Yes, No, Maybe So: "The Five-Year Engagement"

Amir here with a new edition of Yes, No, Maybe So. Today’s film is The Five-Year Engagement from the Apatow production machine, starring Emily Blunt and Jason Segel, who also co-wrote the film. 

Yes...

• JACKI WEAVER EVERYONE! The Oscar-nominated Aussie surely deserves more demanding roles but at least she didn’t totally fade away as we feared, given her age and outsider status. The movie also has Mimi Kennedy who never fails to make me laugh out loud. After Midnight in Paris, this looks more than a bit like typecasting to me, but if she can find a way to be as funny as in In the Loop we’re in for big laughs.

•Jason Segel’s been having a good few years after he forgot Sarah Marshall. He’s actually proved to be a better comedy writer than an actor. His most recent feature is, of course, in theatres now (The Muppets) and it’s been extremely well-received. Can we assume his hot streak will continue?

No, Maybe So... and the trailer after the jump.

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DVDs. The greatest film I...

...almost never saw, or is it? Paolo here again. I'd normally be the first person to watch a movie that features attractive men wearing fedoras and Emily Blunt doing contemporary dance, but fate had other plans. But between The Adjustment Bureau's theatrical release and now, it was a movie that had a minor 'bucket list effect' on me. 

In one of its DVD extras 'Leaping through New York,' writer/director George Nolfi praises the city as an all around "magical place". But the film's visual version of New York is underwhelming and dour, since we mostly see colours like blue and grey and it seemingly takes place in perpetual dawn or autumn. That's how I felt the first time, although repeated viewings made me appreciate how the sunlight would hit on the upper half of the city's Metropolis-like art deco skyscrapers.

New York, as this film depicts is, makes its citizens feel anomic. We get this feeling specifically through the way the titular adjusters are depicted within the shots, as when four mid-level adjusters look out from a rooftop to countless windows in front of them. That image is essentially repeated when two adjusters Harry (Anthony Mackie) and Richardson (John Slattery) look out a window inside the bureau. A high angle long shot of the bureau's library before we see Harry thinking about one of his cases, David (Matt Damon) offers a similar feeling. The city is an overwhelmingly large frame for an internal and masculine struggle, as Harry becomes wary of how his job affects others. But maybe the film dwarfs the adjusters to highlight a part of their function, to have the least ripple effects, as invisible, microscopic, unnoticed.

David and his star crossed lover Elise (Blunt) are also lonely people without family...

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