Anna (2014)

I was looking for something different and came across this 2013 movie on Amazon streaming. It stars Taissa Farmiga, the younger sister of Vera Farmiga, as Anna Greene, bright but mysterious wealthy teenager who decided to quit eating. Taissa really was a teenager when this was filmed and she is quite good in the role.My summary says it is set in an alternate universe, because from what we now know the techniques likely will never be available in our own real universe. An investigator, played by Mark Strong, is among a group who can use a technique while holding hands with a subject, in this story it is young Anna. This transports the investigator back in time and is an invisible observer of what happened sometimes years earlier, he sees and hears the subject and those with her.All this is to help young Anna overcome whatever difficulties she has and to lead a more normal life, otherwise her mom and stepdad are planning to institutionalize her.The difficulty is, the visits to her past are only as faithful as are her own memories, if she manipulates her memories the investigator might be seeing something that didn't really happen that way. And, as the story unfolds, it seems that maybe Anna is too smart for the investigator.Well made thriller it kept me engaged all the way through.

The trailer really got me into watching this movie. I like the idea of memory traveling, the casts, the vibe that the movie gave, the settings, and John's personal problem. I think this movie had a potential. However, towards the end there are some unexplained plots. It would be great if the movie also gave the detail for characters like: "mousey", the 3 girls, and John's wife so that people don't have to speculate or search for the movie detail.

I've seen worse. This isn't too bad.Problem number 1, at least for me, is that I thought it was some sort of a horror movie. Perhaps that's my mistake. Instead it's a psychological thriller.Problem number 2 is that there are no really good acting performances in this film. Everyone does "okay".All this is not to say that the film doesn't have its moments. The concept of a "mind detective" is actually kinda interesting. And, any movie that has a double twist at the end -- neither of which I saw coming -- can't be all bad.But here's the bottom line. If I had it to do over again, I wish I'd not wasted 99 minutes. I would compare this to a moderate t.v. movie.

The preposterous is something many filmmakers today take for granted. I keep smelling an air of carelessness in the plots of many of TV programs and films that reveal a disdain storytellers have for their audience. Maybe they think that since moviegoers spend a billion on seeing The Avengers, Harry Potter & Pirates of the Caribbean, they must be willing to buy anything. I sincerely thought that style of filmmaking went into the production of Anna...John Washington is a "Memory Detective". He does some type of Star Trek mind meld with crime victims, in order to... well, that's one of the fuzzy things that the storytellers never really firm up. Does he go into the minds of these victims to recover lost memories like license plate numbers, or phone numbers? Of course that theory is blown out of the water with the first scene when he goes deep into the plight of a survivor of an assault, so that he can...well, again, they never really address why. But it's a salacious assault. And it looks good cinematically.While John is peeping in on that assault, his "memories intrude". He remembers that his wife died…not of an assault, but hey. His intrusive memories cause him to have a stroke, and he's out of the game for months. He is "lucky" to get his next assignment: making a sixteen year old girl end her hunger strike.Why they would call in a "Memory Detective" and not a counselor is up for debate. Are hunger strikes now a crime? But enter John Washington who mind melds with Anna, a troubled girl who has troubled girl issues – Sex, Drugs, Money and Art – that play well cinematically. John memory reads her, and finds after a good thirty minutes of story that a crime might have occurred. Perhaps the "Memory Detective" Agency's motto is if you look hard enough, everyone has committed a crime.Actually, if they had gone into depth on a story such as everyone commits crime, this would have been a better film. Or maybe if they would have expanded on the sub-plot that memories aren't very reliable, a good sci-fi story could have come into play. Or maybe if they would have gotten rid of that last twenty minutes, this wouldn't have been such an awful film. But neither the director, Jorge Dorado, nor the writers, Guy Holmes and Martha Holmes thought to do this.It's a mystery where this film takes place, both in time and location. They have very American looking shots of skyscrapers and bridges. (They filmed in Spain.) A scandal brews over an affair of a Senator – but we don't know if he's a U.S. Senator. The writers never give us any concept of how the "Memory Detective" came to be accepted by the courts. But we find out from a hokey newscast that "Memory Detectives" are treated as star investigators, even though in the same newscast it is pointed out that these star detectives "aren't as reliable as DNA".No. Really?