Knives Out

Rian Johnson continues to show the world why his is a fantastic director and that the Last Jedi and Looper where not flukes. With the thought and ingenuity that when into this film, it is a real wonder that they were able to pull it off so masterfully. It is a true whodunnit that will have you guessing until the very end. I often try to figure out or guess the outcome of films before they happen as my namesake will suggest and even I, the great Sherlock Holmes was off the mark. And what this film does that even my own films have failed to do in the past is set up the ending with quite obvious hints to the perpetrator that if the audience is truly looking for they can see. It does not take a genius of high IQ to pick up on small minuscule details that are not even shown to the audience. And that is what truly makes a good mystery film. Is it believable and upon second viewing the audience can see how the crime was committed in real time vs the reveal in the end.

 Daniel Craig puts in a truly phenomenal and hilarious performance as Beniot Blanc, a private investigator who is mysteriously hired to investigate the suicide of a famous mystery writer. It is wonderful to see him play off of Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon and Chris Evans as the spiteful children/grandchildren looking for their inheritance. It is a true wonder to see him interact with the coming out party for Ana De Armas who plays the dutiful nurse caught up in the family drama. De Armas has been relatively unknown until now and should not be forgotten again. She easily takes center stage in the film and uses her compatriots to elevate her status. Usually with such a stacked cast, the least known actor is relegated to looking foolish or out of their league. This is not the case in Knives out and De Armas even puts a few of her colleagues to shame. Knives out delivers on all fronts and could not have been a better response to all the Star Wars haters that were calling for Johnson's head.

This easily earns an A+ and I would consider it one of the best films of the year.

Joker

Joaquin Phoenix brings out a very dark, very powerful portrayal of Arthur Fleck aka Joker and the film itself holds up an ugly mirror to the world reflecting its inexplicable treatment of mental health and marginalized society. Fleck is trying to make it as a stand up comedian but can only get jobs as a call for hire clown. Even in the close quarters of his fellow misfit clowns, Arthur is an outsider. he talks to himself, has a condition where he laughs uncontrollably at random and goes home to his frail mother whom he is the sole provider. We get a deep look at the Gotham before Batman and see how things could have gotten so bad. This is only a possible case as our narrator for the film is Moody, who is a self described moody schizophrenic, which makes him unreliable at best and outright wrong at worst. Robert DeNiro enters the scene as Murray Franklin, a talk show host who Arthur Idolizes with this mother. We are continuously shown clips of the show and Arthur slowly has his perfect image of Franklin shattered. It is amazing what kind of sympathy that Todd Phillips is able to muster from the audience for a character that we already know will become deplorable with his actions. Phillips goes after many marginalized groups in the mentally ill, the poor, the taken advantage of, the children taking care of the parent. The audience can even feel sympathy for those treating Arthur poorly. In one scene in particular, Arthur is attempting to entertain a child on a city bus. His mother sees this and immediately overreacts telling him to leave her child alone. Based on everything surrounding the altercation one can feel sympathy for the mother with the utter filth depravity we see in Gotham, one would be suspect to a random older man making faces at their child. We only know it is an overreaction because we have seen what Arthur is truly like.

While I think that the argument that Joker glorifies violence and is a dangerous film for society is over blown, I do think it is a necessary conversation to have. Unlike the John Wick films which are also Ultra violent, Joker's main protagonist is not hero and never will be. To think that these two films are in the same wheel house is absurd. Joker builds off of all the pent up anger and rage that we feel today towards the ultra rich and gives it an outlet in Thomas Wayne. The film almost feels like what would have happened if Occupy Wall street had gone horrifically wrong. John Wick asks what would happen if a good guy hitman decided to burn down a hidden assassin order. Joker should be analyzed for its portrayal of society and the question it asks of does society create it's own monsters. John Wick should be enjoyed for fun and pure amusement.

Joker easily earns an B+ for its view of society and how we need to reexamine our current situation.

