Hey, everyone. “Moriarty” here.

Death is a big subject. Maybe one of the biggest of the big subjects. Artists routinely wrestle with issues of mortality and existence, and with some filmmakers, it seems like the longer they work, the more focused all of their energy becomes on thoughts of death: what it means, what it leads to, how it unites us.

Next week, two films will be opening wider that are already playing in limited release, both of which attempt to grapple with death in very different ways. One is very good, one is very bad, but both reflect sincere impulses to understand the experience of dying as well as the nature of what happens to us afterwards.

I wish Rob Reiner’s THE BUCKET LIST was a better film. I genuinely do. I wish I could say it represents a return to form for this filmmaker who has spent well over a decade lost in the creative wilderness. Instead, it’s exactly the film you think it’s going to be based on the smarmy, vaguely horrifying trailers, and the casting is as on the nose and obvious played out at feature length.

And do you know how much it bothers me to say any of this? Justin Zackham’s script was widely circulated in LA both before and after it appeared on one of the annual editions of “The Black List,” an informal poll of specific agencies and management firms for their favorite scripts their clients wrote that year. It’s not bad. It’s emotionally direct, it’s entertaining while trying to play things real, and it is confident about the way it embraces cliché. It’s forgivable on the page. And Quint quite liked Zackham’s film GOING GREEK a little while ago.

But when Reiner signed Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman to star, he doomed the movie, and that’s the thing that makes me feel like a crazy person when I type it.

I mean... we’re talking about Jack Fucking Nicholson. And Morgan Fucking Freeman. Heavyweights by any definition. Don’t argue just to argue, either. Both men represent pretty much the textbook definition of long-proven professionals, master craftsmen who do more than their fair share of broad audience-pandering crap. They are. They do. It’s just the way the business works. You make a dozen movies when you’re Jack Nicholson, and if you’re lucky, four of them are interesting and one or two might even be really good. You just work to stay fresh. Same thing with Morgan “Voice-Over” Freeman. He works constantly, and he’s always game for whatever he’s doing. He does consistently solid and honest work.

And they have moments here that are gold. Just two guys enjoying each other as actors, passing off moments like Jack’s Lakers at their finest, knowing exactly how to support, exactly how to lay up. But what they’re playing is ham. Thick-cut fatty fatty ham. It’s shameless. What worked on the page has been cranked up to theme-park-subtle, and Reiner has got to be the first guy to blame. Everything that’s wrong with the movie can be traced to what’s wrong with Reiner’s work in recent years. It’s his sensibility. The way he pushes the material onto the screen… the tone… the palette… it’s like he literally can’t make the right choice at this point. John Schwartzman’s a good DP... films like THE ROOKIE and THE ROCK and SEABISCUIT and PEARL HARBOR and ARMAGEDDON... say what you will about them as films, but they were all gorgeously photographed. THE BUCKET LIST... is not. It’s just not. It’s flat, phony, like a Norman Lear sitcom from 1978. Marc Shaiman’s score is just as obvious as the movie, and not to be trusted. He works waaaaaay to hard to lend the film emotional power where it doesn’t earn it.

I can’t really fault the actors for playing what they’re asked to play. Sean Hayes, for example... this is a smart choice for him in a post-WILL & GRACE world. The role of Nicholson’s personal assistant is pretty much a perfect opportunity for him. It’s the John Gielgud role in ARTHUR. It’s not written as well, but that’s the archetype. He does what he’s asked to do.

Same with Beverly Todd as Virginia Chambers, the wife of Carter Chambers, played by Freeman. She’s asked to basically play an unplayable role. There’s no way for her to play sympathetic in what they give her until the end, where her character has a major turn for no motivated reason. She’s a sounding board for Freeman, not a real character. Same with Rob Morrow, who shows up as a generic sitcom doctor, all shtick with a sad face to show it’s “serious.” Aside from them, no one registers at all, and that’s a problem. You’re left with Nicholson and Freeman as the whole show, and a little bit of the shtick between them goes a long, long way. I was actually sort of writhing at one point, as the guys were skydiving, and the use of the CGI to make it look like they were skydiving was so strange and so awful that I couldn’t help but wonder why Reiner would want to make a film about people having these allegedly life-changing experiences, and he would fake them using special effects. As a director, isn’t that decision automatically the moment where your film is sort of bullshit? Look at what Sean Penn did with Emile Hirsch in INTO THE WILD this year. Even if you’re not a fan of the film, you have to admit that the work they did together was adventurous, impressive, and... well, real.

