga) who refuses to eat. Her mother Michelle (Saskia Reeves) and stepfather Robert (Richard Dillane) are one of the richest family. Judith (Indira Varma) monitors Anna 24/7. As John dives into her memories, it becomes questionable what is the real truth.

I like the overall paranoid feel. However there seems to be some easier detective work that could provide proof outside of his memory work. I keep thinking that there are missing pieces or avenues in the movie. I don't know why John is not more suspicious of Anna. The final scheme is so convoluted and specific that it's unlikely to work out exactly like that. The writing by the Holmes need a few more passes and maybe by a fresh pair of eyes. Jorge Dorado is trying to step up to the big director's chair and delivers a workmanlike effort. Taissa Farmiga is intriguing and Strong is effective. However the script is not quite right. The idea itself is not particularly new but I do like the Hitchcockian feel. The final twist is obvious before the reveal but I still like it. The movie could be much better.

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.