Darkest Minds

Disclaimer: I have not read the darkest minds trilogy. I have gotten a brief overview so I know what happens but did not get emotionally invested in the novels. Having said that, and knowing the move differs greatly from the novel, it still boggels my mind how people can hold certain YA movies to such different standards than others. This is a perfectly serviceable film, it is not great but neither is it awful as many have described it. It is a perfect shot at it's target audience, YOUNG ADULTS!! Of which I am not one, so when this film doesn't hit exactly where I want it too, I remember it is not specifically aimed at me. This is also a great case of a young woman of color taking the forefront of a movie series that everyone claims to want but then trashes when it' s not perfect. Why give the Twilight series or the divergent series such good will when they are not very good and The Darkest Minds could easily stand about e any of those films? Is it because it those films had a bigger following as books? Or they are backed by bigger studios? All I can say is we adult critiques seriously need to look in the mirror when we are smashing an attempted at something new before it even gets out of the gate. The one criticism of Darkest Minds is that they criminally under use Gwendoline Christie. She could have been so much more than a random bounty hunter. She's Captain Phasma for goodness sake!!! I digress. A fine movie for a fine afternoon. B-

P.S. A+ for the of Mice and Men Lenny rabbit schene that most of the you get generation won't understand but for us English enthusiasts was a horrifyingly aweso.e delight

Mission Impossible: Fallout

Mission Impossible: Fallout, let's see how many cool stunts Tom cruise can do and call it a movie.

Unpopular opinion alert, I did not like the new mission Impossible. How can everyone be taken by a series do extreme stunts that are tied together I a loose plot that tried to be clever but is constantly falling all over itself. While it is impressive the amount and type of stunts that Tom cruise performs, a good movie they do not make. Seeing cruise jump out of a plane and high pressure skydive is cool, but it would absolutely not happen when they are jumping into a thunderstorm, no matter how important the objective is. It actually shows how dumb the government is if they are not keeping track of the weather and are suddenly surprised by incliment weather. And another cool stunt is when he so climbing a rope to get to a flying helicopter. When he reaches the copter, just to ad tension, he falls all the way back down to the bottom of the rope so he can climb up again. This is all despite there being a timeline on how saving the world. There seems to be a running theme with this set of films where the directors simply ignore basic passage of time and how long it takes for people to do things. It is also impossible to maintain the suspension of disbelief when the overall theme of this movie is that Ethan Hawke is THE ONLY person who can ever save the world. If he is not around, bad things happen. But the true question is, how many times can the government disavow a man and then take him back after he goes against their orders. I am sorry but that is not how government works. Maybe they do it once or even twice but eventually he would be viewed as expendable and let go. You can't just be Tom Cruise and constantly be given the benefit of the doubt. While this would be a fine action film if you looked at it as a stand alone film with no past or future, one cannot discount all of the baggage the previous films bring into the film. Sadly can only give Mission Impossible a C and hopefully it will be the last of the series.

Allied

Allied

The movie that is rumored to break up Branjalina does not live up to the hype. While it is an intriguing historical drama set in the middle of World War II, the famed love story is not developed enough for me to believe. Brad Pitt plays Max Vatan, a Canadian allied spy who is dropped in to Casablanca to meet up with Marianne Beausejour (Marion Cotillard), a French Resistance fighter. Their task is to assassinate the German Ambassador to Morocco in under 10 days. The odds of their survival are low and the stress pushes them together. There are three noticeable moments when the film makers put effort into selling that the couple might be falling in love. None of which warrant Pitt’s abrupt turnaround from his earlier feelings that emotions cause people to make mistakes and die. His sudden proposal of Marianne coming to England and marrying him had me thinking it was some sort of plot twist later on and all part of the allied spy network but (SPOILER ALERT) it’s not. The whole thing had me wanting to love the film but by the ending feeling disappointed. The biggest concern with the film is that the entire premise is that Max and Marianne are deeply madly in love. When you can’t set that up in the first half-hour of buildup, there is something wrong. Eliminate the first quarter outside of England and the film increases in likability by tenfold. Pitt and Cotillard both put in excellent performances especially when the tension rises. The tension is constant throughout the film, just when you get a small reprieve from the central narrative, a subplot tense moment is hurled at you keeping you in suspense until the tension cranks back up in the main story-line. The viewer is never given the typical levity throughout the film to ease the adrenaline and being that it is a drama thriller and not an action thriller, this can get in the way of the enjoyment of the film. It just seems to drag itself along quite a bit, continuously finding minor ways to keep the pressure level high. Other than those issues it is a fine period piece, paying incredible attention to detail and giving a small insight on the German Blitz. 1 pipes out of 4.

