The Adjustment Bureau
Director: George Nolfi
With: Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Anthony Mackie, John Slattery, Terence Stamp
Loosely adapted from Philip K. Dick’s paranoid oeuvre, the story is part Matrix (the good first film) and part love story. David Norris (Damon) is a rising politician in New York who is prone to sophomoric lapses. After losing a senate run, he meets Elise (Blunt), a dancer in one of those downtown modern troupes. They hit it off, and the Bureau, which is a shadowy group of aliens directing human behavior, contrives to keep them apart, because it does not jibe with their master plan. Alas, the agent tasked with preventing a further meeting (Mackie) literally sleeps on the job, and they meet again.
Norris works so hard to screw up the plan, about which he knows nothing, that an agent (Slattery) decides to let him in on the truth. When Norris refuses to go along, they send their most powerful agent (Stamp) to set things right. Only, the agent who screwed up feels bad for Norris and works to help him.
I really enjoyed this movie. Blunt has become one of my favorite actors, and she can light up a movie on her own. The love story works, Damon is terrific, and all the other roles are well-cast and acted. Not perfect, but very good.
B+
The Housemaid (South Korea 2010)
Director: Sang Soo-im
With: Jeon Do-yeon, Lee Jung-jae, Seo Woo, Ahn Seo-hyeon
A re-make of a 50-year-old film that was a scandal in its time. I am told this is a tamer version of the story.
A new nanny/housemaid (Jeon) causes the worst impulses to emerge in a very rich household, causing vicious and homicidal acts, and sexual power games amounting to rape. The husband (Lee) is a sexual predator, his pregnant wife (Seo) is a spoiled brat, and her mother a schemer with no scruples. There is also a young daughter (Ahn) who loves the housemaid and is her only friend in the house.
There is also an older servant in the house who provides backstory for us and the new nanny.
The ending is flamboyant and unconvincing, but the story works up to then. If overwrought psychological melodrama is your taste, enjoy. I thought it was okay.
B-
Beastly
Director: Daniel Barnz
With: Alex Pettyfer, Vanessa Hudgens, Peter Krause, Lisa Gay Hamilton, Neal Patrick Harris, Mary-Kate Olsen
A pale, denatured version of Beauty and the Beast, with the dramatic heart cut out of it, and replaced by a Disney-channel love story. Kyle (Pettyfer) is a smug, vain Manhattan private-school boy with a pompous, rich and uncaring father (Krause). A witch in his school (Olsen) puts a spell on him because he is such a jerk, and he becomes “ugly,” that is, he becomes bald, scarred and tattooed, with odd features looking like someone poured liquid solder on his face.
Daddy banishes him to Brooklyn (horrors!) in the care of a housekeeper (Hamilton) and a blind tutor (Harris).
I looked at this guy and decided that anyone who looks like him would never spend a night alone in New York. He would be invited out constantly and women would throw themselves at him. But, he is The Beast.
Lindy (Hudgens) is Beauty. A schoolmate of Kyle’s who was not impressed with him when he was pretty, and therefore interesting to the shallow Kyle, falls in with him when her drunk father screws up. She does not know that he is Kyle. Ahem.
In the original story, Beauty falls in love with the Beast, but betrays him and steals a rose from his garden (here, a rooftop greenhouse), causing a near-fatal reaction in the poor critter.
This entire part of the story is gone, rendering the story as simply insipid, or exactly what we would expect from the source. Hudgens, never known for her range, is adequate. Pettyfer does okay. Harris is his usual breath of fresh air as the wise-ass tutor, and Hamilton a sympathetic character. Krause’s character is a real jerk, and he nails it.
For Disney Channel devotees only.
C-