One of the great things about Star Trek, be it any of the series or many of the feature films, is
the way it has always put ideas at the forefront of its stories, valuing
philosophy and political science above action and swashbuckling. Even First
Contact, my absolute favorite of all the movies, found a way to work
some excellent action sequences into a film that was mostly about ideas and
really developed some of the characters.
A blog mostly dedicated to cinema (including both new and old film reviews; commentary; and as the URL suggests - movie lists, although it has been lacking in this area to be honest), but on occasion touching on other areas of personal interest to me.
Sunday, August 14, 2016
Saturday, August 13, 2016
The Bourne Ultimatum Movie Review
Matt Damon never smiles in The
Bourne Supremacy. I think that’s also true in The Bourne Ultimatum, which is the darker and slightly more
sinister installment in the trilogy. It picks up where the previous film left
off, after Bourne has tried to achieve some redemption by apologizing to the
young woman whose life he altered when he murdered her parents. Most of the
movie cleverly, it turns out, takes place between that apology scene and the
epilogue of The Bourne Supremacy in
which he calls Pam Landy and insinuates that he’s looking at her through her
office window.
The Bourne Supremacy Movie Review
If The Bourne
Identity was the grounded, relaxed version of an action spy film, then its
first sequel The Bourne Supremacy is
the next step in kineticism, ratcheting up the energy as Bourne remembers more
about his past and becomes more deeply embroiled in layers of cover-ups he
can’t understand.
It picks up two years after the events of the first film.
Bourne and Marie are hiding out in India until an assassin (Karl Urban) shows
up and accidentally kills Marie (Franka Potente) instead of Bourne. Meanwhile
in Berlin, Pamela Landy (Joan Allen), a CIA bureaucrat, is working a case to
uncover a mole within the organization. Someone is also setting up Bourne as a
rogue agent. The old Treadstone project that made Bourne has become Blackbriar.
Landy is kept at arm’s length by Abbott (Brian Cox, returning in his role as
the head of the Black Ops program).
Tuesday, August 9, 2016
From My Collection: The Bourne Identity Movie Review
I’m revisiting the original trilogy of Bourne Movies
after seeing Jason
Bourne. I guess that’s backwards, but the inspiration didn’t strike
until I found myself disappointed in the new movie. Seeing how frenetic the
editing was, I felt that Paul Greengrass had taken his style to an extreme. I
didn’t recall that the two he directed were similarly edited.
Cafe Society Movie Review
There’s not much left for Woody Allen to say in his
movies, is there? He’s already been walking the same ground for decades,
hitting the same themes and even repeating (or so it feels) zingers and
one-liners. After fifty plus films in as many years, how could he not? He puts
out a new movie every year like clockwork. Sometimes it’s as if he’s going
through the motions and occasionally he gives us something inspired, as with Midnight
in Paris or Blue
Jasmine. His latest is Café
Society, which is far better than the recent misfire of Magic
in the Moonlight but still falling short of genuine genius.
Saturday, August 6, 2016
Jason Bourne Movie Review
Jason Bourne’s story was told through a trilogy of films
that concluded nearly a decade ago. From The
Bourne Identity, which saw Matt Damon playing the title amnesiac trying to
figure out who he was, why people were trying to kill him, and how he was so
capable with his fists, his language, automobiles, and weapons, to the capper The Bourne Ultimatum in which he
remembers everything and handily exposes the CIA program that made him who he
was we saw Damon and director Paul Greengrass (for the two sequels) reinvent
the action spy thriller for the new millennium. Bourne’s story being complete,
the franchise attempted to skew in a different direction with Jeremy Renner
starring. Now Damon and Greengrass have reunited, I suppose catching on to the
popularity of series reboots that have cropped up all over Hollywood in recent
years.
Tuesday, August 2, 2016
Finding Dory Movie Review
The Pixar Animation Studio has been a little hit or miss
with their sequels. The two Toy Story
follow-ups are stellar, but Cars
2 doesn’t even measure up to its predecessor, which wasn’t great to
begin with. Monsters
University carried on the story in a really interesting way, going back
to show us how Mike and sully got where they were. It enriches Monsters, Inc. So who knew what to
expect with Finding Dory? The biggest
error of Cars 2 was the belief that a
great supporting character could be the centerpiece of a movie. Dory Added so
much to Finding Nemo and she was the
most beloved character there. But could her short term memory loss affliction
carry an entire movie?
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