The Bourne Identity

This was all just a big misunderstanding.

See, the agency is not aware of Jason Bourne's memory loss, so obviously they have to assume that he has gone rouge, after failing his task and all. But poor Jason doesn't remember who he is and all he knows is that he has six passports and a pile of money stacked away and everyone is out to get him. And then, to cover their tracks, his bosses blame him when the original task is finished after all while at the same time hunting Bourne down. Such is the outline.

Not the first time I am watching this film but I am immediately irritated. My problem? How did Jason Bourne get into Switzerland from whatever port he came to land? By regular train and without a passport? You do not get into Switzerland without a passport. For that matter, how does he get out of the country with his employers practically on his heels from the get go?

So, everything Jason Bourne does, he does by instinct. Except ditch Marie. She is a liability from the start, obviously. He should have ditched her before they even made out. His instincts should have told him so. Does he have a conscience? Because of his amnesia? By all accounts he should be ruthless and efficient, no?

Or, better yet, Marie should walk away much sooner than she does. She is on the verge of leaving for half the film anyway. But of course, Bourne needs a ball and chain to hinder him from doing what needs to be done effectively. Otherwise, this would be a different kind of film. Maybe a better film.

On the whole, I liked this better the first time around.

6/10

Cinemania

Though the subject of this documentary is right down my lane (being someone who watches way too many films, albeit on a very much smaller scale in comparison to the subjects of Cinemania), the execution appears so sloppy that it borders on the annoying.

It is shot with shaky camera (in an attempt at vérité) and does not really focus all that much on cinema itself, or what it actually means to the five people the cameras follow around. There is an awful lot of time dedicated to the logistics of watching as many films as possible in cinemas across New York City, but rarely does it ever touch on what those films are.

I assume that the films are not merely picked because they can be fitted into a day, but there is a reason an individual wants to see certain films. Somehow, we never quite learn what, say, Harvey watches on a particular day. Sure, we know he likes Ginger Rogers and is not a fan of Antonioni, but that is about the extent.

In the end, we see more of New York City, hustling from one cinema to the next on many subways, than we do of actual film. I wish they would have let the five people talk more and make them look less like weirdos.

Somewhat disappointing.

4/10

28 Days Later...

A group of animal rights activists breaks into a lab to free chimpanzees, that are being used for testing. Although the cause is noble, the activists are about to unleash a epidemic on the population of Great Britain. A lab technician walks in on them and, realizing what they are about to do, warns them that the animals were infected with the dangerous and highly infectious 'Rage' virus. Ignoring this, they open one cage and the chimpanzee storms out and immediately attacks a woman, biting her neck. Within seconds, the infection sets in and the woman's eyes turn red with this it starts.

28 days after this, Jim awakes in a hospital, where he was in a coma after a head injury suffered in a car crash. The hospital is empty and - as Jim walks out, wearing scrubs - so apparently is the entire city of London. He stumbles around, calling out and really only starts to understand the gravity of the situation when he finds an old newspaper with unsettling headlines. Soon enough, he encounters the first group of infected, in a church. They run after him (them things are fast) and he is saved by two young people, Mark and Selena.

They group up and after visiting Jim's parent's house, where he finds his parents in bed, having committed suicide some time ago, they are again attacked by infected. Again, they get away but Mark was infected through an open wound. Selena beats his head in. Traveling on through the city, the two survivors see blinking Christmas lights in a high rise, where they go and meet Frank and his daughter Hannah. After spending a night in relative safety, Frank plays them a recording, informing the population of a safe haven up the country some way. The group decides to make a break for it.

When they come to the spot, the road block appears to be abandoned. Frank, in a rage, kicks against the wall of a lean to, that has a bloody body on top. A drop of blood falls right into his eye, infecting him (all this in a pretty shot from the blood drops point of view). While Frank turns, military shows up to shoot the hell out of him. Jim, Selena and Hannah are taken to a nearby, very posh house, which is the military base.

They believe themselves to finally have some sort of safety. However, they are the only ones there besides the small group of soldiers. Soon enough, it turns out that the leader, Major West, has sent out the communication picked up by Frank and had promised his men women - and now there were two. After an alteration, when some of the soldiers are about to attack Selena and Hannah, the one soldier that rushes to help the women and Jim are taken into custody and brought to the nearby woods by two soldiers. There, they are about to be shot, but Jim gets away. He hides in the bushes, noticing an airplane overhead.

While the women are very much in distress, Jim sets off an alarms by the road block, Major West sets out to take care of business himself, with the help of just one soldier. His comrade gets killed by Jim, who also cuts the car's wire, stranding the Major, who has to make his way back now on foot. Jim returns to the house, where he first frees one infected former soldier, that has been kept on a chain in the yard. After the infected makes it into the house, the virus takes his usual, speedy course, getting to all the soldiers (including the returning Major West) while Selena, Hannah and Jim make their escape.

Another 28 days later, the trio is settled in a house in a mountainous area. They have been working on stitching together bed linens and - in the last scene - spell out the word 'HELLO' to get the attention of the planes, passing over in regular intervals.

8/10

Deathwatch

During WW I, a battalion of British soldiers stumbles through a field of fog, losing their orientation. When they come upon extensive German trenches, they kill the few German soldiers still in it except for one and take over the trenches. Obviously, they don't heed the lone soldiers warning about the place, telling them that they will turn on each other if they stay.

