THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU- Review

In the echelons of inaccurate pull-quotes, there shall be a special place for the Total Film assessment of the snappily titled sci-fi romance, The Adjustment Bureau, which appears on the poster and in many of the TV spots. Total Film called it "Bourne Meets Inception", when it's not really like either of those things, but hey, we're in a week where everything is "Bourne Meets" something or other.

So, what The Adjustment Bureau is really like is the Phillip K. Dick story from which it was inspired. David is a Congressman who looks set for a meteoric rise in the world of politics. He has a chance encounter with a dancer called Elise, and he's instantly smitten. However, when he meets her again a short while later, a powerful force interferes. A bureau of men in hats and suits posit that David and Elise were never meant to meet again, and they try their utmost to rectify the course of the plan that is rapidly unravelling as this couple fall deeper and deeper in love.

If we have to compare The Adjustment Bureau to something other than what it actually is, which is a romantic thriller with an otherworldly and theological concept, the comparison that most immediately struck me while watching it was with A Matter of Life and Death. Particularly in its later movements, the similarities are obvious when you're looking at a film about a couple trying to prove that they're destined to be together, even in the face of a higher force that is trying to divide them.  

A Matter of Life and Death is one of my favourite films of all time, so this film would inevitably suffer from that comparison, but it also means that I enjoyed it quite a lot. The masterstroke as far as this one is concerned is either in the casting or in what the lead actors managed to construct when they were thrown together. Matt Damon and Emily Blunt are on fire in this film, whenever they appear together, with a scorching and yet very charming chemistry that really gets you on side.

However, throughout their extended Meet-Cute scenes, the sci-fi elements are established via these men in hats and suits being rather sinister in what they believe is doing right by David and Elise. In the lower rankings of the titular bureau, you get Anthony Mackie, who's ultimately quite friendly and pragmatic, but further up, you get the more rigid and authoritarian John Slattery. Go higher, and you get Terence "General Zod" Stamp, which gives a sense of the ingrained values of this powerful organisation.

They are the opposing force in what is basically a debate about determinism, and the role of free will. If there's a problem with the film, it is that the rules are too vaguely established. We are intended to follow that the Adjustment Bureau give human beings less individual choice in their own destinies because actual free will is a failed experiment that threw up the Dark Ages, two world wars and the Cuban missile crisis. That doesn't explain how their level of control allows for the current atrocities committed all over the world after those events.

These men work in mysterious ways, which is as much as I'm prepared to say without just spitting it out and telling you what we're meant to figure out ourselves while watching the film. In that framework, I can kind of forgive the film some of its vagaries, not least because it's just a very engaging watch. On the downside, I was less enamored of the abrupt time-skips that were brought in throughout the film, because nothing disrupts the momentum more than a sudden "Three years later". The film doesn't exactly outstay its welcome, but there are surely better and more inventive ways to illustrate a vast leap in the narrative.

The Adjustment Bureau was put back to this month from its original release date last summer, and despite having highly anticipated it for a long time, I can now appreciate the wisdom of that decision. In a relatively quiet month at the cinema, it has room to breathe, rather than being shot out of a cannon as counter-programming to Piranha or The Expendables. It's very easy to like, and slightly harder to dismiss some of its flaws, but crucially, it pitches a compelling romance between Damon and Blunt while working through a passage between romantic thriller and sci-fi parable.

The Adjustment Bureau is now showing in cinemas nationwide.
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If you've seen The Adjustment Bureau, why not share your comments below?

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

TRUE GRIT- Review

The last of the big over-delayed Oscar contenders finally arrived in the UK on Friday, and it's the one I've been most eagerly anticipating. There seems to be something of a weird backlash against modern Coen brothers films, but I personally think No Country For Old Men and A Serious Man are great films. I also enjoy Westerns, so True Grit would seem ideal for my tastes.

