Movie review: “The Bourne Legacy”

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Partner and I finally saw “The Bourne Legacy” last weekend. 

 

First of all, there was this Jeremy Renner fellow, who has interesting eyes and a nice face and a very neato body. He’s Aaron Cross, a supersoldier / agent who’s caught in an elaborate doublecross / triplecross scheme, and who fights back.

 

 

Like so many modern action/adventures, it’s an extended chase scene. It is, however, an exceptionally well-done extended chase scene. It has the usual parkour stuff, but also mopeds and motorcycles and cars. Never for a moment do you lose focus, or forget the goal.

 

 

The thing that surprised me, however, is the cinematography.

 

 

There are a couple of scenes, in among the frantic chases, that are beautifully dreamlike:

 

 

-         An opening sequence in the mountains of Alaska, including a scene with Renner diving (mostly naked) in a freezing river in front of a waterfall, like every Hawaiian idyll you’ve ever seen, but at forty degrees below;

-         A violent shootout in a remote abandoned house, all white wood and long staircase and peaceful autumn foliage outside, that feels like something out of “Inception”;

-         A panic in a Manila drug factory, with hundreds of workers in pink smocks and pink hairnets running for the exits;

-         Manila itself, a Third World dreamscape of alleyways and broken rooftops and smoggy skylines;

-         An Elysian archipelago of tropical islands, and a small boat running between them.

 

 

The supporting cast (Scott Glenn, Ed Norton, Joan Allen, Albert Finney, Stacy Keach) could have been replaced with nobodies, or cardboard cutouts. The movie’s all about Jeremy and his traveling companion / hostage / girlfriend, Rachel Weisz. You know it’s going to turn out okay for them (until the sequel, anyway).

 

 

Partner and I highly recommend this picture.

 

 

And we’re deeply committed to the sequel.

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Jeremy Renner

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I mostly knew Jeremy Renner from his part in “The Town,” with Ben Affleck. Jeremy played a thug / bank robber with great abandon, and he has big staring eyes and a strange dominating presence, and he’s very real.

 

 

This is a big deal in the movies. You need to look real.

 

 

I heard last spring that he was playing Hawkeye in the forthcoming Avengers movie, and I smirked a little. Minor role in a major movie: who cares?

 

 

Well, he was wonderful. He was creepy and elegant and very convincing. He also bulked up amazingly, and did not look ridiculous when appearing with Iron Man and Thor and the Hulk at all; in fact, he looked like their peer.

 

 

Now he’s playing a superhuman secret agent in “The Bourne Legacy.” He still has that huge bulked-up body, and those chilly eyes. I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I’m already in love with him. My friend Apollonia (who has vowed herself to Robert Pattinson) has admitted to me that she finds Jeremy attractive.

 

 

And now I discover that Jeremy, before his very successful career as an actor, was a makeup artist.

 

 

Behold this sequence from a recent episode of “Ellen”:

 

 

 

 

He is adorable.

 

 

I don’t care if he’s gay or straight. (He looks straight to me, but I’ve been wrong about these things before.)

 

 

He is a fine actor, and is also very cute, and can do makeup, and packs on muscle very nicely when necessary.

 

 

As someone online said: “It’s nice to have something to fall back on, in case Plan A fails.”

 

 

Jeremy has lots of things to fall back on.

 

 

Whatta guy!

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Movie review: "The Avengers"

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On Sunday, Partner and I finally joined the ten trillion people who have already seen the new “Avengers” movie. (We didn’t go on opening weekend because 1) we don’t like being trampled, and 2) we don’t like excited children screaming along with the movie.)

We both liked the movie a lot.  Well, naturally I liked it: it contains a very large number of my imaginary Hollywood boyfriends. We get Robert Downey Jr. doing his wise-guy genius Tony Stark (although he lost a few points in my book for mooning over the gooey Gwyneth Paltrow); we get the mountainous Chris Hemsworth as Thor, everybody’s favorite thunder god; we get Chris Evans, with his huge shoulders and chest and arms and his hurt/childlike eyes, as Captain America; we get the rumpled cuddly Mark Ruffalo as Dr. Bruce Banner, who occasionally transforms into a very large green CGI creature called the Hulk; and we get Jeremy Renner, all muscled up and deadly-looking, as Hawkeye.

This is not to slight the rest of the cast, who are just as good, if not quite as attractive as the above. Scarlett Johansson is the gymastically adept Black Widow, clever and funny and just as deadly as Jeremy Renner; Samuel L. Jackson is the determined Nick Fury; Clark Gregg is the shy-yet-forthright Agent Coulson, who’s been with us through all or most of the Marvel movies which have brought us to this point; Tom Hiddleston is the aristocratically evil Loki, Thor’s (adopted) brother and the cause of all our sorrows; Stellan Skarsgard (whom I loved in “Pirates of the Caribbean” and in “Mamma Mia”) is a scientist and old pal of Thor. Stan Lee (he’s 90 years old this year!) makes his traditional cameo, of course, and what would a Marvel movie be without that? (And even Natalie Portman, Thor’s girlfriend in one of the previous movies, makes an appearance via photograph.)

