Wednesday, September 05, 2007

Some Great Movies

With the Labor Day weekend, I watched a few more movies. I added them to the full thread here.

The Bourne Ultimatum (8.5/10): The Bourne movie trilogy is probably one of the best of my generation (barring The Lord of the Rings trilogy). It takes the archetype of James Bond, removes all the gimmicks, adds a ton of grit, and pours on the badassery. I prefer Supremacy and Identity to Ultimatum, but Ultimatum only barely trails those two. Again, you get a smart, visceral, real feeling action movie that doesn't pull any punches. The only thing keeping this movie from surpassing the first two is a weaker than expected climax. It is the big reveal and I didn't feel as if it was all that big, even though it answered the question Bourne had been asking since the start of the first movie--"Who am I?"

Fracture (6.5/10): I had high hopes for this movie and even when it was over I wanted to like it, but I just couldn't warm up to it. Both Anthony Hopkins and Ryan Gosling turn in good performances. The movie keeps you interested. The dialog is well written (if a little over dramatic towards the end). However, the plot has some pieces that really irked me, such as not being able to really pull all the pieces of the movie together until the big reveal (not all of the clues are made available to the viewer). Also, the first part of the film was pretty slow moving and the subplot of Gosling's character and his new boss was pretty terribly written. However, the movie is entertaining if you don't think too hard.

Marie Antoinette (6/10): What's the point of this movie? Really, I'm still trying to figure it out. The whole thing was basically a biopic about Marie Antoinette that lacked any substance. Sure, you saw what her life was like, but without getting any insight into the character or meaning from learning about her. The whole movie, as pretty as it was, felt hollow.

Sunshine (9.5/10): This is easily one of the better sci-fi movies I've seen in ages. There are not nearly enough sci-fi movies hitting the cinema today, and this one was hard enough to track down as its release was pushed back multiple times and then it was only released to a limited amount of theaters, so when a sci-fi movie does get released it's a heck of a treat to have it be this good. As opposed to most recent sci-fi films, Sunshine is a tense, smart, and somewhat hopefully depressing movie. It feels real. And that is essential to having a good sci-fi movie. The tone throughout the movie is very similar to what I got from The Fountain. A sense of hopelessness permeates the characters, but within that hopelessness embodied in the characters is a collective hope for something better, beyond the characters. Danny Boyle has given us this year's sci-fi favorite.

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