The Accountant

The Accountant

With a boring name, The Accountant delivers on the action and intrigue. One of the better action flicks of the year, Ben Affleck rebounds after the dud of Batman V Superman to remind us he still has the skills. While the plot can be a stretch at its convenience at times, once one removes the stigma of the improbability of an autistic man becoming an accountant for the black-market kings of the world, it makes a lot of sense. The film follows Christian Wolfe (Ben Affleck) a heavily autistic accountant raised by a militaristic father who felt his autism was a crutch. Through brutal lessons and overexposure to triggers, Wolfe is turned into a high functioning autistic machine. Now a well-known in some circles as accountant for the underworld, cooking the books for mafia bosses, dictators and the like, he keeps a low profile as a small business tax consultant. Things go sideways when he is asked to uncool the books of a Private prosthetic company about to go public. Anna Kendrick plays the naive CBA who unintentionally found the error that brings Wolfe in to investigate and sets the whole drama in motion. There are plenty of things that are predictable in the film but they are all good natured and if you’re not paying attention they may seek up on you. You may just be too involved in the story to worry about what's coming next as I was. When Hollywood needed a solid action film to remain relevant, they have found it with the Accountant. Sometimes it’s best to go back to the basics and go with what you know. 3 pipes out of 4.

Captain Phillips

3 ½ pipes out of 4

Tom Hanks is back in true form with his brilliant portrayal of cargo freighter captain Phillips whose ship is taken over by pirates. Jumping right into the controversy, yes there probably are many inaccuracies and maybe Phillips was not as heroic as he is portrayed in the film but that does not take away from the film itself. As a disclaimer in every movie similar to Captain Phillips, they state that they are BASED on true events. They do not say that it is all true; they simply take the idea of the events and they hollywoodize it. If Paul Greengrass had portrayed the actual events of the pirate hijacking, he wouldn’t have a very interesting film. With what he did portray, he has an extremely interesting film. Tom Hanks plays the titular character and is the biggest name in the film rightfully deserving the acclaim that is coming his way but as the Golden Globes showed, () has a shocking break out role as the Somali Pirate Captain. What Greengrass does with the portrayal or the Somali pirates completely took me by surprise. He still shows them as the main villains of the movie but he shows how they got to the position that they are in and almost makes us feel sorry for them, almost. This depiction of Somali Pirates may change the mind of many on how they are perceived; it certainly has changed my view. The true meat of the film doesn’t come until the last 45 to 30 minutes when Hanks is trapped in the small rescue dingy with the pirates in close quarters. The best acting that I have ever seen comes from Hanks in the final three minutes of the film. It is compelling and truly heartbreaking. Another fantastic film created by director Paul Greengrass and Tom Hanks.

White House Down

2 ½ pipes out of 4

Olympus Has Fallen, take 2. More takes generally create better results and that is definitely the case here for White House Down outperforming Olympus Has Fallen. Roland Emmerich takes the idea of having the White House hostilely taken over and makes it feasible. Unlike Olympus, who uses brute force to take the White House, Emmerich uses espionage and betrayal what takes down the defenses of our nation’s most defended building. From the trailer it appeared as though Jamie Foxx and Channing Tatum would be cracking jokes at inappropriate times during a massive crisis but it turns out that the jokes made sense during the time and defused the tension building, allowing the audience to stay invested without tensing all the way through the film. This only works because the high tempo action and comedy are maintained all the way through the film with no lulls until the films crescendo. At first glance White House Down is just another over the top action comedy when in reality it pays homage to the classic films in the genre. Emmerich pays direct tribute to such film as The Rock and the lethal weapons series while containing almost every cliché possible from the brilliant hacker to the betrayed soldier. The cliché’s work well together but there are a few loose ends that where hastily tied up with no real thought keeping White House Down off the top shelf but it is pretty darn close.

Olympus Has Fallen

1½ pipes out of 4

Olympus has fallen and it can’t get up. Even with an all star cast of Morgan Freeman, Aaron Eckhart, Gerard Butler and Ashley Judd, it just can’t seem to get off the ground. Besides the fact that the premise that the White House could ever be taken in 15 minutes is ridicules, Olympus Has Fallen appears to be a bad rip off of the original Die Hard. It is complete with all of the action movie clichés, with the classic double cross, there being only one person that can save the day and a hard nosed general who hates the protagonist for being better at life than he is. There are so many similarities it could be viewed as a Die Hard reboot to the naked eye. Another interesting fact is that while Morgan Freeman makes a descent president, he continues the trend in Hollywood if having a black man as the acting president whenever there is a horrible tragedy, remember deep impact? The 5^th Element? 2012? Aaron Eckhart plays the original president who gets taken hostage and has to show his bravado of everyone else can give up their codes to the nukes because he won’t give up his. Since he won’t give up his there is no point for others to resist, by this logic the fate of the entire world rests on one man when it could have remained on 3. Ashley Judd makes a brief appearance as the First Lady until tragedy strikes and Gerard Butler, head of secret service security detail to the president, is demoted to a desk job. Soon after, all hell breaks loose at the White House and Butler is called upon to unleash is inner BAMF. One thing that the film does have going for it is that Rick Yune does a wonderful job portraying a genius yet insane villain with realism, going so far as executing a hostage on camera after a failed attempt by the Navy Seals to retake the White House. The action is relatively nonstop which does help disguise the discrepancies making this a nice film to curl up on the couch on a Saturday night with popcorn and the $1 price of red box. 

