The Bourne Ultimatum

At long last, Jason Bourne remembers how he became what he is. Random memories come flooding in on him at the most inopportune times. The conclusion is devastating.

But first, some irritation. We ended part two in New York with a phone call between Bourne and Pamela Lindy. This scene also happens in part three of the saga, but not before going back to Moscow, then London, Madrid and Algiers. Also, there is a short visit in Paris. The payoff this time, however, is that everything will finally make sense.

Contrary to the first two Bourne films, here we not only get a car chase (in New York, no less!) but also a chase on foot an one involving a motorcycle, both in Algiers, when Bourne is running from and then after an assassin (or "asset" as they are called in this universe).

The cast of these films just keeps getting better. This one features not only Joan Allen and Julia Stiles, whom we have both encountered before, but Scott Glenn, Albert Finney, Paddy Considine, Daniel Brühl, David Strathairn (always a welcome sight) and Édgar Ramírez (who, if I am not mistaken, has all of one line despite being on screen a considerable amount of time).

Now, what could the next one possibly have in store for us?

8/10

Hitman

There is a lot of shooting in this film. Probably to be expected from a film about Hitman, but still, a lot of shooting.

The hitman in question is one of many, apparently. All of them bald, all of them with a bar code tattooed onto the back of their bald heads. The one whose story we follow was given the number 47 by the people that raised him or, rather, trained him to become what he is. He is very good at what he does. So much so that one of the top Interpol agents is trailing him. And Agent 47 himself becomes a target, four agents come after him at the same time. All four presumably had the same training he did.

Why did he become a target in the first place? That is what he is trying to find out.

When he is sent to assassinate a high profile Russian politician - and seemingly fails - he is set up by whatever agency is behind all this. Then, to save himself and the politician's whore/lover/property, he goes rouge.

Now his fellow agents, Interpol and a Russian agency are all after him. Agent 47, being as good as he is, takes out pretty much everyone that has wronged him (the casualty count is rather high) and, in the end, walks away. Also, he turns out to have a heart.

Very, very entertaining. Also, something to tide me over my current Timothy Olyphant withdrawal that set in as soon as Justified officially ended. (My poor bleeding heart!)

7/10

Live Free or Die Hard

Stupid title.

The copy I watched actually announced the film as Die Hard 4.0, which I prefer. It even makes sense, since the film focusses on technology and hackers. But the official title seems to be Live Free or Die Hard. Well, so be it.

John McClane is sent to get a hacker and bring him to the FBI in DC, because there are some serious technology based security issues and several hackers have had their hands in them. Unwittingly, as it turns out. These hackers are now being killed off by the people that originally used their services. McClane saves his package, one Matthew Farrell, from death by explosion and/or multiple gunshot wounds. They will spend the rest of the film running from henchmen sent by the bad guy, one Thomas Gabriel.

Thomas Gabriel is played by Timophy Olyphant, who makes a wonderful baddie, I always thought. My earliest recollection of him is in Scream 2, where he was bad, bordering on insane. Here, he is more of an evil genius, always keeping his composure and cooly disposing of everyone who has done his part in the operation and is no longer of use to him.

An additional complication is thrown into John McClanes path in the form of his daughter, who is upset with daddy right up to the point when he is her only hope of survival. His son we will meet in A Good Day to Die Hard, which is nowhere near as good as any of the other parts.

You know what? I like this film. I am down with turning off my brain and watching Bruce Willis save the day. It's good fun.

7/10

Wrong Turn 2: Dead End

This is so disgusting. There is, however, one reason to watch this (well, at least reason enough for me) and that is: Henry Rollins!

The premise is a reality TV show. Because, of course it is. The goal is to be the last man/woman standing after five days in a post apocalyptic world and most of it is scripted. So much for the 'reality' part. The contestants are an assortment of failures: a would-be athletes, 'actresses', an idiot skateboarder named Jonesy and a woman with military education. She, of course, is a tough lesbian. Because cliché. Not that it is going to help her any in the long run.

How this Jonesy character made it for as long as he did is beyond me. He should have been killed off much earlier than he was, for being annoying if not for anything else.

So, the cast and crew get killed and possibly eaten one by one. That is the plot.