When Frank Ross is murdered in cold blood over a gambling dispute, his daughter Mattie wants retribution. The killer, Tom Chaney, has long since skipped town. Nobody seems particularly keen to pursue Chaney, so Mattie hires a hard-bitten US Marshall, Rooster Cogburn, to hunt him down. Also in pursuit of the killer is a Texas Ranger called LaBoeuf, and he accompanies Mattie and Cogburn as they head out on the frontier in search of justice.

The overwhelming impression that True Grit left me with was that it had gone by too soon. It's 110 minutes long and it feels much shorter. Multiple viewings of this thing may be needed just to fully take everything in, but let's be frank from the beginning- outings with the Coen brothers tend to end abruptly. We remember how things wound up at the close of those films I named above, and without spoiling anything, there's a similar grinding halt to the action here, followed by a quite disparate postscript. Maybe it's something I need to leave to grow on me, but I really didn't enjoy the ending of this one. A shame really, because the rest of it is excellent.

As a film, it's possibly the most conventional thing Joel and Ethan Coen have ever done. It feels like a part of the classical tradition of Westerns, doing less new stuff with the genre than No Country for Old Men did a few years ago but still managing to utterly submerge me all the way through. The Coens' gallows humour serves the story well, rousing much laughter throughout but also lending itself to brutal moments of violence, as in so much of their oeuvre.

Surprisingly, to me at least, the main character turns out to be Mattie Ross. While Oscar might have nominated Hailee Steinfeld in the Best Supporting Actress category, she is undoubtedly the protagonist here, and Steinfeld is the standout in a cast of very good and much more experienced actors. A line can be drawn from her performance to that of Jesse Eisenberg in The Social Network, showing the same obstinacy and intelligence that Mark Zuckerburg is imbued with in a film set over a century later. And Steinfeld is only 14 years old.

The rest of the cast are just as important, mind. Jeff Bridges is a little mumbly, but reliably magnetic as Rooster Cogburn. The Dude quickly dispels whatever notions you might have of the Duke in that role, at least for as long as you're submerged in this new rendition. Matt Damon is also very impressive as the prideful LaBoeuf, making an indecisive character very engaging at the same time, and holding his own in exchanges of machismo with Bridges. And while Josh Brolin and Barry Pepper are held back until late in the proceedings, their respective roles should not be understated- at the very least, Brolin does a much better job with a weird voice in the old West than he did last time around.

The surreal touches of the Coens' previous work are more sparse this time around, but they're still there- witness the man who speaks only in barnyard noises, or the image of a bear riding a horse. The look of the film is consistent with their previous stuff though, largely due to the presence of their erstwhile cinematographer Roger Deakins. The films he's worked on always look gorgeous, and if anyone needs to win an Oscar this month, it's him- True Grit marks his ninth nomination for Best Cinematography, and yet he's never won. Actually, mark the film in for Best Sound Design and/or Editing too- if you actually notice a film's sound design and editing as I did with this one, you know someone's doing something special.

After accidentally getting a clutch of Oscar nominations last year with A Serious Man, their most personal project ever, the Coens go for something a little more conventional in True Grit. "Conventional" should not scan as "typical" though, because the film still stands out, even after the barrage of awards contenders we've had recently. The cast and the standard of the production are fantastic, and only the very ending could be called dissatisfying. I can't speak for how it measures up to the original (it's on my to-watch pile, honest), but I can tell you that the brevity of pace and the sheer boisterous entertainment value of this adaptation left me yearning to revisit it at the nearest possible opportunity.

True Grit is now showing in cinemas nationwide.
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If you've seen True Grit, why not share your comments below?

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

HEREAFTER- Review

Clint Eastwood's perpetual motion mode of direction couldn't hold out forever. And sadly, we get a less than good effort from the great man with his latest film, Hereafter, a u-turn into the territory that M. Night Shyamalan has marked as his own in the same way as territory is usually marked- by pissing on it. Even in disappointing though, Eastwood is able to surprise by doing something outside of his comfort zone.

Essentially, it's a supernatural drama, in which respected French journalist Marie has a near-death experience and thus finds herself able to commune with what lies hereafter. Meanwhile, in London, a young boy who loses his twin becomes entranced by the idea of where his brother has gone. And in New York, lonely warehouse worker is all too familiar with these matters. He's a retired psychic who wants no part in his own powers anymore, but whether he likes it or not, three people from across the world are about to collide.

