August 03, 2007
the bourne ultimatum
...in which Jason Bourne, né David Webb — well-meaning, patriotic, brutally brainwashed into becoming a vacant killing machine — finds himself, late in the movie (the third in a series running since mid-2002, if dates are really needed), asking the lone sympathetic authority figure, Pamela Landy, why she's now helping him.
To which she explains that "this" (black ops, waterboarding, assassinations, etc etc) isn't what she signed off on, initially; now she wants to help him put a stop to it.
Which is to say that Matt Damon plays the American people, as imagined by, oh, The New Republic.. And Joan Allen plays Hillary Clinton as imagined by, oh, Hillary Clinton.
A curiously overrated film; it's not even the summer's most entrancing bit of propaganda, which is all we ever asked for.
25) Smokin' Aces (nothing)
24) Factory Girl (wasn't Smokin' Aces)
23) Paris je t'aime (didn't have Hayden Christenson)
22) Waitress (Cheryl Hines' micromonologues, Nathan Fillion's smile)
21) Severance (theatre was quite clean)
20) Dreamgirls (the club sets; Eddie Murphy's Marvin Gaye skullcap)
19) Avenue Montaigne (the one brief image of the young Dani)
18) Ocean's 13 (Soderbergh's knack for shooting Vegas so you can't tell if it's a set or not)
17) Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten ("White Riot" a capella)
16) Notes on a Scandal (Bill Nighy dancing)
15) Hot Fuzz (lighting in British supermarket)
14) Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (pleasure of SRO crowd in huge theatre)
13) Blades of Glory (ambient Ferrellage)
12) Disturbia (strange racialized decision to have best friend recreate the standard John Cho performance)
11) Alpha Dog (Justin Timberlake in general)
10) The Bourne Ultimatum (Steve on Julia Stiles' role: "in like a magic bullet, out like a cigarette butt")
9) Shooter (Mark Wahlberg dressed as a frickin' yeti for the final showdown; Ned Beatty's career-long conversion into Buford T. Justice)
8) Backstage (Isild LeBesco's facial physiognomy; plausibility of such drecky pop being huge in France)
7) Grindhouse (Fake trailers, muscle cars, and a wrecker named Killdozer)
6) Knocked Up (Seth Rogen's delivery, the jokes about Martin's beard, Paul Rudd's three smiles)
5) 28 Weeks Later (Goodbye Dover Beach...)
4) Transformers (has entire theory of American history, plus robot fights)
3) The Host (brief familial hallucination of feeding the lost child; Kang-ho Song's facial expressions)
2) Children of Men (blood on the lens for long tracking shot; Clive Owen's slumped shoulders)
1) Pan's Labyrinth (Spanish Winona Ryder; Harold & the Purple Crayon riff; title better in English)