As I started watching The Adjustment Bureau, I was surprised to see it was based on a short story by Philip K. Dick. I then spent the first ten minutes of the movie trying to think of all of the novels and short stories written by Dick that were made into movies. The list is massive and includes hits like (Minority Report, Blade Runner, A Scanner Darkly), misses like (Imposter, Next, Screamers), highly overrated movies (Total Recall), and highly underrated movies (Paycheck). I wouldn’t put The Adjustment Bureau in any of these categories. It was a moderate hit ($62 million domestically, $128 million worldwide) based on a $50 million budget. It earned a 72% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It was more a hit than a miss, but it certainly was no Minority Report or Blade Runner. Another interesting fact about Dick was that for every movie/short story, he wrote that was made into a movie, he wrote 15-20 times as many that were not made into movies. Philip K. Dick was, in his day, to the science fiction genre what Stephen King is to the horror genre today.
Category Archives: Science Fiction
Melancholia (2011)
After being thoroughly disappointed by Terrence Malick’s tone poem The Tree of Life, I was hesitant to watch Melancholia after watching its similar artistic trailer and hearing comparisons between the two movies. However, unlike The Tree of Life, which I went to see thinking would be a good movie, I decided to view Melancholia because some were calling it the best performance of Kirsten Dunst’s (Spiderman, The Virgin Suicides) career. While Dunst was deserving of the praise, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed the experience of Melancholia.
Thor (2011)
I don’t know enough about the Thor story coming in, so there were parts of this movie when I wasn’t as confused as I was surprised. I saw Thor after seeing Captain America (even though Thor was released a few months ago). I liked the World War II storyline of Captain America. I also liked the mythology storyline of Thor. However, I was not a fan of the back and forth between and present day. I know that many probably liked this aspect of the movie, but I was so engrossed with the movie’s first 15 minutes that I didn’t want to leave this story to enter “the realm” of the present day.
The Green Mile (1999)
The Green Mile was Frank Darabont’s (The Mist, The Majestic) first movie following The Shawshank Redemption, a riveting prison movie that has found a permanent spot on many critics and movie fan’s top ten of all-time lists. The expectations were high for The Green Mile, if not altogether unrealistic. Like The Shawshank Redemption, this movie was set almost exclusively in prison. Like The Shawshank Redemption, this movie was based on a Stephen King novel. Like The Shawshank Redemption, this movie was set somewhere in middle America, reasonably close to the time frame of World War I, though neither of these movies ever really talks about any war. The Green Mile was set in 1932, while The Shawshank Redemption was set in 1946. The expectations for The Green Mile might have been unrealistic. I say this because of the reasons mentioned above, but also because it starred Tom Hanks (Forrest Gump, Philadelphia), Hollywood’s #1 leading man at the time, who was fresh off of receiving his 5th Academy Award Nomination for Best Actor after his performance in Saving Private Ryan. While The Green Mile is not as good as The Shawshank Redemption (my favorite film of all time, at the time of this review), it is still an incredible movie that everybody should see at least once.
The Crazies (2010)
I had one primary reason for watching this movie: Timothy Olyphant was the star. Olyphant was an actor I had not even heard of one year ago. F/X had a new show this season called Justified, and Olyphant was the star. I gave the show a chance. It hooked me from the first scene in the first episode. There are many reasons why I like the television show, but one of those is Olyphant. He plays the role of US Marshall well. So, I have been looking back at Olyphant’s filmography and saw he had the leading role in The Crazies. I like Olyphant, and horror movies generally perk my interest, so checking this film out was a no-brainer.