Much like the interweaving stories at work, the point at which Hereafter absolutely loses its shit can be very clearly delineated. Basically, the film stops for the most bizarrely specific bit of product placement I have ever seen in a film. The point at which the three stories coincide is the London Book Fair, where Derek Jacobi is signing audiobooks of Charles Dickens' "Little Dorritt". Derek Jacobi stars as himself, and he reads a bit of the book to his audience before having a discussion about how great the CD is with Matt Damon's George. It's as if the whole film stops for an entirely irrelevant advert.

Why mention it so prominently? Because it's what stuck with me after seeing it! In all fairness, I caught this screening right after the horrible time I had with Barney's Version, but that just meant I was all the more ready to enjoy a film directed by Clint Eastwood. And produced by Steven Spielberg. And written by Peter Morgan. Cripes, how did this go so wrong? In this respect, it can be compared to The Tourist, in which a perfect storm of talent just left everyone feeling thunderous and annoyed.

It's obviously better than The Tourist, and it clearly has some great parts that are almost worth the price of admission. The opening sequence, for instance, is dazzling. A tsunami hits France in a scene that could never and has never have been done as personally by a hack like Michael Bay or Roland Emmerich, who have scenes like this ten a penny in their dreck. However, it's unlike any other sequence Eastwood has ever directed, and it's the most promising start possible, integrating the impressive special effects with real human drama in amongst the chaos.

Likewise, I found myself enjoying Matt Damon's performance as George, and there was some mileage to be had from his inability to make physical contact without his brain wandering off to the afterlife. The trouble is that his character arc is spread too thin, even with the other two storylines going on in the background. Everything feels stretched out, and yet we eventually close at a point that feels like the beginning of a more interesting journey for each of our protagonists.

As the film's settled, I appreciate that Eastwood and Morgan were clever enough to end the film with optimism for its characters' futures, and not at the end of their lives, despite the rest of the film being fixated on what happens after people die. The rest of the film is oddly pessimistic too- it may be very spiritual, but its secular approach is less inclusive than it is vague. You can complain all you like about the afterlife as depicted by Peter Jackson in The Lovely Bones being too happy and sunny, but the grey and intangible masses we see in Hereafter just seem unpleasant. It seems like you die and go to a big waiting room with standing room only, while Matt Damon and Cecile de France pester you for messages from the mortal realm.

Hereafter might be Clint Eastwood's weakest film for a long time, but that's still a damn sight better than anything M. Night Shyamalan, the most notable resident of this sub-genre, has to offer. It's a departure for Eastwood in almost every way, and there are shining moments in which he manages to pull it off very well, such as the incredible opening. The script is just too vague, and the message too ephemeral, and the appearance of Derek Jacobi to plug his CD just too damn odd- it becomes just a little arduous. Eastwood fans will still enjoy seeing the man at work, even if it's not great. His next one will probably be better, mind.

Hereafter is now playing in cinemas nationwide.
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If you've seen Hereafter, why not share your comments below?

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

Where The Grass Is Greener

Following the quite fantastic step-up in quality that Paul Greengrass brought to Jason Bourne with the latter two films of that trilogy, he's teamed up with Matt Damon once again to bring us Green Zone, an action thriller set around the conflict in Iraq and the search for weapons of mass destruction.

Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller is getting fed up with the unreliable intelligence his investigation is being hindered by. In questioning the veracity of the source, mysteriously named Magellan, he uncovers the political machinations behind the war and goes rogue to uncover the truth. As something of a regular disclaimer, it's only my opinion here- others are available. As ever, mild spoilers may occur in the process of reviewing, but never so far as to spoil any major plot developments.
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Last week's I Love You Phillip Morris opened with a title card saying "this really happened, it really did", yet somehow this sentiment is more desperately emblazoned across Green Zone. Of course the presumably unforeseen difficulty in bringing the subject matter to the screen is that we don't know everything that happened in the war just yet.