They are under command of one Cpt. Jennings, who orders them to defend the trenches until their own troops catch up with them. But they are unable to make contact with anyone, with only white noise coming through the radio.

The place is eerie, to say the least, and the fogs surrounding everything never lifts. They soon realize that they are stranded, not knowing where they are and unable to call for help. But their Captain insists on staying, no matter how uneasy everyone is.

Sometimes, at night, the place is surrounded by battle noises but whenever they get ready for the oncoming attack nothing happens and the noise dies down again. In the confusion that follows their trying to clean out the tunnel system by throwing explosives inside, the Captain accidentally shoots one of his own men - the first sign of them turning on each other.

On another occasion, a patch of fog, this one rather red than white, befalls one of the soldiers who is then finally ready to desert his post. When he does, he is - as deserters will be - shot by a companion. His other fellow soldiers try to help him, but he gets swallowed up by the ground before they can get to him.

This then causes the group to finally split apart, some wanting to leave immediately, the Captain still wanting to stay and establishing his role as the leader and one rather crazy man hollering at whatever is out there with him to come and get him. When the Captain orders him to cease his nonsense, he gets stabbed to death for his efforts. As predicted, they all turn on each other, with only one of them (the youngest) having any sense of moral left and only shooting out of self defense.

When all but himself are dead the earth swallows the bodies along with him into...the ground? ...hell? When he comes to he is surrounded by decaying corpses and in the distance sees his entire battalion, seemingly unharmed, including himself. When he stumbles outside he runs into the one remaining German soldier, now suddenly fluent in English when before he was only able (willing?) to communicate in French, telling the survivor that he is free to go as he was the only one trying to help him.

It all ends with another battalion happening upon the trenches and aiming at the German soldier, who lifts his head to face the camera, smiling.

The film relies mostly on the dreary and bleak atmosphere and a pretty decent cast, convincingly portraying a scared, desperate group of soldiers.

It is a bit confusing, though.

5/10

Ghost Ship

Last Sunday's horror film bonanza (see my previous posts) concluded with Ghost Ship. Sort of as a way to calm down after The Collector/The Collection we needed something blood free and relatively calm. It was....fine. Not really scary.

Some guy contacts a group of what can only be described as ocean teasure hunters because he saw a seemingly deserted ocean liner in the middle of nowhere while flying over and, who knows, it may be worth something. The group is beat and ready to go home but the promise of financial gain prompts them to join in.

When they find the ship it does hold what they were hoping for - gold. And lots of it. It is also haunted by seemingly all the passengers that were on it when they 'mysteriously disappeared' in the 1960s. The disappearance, of course, was not so mysterious after all. Most were killed for the gold the ship was holding.

The new arrivals also find a pile of bodies that could only have been there for a few months. And they start seeing things and miscalculating dangers and people die. (Of course they do.)

Not too surprisingly, the guy that first alerted them to the ship's existance has something to do with all the eery things that have been happening. Turns out he is not a human but once was a very bad man and has to collect souls for his boss (the devil, one assumes) and the ship seemed to be as good a hunting ground as any, but he needed to get someone to fix it agains because it was in danger of sinking.

In the end, the lone survivor is straped to a gurney, because she is badly injured and as she lifts her head she sees the boxes of gold being loaded onto another ship and the bad guy boarding with them.

Oh, well.

4/10

All or Nothing

Leave it to Mike Leigh to bring you down with a beautifully spun story about people living in a nondescript apartment complex, with no rewards for there daily struggles, just barely making a living.

The family this film revolves around are couple Phil and Penny Bassett and their two overweight kids Rachel and Rory. Phil is a cab driver, accepting of his dreary life and never making a fuss about anything. His wife Penny works on a supermarket check-out and has to put up with Rory's insults. Rory himself just lies around on the couch all day, jobless and lazy. Rachel works as a cleaner at an nursing home.

Their neighbor's life's are no better. There is the single mother, getting lip from her daughter, who gets abused by her boyfriend and finds out she is pregnant. One of Phil's colleagues lives in the complex, as well. His wife is a drunk and the daughter wanders about making trouble.

There are no ups in their lives, only the occasional down. It is one particular tragedy that breaks open the small collectives of wounds of the Bassett family but makes Phil and Penny understand each other a little better.

from Roger Ebert's review: Watch carefully how it happens, and who reacts to it and how, and you will see that Leigh has made all of the neighbors into characters whose troubles help to define their response.

Sad and desperate, but also beautifully told and acted.

7/10

Amen. aka Der Stellvertreter

The film Amen. is about an officer of the SS, aided by a priest, trying to alert the catholic church, opposing nations, anyone of the atrocities commited on the Jews in WWII Germany. It is based on true events, although the accuracy of the portrayal of the catholic church is under some scrutiny.

The film does spare out the actual gassing of Jews and is generelly very sparse on grisly imagery. Instead, it shows German military officials, well off people and religious figures having lavish meals as well as hurried meetings.

The cast is from across Europe, heavy on the German side (and it is always strange to hear Germans talking to other Germans in heavily accented English). The SS officer is played by Ulrich Tukur (wonderfully so) and the priest is portrayed by Mathieu Kassovitz (handsome, so handsome). The evil side is represented by the late, and always brilliant, Ulrich Mühe.

The most impressive images, for me anyway, are shots of trains going through scenery with empty cattle cars, followed by closed - and supposedly full - cars a few minutes later. This is repeated throughout the whole film to represent the incomprehensible numbers of people being transported to the concentration camps and - for most - to their deaths.

6/10