The difference to part one is that we get to really take a close look at the deformed killers. We even witness one of them give birth. Also, we see two of them having sex (as if anybody needed to see that).

The baddies do get killed more efficiently here, thanks to a stack of dynamite that Henry Rollins chances upon. Since flying meat and spraying blood is not gross enough, however, the last two remaining get hacked to pieces by a machine that can handily dub as a meat grinder.

Did I say last two? I meant of course the last two to tie up the story nicely, before we get the final horror film classic open end shot of someone (something) giving the deformed newborn a cut-off finger to suck on.

As for Henry Rollins...Henry Rollins is a fucking one man army! Bad ass until the end. His end, that is. So much blood. So much blood.

3/10

Far North

We do not know for sure, but there is a pretty good chance that Sean Bean dies from exposure. After all, he runs off naked into the bitter cold in the end.

Two nomad women live together in the Arctic somewhere, away from their people. One of them, Saiva, was said to bring misery to everyone close to her. That is why her mother went to live in the wild to bring up her daughter years ago. Not sure where the other woman, Anja, came from but whatever.

They live together and survive together and have been doing so for some time, apparently, when one day Saiva finds a stranger, Loki, in the ice and brings him back to their tent before he freezes to death. Two women and one Sean Bean in the same tent can only spell trouble. Of course, both of them develop a crush on him. Initially, it is not clear who he will end up with. It turns out to be Anja.

The three go through an indeterminate time together until one day Anja announces to Saiva that she will be living with Loki once the sea freezes over.

The next part gave me a very distinct WTF? feeling.

Saiva chokes Anja to death with Anja's own braid before scalping her and skinning her face to wear as a mask and wig.

Ew!

Then Loki comes back from testing the ice for the next day's crossing and he gets all hot and steamy with the woman he believes to be Anja. Then the skin on the face starts moving in odd ways and he realizes that Saiva is wearing an Anja mask. Literally.

It is then that he flees the scene. Naked. (Yummy but also Ew!)

There is something beautiful about the frozen landscape and bleakness. Also, the film is compelling. And gross. Yes, also gross.

7/10

3:10 to Yuma

I am not the biggest fan of wild west films. I don't particularly care for Russel Crowe (although I can appreciate that he is a good actor) and I am just so over Christian Bale. Still, I ended up watching 3:10 to Yuma (Alan Tudyk! Peter Fonda! Kevin Durand!) and enjoying it throughout.

Russel Crowe plays the outlaw Ben Wade, who gets himself caught and is set to be brought to the train going to Yuma prison. Yes, yes, it leaves at 3:10. The raga tag band of unlikely characters to get him there include the Doc (a vet, actually), a bounty hunter and farmer Dan Evans, who really needs the money promised him for getting Wade on that train.

Evans' motives go beyond that as he also wants his young son William to respect him (he doesn't). William himself wants in on the trail because he believes himself to be a great shot, even at 14, and also considers his father to be a wimp. Hot on their trail (after a cleverly devised delay) is Wade's gang of outlaws, now led by the trusted Charlie, who wants desperately to fee his boss and keep the gang together.

Many a shootout and several casualties later (Alan Tudyk! Peter Fonda! Kevin Durand!) the good guys almost made it. They are hiding out in a hotel room, having recently obtained the assistants of the local marshal and his two best men. They hightail it soon enough though, because Charlie offers anyone a reward of $ 200,-- if he just shoot and kill one of his boss' captors. Quite effective in making things way harder for Evans, who is the only one left that really wants to put Wade on that train. This not only wins him the respect of young William, but that of Wade, as well.

The final shootout is quite exciting, with only very few survivors.

Not bad at all.

7/10

Saw IV

Now, this may appear even more confusing than the previous part, but really it gives you so many answers and - if you are patient - you will figure it out in the end.

As I so often do, I will now give you one big spoiler off the bat: whatever happens after the beginning credits happens more or less at the same time as the entirety of part III. Before the credits you see what happens after Jigsaw died. This may not make much sense on paper, but it does once you give yourself over to the notion that this is not linear storytelling.

The players this time are the law enforcement officers. A local police officer is still looking for Eric Matthews from all the way back in part II. He has been missing for 6 months now but his former colleague is sent on a scavenger hunt to his location. The FBI meanwhile is hunting the hunter, who they believe to be helping Jigsaw (because he himself is too sick to arrange all the elaborate machinery and Amanda is too small to do all of the heavy lifting the preparation has required).