It gives me no pleasure to write any of this. Seriously. I wish THE BUCKET LIST offered up even some marshmallow philosophy that I could at least give a pass because some things are worth saying, even smothered in cheese. But I don’t think the film ever makes a cogent point about dying or dignity or experience. Nicholson’s inevitable transformation from Grinch to Santa, his moment where his heart swells ten sizes, is pretty much mandated by running time, not by genuine character. Freeman’s inevitable exit from the film is tasteful and restrained and a crashing bore. It just doesn’t deliver any emotion. It’s short. I’ll say that for it. Even so, I didn’t feel like it was time well-spent, especially considering some of the other good films currently booked in limited or wide release. If you want to see a film that deals with issues of mortality, questions of life or death, and does it with intelligence and taste and skill, then you need to be ready for some subtitles, because it’s the Spanish-language THE ORPHANAGE that really delivers.

But before we begin, a question.

Who said this was a horror film?

I’ve been hearing for months now that THE ORPHANAGE is “terrifying” and “the best horror film in years.” Fiddlesticks. This isn’t a horror film at all. It’s a very good film, a lovely meditation on how parents deal with the loss of a child, but a horror film? Hardly.

Ghosts are one of the oldest literary devices still in use. Ask Shakespeare sometime if HAMLET is a horror story or not. They can be harbingers of the future, reminders of the past, the evidence of buried sins, or simply playful companions. They can be full of malice, or they can be comic foils. But the appearance of ghosts in a piece does not automatically make that piece a horror film, and despite a few moments of tension, I think anyone who goes to THE ORPHANAGE expecting to be terrified is going to walk away disappointed, convinced they’ve been misled.

But the fact that this is not a horror film is what makes it interesting and worthwhile, I think. I’ve only seen Belen Rueda in one film before this (THE SEA INSIDE), but I’m impressed by her in general. She’s a strong Spanish woman whose performance here would be garnering awards-consideration talk if it were in anything other than a genre film. The start of the film establishes who she was: a little girl growing up in an orphanage with a group of friends, the leader of the group really, who was adopted and who left those friends behind. She returns with her own family as an adult, and the film is really her journey, her experience.

And it’s a crazy ride in places, sure. There’s a scene early on where Laura (Rueda) and her son Simon (Roger Princep) play a game that involves following clues that is creepy and cool and thrilling all at once. There’s an attack in the film that’s startling, certainly, and there are some images involving the aforementioned ghosts that are striking, and appropriately haunting. But from the very start, there’s great sadness running through the film. Simon is a troubled, unhappy kid, and when the hints about his health condition come together, it’s obvious that Laura is concealing the knowledge that he is probably not long for the earth. And to complicate things, he’s adopted and doesn’t know it, so the secrets being kept from him weigh heavily on Laura. The first part of the film is just about her relationship with this fragile boy she loves so dearly.

And then he vanishes. I won’t say more. That disappearance is the event that the rest of the film depends on, and the way things spin out of control from there are more tragedy than horror. The Orphanage turns out to be a thin place, a location where this life and the next seem to exist simultaneously. This allows Laura to search both worlds for her son, exhaustively. More than anything, this is a movie about the pain of losing a child, and when we’re talking about death, that’s one of the particular permutations I hope to God I never have to contend with. It’s potent dramatic fodder for obvious reasons, but it’s also a cheap shortcut to emotion if used wrong. Sergio G. Sanchez’s script is lean and focused and smart, though, so the film doesn’t shortchange the reality of what Laura goes through. And Rueda really makes it hurt. She’s so obviously dying inside the longer the search for Simon continues that it becomes hard to watch. When everyone else gives up, when everyone else believes Simon dead or gone for good, Laura continues to probe The Orphanage for the secrets she’s sure it will give up eventually. The problem is, if it does, she may not be able to handle them.

Layering in an extended literary reference to a film can backfire mightily, but again... it’s handled with just the right touch here, and considering the thematic weight of PETER PAN, it really pays off powerfully here. I think Juan Antonio Bayona is a talent to watch, a guy whose fundamental storytelling skills are so strong, so fully formed here in his debut picture, that I have no doubt this is the start of a decades-long relationship we’ll have with him as an artist. And that’s another reason I think it shortchanges the movie to just call it a “horror film.” Bayona is capable of whatever he wants to do in terms of working with actors and creating mood and emotion. He shouldn’t have to struggle with the inevitable ghetto-ization that comes with being labeled a genre filmmaker at the start of a career. My guess is we’ll see him try many different types of storytelling and genres, and I hope he proves to be this good at all of them.

Once you realize where this film is going, you start to wonder if they’re really going to have the balls to go there. And the answer is yes. They really do. The film doesn’t compromise at all, and the ending is one of the most ironic happy endings since BRAZIL, an act of love that is both devastating and oddly euphoric.

I’m in the homestretch right now in terms of putting together my list of 2007 films, and I’ve got about eight or nine more films to watch in the next two days before I consider myself “done.” Should be interesting, and I’ll certainly try to put up a few other things in the meantime. Happy new year to all of you, and here’s hoping 2008 is full of just as many great film moments as 2007 was.

Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles