If you can set aside your belief system for a movie that tries its hardest to be believable, you will enjoy Gus Van Sant’s (Good Will Hunting, Milk) Promised Land. The film takes on a highly controversial topic and an issue that will continue to be discussed more and more in the near future. Because the subject is so contentious and so important, it seems highly unlikely that just two natural gas company executives, played by Matt Damon (The Bourne Identity, The Departed) and Frances McDormand (Fargo, North Country), would be the sole representatives trying to win over a rural town to vote for their company to move in and start drilling their farms.
Continue reading Promised Land (2012)
Category Archives: Matt Damon
The Adjustment Bureau (2011)
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.
True Grit (2010)
I am the first to admit that I am not as big a fan of Joel and Ethan Coen-directed movies as most people are. While I did enjoy Fargo (1996) and A Single Man (2009), I wouldn’t say I liked Miller’s Crossing (1990) and Barton Fink (1991). While I thought No Country for Old Men was pretty good, it was not close to being the best movie from 2007. Then there are the other Coen-directed movies I would prefer to see. These include Burn After Reading (2008), The Ladykillers (2007), Intolerable Cruelty (2003), or O Brother, Where Art Though? (2000). I appreciate a good Western. Once True Grit was nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award, it became a no-brainer that I saw the movie, despite my reservations about the Coens.