Indeed, the conflict is still ongoing. As yet, it does not have any historical weight, and so as a statement of "this really happened", it has approximately as much value as Titanic.

To say this feels a little harsh on what is essentially a taut and competently realised action thriller, as is expected from Greengrass, but in the wake of The Hurt Locker, it can only be seen that films about the conflict in Iraq are better when they're divorced from the politics.

Moreover, it does border on becoming visually incomprehensible at times. The shaky-cam aesthetic that was so acclaimed in the Bourne films becomes grating here, and certain action sequences are as obscured as watching through the lens of a hyperactive five-year-old jumping up and down in their seat.

This at least is a little more immersive than any 3D film yet released, because if you're really in the middle of a car-chase, there is no tripod holding your head still to calmly take in the action. Nevertheless, using it every time someone walks across a street or gets into a car gets tiring.


There are still some excellent action sequences, particularly the final scramble to extract Magellan from a Baghdad in the midst of a shock-and-awe campaign.

The worst you can really say about Green Zone is that Paul Greengrass makes the best film possible out of a less than inspired concept. The conspiracy element is at its most clunky when it deploys footage of Bush's "Mission Accomplished" fiasco, and it's less a thinking man's action film than a disengaged political statement that often reaches further than it can grasp.

Still, it's technically adept and is bolstered by a number of great performances from Matt Damon, Brendan Gleeson and Greg Kinnear. Jason Isaacs nearly steals the show with some magnificent facial furniture and a flawless American accent.

I have to admit, it's always satisfying even to see a less than brilliant film from Greengrass, whose penchant for realism always results in films that are high in adrenaline and thrills, even if this one is low on actual substance behind its admonitions.

Green Zone is still showing in cinemas nationwide, so if you've seen it, why not share your comments on the film and on my review below?

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

Ménage à François

When the news is banal, it's always best to slip into the cinema. As the nation works itself into a lather over where the England football captain's been dipping his wick, Clint Eastwood marries the sport movie with the political biopic in Invictus, the story of the relationship between Nelson Mandela and rugby captain François Pienaar. And if sports and politics aren't for you, another more weedy and pencil-moustached François is available in Michael Cera comedy Youth in Revolt. As ever, mild spoilers may occur in the process of reviewing, but never so far as to spoil any major plot developments.

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Invictus finds Morgan Freeman playing Nelson Mandela as he leaves Robben Island prison and becomes President of South Africa. However, the film's focus is much larger. Although apartheid has been abolished, inter-racial tensions are at boiling point. The white South Africans now fear that the black South Africans will treat them with the same contempt they dished out themselves in the years previous. The blacks seem all too happy to meet their expectations, orchestrating a vote to ban the team's largely white rugby team, the Sprinboks. With South Africa due to host the 1995 Rugby World Cup, Mandela liaises with the Springboks' captain, François Pienaar, played by Matt Damon, in a plan to unite the country by winning the tournament.

Clint Eastwood may never stop. I'm being serious, we need to get some scientists in to project whether or not his career in film will be the first true instance of perpetual motion. At the age of 79, he directs two films a year, which are, almost without exception, distinctive from anything else he's done before. He also acts in some of them, and that the only film he worked on in 2009 turned out to be this year's Invictus is no sign that he's slowing down. Because as with all of his films, it's tremendous. It passes the acid test for all sports films by being more about the story than about whether or not the sports team win, which they usually do. Having no interest in professional sport whatsoever, I still found the film to be irresistibly immersive. Incidentally, Eastwood also swerves the trap that befalls most by biopics- trying to penetrate the psyche of their subject by telling the story of their entire life while also telling the audience what to make of them.

In the pivotal role of Mandela, Eastwood's long-time collaborator Morgan Freeman is really nothing less than brilliant as usual. Instead of spoon-feeding an explanation to their audience, the director and the actor both dally with the personal problems between Mandela and his family, without enlarging them to dominate the film's story. Eastwood has picked the period and the subject for his story, and the film is constrained to the progression of that story rather than anciliary parts of Mandela's life, or Pienaar's. In the latter role, Matt Damon continues to flout the hilarious but unfair portrayal of his acting in Team America, although I wasn't entirely sure about that South African accent. Then again, my frame of reference is Sharlto Copley screeching about "fokkin creatures" in District 9, and I enjoyed Damon's performance on the whole. I'm not sure it's Oscar-worthy, but part of me wonders if that's just the Academy making up for its ignorance elsewhere.

