Sounds, Images

Ghost Town (David Koepp, 2008)

Classicist, if not downright classical, and anachronistic in the unfussy care put it into images and edits. Takes of Studio Era length, sequence-shot gags (the delivery boy catches Ricky Gervais' cold; a man goes from living to ghost in a single shot, his death occurring off camera; the "Sabre Dance" being played during a chase scene is revealed to be coming from a street busker) and the 1.85 frame treated as though it was Academy Ratio. All that and an old-fashioned plot, too: fussbucket dentist who begin to see ghosts after a near-death experience is hounded by a dead philanderer into breaking up his widow's impending marriage. Best part's the ending, which develops slowly and "naturally" and cuts to credits just when a 1930s movie would would say "The End." Speaking of Gervais-in-America comedies, I'm not sure where all the fuss about Invention of Lying as an "underrated movie" comes from: it's about half of a good idea executed very poorly -- funny every now and then but mostly misanthropic (not always a bad thing, but hypocritical in an ostensibly humanist film) and facile; this is an ordinary, okay idea executed smartly and with feeling, and that's always better.