In which V. loses count of how many posts she's made, and also encourages people to see The Jacket, which is a Most Decent Film.

So, yesterday I made a solo excursion to the cinema to see The Jacket. This business of going to the movies alone is fairly new for me. My friends are scattered far and wide across several continents, and typically the only person locally who will see movies with me is my mother. This poses problems, as I'm rather partial to horror films (the more graphic and lurid the better) while my mother frowns upon what she calls "devil movies". So out of necessity I started going to the cinema alone. I find it quite liberating, like having a little adventure or something.

But I digress. The Jacket. This is being marketed as a horror film, and it's not. Not really. I quite liked it, liked it a lot, but it's not a horror film. So bear that in mind if you choose to see it. I'm not sure how I would classify it. Eli suggests that it sounds like a sci-fi film. I'm not sure about that genre either. Yes, The Jacket deals with time travel, and time travel usually falls well within the realm of sci-fi. But The Jacket is about as much sci-fi as Donnie Darko, or The Butterfly Effect. There's some weird stuff going on here, kids. Weird, weird stuff.

The film starts out showing Adrien Brody (good actor, that bloke) in the Gulf War back in the day. He gets shot in the head, and it kind of messes him up mentally. I don't think they ever really get into HOW it messes him up mentally, but he seems to have problems with memory and whatnot. Flash forward a few months and he's been discharged and is walking along a snowy road. He stops to help some stranded people, and then hitches a ride with a guy in a trucker hat.

This is where it all goes bad. A cop ends up dead, and it looks like Adrien Brody is guilty. He ends up getting shipped off to an asylum, and his doctor is about as much of a nutter as the patients. In some kind of bizarre experimental therapy they shoot him full of hallucinogenic drugs, strap him into an old grubby straightjacket (complete with pee-stained crotch, I applaud their level of detail), and lock him up in a morgue drawer.

And while he's in there, he travels through time.

Telling you anything else would be giving away too much, and I think it's best just to let this one surprise you. It's a tragic film in a lot of ways, and an uplifting one in a lot of ways. It's well shot with brilliant visuals, and makes great use of music (the film ends with one character asking a question, which seems to be answered by the song that immediately starts playing over the final credits).

So yeah: go see The Jacket. I thought it was original and satisfying, and certainly well worth my $5.75.