The Bourne Legacy

The studio apartment where I live has turned into a pizza oven. I am in a unit on the top floor of a 100-year-old building. For the most part it stays cool during the summer; only when the temperature reaches the mid-80s°F and above does it begin to bake.

It has been warm the past couple of days, warm and humid, and today it is forecast to be in the 80s°F again. Today the Gay Pride Parade takes place. Last night, the Saturday before the parade, I was expecting more noise -- the thudding base of dance music from the street party on Broadway -- but everything was surprisingly quiet. Festivities must be going on downtown.

Last night I finally got around to streaming The Bourne Legacy (2012), my first Hollywood blockbuster in several weeks. Recently there has been a marked reduction in new big Hollywood films available to stream from Amazon; that, and Amazon seems to be fiddling with their pricing. It used to be that pricing was very stable. All newly released big Hollywood movie rentals would be priced the same. Now it's all the over the map. Some, when first available, you cannot rent, only buy.

So I've grown tired with the process; hence, the three-week hiatus. But last night I was in the mood for a Saturday-night blockbuster, and I chose wisely.

The Bourne Legacy is directed and co-written by Tony Gilroy, who wrote and directed the refreshing thriller Michael Clayton (2007). Legacy is part of the high-quality Bourne franchise.

In Legacy we have Aaron Cross, played by Jeremy Renner, instead of Matt Damon as Jason Bourne. The secret government program is also different. The one Cross is member of is Operation Outcome, not Treadstone and Blackbriar, which were the black ops programs in the first three Bourne movies.

Outcome is a supersoldier pilot project. Through a combination of drugs and viruses, Operation Outcome engineers genetic enhancements -- an increase in cellular efficiency -- making its operatives faster, stronger, smarter. Think an updated version of the Captain America origin tale. In this case instead of earnest scientists working to discover a supersoldier serum to combat the Axis powers, we have a sprawling, opaque national security state with overlapping secret programs spewing out beta versions of super-assassins. (The idea of a warrior made superior by increased energy production at the the cellular level can be found in another Marvel comic book character, the villain Zeke Stane from the pages of Matt Fraction's Invincible Iron Man.)

This movie has everything. It is a Call of the Wild with missile-firing drones. It is a timely expose of our nefarious corporate national security state (Big Pharma in bed with high-ranking government intelligence officials). And it has a stupendous motorcycle chase in Manila. You even get the James Bond final scene -- the stud ends up with a beautiful, devoted woman on a boat on some exotic body of water. Cue the Moby theme song. Roll credits.

Cloud Atlas: Be Prepared to Suffer

I started late yesterday afternoon. I had stepped out and purchased a medium cheese pizza at the neighborhood Pagliacci. A movie that's close to three hours in length, as Cloud Atlas is, requires nutrition.

Not since The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey have I suffered so. And as with The Hobbit, I was unable to finish Cloud Atlas. I made it 90 minutes in and then had to throw in the towel from sheer exhaustion. Following six separate stories over six different time periods, watching spiritless acting (I found the performances of Halle Berry and Tom Hanks embarrassing) and having to deal with the quick breaks between plotlines, it's hard to establish any kind of connection to the movie. What were the Wachowskis and Tom Twyker thinking? Are they purposely alienating their audience?

I slept for four hours and then got up and sat through another hour. I now have around 30 minutes left to go. I'll finish up tonight. But my advice is don't waste your time with this film. Some of the futuristic Neo Seoul stuff is interesting, probably because it taps into the Wachowskis' The Matrix trilogy, and the San Francisco 1973 investigative reporter plot was decent. But if you're looking for a movie with multiple plotlines that addresses time consciousness and identity, stick with Christopher Nolan's Inception (2010); it's an incomparably better picture.

Side Effects

I dreamed of pharmaceuticals last night -- Wellbutrin, Gabapentin -- after streaming Steven Soderbergh and Scott Z. Burns' latest project, Side Effects. If you think you've seen it all in a crime drama, definitely check out Side Effects; it will be worth your time and expense. It's an amazing bit of writing. To structure a compelling story about depression and the unholy alliance between psychiatry and pharmacology set against the backdrop of a soulless financialized capitalism that's killing us all, and then to shift from what you think is a human-interest drama to a criminal whodunnit -- bravo! -- that's good.

Of course you need some stellar performances to pull the whole thing off, and you get them from Jude Law and Rooney Mara. I enjoyed the opening shots of the hive-like apartment buildings of Manhattan and the closing shots of the hive-like correctional buildings on Rikers Island.

Taylor Hackford's Parker

Still suffering the effects from weekend food poisoning, I settled in last night for a viewing of Taylor Hackford's Parker. I've never been a Taylor Hackford fan. I always think of his movies as dumbed down for a mass audience trapped at a junior-high level of comprehension. There is no better example of what I'm talking about here than Ray (2004).

But with Parker, Hackford is working with action, tough-guy star Jason Statham (who seems to make three pictures a year). No dumbing down is required.

I like Jason Statham. Safe (2012), a story written and directed by Boaz Yakin about a fighter and former cop (played by Statham) caught between the Russian mafia and the Chinese Triads, is thoroughly enjoyable. But Parker is not of that caliber.

Parker is a movie we've all seen before. A heist picture with a double-cross. The plots chugs along, and the the viewer's interest is maintained by the slimmest of margins. A great deal of credit for any success the film enjoys should go to Jennifer Lopez, who manages to take an unbelievable character and make her the most interesting part of the movie.

