by ·Comments Off on Room (2015, Lenny Abrahamson)

“Ma” was kidnapped years ago, now has a young son Jack, and they live together in Room, which is actually a shack behind their kidnapper’s house. After setting up their relationship, the movie breaks them out of Room for the second half to see how Jack can adapt and how the parental relationship will fare and whether the media attention will turn Ma suicidal. Turns out Ma’s dad William Macy can’t handle the truth, but her mom Joan Allen and stepdad Tom McCamus are more understanding. Katy and I liked it a lot.

The director of Frank likes his titles short. Writer Emma Donoghue adapted her own novel. Kidnapper/rapist Sean Bridgers (that’s not a label he’ll want showing up in a google search) was in Deadwood and Rectify, started his career in the Nebraska-set Children of the Corn 2. Young Jacob Tremblay has two Naomi Watts movies filming. Brie Larson already got awards for Short Term 12, and unrecognizably played rival singer Envy Adams in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.

by ·Comments Off on The Bourne Supremacy (2004, Paul Greengrass)

The series has a new director, one who likes to edit so quickly as to barely let you catch the meaning of action scenes, but with an admirable energy, not the seemingly random cutting of Transformers. I’m not trying to champion or justify this, as some film critics did, calling Greengrass the best filmmaker of the 2000’s and all that, just saying it wasn’t as annoying as I figured it would be.

Felt like the obligatory sequel, bringing back all main characters from the last movie and giving each a big scene, tying up narrative loose ends, and giving lord baddie Brian Cox the death he deserved. I’m hoping part three can be more free with the plot and character. Bourne conveniently half-remembers certain things from his past, a good plot device.

Since Chris Cooper is gone and Brian Cox has gotten so desperately evil he’s shooting people in the hallways now, we get a new FBI (or is it CIA, or some made-up agency – I forget) person: Joan Allen (the same year she starred in Yes). Lola Potente is killed off in the early scenes. Julia Stiles is still in the movie for some reason. Damon’s big moment is discovering in his memory that he killed some respectable foreign politician and his wife for nefarious reasons, faking it as a murder-suicide, so now years later he finds their daughter and apologizes for killing their parents.