Reviewed: Two Great Movies (Bourne Ultimatum and Michael Clayton) And, More Briefly, Two Awful Movies (Swamp Lake and Mulberry Street)

I am trying something different with these reviews, namely incorporating other reviews into my own review. I thought I'd note that before someone swings by and says, "hey, that's cheating" or some such

I saw the Michael Clayton and Bourne Ultimatum movies while on my cruise and as I have noted elsewhere if you watch them on a ship while reading creepy novels you can well find yourself getting a bit paranoid. i.e. if the government is not spying on you than your work colleagues are.

I decided to wait until I returned to land and re-acclimated before writing up mini reviews on both movies..Besides, I also wanted to see the dvd extras and read a few other reviews.

I am glad I did because both movies have excellent commentary tracks. I don't know about you but I love to listen to the directors explain their thinking behind movies. Sometimes it's added insight, other times it's just weird trivia but I usually find myself enjoying and appreciating a movie more after listening to the commentary tracks.

So here are my thoughts...

Bourne Ultimatum

The film moves so fast it is hard to remember to breath which is good in a way because it helps you better identify with Matt Damon's character of Jason Bourne, who is trying to sort out what is going on. It has the kind of intensity of other great movies like Run Lola Run and indeed Roger Ebert begins his review by saying, "Run, Jason, Run."

In a way it reminds me of the great TV series Burn Notice in that both have protagonists needing to go jump through so many hoops with just one seemingly simple but truly elusive goal in mind namely "the truth." The obvious difference is there is humor in Burn Notice whereas the Bourne series (of which this is the third) are notably humorless and understandably so since it's addressing issues like assassinations and espionage.

Damon's turning into a believeable action star with this series (I always felt that Ben Affleck was the weak link in their partnership). Damon does a great acting job in this movie as does Joan Allen and Julia Stiles.

Incidentally if you have not seen Bloody Sunday I implore you to do so. Here is why I mention that, this from movie critic David Edelstein's review

As with The Bourne Supremacy, the director is Paul Greengrass, who perfected his faux-documentary syntax in Bloody Sunday (2002), the story of the 1972 Northern Ireland civil-rights march that exploded into a massacre. In that film, the you-are-there approach made brilliant artistic and moral sense: You understood the historical forces in play; you also understood at least something of what it felt like to be in the middle of the melee. In United 93, he used the same techniques to re-create the events of 9/11 onboard the only plane that didn't hit its target. His aims weren't quite as clear as in Bloody Sunday, but the movie worked as journalism and (arguably) therapy. He took an event that many of us could barely bring ourselves to imagine and gave it form.

If some of you rent Bloody Sunday then I will finally get around to seeing United 93.

A few valid criticisms were made by the critics whose reviews I read. James Berardinelli wrote in his review that

Bourne is always on the move, sometimes acting as the hunter and sometimes being the quarry (and often both at the same time). One could argue it's a little exhausting, but the action is consistently excellent - if only the same thing could be same could be said of the manner in which Greengrass has chosen to film it. Looking back on The Bourne Identity, it's easy to be impressed by the clarity with which Doug Liman directed the action sequences. Greengrass, on the other hand, prefers fast cuts and an unsteady camera. Even during static shots (such as a simple conversation with close-ups), it's as if the cameraman has Parkinson's. Things aren't as bad here as in 28 Weeks Later, but there are brief instances when the inability to figure out what's going on diminishes the effectiveness of the action. Still, it's hard to deny that Greengrass' approach generates intensity.

and Edelstein also makes a fair point

I loved watching The Bourne Supremacy and might have loved The Bourne Ultimatum if I didn't, by now, know all Greengrass's moves-and if I weren't so sick of being motion-sick. The on-the-fly documentary style was first employed in fiction films to say, "This is different. In exchange for a handheld camera's limited vantage, you'll get the texture of a real place and the urgency of real time." Seeing someone like Greengrass, whose work had moral authority in Bloody Sunday, use the same techniques so promiscuously, to make the bone crunching crunchier, drives home the bitter truth. "Reality" is virtual-just another tool for bludgeoning you stupid.

Roger Ebert gets off my favorite comment about this movie so I'll give him the final word:

Ultimatum" is a tribute to Bourne's determination, his driving skills, his intelligence in out-thinking his masters and especially his good luck. No real person would be able to survive what happens to him in this movie, for the obvious reason that they would have been killed very early in "The Bourne Identity" (2002) and never have survived to make "The Bourne Supremacy" (2004). That Matt Damon can make this character more convincing than the Road Runner is a tribute to his talent and dedication. It's not often you find a character you care about even if you don't believe he could exist.