Jack Reacher: It's Worth Watching

Last night I struggled to find a newly-released-to-DVD Hollywood blockbuster to stream. I considered Cloud Atlas but was scared away by its three-hour length. I would have gone with Steven Soderbergh's Side Effects, but it was only available to purchase on Amazon, not for rent. Taylor Hackford's Parker, starring Jason Statham, won't release for streaming until Tuesday. I mulled over the idea of Stand Up Guys, starring Al Pacino, Christopher Walken and Alan Arkin, but judging from a few of the Amazon customer reviews I decided against it.

Then I noticed that Amazon is starting to offer "Watch While It's In Theaters" streaming for select movies. You pay more -- in this case, $2-$3 more than what it costs to stream a newly-released-to-DVD film. I almost pulled the trigger on Terrence Malick's To the Wonder, but I held off. I'm a big Terrence Malick fan. I think The Thin Red Line (1998) is a masterpiece. But I found The Tree of Life (2011), believe it or not, too esoteric and self-indulgent; and judging from a cursory glance at the customer reviews, To the Wonder is more of the same. I'll watch it at some point; it's just that last night I was not in the mood.

After about a half hour of this, I finally chose the Tom Cruise vehicle Jack Reacher. I hesitated because I've never been a huge Tom Cruise fan. I thought he was super as Frank T.J. Mackey in Magnolia (1999) and as the hitman in Collateral (2004). And come to think of it, he was incredible in Tropic Thunder (2008) -- really the best part of that movie by far. But my feelings about Tom Cruise are conflicted. He's of my generation. He comes on the scene at the same time as the country begins its full retreat Rightward with Ronald Reagan. The two films that rocketed Cruise into the Pantheon of Hollywood stars -- Risky Business (1983) and Top Gun (1986) -- are synonymous with the "Reagan Revolution" -- a mythologizing of American business and the military.

Here we are, three decades on, and Tom Cruise, a half century in age, is playing an ex-MP superman named Jack Reacher in a film adaptation of Lee Child's 2005 novel, One Shot. Christopher McQuarrie, of The Usual Suspects (1995) fame, writes the screenplay and directs. What cinched my decision to stream Jack Reacher was seeing that MacQuarrie was the guy who had written and directed Way of the Gun (2000), an excellent and too-little-appreciated movie starring Benicio del Toro and Ryan Phillippe.

The film opens with shots of PNC Park, where the Pittsburgh Pirates play, and the Allegheny River. The movie looks good. Pittsburgh looks like a nice city. Then you're looking through the scope of the killer's rifle deciding which passersby to snuff. Right away you know you're in for a treat.

This is a topnotch movie. And while it plays to a Red State, gun-toting, pro-military audience, it doesn't do it in an offensive manner. This is a testament both to McQuarrie's direction and Tom Cruise's performance. Supporting roles that stand out are Jai Courtney as the handsome heavy (Spartacus: Blood and Sand junkies will recognize him as Varro); David Oyelowo as the homicide detective; and the legendary Bob Duvall as the crusty gun-range owner and last-second O.K. Corral recruit. There is a tremendous car chase a little after the film's halfway point that is reminiscent of Bullitt (1968). Any movie that puts one in mind of Bullitt is worth watching!

Ignore A.O. Scott, Gangster Squad Is Good

Contrary to the scathing review by A.O. Scott of the New York Times that I saw online back in January, Gangster Squad is a topnotch action movie and thoroughly enjoyable from start to finish. Directed by the young Ruben Fleisher, who did Zombieland (2009), Gangster Squad is a Seven Samurai (1954), The Magnificent Seven (1960) set in mobster Mickey Cohen's post-war Los Angeles. The Yul Brenner role is played ably by Josh Brolin. Ryan Gosling is terrific; his character's romance with Cohen's etiquette coach, played by Emma Stone, actually enhances the movie rather than bog it down.

The key to a good action picture is a believable villain, the character who creates fear. Sean Penn delivers as Mickey Cohen, the ambitious, ruthless former pug who is on the verge of controlling all the parimutuel betting on the West Coast.

Fleisher borrows heavily from Michael Mann and the Wachowskis. But this is a good thing. Gangster Squad is an excellent example of the action genre. (It makes me question the value of reading A.O. Scott.)

Life of Pi

I finally got around to watching Life of Pi last night. I had held off because I was wary of the whole magical realism, "Oh, isn't nature trippy" thing. But there is no need to worry. Ang Lee is an accomplished director who keeps the narrative moving along at a fast clip (his first Hollywood efforts -- Sense and Sensibility (1995) and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) are terrific movies). And the "Oh, isn't nature trippy" moments are used sparingly and as punctuation in a white-knuckled action adventure story about survival in an open boat after a shipwreck on the high seas. And what makes the survival tale unusually riveting is that in the open boat with Pi Patel, the Tamil boy at the heart of Yann Martel's 2001 prize-winning novel that the film adapts, is an injured zebra, a bloodthirsty hyena, a benevolent orangutan, and of course the majestic and fierce Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. This is a thriller which puts us back in touch with the primordial terror we in all our urban, electronic sophistication have forgotten -- the terror of nature and the animal kingdom; and in this sense Life of Pi is far more thrilling than any James Bond or Batman blockbuster.

From the opening shots of animals languidly being animals in the zoo managed by Pi's family in Pondicherry, Ang Lee's intention is to reawaken our forgotten knowledge of animality. The underlying discussion this movie is engaged in is the connection between animality ("Nature" -- the many manifestations of the sublime) and religion. The acting is superb -- particularly Suraj Sharma, who we spend most of the movie with in the boat with Richard Parker -- and the computer animation seamless. This is definitely a movie worth watching.