The Bourne Ultimatum is the final film in a trilogy of films that I could really take or leave. Are their great moments in the trilogy? Yes, there are. But for me, it is a rare thing when moments make a movie–or series of movies for that matter. I tend to want a full experience. Luckily, this third installment in the adventures of Jason Bourne is my favorite thus far, which it earns it a stronger meview rating than the others would, though it is still not up there among the best of the best in the genre.

Frankly, it’s because of the ending. The ending in this film, involving Bourne and another agent, is really unbelievable to me; and in a way, ruined the excitement and build-up that had come before. This was really sad for me, because I had really enjoyed the movie up to that point. I guess this is just one of those movies that proves that a solid ending can make or break a story. Again, this is just me; and if others found the ending appropriate and solid, more power to you, I am glad you connect with this series and its resolution. It just didn’t do it for me.

That being said, The Bourne Ultimatum gets a 4. It’s a good movie that I enjoyed. It’s not my favorite thriller or spy flic, but it’s a fine way to pass 2 hours with a well-paced motion picture–the end kinda ruined all that came before it (for me at least), but it’s still a fun ride. Oh, and everything that took place in Morocco ruled.

Blade and I have a sordid history. I first saw the movie in high school, and I hated it because I thought it was lacking action. I don’t know what I was thinking…

I then saw it a second time with a group of friends, and I really enjoyed it, not because of the action, but because of the humor found through watching it with my buddies, since we all joked around ruing the course of the film. But Blade isn’t really a comedy.

I then saw Blade II at the recommendation of a friend with whom I had watched the first flic. I hated the second one. In fact, I hated it so much, it made really appreciate the first one (I Know, weird, huh?)

So, now I dig Blade. Alot. It’s the story of a uniique vampire, one who is half-succubi and half human, giving him all the power of the vampire with none of its weaknesses, less the bloodlust, which is as powerful as any weakness in a hero. The idea of good vampires, tortured souls of the night who fight their own kind in hopes of some sort of earned redemption or carthitic exorcism of self loathing, is a very appealing one to me. As a Christian, I kind of see myself as one lost, having been redeemed and seeking to better the world in some way as a result, so I can kind of relate to ideas underlying the Blade character. Plus, the movie is shot well; it’s paced like a tour de force hip-hop album, and while the ending is over-the-top, it’s about as true to comic-book-storytelling-form as any fan could want. For all of these reasons, I am giving Blade a five. It took a few viewings, but I got it.

NOTE: If you have this DVD or decide to rent it, you have to watch the special featurette regarding the history of vampire lore…it’s pretty much one of the best featurrettes I’ve seen on a DVD, and I recommend it for anyone into vampires.

This is a great movie. I know that it gets overshadowed by Pixar’s other projects, but A Bug’s Life is a very, very good film. Frankly, I would say it’s the most under appreciated of Pixar’s work. A Bug’s Life follows the story of an ant colony that hires “warrior” bugs to protect them from attacking cricket marauders; but the bugs they hire are not “warriors” at all, and hilarity ensues as a result.

See, that’s a clever story. Plus, the movie has many innovations as well. We get a male lady bug, a city made of trash, and a giant attacking monster–that from a human perspective is actually just a little bird. So the film also has an incredibly creative landscape. The characters are all fun, and many of them are unique. PLUS, plus, plus, plus, on top of this, the ant community comes together to build a giant model bird vehicle to battle the cricket attackers, which is awesome.

Storytelling. Creativity. Writing. What more does a film need? I don’t know. Heart? It’s got that too (a community unites to build a giant, drivable bird monster, remember). So, I’m giving A Bug’s Life a resounding 6. It’s fantastic. Seriously. In a fairly unbearable landscape of kids’ movies, A Bug’s Life stands out as not only a fun cartoon for the whole family but an exceptional piece of filmmaking.

Black Hawk Down is a boy playing with his G.I. Joes. That’s what it is. You have disposable dudes who get knocked off quick, others who get captured, and still others who survive everything they shouldn’t. The villains outnumber the heroes 20 to one, the heroes are locked in, and it’s nonstop action. For all these reasons, It’s a fun and entertaining piece of entertainment.