Zero Dark Thirty

2 ½ pipes out of 4

Kathryn Bigelow has created another Hurt Locker only under a different name, more realistic and documentary style. She does a decent enough job chronicling the events that led to Osama Bin Laden’s Assassination, not in the thriller format that is advertised but in a scripted documentary that the audience already knows the ending of. The audience is introduced to the film with the audio of the final moment phone calls from the Twin Towers on September 11^th 2001; they are then thrust into a CIA torture scene 3 years later still trying to find Bin Laden. Zero Dark Thirty has taken many shots from the military in how it portrays torture, understandably so because the film appears to glorify torture and declare it a necessary evil to fight terrorism. Jessica Chastain plays Maya; a CIA agent who becomes hell bent on finding Bin Laden and somehow happens to be in every key meeting regarding him. She dedicates herself from her deployment into the field until she sees Bin Laden’s body on a gurney demonstrating the drive of one person and the political bureaucracy that governs the CIA. Even though being designated a thriller, Zero Dark Thirty is more of a drama until Seal Team 6 enters Bin Laden’s secret compound. There the audience becomes part of the team not knowing what to expect and anticipating that fateful moment of discovering Bin Laden. To close the film, Bigelow gives the audience a scene of relief, security and uncertainty on what direction to go next. While Zero Dark Thirty is being heavily favored for the best picture at the Oscars to me it failed to live up to such high expectations and is too similar to The Hurt Locker to get my vote but it remains a decent film.

Taken 2

½ pipe out of 4

Sometimes sequels don’t need to be made and when it comes to Taken 2, this is a definitely the case. When a movie like the original Taken sits on the movie company shelf for 2 years before being released, you can tell it’s not movie gold. That is what happened with Taken but it was released at the perfect time when there were no other action films in theaters and it did huge. You’d think that the movie company would count this as a win and move on. Oh no, not in this day and age. Any time movie companies see dollar signs they immediately think sequel, even if those dollar signs were just dumb luck. Don’t get me wrong; I loved Taken just as much as the next guy but Taken 2 is a whole other story. The movie looses all of the emotional edge from the first film and it looks like Liam Neeson has done this all before, which he has, and simply goes down a checklist of what to do when your wife and daughter are kidnapped. Throw in a number of other inconsistencies and the fact the Neeson rescues his family in less than 12 hours make this a forgettable movie.

Skyfall

1 pipe out of 4

Skyfall falls flat. Note to MGM studios, the makers of James Bond, when you are making a prequel series of the greatest MI6 agent of all time, remember that things are happening before the 30 odd other Bond films. So to have in your chronologically 3^rd Bond movie, a burnt out James Bond does not make any sense. You are supposed to be showing us how Bond became a BA. You did this adequately in Casino Royal and got worse in Quantum of Solace but still okay, in Skyfall you are downright awful. To supposedly start Bond off as an old burnt out agent DOESN'T WORK! Daniel Craig may be 44 and can look his age when he isn’t cleaned up but through the magic of cleaning and a little bit of makeup he looks like he could honestly be in his late 20’s or early 30’s. USE THIS! Don’t give him the problems of an old washed out spy when he needs to be the epitome of awesome. Another thing that I am starting to get sick of in Bond films is the complete disregard and degradation of women. I understand that Bond is a womanizer and with that comes a certain amount of disgrace but simply to kill them off to get them out of the movie is starting to get really old. We are in the 21^st century for goodness sake; I think we can do better. The one bright spot of the film was the acting of Javier Bardem who plays the rogue MI6 agent that has a vendetta against M (Judi Dench). His playful yet sinister attitude and brilliant planning make him wish he had more screen time especially since he isn’t introduced to the film until nearly half way through. Bardem’s masterful work and everyone else’s lackluster performances actually get you to start rooting for the villain and completely understanding why his is doing the vile things he has done. The attempted back-story into Bond’s Childhood asks more questions than it answers and leads to the anticlimactic reveal of the meaning of Skyfall, leaving a sour taste in your mouth. This Bond film is well worth the wait for Red Box.