Unfortunately, the FBI agents have to deal with some of the dumbest and one dimensional dialogue in (probably) horror film history. Also, the two actors are terribly wooden (and, yes, well, one dimensional).

Eric Matthews is the one I felt most sorry for. While everyone is off trying to beat the clock and find whoever it is that is now working for Jigsaw, he is stood on a block of ice while at the same time has a noose around his neck. The idea is that he will hang himself once the ice is melted enough while at the same time lowering a see saw contraption that on the other side will put another police guy into water that will then have an unpleasant union with electricity.

The really rough part, however, that no matter if he survives long enough to be presumably saved by his former colleague, as soon as said colleague opens the door to the room, the contraption is rigged to smash his head with two more blocks of ice. (And it does.)

In the end the surviving FBI agent encounters - and shoots - Jeff, who is still stumbling through the building, now looking for his daughter. Also, we now know who Jigsaw's successor is.

At this point I am very much looking forward to the next part(s) and hoping for better dialogue.

6/10

Fracture

Ted Crawford shoots his wife. He knows she is cheating on him and she knows with whom. So, yes, it is pre-meditated. There is never any doubt that he did it. There are, however, several problems, not the least of them the fact that the arresting officer is Lt. Nunally, the guy the wife was having an affair with.

When Nunally comes to the scene he does not know who Crawford is, as he has only been meeting with his lover under the names 'Mr. and Mrs. Smith'. Crawford lets him into the house under the condition that both men put their guns down. He confesses to Nunally then and there. When the policeman sees the victim, he goes off on Crawford (not proper conduct for a police officer). Crawford later repeats his confession and signs it at the police station - with Nunally in presence during interrogation.

The prosecutor of the case, Willy Beachum, does not know the connection between the victim (who is still alive, but in a coma that she has very little chance of ever coming out of) and the arresting officer. Beachum is very ambitious and has secured a new job at a prestigious law firm ('it's all about the money, money, money') and this is to be his very last case. Unfortunately, he grossly underestimates Crawford and isn't paying as much attention to the task at hand as he should be.

Crawford chooses to defend himself, offers to start trial right away, recants his confession and pleads not guilty. Beachum's underestimating him is not the biggest problem with the case. The gun they find at the Crawford house - the only gun they find, no matter how many times they turn the house upside down - is not the murder weapon. And then, when Beachum learns that Nunally was having an affair with the victim right when he is on the witness stand, the case falls apart.

Thanks to his failure, Beachum loses the new job he has not started yet and - despite his (old) boss having his back - he is done with being a prosecutor. But when he realizes that Crawford is about to pull the plug on his wife's life support, he begs for any help he can get to stop it. He does get the paperwork legally required but does not make it on time.

And then all the pieces fall into place and Beachum goes to see Crawford at his house. He explains his theory of where the murder weapon is - Nunally's gun that Crawford replaced while the officer attended to the victim. Crawford, thinking himself in the safe haven of 'double jeopardy', is as condescending as can be, owning up to everything because he is convinced nobody can touch him now. But the big mistake he made was taking his wife off life support. He beat the trial for attempted murder due to lack of physical evidence but will now be retried for murder in the first degree - with the murder weapon in evidence.

Justice is served.

A brilliant group of actors make this much more exciting than I made it sound.

7/10

Du levande (You, the Living)

This is a Swedish film pieced together from little scenes featuring recurring characters without an actual plot to tie them together. It is a collection of very sad people that visually blend into their surroundings, which are very Scandinavian, as well - this is to say sparse with toned down colors.

Some of the characters we meet include: a middle aged woman, wearing animal prints, sending her boyfriend away constantly and lamenting the sadness of her life; a psychiatrist who after 27 years of listening to people complain, is tired and now merely prescribes pills; musicians practicing alone on their respective instruments; a groupie who is given the wrong address for a rehearsal space; and a husband and wife that are both devastated after a fight they had earlier, during which they called each other rude names.

The music here comes from a marching band, the Louisiana Brass Band, a middle aged woman singing out her sorrows in the beginning, a song at a funeral and people in a banquet hall singing some sort of traditional song, which also requires them to collectively stand on their chairs to have a drink.

