The Adjustment Bureau (2011)

I am a fan of the late Philip K. Dick. No...let me correct that. I am a HUGE fan of the late Philip K. Dick. So it was with eager anticipation that I purchased my tickets and entered the theater to watch The Adjustment Bureau, which was adapted from Dick's short story "The Adjustment Team." I was, I am afraid to admit, underwhelmed. Which is a bad sign. This movie had all of the makings of a great film. It had fantastic source material. It had an outstanding cast. The leads had class and sex appeal and chemistry and a great meet-cute. It had shadowy-men-in-black. What it did not have, unfortunately, was a screen play that could carry it all through a full-length motion picture. Instead, it relied on interminable chase scenes. Yes, our hero and heroine are running away from the eponymous adjustment bureau, but come on! How many scenes do we need of them running down the street? Through a door? Up the stairs? Through another door? Along the corridor? Through yet another door? Around the corner? Through - wait for it - yet another door? Are you starting to get tired of this already? So was I. Oh, and did I mention that they go through doors? Yeah, they do that. Doors. Lots of `em.

Let me throw you the plot so you know where I'm going here. David Norris (Matt Damon) is just about to win a seat in the US Senate. Then he meets Elise Sellas (Emily Blunt) in a men's room. Sparks definitely fly. This is the real thing. They both know it. But, enter the shadowy-men-in-black who do everything in their power to prevent David and Elise from getting together. At least, most of the shadowy-men-in-black do. One of the shadowy-men-in-black (Anthony Mackie) is not so shadowy after all. He kind of runs interference for them. Tells them who they're up against. Shows them the doors. (Oh yeah, you knew they'd be back.) Once everything was established and I was all ready to hunker down with my bucket o' popcorn and gallon o' soda for a bit of good, suspenseful repartee with the shadowy-men-in-black, the film devolved into a rather insipid version of Running Man...with lots of doors. Yeah, cuz the doors let you move around sort of behind the scenes, between the space of reality as it were. Unfortunately, the film doesn't show you any of the space between the space. Instead, we just see our plucky hero and heroine enter a door in one place and - jump cut - exit a door someplace else. Not much to work with there. Then the whole thing ends so abruptly that I almost cracked a tooth on the rim of my soda cup.

In the pantheon of films made from P.K. Dick stories, The Adjustment Bureau ranks pretty near the bottom. Even the 1995 film Screamers had more on the ball that this one does. And as I said before, that's really too bad, because all of the right elements are there. It just needed a better screenplay, one that was a little more fleshed out, maybe a bit more philosophical, maybe one that actually had something worth saying in the end.

The Adjustment Bureau is rated PG-13 and has a runtime of 106 minutes, which is a long time to watch two people running.

True Grit (2010)

There's always a danger when you try to remake an iconic movie. Take King Kong for example. Every attempt to remake that classic landmark film has resulted in a colossal yawn fest. And the TV remake of Dr. Zhivago that came out a few years back? It lacked all of the romance and the sweeping vistas of the original David Lean film. But in True Grit, Joel and Ethan Coen have managed to pull it off. That's due in large part to the fact that they didn't just remake the film, they retold the story and re-imagined the characters. The original version with John Wayne was centered on John Wayne, as was any movie that he was in. The Duke had a larger than life persona, and he dominated every scene, towering over his co-stars, upstaging them even when he stood behind them. That original film was all about Wayne's character, Rooster Cogburn - the other characters were there simply to give him a reason to move.

In the new True Grit, the Coen brothers center the story on Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld), who is seeking revenge on Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin), the man who murdered her father. In this version, Mattie is no shrinking violet who's just along for the ride; instead, she's the driving force behind the action, pushing everyone on to the ultimate conclusion. She's smart, tough and resourceful. She wants Chaney killed, she wants Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) to help her, and she wants to be there to see that it gets done. The Rooster Cogburn of the Coen brothers' film bears no resemblance to the Duke's character. The earlier Rooster was a man of supposed vices (we never see them), a man of honor who always does the right thing. The Coens' Rooster is a filthy, foul-mouthed drunk, who'd just as soon kill a man than bring him in. Throughout most of the film, he's drunk, and he talks in a slurring growl, like he's less than half-awake. He only agrees to go after Chaney when Mattie promises to pay him. By the end of their adventure, though, these two form a bond that will last beyond the grave.

True Grit is a powerful film, shot against a stunning landscape, with a cast of incredible actors. Matt Damon was great as the arrogant Texas Ranger who wants to arrest Chaney and take him back to Texas to stand trial. Brolin is appropriately menacing as the vile Tom Chaney. And Hailee Steinfeld is magnificent as Mattie, a young girl trying to heard a bunch of caustic lawmen in the direction she needs them to go. The Coen Brothers paid close attention to period details right down to the way the characters speak - a very proper English with few contractions and little slang. You might call it Bible English for its formality. There is violence in the film, but it's never gratuitous; it's appropriate to the story of lawmen who practice their trade on the edge of the law and are often not much better than the criminals they are pursuing. In the end, once the bad guys have been dispatched and the violence has died down, True Grit shows itself to be a touching film about how a trying ordeal can bring disparate people together in everlasting bonds of love and respect.

True Grit is rated PG-13 and is available on DVD and Blu-ray.

Inception (2010)

Imagine what it would be like if you could enter somebody else's dreams. You could see their innermost secrets, their desires, their fears, their intentions, their demons. Now, imagine that you had the power to alter those dreams, to erase their demons. Or give them new ones. Would you go there? That's the central idea in Christopher Nolan's Inception, a mind-bending thriller about a near-future world where dreams can be shared and controlled. The story revolves around Cobb (Leaonardo DiCaprio). Cobb is a haunted man, a man on the run, a man who can't go home because he's wanted for the murder of his wife. Cobb makes his living by entering people's dreams and stealing their secrets, which he then sells to interested third parties. One day Cobb is approached by Saito (Ken Watanabe) and asked to do a job that is supposed to be impossible. Instead of stealing an idea, Saito wants Cobb to place an idea inside the mind of his main business rival, Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy). When Cobb refuses, Saito offers to erase Cobb's criminal record so that he can return home and see his children again. Cobb agrees, assembles his team and goes to work. Saito gets Cobb close enough to Fischer to enter his dreams, and Cobb and his crew drill down through one dream layer after another until they reach a point that is deep enough to plant an idea that Fischer will think is his own. There are only two problems: Fischer's mind has been trained to fight off a dream invasion, and Cobb's own secret demons threaten to derail the entire caper.

Inception is an intelligent movie with an incredibly complicated plot and truly mind-blowing special effects. Watching it, I was reminded of the novels of Philip K. Dick, where the characters are often unclear as to what is actually reality and what is simulation or dream or insanity. Inception plays with reality in the same way, until neither the characters nor we are sure of what is real and what is dream. In the end, Cobb washes up on the shores of Saito's subconscious, where a minute of real time feels like a 1,000 years in dream time. Will Saito believe that the reality he's constructed around himself is an illusion and follow Cobb back up to the real world? Would you believe someone if they told you that "everything you see or seem was but a dream within a dream?"

Inception is rated PG-13.