Anna

Movie Title--  Anna (also known as "Mindscape")

Release Year--  2013

Running Time--  1 Hour and 39 Minutes

Director--  Jorge Dorado

Cast--  Mark Strong, Taissa Farmiga, Brian Cox, Noah Taylor, Indria Varma, Saskia Reeves, Richard Dillane

Memory detective, John Washington, takes on the case of a brilliant and troubled 16 year old to determine if she is a sociopath or a victim by separating fact from fiction inside her memories.

Recently widowed John Washington (Mark Strong) is a man that has the abilities to enter people's memories.  John has a stroke during one of his sessions that leaves him broken and financially incapacitated so after a while out of the business, he comes back and asks for an assignment from his boss, Sebastian (Brian Cox), who gives him what is supposed to be a relative easy case.  

The case he receives involves a troubled but brilliant 16 year old named Anna Greene (Taissa Farmiga) and he is to determine if she is a victim of abuse or a sociopath.  She is the daughter of a wealthy mother and a gold digging, high profile stepfather and she has recently gone on a hunger strike; John's job is to get to the root of the problem and get Anna to eat again.  It doesn't take long before John realizes that Anna's case is a lot more difficult than just trying to get the teenager to eat.  To get to the root of the problem, he goes through a journey through her memories and has to try to not get his own troubled past tangled up with her's.

I actually liked this film.  I am a big fan of Taissa Farmiga from the television show "American Horror Story", so I was interested in seeing how she would do in her first real starring film role.  I was not disappointed.  I think that she did a really good job in this film and the relationship between her and Mark Strong seemed to be a very natural one.  It is always good for the film when you can see on screen that the lead actors work well together and in this case, when they two of them were on screen together they seemed very comfortable and their chemistry was great.

This is the feature debut of director Jorge Dorado and I think that it was a good debut.  It is classified as a psychological thriller and there were moments that I was actually on the edge of my seat waiting to see what happened next.

For anyone that is looking for a thriller type film that isn't a typical big budget flick with big name stars in it, this one is a good bet.  It has everything that a good thriller should have without all the extra bells ans whistles to try to pull your attention away from the story.  If you still aren't convinced, watch it for Farmiga and Strong's excellent performances and Don't Forget the Popcorn!