The film got Roger Ebert's stamp of approval and a coveted 4 star review. He concludes his piece about it like this:

"You, the Living," is a title that perhaps refers to his characters: Them, the Dead. Yet this isn't a depressing film. His characters are angry and bitter, but stoic and resigned, and the musicians (there are also a banjo player and a cornetist) seem happy enough as they play Dixieland. In their world, it never seems to get very dark out, but in the bar, it's always closing time.

This is well worth your time.

8/10

The Hitcher

Brace yourselves for what I am about to tell you...Sean Bean's character dies.

This is a reimagination of  the 1986 film of the same name. Back then it was Rutger Hauer hunting down C. Thomas Howell. This time around it is Sean Bean coming after a young couple played by Sophia Bush and Zachary Knighton.

The two ignore a guy with a broken down car standing by the side of the road in the pouring rain only to run after him again at the next rest stop. He is being all chummy and "I wouldn't have picked my up, either *chuckle*" and when he now asks for a ride to the nearest town the young man, guilt ridden, says yes. And really, he should have listen to his girlfriend, as she will remind him later.

The drive turns pretty ugly, pretty quickly and after the hitchhiker pulls a knife on them, they throw him out of the moving vehicle. They thought they were done with him but the very next day they are overtaken by a Christian family with two kids and see the culprit sitting in the back, playing with the young son. They pull up next to the car to warn them - which is never a good idea, because the people in the other car will think you are crazy and an oncoming vehicle will force you off the road.

Now the car is trashed and they have to walk and soon enough come across the family car with all but the badly injured father dead. They think they can save him and drive him (and the very bloody bodies) to the next diner to alert help. This all looks pretty bad, with the young couple all bloody and now their fingerprints all over the car.

They get taken into custody but the hitchhiker is not yet finished with them. He kills off everyone in the police station except for the two (no, I don't know what he wants with them, either) which they will also be suspected of doing. Only one cop has his doubts about their guilt and after a highway chase with multiple police fatalities it is pretty obvious who the bad guy is.

The hitchhiker is taken into custody after ripping apart (literally!) the young man with the help of two trucks only to cause the police car that is to transfer him to another location to crash, killing of that one sympathetic cop and gets offed by the woman, lone survivor of the string of tragedies.

The film is not as good as the 1980's one but Sean Bean is as evil a killer as Rutger Hauer was.

7/10

Battle in Seattle

The film is based on the 1999 WTO Conference in Seattle and how the protests surrounding it got out of hand.

It does not glorify the civil disobedience but rather strives for a balance for both sides. The protests and traffic disturbances caused humanitarian causes to take the biggest hits. Resources were shifted to the main part of the conference, cutting off speaking time from causes like Doctors Without Borders that would usually happen alongside, while all relevant people are gathered in the same locale.

But much more than paint a big picture, it focuses on the human stories, which takes away some of the force somehow. Peppered in are TV clips from Seattle used to cover that part of the story.

It does sport quite the impressive cast and is thoroughly watchable although it is never quite clear where it stands or if, indeed, it takes sides at all.

6/10

The Messengers

The Solomon family moves to a farm in North Dakota to plant sun flowers, after they have had a rough time of it in Chicago for the last two years. The father lost his job and the daughter got into trouble back there.

The house they bought with their last money is, unsurprisingly, haunted by the ghosts of a family that died there. There are ominous shadows in the background and the daughter and her toddler brother seem to be the only ones seeing them - the teenage girl terrified by them, the boy having a blast.

When a mysterious stranger shows up and stays on to work on the farm, nothing much seems to happen for months, however. Then suddenly the visions come back with a vengeance. Nobody believes the teenager, however, as she is a known troublemaker.

In the end, it turns out that the farm hand was involved in causing all of the trouble back in the day, he was actually the father that did away with his entire family and loses it one day, after he has been attacked by the ever present crows. He suddenly cannot tell the new and old family in the house apart and tries to kill his all over again.

There are a lot of eye-rolling moments in this, mostly about the philosophizing of the farm hand and a local teenage boy. The scares are kind of interesting. The film also gives Kirsten Stewart an opportunity to show off the entire range of her acting.

