Movies September 2012 - Total of 29 movies watched

1. The Hurt Locker *****
2. The Bourne Legacy ****
3. Love and other drugs **** new
4. Dahmer **** new
5. Lawless *** new
6. Strange Days ****
7. The Professionals **** new
8. Shadow Dancer **** new
9. Total Recall (2012) *** new
10. The Blind Side ****
11. Liberal Arts **** new
12. True Romance ****
13. The Tree of Life ***** new
14. Premium Rush *** new
15. Singin' in the Rain *****
16. Anna Karenina *** new
17. Sullivan's Travels *****
18. The Bourne Legacy ****
19. Dredd 3D *** new
20. Laws of Attraction ***
21. Archipelago **** new
22. An Ideal Husband ****
23. The Importance of Being Earnest ***
24. Savages *** new
25. Star Trek ****
26. Avengers *****
27. Lawless ****
28. In the Loop ****
29. Looper ***** new

Movies August 2012 - Total of 37 movies watched

 1. The Dark Knight Rises *****
2. Reign of Fire ***
3. Brave **** new
4. Little Voice ****
5. Terminator: Salvation ***
6. The Last Song ** new
7. The Bourne Supremacy ****
8. 50/50 ****
9. The Bourne Ultimatum ***
10. The Bourne Legacy **** new
11. Ted *** new
12. The Constant Gardener ****
13. The Bourne Legacy ****
14. Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol ****
15. Marnie ****
16. The Departed *****
17. Grabbers **** new
18. The Bourne Legacy ****
19. Chronicle ****
20. Paperback Hero *** new
21. Airplane! ****
22. Someone Like You... *** new
23. Rain Man *** new
24. The Hunger Games ****
25. The Bourne Legacy ****
26. The Town **** new
29. This Means War ****
30. Passchendaele *** new
31. Gone Baby Gone *****
32. Haywire ****
33. Twelve and Holding **** new
34. Neo Ned *** new
35. Forgetting Sarah Marshall ***
36. The Fountain ****
37. 28 Weeks Later ***

Review of The Bourne Legacy

(Some spoilers within - bigger spoilers are blacked out)
I absolutely LOVED this film. I am a huge fan of Jeremy Renner and Rachel Weisz separately but together, they are simply wonderful. It makes a big difference when action films cast actors of such a high calibre - as with the excellent Matt Damon as Bourne, double Oscar nominee Renner and Oscar winner Weisz bring so much more to their roles than lesser actors could. Soldier-turned-guinea pig Aaron Cross is a very different character to Jason Bourne but is no less sympathetic as his backstory and his desperation to avoid returning to his previous life as a man with a low IQ is revealed over the course of the film. Meanwhile, Weisz's brilliant scientist is much more than just a sidekick or damsel-in-distress. In one key scene, when a desperately-ill Aaron tells her that she has done everything she could do for him and begs her to leave and save herself, Weisz's face told of her character's guilt for her participation in the Outcome project and how it has affected Aaron's life. No dialogue was needed - everything was there in her face and her actions.

I watched the three Bourne films in the last ten days to get myself in the spirit of things. The Bourne Identity remains very much my favourite of the three, probably because I found it the most emotionally engaging. This film is much closer in spirit to the original Bourne Identity than to the other two - the couple on the run, the spies hunting them down, other agents being despatched to kill them and being summarily dealt with by their intended victim. There is a lot less of the CIA/NSA cross and double-cross of the later two films, although the DNA of the Bourne series is very much evident - an embattled Pamela Landy even makes an appearance. The love story that developed in Identity was a part of the film that really touched me and there is also a love story here. However, rather than being Jason and Marie 2.0, Aaron and Marta ended up reminding me very much more of my favourite on-the-run couple, Kyle Reese and Sarah Connor in The Terminator. There seems to be a deliberate nod to that film in Aaron's early line to Marta: "DO YOU WANT TO LIVE?" :-) The actors have terrific chemistry together (which is amusing, given their characters' connection) and the characters have a history going back several years, which makes their connection believable. Three lines of Aaron's could imply that he had feelings for Marta long before he came back for her: before succumbing to anaesthesia during a check-up he mumbles something about her always looking pretty and later he tells her that they have met 13 times in four years. He also surmised that a fellow Outcome agent had been exiled to the wilderness after he had fallen in love and seemed pleased to think that this was the reason.