Michael Clayton
In addition to both movies leading to paranoia they have something else in common - intensity
As David Edelstein writes in his review of Michael Clayton,

It's not one of those jittery motion-sickness pictures that accelerate around every narrative curve. It holds to a measured beat, to the point where you feel a growing impatience-a good impatience, like when you're reading some potboiler and can't breathe too easily and can't turn the pages fast enough. Maybe that's why the climax, a dialogue in which no voice is raised, is so smashingly cathartic and why the line "I am Shiva, god of death" will enter the lexicon. The dénouement, the last shot of the film, is hauntingly strange and sad; I didn't want the image to fade to black.

I loved the movie for exploring important topics like morality and ethics and good personal values.

As Edelstein writes,

Michael Clayton is about characters who inhabit the gray area between morality and immorality, where everyone has a different definition of what constitutes ethics. As in real life, these people are not "good" or "evil" - they are the end product of choices, some right and some wrong

All of the acting is exceptional, especially that of Clooney (playing Michael Clayton) and Tilda Swinton, playing a cut-throat person.

The movies does an exceptional job exploring a whole host of imporant issues. I am going to again give the last word to Roger Ebert:

I don't know what vast significance Michael Clayton has (it involves deadly pollution but isn't a message movie). But I know it is just about perfect as an exercise in the genre. I've seen it twice, and the second time, knowing everything that would happen, I found it just as fascinating because of how well it was all shown happening. It's not about the destination but the journey, and when the stakes become so high that lives and corporations are on the table, it's spellbinding to watch the Clooney and Swinton characters eye to eye, raising each other, both convinced that the other is bluffing.

I recommend seeing both movies. Just don't do it if you ever suffer from any paronia:)

Now on to some shakier fare....

There is a house I sometimes work at where the resident seems to watch an incredible amount of bad movies. This is the guy, for example, who watched all four Jaws movies. Mostly he keeps his tv locked on the Sci-Fi channell. Well, Sunday he watched two more bad movies and this time I took the extra step of reading the rviews... When I left he was watching something truly atrocous called Swamp Thing, so bad it was almost - but not quite - good

Mulberry Street

This review in Variety sums it up - this movie is a mess. It had potential early on as it began to develop different charcters living together in a New York City tenement,,, but squandered it with rats (!) becoming the focus of the story. Incidentally I seem to be seeing rats everywhere I look since I saw the movie so I am shaking my first now at the filmmaker, Jim Mickle.

And to add to my paranoia (or perhaps see some some political symbolism) I just saw, an hour ago, a dead baby bird in front of the county's republican headquarters. I'm considering calling the animal CSI to see it's a dead dove of peace.

Needful Things

My usual criticism of Stephen King is that his books have weak endings but Roger Ebert, in reviewing this movie, correctly notes another problem but this time one that is not King fault: ""Needful Things" is yet another one of those films based on a Stephen King story that inspires you to wonder why his stories don't make better films.

For every one that does ("Carrie," "The Dead Zone," "Misery"), there are three that don't. In this case, the problem is that the characters are unattractive and the plot, once it reveals itself, lacks any surprises. You know you're in trouble when a movie's about Satan, and his best lines are puns."

The movie has a good cast, from Ed Haris as police chief to Max Von Sydrow as an unusual old man who provides people with their "needful things" (thus the title),be it a baseball card for a boy or a sports jacket coveted by a man. But there's an unusuak way they have to "pay" for their purchases.

James Berardinelli asks a related question I was thinking as I watched this movie:

How is it that a film with a good cast, stylish direction, and an intriguing premise can turn out mediocre? Perhaps if the production crew had known the answer, Needful Things would have been a far more engrossing and satisfying motion picture experience than it actually is....

Needful Things is another example of a good idea gone awry. This seems to happen with alarming frequency when a Stephen King story is involved. In Leland Gaunt, Needful Things wastes one of the year's most intriguing villains, and the film builds to an apex that isn't there. By the time the end credits roll, a lot of people will be wondering if that was really everything. Sadly, the answer is yes, but at least the time invested is repaid in part by the fine performance of Max von Sydow.

These two movies are so bad they are almost good. The key word in that sentence is "almost."

Skip these two movies - you will thank me later.