Yes, I was being sarcastic just then.

Why the ghosts would be called "messengers" is not ever addressed. They don't appear to be giving any messages to anybody, unless you interpret their weird behavior in trying to scare the hell out of people and possibly trying to kill them as warnings. Come to think of it, though, the  crows on the farm are the probably the messengers.

Maybe we get confirmation in the sequel. Yes, there is a sequel! Part two at least bears the promise of some serious eye candy in the form of Norman Reedus. The only saving grace in part one was William B. Davis (the cigarette smoking men from The X Files).

4/10

The Take

Felix (John Leguizamo) gets kidnapped while driving his money truck and is forced to make the rest of his pick ups for the night before he gets shot in the head and left to die. Only, he doesn't die. Also, this is just the beginning of the film.

What it is actually about is the aftermath. How Felix deals with his dire situation, not knowing who to trust and only remembering bits of what happened. His family have to suffer through is mood swings and paranoia.

He feels like the police are not on his side and makes a few bad decision that incriminate him. The only cop appearing to be on his side is Agent Perelli (Bobby Cannavale), who tries to help as best he can while Felix undermines the law officials' work. He decides to take matters into his own hands and hunts down the guy who shot him in the head.

The shaky camera makes this slightly irritating to watch. Great performances by Leguizamo, Cannavale and Rosie Perez (as Felix's wife).

6/10

Forbrydelsen (The Killing) - Season 1

This is an excellent, excellent show.

It starts with the discovery of some bloody bits and pieces in an open field. Sarah Lund, on her very last on the Copenhagen police force (she is about to move to Sweden with her fiance) gets the seemingly minor case. She has to work along with her successor, Jan Meyer.

Quickly, it becomes clear that the case involves the disappearance of Nanna Birk Larsen, a 19 year old college student. After the discovery of her body in a car dumped in some lake. The car is part of a fleet belonging to the campaign office of local politician Troels Harmann.

The investigation starts at Nanna's school, with her friends and former boyfriend acting suspiciously. When nothing much comes of investigating them, the focus turns to one of Nanna's teachers, who saw her the night she disappeared and has been seen to remove something that could have been a body into a friends car. The secret he hides, however, turns out to be something entirely different, but not before Nanna's father takes the law into his own hands and is stoped just in time before killing him.

All the while, circumstential evidence (the car, the party flat, surveillance tapes) mounts against Hartmann, who is running for mayor. He is in and out of police custody, his alibi crumbles, and the political vultures circle over his head. He does get cleared, eventually, but the focus stays at town hall. As a consequence, a civil servant is killed in a hit-and-run, presumably because he knew to much about a moderate politician, who had an affair with Nanna until half a year previously. After he gets shot by police, the evidence against him is deemed enough to shut the case.

Doubts about his guilt arise when similar cases get connected to Nanna's, that go back some 15 years. We are now looking for a serial killer. While Lund's life falls apart around her and she seems to be out of her depth, the investigation moves closer to home, and now men working for Nanna's father become suspects. Lund cuts a lot of corners, and one of her unauthorized investigations costs her partner his life.

Her persistence and instinct are what cracks the case eventually, but it is a costly victory.

The US version has nothing on the Danish original, least of all a lead actress that awesome.

7/10



The Visitor

The Visitor is the story of widowed university professor Walter, who has essentially been doing next to nothing in the past few years and just stalling. He has to appear at a conference to speak, an engagement he tries to wiggle his way out of but can't.

He travels from his Connecticut house to an apartment he has in New York just to find a couple, Tarek and Zainab, living in his place. They found it via one mysterious Ivan and had no idea they had been living there illegally.

As they are in dire need of housing, walter let's them stay and eventually befriends Tarek, who starts teaching Walter how to play the African drum. While out and about one day they have some trouble getting their drums through the subway turnstiles, Tarek gets falsely accused of dodging the fare and gets taken into custody.

It is only then that Walter realizes that the young couple are illegals and he tries to help as best he can to get Tarek legal representation and possibly getting him a staying permit. While Tarek is incarcerated and living in constant fear of deportation, Walter becomes very close with Tarek's mother Mouna.

The film shows the harshness of the system, but manages to do so without blaming the people working in it - like the prison guards really only doing their jobs, however frustrating it may be for Walter or anyone else that is desperate for some information on the whereabouts of their loved ones.