On the downside, the film does suffer from a confusing plot (though I was not as confused as some reviewers have been, perhaps because I just watched the earlier films VERY recently) and the direction is nothing special. The super-soldier drugs idea seems a little sci-fi but in some ways more believable than the idea that behavioural modification alone was responsible for making these men (and women) so damn impressive! I also liked the idea of the different strands of the super-soldier programmes having their own problems and issues: there's a reference to Treadstone's inconsistency and Outcome's emotions (perhaps the love issue Aaron raised?), while new project LARX supposedly lacks either of these.

I would highly recommend this film - I enjoyed the hell out of it. And even if you don't take to Aaron and Marta the way I did, there's still plenty to entertain. Aaron Cross wrestling a wolf, for God's sake. And apparently the wonderful Jeremy Renner is not only one of the most interesting actors around at the moment (and possesses some of the finest arms in Hollywood, which get plenty of screentime), but the man CAN REALLY RUN UP WALLS. He did it twenty-five times during filming, according to recent interview with Empire Magazine. So watch out for that. Also watch out for the nerdy-looking guy who suggests involving the LARX project agent - that's the almost unrecognisable Corey Stoll, who was so very brilliant as Ernest Hemingway in Woody Allen's Midnight In Paris.

Movies July 2012 - total of 23 movies watched

1. The Amazing Spider-Man **** new
2. Shame ****
3. The Five Year Engagement **** new
4. Magic Mike **** new
5. Only You ****
6. Die Hard *****
7. Good Will Hunting ****
8. The Incredible Hulk ***
9. Killer Joe **** new
10. Batman Begins ****
11. The Dark Knight *****
12. Step Up ***
13. Battleship Potemkin **** new
14. The Dark Knight Rises ***** new
15. Warrior *****
16. The Prestige *****
17. A Few Good Men ****
18. Little Women ****
19. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy *****
20. The Dark Knight Rises *****
21. Inception *****
22. The Hurt Locker *****
23. The Bourne Identity ****

June 2012 - Total of 21 movies watched

1. Prometheus **** new
2. Snow White and the Huntsman *** new
3. Prometheus ****
4. Avengers Assemble *****
5. Barefoot in the Park ****
6. Crazy Stupid Love **** new
7. Speed *****
8. Jaws ***** (cinema)
9. Twilight: Breaking Dawn: Part 1 ** new
10. Morning Glory *** new
11. The Other Guys ****
12. Never Let Me Go ***** new
13. One Day ****
14. The Descendants **** new
15. Dear John *** new
16. Midnight in Paris **** new
17. Source Code ****
18. The Matchmaker ** new
19. 21 Jump Street ****
20. When Harry Met Sally *****
21. Fighting *** new

May 2012 - total of 14 movies watched

1. Dirty Harry ****
2. Avengers Assemble ***** new
3. The Lucky One ** new
4. The Day After Tomorrow ***
5. Avengers Assemble *****
6. Stranger than Fiction ****
7. Terminator 2 ****
8. Willow ****
9. Like Crazy **** new
10. The American President ****
11. Men In Black III *** new
12. You've Got Mail ****
13. Jane Eyre (2011) ****
14. Young Victoria ***

April 2012 - Total of 18 movies watched

1. Alien *****
2. Aliens *****
3. The Cabin In The Woods **** new
4. The Abyss ****
5. Battleship *** new
6. The Cold Light of Day ** new
7. Double Indemnity *****
8. Dog Soldiers ****
9. Mirror Mirror *** new
10. Carriers *** new
11. The Vow **** new
12. The Cabin In The Woods ****
13. Headhunters *** new
14. Wrath of the Titans *** new
15. The Lake House ****
16. The Hunger Games ****
17. Being Elmo **** new
18. Post Grad **