However, on the flip side, it’s also terribly confusing, shallow, and repetitive. I don’t now what director Ridley Scott was intending with this, but I am almost certain that it didn’t work. What did work was the stylized action of soldiers battling the faceless masses; but frankly, I don’t think that was his intention. In fact, I was torn because I had wished I cared more about these soldiers, the people they killed, the masses of Africans, this entire event, and all of its importance, but frankly I didn’t. I just had an entertaining time.

All that into account, I will say that Black Hawk Down if nothing else, is one of those films that I’ll have to explain every time someone asks my opinion, and I appreciate movies that require me to engage them with more than a simple, “yeah, it’s good.” or “No, i hate it.” response. Conversations about this movie I have in the future will probably sound something like this:

Friend, “Did you like Black Hawk Down?
C, “Yeah, but for all the wrong reasons. I felt like it was the best game of playing with army men and action figures I’d experienced in a long time, but it’s supposed to be more, I think.”

Then I’ll have to go into what I mean, which is basically what I wrote above. So I don’t know where I stand with it really. I mean, sure it’s great entertainment, but I don’t think that was the goal; and as a result, I don’t even know if I can call it a “good” movie. Can I? I suppose since it’s a meview, and I enjoyed it, I can–so I will. Black hawk Down gets a tentative 4 from me. I found the film to be entertaining and cool, but I think that it was supposed to be much more than that, and I missed it, so I have this shallow aching that I shouldn’t like the movie the way that I do. In fat, maybe I’m supposed to be repelled by it. Oh well, that happens some times.

Boiler Room is one of those movie I always liked but never loved. It’s an odd type of dramatic thriller, with the tension coming not from a conspiracy or serial killer but rather than fast and frenzied world of Stock brokerage.

The film stars Giovvni Ribisi as Seth Davis, a bright young man who runs a small game casino out of his Queens apartment. After a visit from an old friend who has found success as a Stockbroker at a small firm, however, Seth is recruited into the world of trading, selling, and rolling witht he punches–both from the market, his team leader, and his life.

It’s an imperfect movie; and like Fight Club kind of jumps the shark with a subplot that becomes the A-plot in act three. I’m not going to give away the revelation which changes the story from that of a rising star to a company scandal; but I will say that it was a bit of a disappointment. I wish the filmmakers had kept the story grounded in this new world they’d created. I would ahve liked them to have explored it further–treating the piece more like Scarface than Wall Street. It’s an artistic choice that felt easy but forced, which is sad given the ripe foundation and material we have for the first 2/3 of the film.

Taking all of that into account, Boiler Room gets a 4 from me. Though it’s third act plays out differently than I would have liked, the overall experience is an engaging and interesting ride, one worthy of multiple viewings.

Sorry, I know this Meview is long, but this is another one of those movies where I was really debating how I felt, so I ramble a bit.

Small, independent films have a lot of problems. Making a movie without money is difficult. You can’t afford to pay crew and cast for A-list quality production values. You can’t make any story you want because you don’t have the resources, legal pull, or other needs necessary to make it work. You are, by definition of being independent of the major system designed to create movies, limited (unless you’re a multi-millionaire like George Lucas or Mel Gibson).

Now, a solid director-producer team will know which scripts are within their scope, and they will gladly limit themselves to them. These teams usually turn out small, respectable pieces that are not only a nice break from the usual Hollywood fare but also great works unto themselves. Chasing Amy, Memento, Snatch, and Reservior Dogs come to mind. Some,who are particularly ambitious, will attempt to reach beyond their means and create something awful or sometimes (rarely, but sometimes) create something amazing. 6 times out of 10, however, the movies are mediocre at best, showcasing not only limited talent by directors but also short-sightedness, over self-awareness, and just plain prententiousness.

I put Behind the Mask into this last category. It’s an average outing from the Indy scene with a few good hits but a great deal of misses. The film is imbalanced, very self-aware; and in the end, completely and utterly disappointing. At least it was for me.

Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon takes place in an alternate reality–a reality in which Jason Vorhees (of Friday the 13th fame), Michael Myers (Of the Halloween films, and Freddy Kreuger (from Nightmare on Elm Street) are all nationally known murderers in the same way that Dahmer, Gein, and Manson are known in ours. In this fictional universe, there have been copycats and hacks that followed, but none have studied the art of serial killing, at least in a fictionalized Hollywood sense, as much as young Leslie Vernon, who plans to be the next great slasher killer in America. A team of graduate film students follow Leslie and interview him in hopes of discovering “the how” and, ultimately, “the why” of serial killing, only to become part of his viscious plan.