Invictus was hardly snubbed in the Oscar ballots like Gran Torino was last year, and received acting nominations for both Freeman and Damon. I personally don't see any problem with nominating Eastwood for both best director and best picture every year, because he invariably does make the best films. That he's made a film about rugby, a sport largely cannibalised Stateside to become American football, speaks volumes for the scope of his vision. The Blind Side got the Best Picture nomination instead, and I'll be reviewing that when it comes out, but I doubt it's a coincidence that the American football film won out over the rugby film. It's hardly an obscure sport of course, but on a much larger scale, this is a film about overcoming inequality. It may be overly reverent in parts, but Mandela has had an inspiring life. Another tremendous effort from Clint Eastwood.

While Eastwood continues to crank out brilliant film after brilliant film and remain distinct, the much younger Michael Cera is shaking off his typecasting in Youth in Revolt. Nick Twisp is a gawky and awkward young man who doesn't get much luck with the ladies... er, wait a minute. No, he does break that typical Cera role, because after being driven to distraction by his incompetence with Sheeni, the girl of his dreams, he creates a supplementary persona called François Dillinger, also played by Cera. Chaos ensues, as his juvenile delinquency sends him on the run for blowing up half his hometown, all the while trying to win Sheeni's heart.

This film has, for reasons I'm not certain of, been languishing on a shelf for well over a year now, apparently. Now that it's finally found release, its unconventional romance seems less innovative in the wake of last year's (500) Days of Summer. It could have pre-empted it, but instead, it's finally being released after that film proved a hit with audiences and critics, and after Zach Galifianakis, who appears in this briefly, had a huge hit with The Hangover. But in the company of other fare from that genre, I'm not entirely sure Youth in Revolt counts as a romcom- it's really more of an outright comedy, contrary to what the marketing has depicted. The central conceit that you should change everything about yourself in order to attract an otherwise uninterested partner actually seems like it belongs in a much lazier film that this.

It is played mostly for laughs though, with the cooler François spouting suave one-liners like "I'm gonna tickle your belly button... from the inside" like a nebbish Tyler Durden, in contrast with Cera's more mild-mannered screen persona that we all know and were frankly getting a bit sick of. To be fair, I like him as an actor, and he proves here that he's very good when he has a similarly sound script to work from. The real discovery here is Portia Doubleday as Sheeni, who makes the role convincing. She's pretty, but not the traditional porcelain perfect look that some other films have been known to cast as similarly desirable characters. But her acting sells Sheeni as a character for whom Nick/François would go to such extreme lengths. A talented supporting cast includes Steve Buscemi and Fred Willard, but loses points for engaging Ray Liotta to play the exact same character he always does. He just screams asshole in the same way as you immediately know Danny Huston in a suit is the baddy in Edge of Darkness (still playing in cinemas, folks!).

There aren't really many belly laughs in Youth in Revolt, but then it's not Airplane! The humour exists alongside a well executed adaptation of the book it's based on, and it boasts the best performance by Michael Cera since Juno. Admittedly, that wasn't long ago, but some of the dreck he's sleep-walked through since made this a relieving watch. It may be only infrequently hilarious, but that's better than consistently smirkworthy. Laughometer semantics aside, this will be adored by fans of Cera, and this will hopefully find a decent audience after taking so long to make it to cinemas. Having attended a practically sold out screening myself, it looks to be doing alright for itself.

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If you've been to see Invictus or Youth in Revolt, why not share your comments below? Next time will most likely cover Disney's return to 2D animation, The Princess and the Frog, and the much acclaimed and Oscar-nominated crime drama, A Prophet. Never let it be said there's no variety on this here blog.

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.