The Adjustment Bureau - KDJ

Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly, Paycheck and now The Adjustment Bureau, are films that I have seen based on Philip K. Dick novels or short stories. In each, the metaphysical world that the characters live in is a sci-fi-ed version of our own. Matt Damon and Emily Blunt rom-com-ed a sci-fi-ed meta-physic in this most recent installment of predestination vs. free will.

The Adjustment Bureau itself is helmed by a boss that we never meet, yet this boss has two soft-spots. Boss and his 'agents' are weaker around water and seemingly confused by chance and love - two themes that play out insofar as they became one thing. It is chance and love that finally free the love birds of the confines of a plan that originally calls for separate existences. The fun is not so much in the head play of free will vs. predestination as it is the consistent escaping Damon and Blunt execute. Lucky for them, they befriend a disenfranchised agent that has become wayward in his matrix enforcement due to lack of vacation time. It his old-timey hat that allows Damon to portal from the 'planned world' to the 'real world' or the experienced world just in time to interrupt Blunt's foreseen mistake.

Damon is Damon in this move so no real surprises. Emily Blunt, however, I thought, was really good. The script doesn't make too much room for Oscar performances but it does require Damon and Blunt to be somewhat believable. After all, a rom-comed sci-fi thriller, is already enough of a play--much more playing and we'd be left with sci-fied Sex and the City, and we wouldn't want that--or would we?

McConaughey: A Life's Work - JAK

2005 was a good year. The ‘stros made it to the world series, France performed the first successful face transplant, and Six Shooter won best live-action short at the Oscars. But what was best about 2005 was that People magazine finally, officially recognized the sexiness of Matthew David McConaughey. Of course People’s decision wasn’t news to those of us who had long before acknowledged his chiseled, heart-breakingly rugged good looks in in A Time to Kill. His portrayal of a lawyer defending an African-American father accused of murder in a racially-charged Mississippi revealed a new hunk of talent on the Hollywood scene. Not since Brando tore his shirt and yelled ‘Stella!’ has an actor so brilliantly coupled rock-hard acting skills with Sexiest-man-alive looks. Following T to K, McConaughey proceeded to hone his sexiness by playing the male lead in Carl Sagan’s Contact. Embodying a physically flawless, sexually promiscuous spiritualist (“a man of the cloth, without the cloth”), McConaughey wooed Jodi Foster and argued the ethics of human/alien contact. He went on to stretch his sexiness to the breaking point with hits such as U-571, Failure to Launch, and Sahara. Though some of his films were hampered by sub-standard dialogue, superficial scripts, and shirts, McConaughey always found a way to make the role his own. Perhaps the Adonis called McConaughey will best be remembered for his role in Dazed and Confused. Playing a character profoundly suited to his time and place, he encapsulated the small-town, post-high school male experience in such lines as “I love them red heads”, “alright, alright, alright” and, of course, “You just gotta keep on livin', man. L-I-V-I-N.”

McConaughey will next be flexing his acting chops in The Lincoln Lawyer: http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/lions_gate/thelincolnlawyer/

No Strings Attached - KDJ

Straight up, Oscar season wore me out. For some reason(s), I put myself through the gauntlet every year just before these glorified theater nerds and liberal english lit majors walk the 1.2 mile red carpet. I make a point to see as many of the nominated films as I can. This year, the last couple weeks leading up to the lackluster-Franco peering off cause he is awesome-awards show, were filled with Biutiful, Blue Valentine, Winter's Bone, I am Love and The Black Swan. In other words, the night before the-Anne Hathaway giving 25 Arsenio Hall like 'woops'-awards show, I needed a breather. I thought about watching The Proposal for a second time. I also thought about Dan in Real Life for a third time. Lucky enough for me, I appreciate Rom-Com's enough to not allow No Strings Attached to deter my unbridled respeckt for Natalie Portman. As a result, I kept my sanity and was reminded that Blue Valentine is as much of a motion picture as No Strings Attached is. Sure, in one nothing works out, eerily mirroring real life for 60% of American couples. While in the other, everything works out just as it did in Clueless, White Christmas, and How to Lose A Guy in 10 Days. The bottom line is, though, after seeing all these phenomenal actors take me to really dark places (Javier, Portman, Lawrence, Swinton etc.), I remembered that it is just as much of an experience to watch the picture book version. Call it a cheap thrill, a solid Rom-Com that is, but don't knock it until you can prove that Jerry McGuire, When Harry Met Sally, and You've Got Mail aren't worth our time. NSA may not join the ranks of said epic-rom-com's, but it just may keep you out of the Indie movie theaters long enough to remember that there is a reason to give Blue Valentine and Biutiful and an Indie movie theater a hard earned chance.