Doubt

The other night, Candace and I finally made it to see Philip Seymour Hoffman and Meryl Streep's new film, Doubt. I had been really excited about this movie ever since seeing its trailer a few months earlier, as it features a great cast, an anti-religious theme, and an interesting plot, but I'm sad to say that it just didn't live up to my hopes. Sure, the acting was great (especially by Hoffman), but the movie had relatively little to say about the nature of doubt and faith. The closest the film comes to approaching some sort of artistic message is by leaving the nature of everything in the film up to doubt for the viewer, and although this is successful, I'm not sure it helps convey any greater meaning other than that doubt exists and is tricky.

So, although the acting was good (Amy Adams and Meryl Streep were great too) and the sense of constant tension is a bit unsettling, this film just failed to capture me in any way, shape, or form. I would only recommend it as a rent, but maybe someday I'll get around to watching it again and find it amazing, as all the critics have seemed to have felt.