That premise carries the movie very well for two-thirds of its running time. The first act features an intro to Leslie himself, his homes, his friends, and his ambitions while the second act showcases his current plan to murder a group of young people. We are taken through the planning stages, meet mentors of serial killing, and learn a great deal about the amount of work that would be required for slashers to do what they do. It’s certainly not a subtle critique of the genre but is one that works thanks to the film’s villain, Leslie, who glamorizes the cliches and expectation of horror cinema as an important part of the human experience. He explains to the filmmakers that serial killers, in this alternate reality, choose to be who they are based on a desire to be the evil’s yin to good’s yang, because people need that for balance in the world.

This is an interesting take on the horror genre as a whole, and I was very satisfied by the first two acts of the film. The third act, however, wherein Leslie actually goes on his initial spree is not only by the numbers and suprisingly dull, but it’s supposed twists and surprises are telegraphed a mile-away; and once they are revealed, left me sighing ans saying, “I don’t believe this. What is happening?”, only not in a good way.

And that’s where the movie not only lost me, but made me look back on the rest of it with a bit disdain, asking myself, “Why did I bother with this?” Sure, I learned a few things about the genere I didn’t know. Yes, there were some devilishly clever moments. And I suppose that a movie that keeps me engaged for 2/3 of the time is good. BUT deconstruction usually requires an original ending, not a retreat to the ideas you just broke down, simply because they work. Or you know, maybe that’s the whole point, that horror cliches are so endearing because they work, DESPITE being overdone. If that is the point, I “got it”; but it’s a sad commentary on the movie that I disliked it and felt it could and should have been much better.

In all honesty, I am really on the fence on this flick. I feel as though can only give Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon a 3. I want to give it a 4 for those great first two-thirds; but the fact that the last act is such a disappointing, hackneyed trainwreck really gives me pause about saying I thought it was more than just “alright.” It’s my blog, and I can say what I want; but I really don’t know. It’s always safer to round down from the fence, so it’s a 3. Let this be a testament that, as far as this viewer is concerned, the last act and payoff MUST live up to the promise of the acts before it if a picture is going to work well–especially when it comes to a horror flic. I think that the first portion of the movie is entertaining enough to warrant a viewing but only for Horror fans who are ready for a fresh-turned-stale look at the genre.

Many children of the 1980s love Bloodsport, the tournament movie about the Kumite and Frank Dux famous victory over reigning champion Chong Li. It was inspriation for an entire generation to train and fight. And rightly so. Bloodsport is a fun time at the movies, with several montages–the primary tool of film grammar in the eighties–as well as comedic moments and fights aplenty. It’s maybe the second greatest tournament film after Enter The Dragon.

Featuring unique fighters with loads of personality despite having little to no dialogue, the film is an entertaining action extravaganza. It gives the audience the opportunity to meet characters with impressive skill and arrogance to match it, so that as much fun as it is to see them win, it’s equally as fun to see them lose. The film is a bit wieghed down by an unnecessary subplot involving agents trying to capture Van Damme, but because one of said agents is Forrest Whitaker, it’s tolerable. There’s also a bit featuring a reporter, and it is crap. She was uninteresting, and her relationship to Van Damme was just silly. There’s also an extended sequence with Van Damme as a boy, and it’s pretty much The Phantom Menace without the good parts. The movie would have benefitted much from just being about the tournament and its fighters alone.
While Bloodsport is arguably Jean Claude Van Dam’s strongest and most beloved picture, it’s got its flaws that weigh it down in parts. Still, it’s awesome. No doubt. I give it a 5.

Brother of the Wolf is the first French, martial-arts, monster-movie period piece I’ve ever seen, and it may be the best entry into its genre.

The film follows Jean Baptiste and his Native American companion Mani as they venture to a remote French province to investigate the deaths of several local women at the hands of a beast. The beast, an enormous wolflike creature, is apparently bullet-proof and spiritual in nature, haunting the province due to the libertarian ways of France’s present king. There’s a lot of surprises throughout the story, so I won’t get into too much detail, other than to say the film is chock full of surprises and brilliant fight sequences sure to keep even the most jaded genre fan interested–at least I think so.

