Wednesday 19 February 2014

Freeview film of the day : wednesday 19th of February

The Adjustment Bureau (2010 101min.) [Film4 9.00pm &+1]

Romantic sci-fi drama starring Emily Blunt and Matt Damon. A seemingly random series of events brings ambitious politician David Norris together with ballet dancer Elise Sellas, with whom he falls in love. But was their meeting down to chance, and are there now supernatural forces conspiring to keep them apart?

Based on a Philip K.Dick short story - there's an awful lot of running about and some very clever visual effects but somewhere along the line they forgot to build any of the tension, surprise, suspense or sense of wonder that's in the source material into the film.

It's very compotent and the leads put in a good shift (especially Emily Blunt who continues to be under valued by Hollywood for some reason) but there's something essential missing from the finished work.

it's a shame and something of a missed opportunity, however it's still a perfectly watchable film thanks to the visual style, the likeable lead actors and John Slattery from Mad Men.



The Straight Story (1999 106min.) [C4 1.45am thursday &+1]

Road movie based on a true story, starring Richard Farnsworth. In 1994, Alvin Straight, a 73-year-old widower, sets out on a journey from Laurens, Iowa, to Mt Zion, Wisconsin, to make peace with his ailing brother. Denied a driver's licence, Straight uses the only means of transport available to him - his 1966 John Deere motorised lawnmower.

David Lynch's beguiling and whimsical film tells the based-on-true-events story of Alvin Straight (a superb performance by the Hollywood veteran Richard Farnsworth) who travels from Iowa to Wisconsin perched on his sit-down lawnmower to visit his ailing brother.

Along the way Straight meets people whose lives are in various degrees of turmoil and attempts to help them by the use of the wisdom of his age and his downhome philosophy.

Lynch leaves aside his normal mind warping visual and narrative tricks to make a remarkably straight-forward film that's gentle and rooted in character, landscape and events, while still throwing in enough bonkers genius to remind us that he's there.

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