Total Recall

½ pipe out of 4

Schwarzenegger out acting someone? Inconceivable right? Wrong. Colin Farrell is the man selected to modernize Arnold’s iconic role and does a horrible job. It did not help that he had an absolutely atrocious script to work with but it is his job to recognize good and bad scripts and he found a bad one. Jessica Biel continues her downward spiral of movie making by playing Farrell’s love rebel love interest while Kate Beckinsale makes a poor career choice by portraying Farrell’s wife. Len Wiseman of Underworld and Live free or Die Hard fame chose to direct the Total Recall remake while Kurt Wimmer of The Recruit and Equilibrium fame chose to write. Wimmer and Wiseman eliminated many iconic scenes for attempted modernization which did not add anything to the film he also removed a huge plot point only to replace it with a mashed up confusing alternative. Instead of a colony on Mars, there is a colony on earth that is one of two places on the earth that is inhabitable after nuclear war. Klatu (Bill Nighy) is no longer a mutant fighting for equality and freedom for mutants but just independence from the United Federation of Britain. Brian Cranston plays the evil Prime Minister who wants to destroy all the inhabitants in the colony for no discernible reason and wished to do so with synthetic robot guards, instead of the regular military. With this decision to eliminate a good portion of the plot of the original Total Recall, Wimmer appeared to create a list of things that are required to be in a Total Recall remake such as the three breasted prostitute, reference to divorce between Beckinsale and Farrell’s character. He subsequently proceeded to check them of in no discernible order. In the beginning of the film it appears to have promise with the new direction that the director chose to go but he was limited to be unable to divert to far of the original. With these limitations, Wimmer and Wiseman sink the remake into the nuclear wasteland that they created.

The Bourne Legacy

1½ Pipes out of 4

The action remains but the heart is gone. With Matt Damon removed from the Bourne series the logic and investment held by the audience has disappeared as well. Jeremy Renner attempts to continue the franchise made famous by Damon and puts forth a good effort but is not given a whole lot to work with plot wise. Renner is in the difficult part of his career where he has been pigeon holed and type casted as the next action star so was the logical choice for Damon’s replacement. This is a problem when the Bourne films have developed into more than just action films but acting and action films. It also does not help that the audience has built an emotional attachment to Jason Bourne only to have a fourth film that has almost nothing to do with him. There is the occasional reference to Bourne as being in New York with a news clip about his exploits but little more than that. For the most part of the film the audience is following the exploits of Aaron Cross, a bioengineered super soldier who is betrayed by his government. He then must go and rescue a doctor (Rachel Weisz) who has been overseeing his bioengineering who coincidentally has also been betrayed by the government. This then leads to the main plot of the film which actually appeared to be a sub plot but turned into the main which leaves the viewer incredibly disappointed at the end of the film because they were expecting more. The rest of the film follows a government official (Edward Norton) who is never really explained, only that he has top security clearance and he is in charge of the numerous programs spawned from Treadstone and Blackbriar. He is attempting to clean up the mess left by Jason and that means killing both Renner and Wiesz’s characters. The writer and director Tony Gilroy who also wrote the previous 3 Bourne films stated he likes that being the director means he gets to do the film his way but maybe he needed that input to make the movies good because  The Bourne Legacy doesn’t even come close to the other three films.

The Source Code

3 pipes out of 4

When going into The Source Code one expects an action thriller without great acting but entertaining. When you come out you are completely surprised in with the acting and message. The Source Code takes you on an emotional journey and question what is the cost of safety. Blackhawk Helicopter Pilot Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) wakes up in the source code with no memory how he got there but is told by his one link to the outside world mission controller Carol Goodwin (Vera Farmiga) that he is the only hope to find the culprit who bombed a commuter train in Chicago. He can find the culprit by using a government program called the Source Code which allows him to go back and live in the last 8 minutes of a person’s life who was on the train. The story appears completely predictable from the beginning but it turns you upside down with a completely different ending than predicted. The only real identifiable actor in this film is Jake Gyllenhaal but some may know Michelle Monaghan from Eagle Eye or Made of honor. Even without the big name actors this film brings expert acting exciting action into one great movie.