There’s little in the film that has been seen elsewhere or seen as well as it is here, for that matter. The Native American character, played with reserved charm by Mark Dacoscos truly steals the show anytime he is put at the forefront of a scene and makes the most convincing argument for the beauty of Native American cutlure through his quiet wisdom, quick wit, and warrior’s spirit. He is a fascinating character and made me lament deeply the loss of Native American culture in the United States.

Beyond him, however, the other characters, of which there are many, are dynamic and well-rounded, each with their own secrets and mysteries. The story itself is interesting, unpredcitable, and starkly unsympathetic toward its heroes in ways one does not expect.

Brotherhood of the Wolf gets a very soild 6 from me. Not one of my all-time favorites, but certainly one of the best movies I’ve seen in any of the categories in which it includes itself.

WARNING: This film is a hard R for implied rape, brief nudity, sexuality, gruesome images, extended seuqences of violence, torture, and brief crude humor. Watch with caution of these factors.

What can I say about The Black Dahlia that hasn’t already been said about a thousand movies. It started well. It had a few very interesting moments. I liked some of the characters. Despite its faults, i fought through the whole movie trying to “get it”. In the end, however, I can just say that it was a mess, a big bloody mess.

The real Black Dahlia was a sensationalized murder case in 1950s Hollywood. Apparently, the unsolved murder, given its gruesome nature, completely shook the community to the core and has become part of urban mystery in Hollywood. IN fact, the real case of the Black Dahlia would have made for one fantastic flic. This movie isn’t it though, not so far as I could tell. It follows two cops who are on the case, and its focus is how they are affected by it. Meh.

Frankly, the movie is a huge letdown. Even from the initial sequence in the first act, the structure is confusing, and while it gets better, the complications in it seem forced, contrived, and ultimately very unfulfilling–at least I didn’t catch them. Others may have, and they have felt very rewarded by the film. I felt taken advantage of, both in terms of my time and my intelligence. The Black Dahlia is another major disappointment for me from Brian de Palma. I know he is considered one of the greats; but less Mission Impossible and possibly Scarface, I have not seen any movie of his worth subsequent viewings or even enjoyable first ones. For me, The Black Dahlia falls in line with a great many other failed crime story type films that seem to have alot to say somewhere amidst the refuse of the structure, plot contrivances, oddball occurences and so forth; but I’m afraid in the case of this movie, I couldn’t get my head around enough of it to dig it, at all.

I was gonna give The Black Dahlia a 3, but upon further reflection, it gets a 2 from me. It was that unsatisfying, and that’s the most honest thing I can say about it.

Breakdown isa pretty mediocre venture so far as I am concerned. The story follows Kurt Russell as some guy who is traveling cross country to take a new job out west. He is targeted by a group of desert bumpkins who kidnap people and hold them for ransom. When they get his wife, he is forced to fight them and rescue her. It’s really that simple. It’s a B-movie in tone, pace, and story movement. Only the visage of A-lister Kurt Russell keep this movie from being a straight-to-DVD flic lost to obscurity.

This isn’t to say that movie didn’t entertain me. It did to a point. The mystery for the first act is interesting; but once the culprits are revealed, the movie grinds to a halt and ceases to be interesting. It’s really, really, really jolting–and completely slams the break on pacing–when a mystery movie solves the mystery for you midway through the movie, then gives you very dull scenes to undo the trouble cause by the reveals. I think Breakdown totally did this, to an unforgiveable extent. Frankly, they should decided to make it a mystery movie and have us solve the mystery alongside Kurt Russell OR they should have made it a breakneck action movie from the beginning. This half-and-half deal they made just didn’t work–at least not for me. There are still some enjoyable moments. The end car chase is good (not great, but good). There is a character that looks like Santa Clause, and he gets shot by an 8 year-old, which is fun. And, of course, who doens’t like Kurt Russell. Sadly, though, these moments just didn’t make it happen for me.

After this last viewing, I am gonna give Breakdown a 3. It’s really not all that good or entertaining. If it were anyone but Kurt Russell in the lead, I don’t see what I would have enjoyed much about it–other than the Santa-looking guy getting shot and screaming, that’ll always be hilarious.