The movie has a bouncy plot full of government agents and alien invaders and renegade demigods. Never for a moment did I feel confused about the plotline: even when the fighting is going faster than the eye can follow, you can still pretty much tell what’s going on. It defies belief every few minutes : can you really hit the ground like that and not get hurt?  If a jet figher splits in half, would the pilot really have enough time to eject? If you’re flying a huge invisible gunboat/battlecruiser, don’t you think knocking out one of the engines would make you crash? But none of these matter. It’s fun. Just go with it.

Much of the credit, I think, goes to Joss Whedon (of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Firefly” and “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog”). In this movie, he’s created a world where impossible people live and impossible things happen, but it all seems very calm and tranquil. Most of Manhattan gets blown up in the movie, but – you know what? – it looks like that most days anyway, especially after a good parade, or after they have one of those big street fairs on the Avenue of the Americas.

(Apollonia and I were talking about the movie last week. She wanted to see it, mostly because of Jeremy Renner, who is one of her spiritual boyfriends too, evidently. Then she found out that Gwyneth Paltrow is in it, and this soured her a bit. But her big question was: “How much do I need to know before I see this one? I didn’t see ‘Thor,’ or ‘Iron Man,’ or ‘Captain America.’ Will I be completely confused?”

(I didn’t know the answer last week, but I do now. You don’t need to know a damned thing. This movie is self-propelled. All you need to know is that there all of these crazy-ass superheroes, and they’re all over the place, and they don’t get along so well, but in a pinch they do pretty well.)

I’d tell you to go see it, but judging by the box-office receipts, you already have.

So go see it again.

I just might see it again myself.

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Movie review: “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol”

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Partner and I trundled off to the Lincoln Cinemaworld yesterday to see the new Mission: Impossible movie.  Normally I do not rush right out to see Tom Cruise movies; his personal life creeps me out, and I’m always afraid that Scientology is suddenly going to erupt out of his head and kill everyone in the vicinity.  But the previews looked entertaining, so –


Well, it’s a lot of fun, actually.  It never slows down for a moment.  There really aren’t any extraneous scenes; everything is plot-driven, and I never had any trouble figuring out what was happening, even when people were wrestling in the dark or chasing one another through a blinding sandstorm.


Partner pointed out that Tom (who’s also listed as producer) really doesn’t get mixed up with mediocre projects.  Tom takes care of his own image and products pretty scrupulously (with a few memorable clunkers thrown in; remember “Vanilla Sky”?)  The movie is beautifully directed by Brad Bird, who has mostly done animated films up to now, and who brings a beautiful floating quality to the cinematography.  The acting – well, Tom is mostly doing stunt work in this one.  His acting here appears to be mostly based on Mark Harmon’s character in “NCIS,” who registers most of his emotions by squinting cryptically off to one side of the camera.  (Harmon usually purses his lips as he does this; Cruise parts his lips in a sort of incredulous smile.  At least it’s different.)  Simon Pegg, of whom I am very fond, plays Comedy Relief; he overdoes it a little, but in a movie with this much going on, I suppose you need a maximum dose of everything.  Jeremy Renner, whom you will recall from “The Hurt Locker” and “The Town,” with his off-kilter good looks and nice dramatic intensity (and massively developed forearms, which I assume he built up while playing Hawkeye in the upcoming “Avengers” movie), adds most of the dramatic interest.  And Tom Wilkinson, of whom I am very fond, has a (sadly) brief role.


The movie made me nostalgic.  It reminded me of staying up late when I was a kid to watch the original “Mission: Impossible” on TV, with Peter Graves and Martin Landau and Barbara Bain.  It had a lot of the same improbable gimmicks: the clocks ticking down to zero while our heroes are trying to rewire the bomb, the disguises, the unheard-of gadgetry, the elaborate deceptions foiled just because someone arrives at the hotel ten minutes earlier than planned.  There’s a James Bond element too: the international espionage thing, the breathless scampering around the world (Budapest! Moscow! Dubai! Mumbai!).


And there’s a joke running through this movie that I sort of enjoyed: the equipment keeps breaking down.  The magical mask-making machine short-circuits; the communications network drops their calls; even the thing that’s supposed to self-destruct in five seconds needs a bop on the head from Tom.


The theater wasn’t very full yesterday: apparently everyone was watching that new exorcism thing.  But “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol” is a romp, and a perfectly acceptable way to spend the afternoon. 


(Note: as the movie ended, we heard a woman behind us sobbing.  My goodness!  Some people take their movies so seriously!)

Don't worry, Movie Lady. Tom will be back in another Mission Impossible movie.

I guarantee it.

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