I am always intrigued that my favorite time of year for movies in the last few years is the brief time right after the Academy Awards when some amazing and surprising movies suddenly emerge. I skipped Black Swan, True Grit and the rest because the whole thing just bored me to tears. The award show itself was amazingly and shockingly an utter snooze. But wait- get out of the house and the studios are releasing films that got bumped by the pompous pap of award season and are actually fun, entertaining and real cinema experiences. Which brings me to The Adjustment Bureau. I saw this in a packed theater full of people hungry for a real movie, and they were not disappointed. Even though the MATRIX and some other blockbuster type sci-fi films have attempted to kill the genre completely with their bombastic special effects over kill, nothing should stop you from enjoying this little gem of a film. Shot in glorious color, the film uses NYC as a setting. This in itself is a cinematic tour de force that will keep any true movie fan glued to the screen, trying the guess the actual settings. And even though a number of elements are slightly off kilter including the chemistry between the two leads, there is a quiet and beautiful poetry to almost every scene. What it boils down to is that you have to admire the guts of a movie that can go this route in the wake of similar films with massive budgets and a lot more techno blitz. This film can take a simple scene in a parking garage and meld it to a plot line that has just enough Dickinson twists to make it all worth our time. I just have to say "praise the lord and pass the popcorn." One more award season is shot to hell and now the fun begins. If you miss this you miss the true "awards" real cinema fans live for. This is best little film that is a blast without bombast.
Review of The Adjustment Bureau
