Seuls sur Terre

I was able to see a sneak preview of I Think We're Alone Now at "The Female Gaze" Film Festival in NYC. I had high expectations for the cinematography in this movie by Reed Morano and they exceeded all of them. The lighting was gorgeous and the set design was spot on.

While there isn't a lot of action or answers that one might be looking for in a post apocalyptic flick, you get all the story telling you need out of the nuanced performances by Peter Dinklage and Elle Fanning who share an undeniable chemistry.

There's not a lot of backstory or dialogue in this flick but Peter Dinklage managed to grab our attention with great acting. To communicate with subtlety is worth watching. I feel like it's something we can all learn from.

Great to see a film where it's all about the acting and not an explosion a minute.

I wish they would speak up though; the atmospheric music is so loud, and all of their dialogue is so quiet and so mumbled.

I Think We're Alone Now is not the typical post-apocalyptic film most audiences are used to seeing.

After looking at the gorgeous poster and watching half the trailer to this movie, my interest grew. The further I looked into the project and the more I learned about the cast and crew involved, I was hooked.

The film is directed by Reed Morano and stars Peter Dinklage and Elle Fanning. The story follows a seemingly lone survivor of a mysterious apocalypse that stumbles upon a young girl. Throughout the film the two talk and bond, living in this quiet world Morano builds for his characters.

Dinklage's acting was quiet and subtle, very rarely talking and communicating in glances. Fanning's character is loud and full of energy. The two have great chemistry. The film's romance is similar to Lost in Translation but isn't executed as well. Throughout the film it seems they are close, but never really romantic, just surviving. If it was built upon more, execution would be better.

The cinematography in the film is spectacular. Morano's past in cinematography shines in this project. The atmosphere is built upon with the film relying on natural lighting. This has an amazing effect on the environment, giving it life and making it seem real.

There are downsides to this movie. About two thirds of the way into the movie, it seems to take a total shift in the mood and story. The ending seemed like it didn't belong, ripped out of a mid-two thousands teen dystopian book. While the ending didn't ruin the film, it still left me unsatisfied.

While the runtime of this film is just over an hour and thirty minutes, it takes its time. If you're going into this expecting a fast pace movie with quick dialogue and fast results, this movie isn't for you. If you're a fan of character studies and long, interrupted takes, you'll more than likely enjoy this movie.

Overall, I Think We're Alone Now is an experience that I haven't had in a theater in a while. It's different than most of the films in theaters this year which is refreshing. It teaches people the importance of a strong and satisfying ending and how not to do that, but also how to set up an effective and interesting universe Check it out.

I wanted to like this movie more than I do. Great performances by the whole cast, and I liked how they approached the post-apocalyptic wasteland concept in a more benign way. Production quality seemed decent enough as well.

What I didn't like:

• The audio. Subtitles are basically a requirement. The audio levels are terrible: the dialog is barely audible at twice the volume I normally watch movies at. The soft and mumbled dialog throughout, although fits the atmosphere, made it that much harder to understand really Any of the actors speak. When you think you finally have the volume level ok in the near silent dialog scenes, they suddenly cut to high volume music that blasts your ears. Possibly the strongest example of a 'volume-up/volume-down' movie I've seen and it was frustrating me throughout the movie.

• Slow and meandering, both plot-wise and pacing-wise. Not a whole lot happens in this movie. A number of arbitrary scenes of them simply living their everyday lives in the empty city and doesn't really add anything to the story. Many of the shots moved very slow and took what seemed like forever to play out, with a few done entirely in slow-mo. I found myself skipping ahead 10 seconds at a time in parts and not missing anything of importance. Not sure if they were trying to go for a more artistic look or build a sense of stagnation/boredom in their basically empty world, it felt more like they were padding the run-time in my opinion.

• The ending. I don't want to spoil anything but it felt like the writers ran out of ideas and didn't know how to end it, so they threw in some completely random 'twist' out of left-field that had nothing to do with anything up to that point in the movie prior. You'll probably be left with a puzzled look on your face thinking, "...What?"

It still held my attention for the most part and it was a bit of a different take on the apocalypse-type movie. I might recommend watching it if you are a Peter Dinklage fan or have nothing else to watch, but I wouldn't schedule a movie night with friends around this or anything.