Hanna

2 pipes out of 4

Get ready for action and depression. Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) is  a secret CIA project that went wrong and her father (Eric Bana) takes her to the Arctic. Once she is ready Hanna is on a mission to kill CIA operative Marissa (Cate Blanchett) and Marissa is trying to capture Hanna. Twists and turns abound with an emphasis on the Brothers Grimm fairy tales. The fairy tales are Hanna’s one grip on a real life because she was raised in the Arctic since early childhood. Hanna is a very depressing movie because whenever a speck of hope arises for Hanna it is immediately crushed by the relentless Marissa who will do anything and kill anyone to find her. The mood is brought up with all the action that takes place throughout the film but don’t go to this movie expecting an ending where it all works out because you will be in for a surprise. There are also a couple of plot holes that need explaining near the end but not important enough to deter you from the movie. Hanna is a good action film similar to Salt in that it has good action but not the everybody’s happy ending.

Limitless

½  pipe out of 4 

Robert De Niro has made some pretty great movies during his acting career but as of late he has chosen bad movie after bad movie such as Righteous Kill, Little Fockers and now Limitless. The film also stars Bradley Cooper but I don’t expect much out of him as a lead role because the best movie he has done was about a bachelor party where he gets rooffied and can’t remember anything. Limitless follows the strife of a struggling author Eddie Morra (Bradley Cooper) who has writers block and his girlfriend just broke-up with him. He runs into a former acquaintance who offers him a miracle drug that lets him access all of his brain. He is immediately hooked and becomes incredibly successful until he runs into huge business owner Carl Van Loon (Robert De Niro) and he runs out of the drug. Limitless had an incredible similarity to Law Abiding Citizen but instead of rooting for the bad guy you are rooting against the good guy. Bradley Cooper’s character makes himself look like a douche and an idiot but at the end of the movie you’re supposed to like that he outsmarted De Niro. When it comes down to it you want Morra to fail and especially not get back together with his girlfriend after she takes the drug and realizes that it changes the person who takes it. The ending also leaves you with more questions than answers because in an epilog there are 12 months that pass where we don’t know what happens. It really says something when the best part of the movie doesn’t come from the movie itself but from the audience’s reaction to the realization that Morra will drink the blood of another human who has the drug in his blood system in order to get the drug.

Law Abiding Citizen

1 pipe out of 4

This is a terrible movie because it had me rooting for the bad guy through the entire film. The story begins with Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler) witnessing the brutal murder of his wife and daughter only to see the successful attorney Nick Rice (Jamie Fox) cut a deal with the leading man who flips on his partner. You feel for Clyde because he cannot understand why Rice would not prosecute both men to the fullest of the law. It appears that Rice only wants to get a conviction and not do the right thing. In this first part of the movie it appears that Clyde is the protagonist and Rice is the antagonist but suddenly they switch when Clyde takes the law into his own hands and begins killing everyone involved in the case that saw the man who butchered his family get only three years in prison. So apparently the viewer is supposed to feel for Rice now but for me I continued to want Clyde to win because he brought up all the things that are wrong with our system he was trying to fix it. Granted he went about fixing it in the totally wrong way but he still was showing us that we let killers and rapists free on plea deals every day. Law Abiding Citizen was not a total waste of my time because it had decent suspense and I genuinely thought that Clyde might win. There were also cool explosions and it had Gerard Butler as a total BAMF.

The Adjustment Bureau

3 pipes out of 4

If you are heavily religious person and not comfortable with seeing movies that question or are about god do not see this movie. Everyone else should defiantly see it. Matt Damon has done it again giving his adoring public another thriller. But don’t go expecting another Bourne because this one focuses more on the relationship between a New York congressman and a ballet dancer. The story follows David Norris (Matt Damon), a prominent bad boy New York congressman who chance runs into the girl of his dreams Elise Sellas (Emily Blunt) in a men’s bathroom. Was it Chance or fate? David has a checkered past and has lost both his parents and his brother before even getting to high school. He has become the youngest New York Congressman at age 24 and is now running for a Senate seat. Once after bumping into Elise, a group called the adjustment bureau says they are never supposed to see each other again which poses David and Elise with the question do they want to fight fate to stay together? At first glance, The Adjustment Bureau looks like an action packed thriller but actually is more of a romantic drama with big thrills thrown in throughout with a big finish. I have not found a movie that Damon has attached himself to that has not either done very well had a powerful message. He reunites with The Bourne Ultimatum screenwriter George Nolfi who makes his directing debut with this wonderful film.  Nolfi has shown that he is a talented screenwriter with such screenplays as The Bourne Ultimatum, The Sentinel and Oceans Twelve and he delivers again. This movie will leave you with thoughts in your head that you didn’t even know existed and question whether life is predestined or if we have a choice.