Despite the moments of hope and happiness, the story is a sad and desperate one. Richard Jenkins is brilliant and rightly earned the acclaim he received, including a nomination for Best Actor at the Academy Awards (losing to a wonderful Sean Penn in Milk). Another plus - nice shots of New York.

Recommendation.

9/10

À L'Intérieur (Inside)

This is among the most out-of-proportion bloodbaths I have ever seen on film.

A very pregnant Sarah loses her husband in a head-on collission. The day before she is to deliver her baby, a strange woman (Béatrice Dalle playing a totally insane bitch) attacks her because she wants the baby.

What follows is an orgasmic outburst of violence and gallons of blood.

It's not like it is just Sarah vs. the crazy bitch. No, Sarah has alerted the cops of an intruder and they make sure "she is gone" before driving off and promising to have a patrol swing by later to check on things.

Jean-Pierre, who is scheduled to drive Sarah to the hospital next morning, comes by to check on her - he gets stabbed, chocked with a pillow and stabbed some more.

Sarah's mother comes by and gets killed by her own daughter, who simply hacks away at the first moving thing outside the bathroom she is hiding in. By this time her water has broken, but she stays rather active for some time after.

The night patrol comes by - two of the cops get suspicious and investigate further. One gets stabbed in the neck, the other has his face shot off. Cop no. 3 hears the shots, chains the prisoner in the backseat to himself, takes him with him into the house and does. Not. Call. For. Backup. Cop gets shot, prisoner takes a pair of scissors in the skull.

By this time, Sarah has a gun lying beside her on the bed and when crazy bitch comes to make out with her (just because) she does. Not. Shoot. Her. Also, she choses not to leave the house when she has the chance.

Crazy bitch gets her face burned badly thanks to the ever-helpful can of some cleaner or other and her smoking habit. It is at this point that Sarah gives herself a tracheotomy (yes, yes she does). Then cop no. 3 - who is not dead after all - starts hitting Sarah, or rather her belly for no reason. Crazy bitch - who lost her own baby in the car accident that killed Sarah's husband (and here is where it all suddenly makes perfect sense!) - kills off the cop and cuts the baby out of Sarah.

Seriously? WHAT. THE. FUCK?

2/10

Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield

This is only very loosely based on the real events and murders of Ed Gein and is actually more about country cop Bobby Mason than it is about the serial killer.

Gein is your standard loner that is locally only spoken off in hushed tones because his mother and brother died last year and he hasn’t been the same since. The scenes of attack usually involve poor Ed imagining his mother speaking to him rather than the women he picks out for killing. Surely, it is all mommy’s fault.

The town folk is portrayed as plain and almost cartoonish at times. The cop’s momma particularly overplays the matronly lady. She gets so annoying at times that you wish Ed Gein upon her – and sooner rather than later. Bobby is about as one-dimensional and stupid as they come (think Dewey from the Scream films without the humor angle). He is either staring in wide-eyed wonder when making any discovery of any significance or boldly making out with his girlfriend Erica (his boss’ daughter – never a good idea, and his mother may not approve either). This is 2007, so we can go a little steamy, no matter when the story is set.

There is even the inquisitive female (!) journalist hounding the sheriff for details of any crimes. An impromptu press conference brings out all the awful acting in full force. The only person that does  a halfway decent job is Kane Hodder, who plays Ed Gein. Hodder also played Jason Voorhees in the later parts of the Friday The 13th films. In his work as a stunt man he badly burned part of his body. This – as well as his stature – probably is part of the reason he seems to be stuck in murderous roles.

For some reason that I don’t quite understand, some of the really bad scenes are played out in slow motion, which feels totally out of place.

Fittingly, the dialogue falls flat through most of the film, like

“Erica! Erica! Erica! She was right here! Where did she go? Erica!”

or

“Now, we know for sure that you are somewhere on this property. We’d like you to kindly help us in this investigation by coming out and introducing yourself.” “I don’t think he’s home.” “Oh no, he’s home. I can smell him.”

or even,

“Bobby don’t do it. Don’t lower yourself to his level.”

The film has a score of 3,8/10 on imdb, which is too high for my liking.

1/10