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Jason’s final blow-out?

So, you come to the third film of an established franchise, and typically you’d be grinding the gears of familiarity and delivering a story with merely a passing resemblance to, or derivation of, that which has come before. Not so with Ultimatum, the third and concluding chapter (so far) in Matt Damon’s essaying of Jason Bourne, the amnesiac CIA operative trying to uncover his true identity while being pursued by those wanting to keep him quiet. The Bourne Ultimatum might well be called The Bourne Supremacy 2.1, because the film picks up immediately (and I do mean immediately) after the end of Supremacy’s low-key conclusion, where Bourne apologizes to a young woman for the death of her parents by his hand; Tony Gilroy’s script (and I must stipulate that he wasn’t the sole writer here, with Scott Burns and George Nolfi brought in to massage the detail into shape, a fact not lost on Gilroy after the fact) tries to tie up all the loose ends and story beats established in the previous two films, and it’s worth noting that after watching all three films in rapid succession, it’s easy to spot links and symbiosis between all three, giving all three films a sense of completion. Ultimatum is essentially Jason Bourne’s epiphany, his finding peace with himself and trying to find repentance for what he perceives as transgressions, having murdered all those people in the name of the CIA. Does it work, though? Without Franka Potente as his emotional center, or even without an enemy he can face down, is Bourne’s final journey something of a let-down? Or is it (as I hoped) a solid, worthwhile conclusion to a well-thought-out saga that delivers the resolution audiences will find appealing?

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Wendy Hughes – 1952-2014

One of the great lights of Australian cinema, television and theater, Wendy Hughes has lost her battle with cancer today.

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If you’re a fan of hard-core action, take-no-prisoners filmmaking, and decidedly adult violence and carnage, then Garth Evans’ hugely thrilling The Raid 2 (I say hugely thrilling because it could hardly be anything but, right?) is about to unleash itself on your ass, taking all before it. If you haven’t seen the first Raid film (Redemption, and if not, how dare you call yourself a film fan!) then you should definitely see it before witnessing this movie. Let the ass-kickery of a trailer commence, and prepare to weep for the fact that you can only ever see it for the first time once.

Check out the cool, after the jump!

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Bim Bang Bash Badass.

One of my favorite car chase films (I still use this as a set-up disc for my home cinema) and one of the best action films of the 00′s, The Bourne Supremacy has it all – thrills, chases, weaving and twisting plot developments, and Matt Damon doing his square-jawed, glowering best. As a sequel to The Bourne Identity, Supremacy delivers more of the same and then some, amping up the action, ratcheting up the stakes, and delivering some nice textures to a relatively one-dimensional character in Jason Bourne. Coming off the back of his terrific (and terrifying) film Bloody Sunday, Greengrass’s visual style certainly had the ability to translate into big-screen thrills, yet as a relative unknown in the industry, his hiring as director was something of a risk for the young franchise. If Greengrass failed to deliver, Bourne would be dead and buried, but if he managed to succeed, then the door was open for even further adventures of everyone’s favorite amnesiac assassin. Filming across several continents, including India, Russia and Europe, The Bourne Supremacy saw many of the original films’ cast return for more; would Greengrass be able to capture the lightning twice?

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Stanley Rubin – 1917-2014

Hollywood producer Stanley Rubin has passed away.

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The new thriller with Tom Hardy, Locke, has a brand new trailer. if you’re wondering, it’s one of those “man in a box” scenarios, a lot like Buried or Cube, where the characters exist in a single location, and the entire film takes place within it. I’m reserving judgement until I see the final film, but this looks terrific purely based on Hardy’s intensity and the truly terrifying premise.

Check out the trailer after the jump!

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Robert Rodriguez’ long-in-the-womb sequel to his last major film success (yes, even Machete 2, I’m looking at you), Sin City, has graced us with a slick and stylish trailer. Featuring a smorgasbord of Hollywood A-list talent, including (but not limited to) Bruce Willis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Josh Brolin, Jessica Alba, Rosario Dawson and Mickey Rourke, the new trailer for Sin City: A Dame To Kill For is filled with stunning imagery that repeats the original 2005 film’s visual style, and looks amazing. Not much in way of plot is revealed, but when it’s all guns, glam and gals, what’s not to love?

Hit the trailer up in HD after the jump, and be amazed!!!

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Former Doctor Who companion Karen Gillan takes the plunge into horror with a leading role in Oculus, a creepy-lookin’ spook flick from director Mike Flanagan. The film opens in the US on April 11th, and also stars Katee Sackhoff (most recently seen in Riddick). Check out this trailer, then go change your underwear, then go check this film out in cinemas!!!

Watch the trailer after the jump!

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Back to the Bourne Beginning.

The wonderful thing about the original Bourne trilogy of films – Identity, Supremacy and Ultimatum (the latter two directed by Paul Greengrass) – is just how well they all wrap into each other. All three films form a perfect circle of character, action and plot; no moreso noted than the reprisal of a line from Identity which would come back in Ultimatum’s finale, “Look at what they make you give”. Wether by design from the outset, or simply clever script-wrangling by Tony Gilroy (co-plotter on the three originals, before taking the directorial reins for the rather poor Bourne Legacy), The Bourne Identity sets off a chain of events that cover not only this single film, but continue to be felt three films later. Whereas most sequels tend to spin off into tangents and lesser-story mediocrity, the Bourne trilogy is well noted for remaining as gripping in the final frame of Ultimatum as it is in the opening of Identity. That’s an amazing feat of production, writing, directing and acting, although considering the material is drawn from the late – great – Robert Ludlum’s novels, perhaps not entirely surprising. Looking back at The Bourne Identity, the film which saw Matt Damon cast as a then-unlikely action hero (hard to imagine otherwise now, right?) it’s easy to see how the overarching plot works, weaves and winds its way to the ultimate conclusion, while setting up sequel material with just enough hints and tidbits to tantalize audiences with a possible “wider world” story; The Bourne Identity remains a gripping, well made action thriller that provides just the right balance of character, action and story to not only whet the appetite, sate it, and then have you asking for more.

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Part of our new series of Behind The Scenes postings on all things Hollywood, we kick off today with a lengthy lecture on operating a hand-held camera by Cinematographer, Sean Bobbitt. Bobbitt worked with director Steve McQueen on 12 Years A Slave, which won Best Picture at the 86th Academy Awards. It offers a fascinating insight in to the practical activity of operating a camera – while most of us will never actually shoot a film, some of what Bobbitt says might come in handy for the handycam shooting of our kids’ birthdays and other personal events – and it’s just a damn good talk nonetheless.

Enjoy Mr Bobbitt’s work by hitting the video after the jump!!

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Yowp, a new version of the classic musical, Annie, is about to drop. Starring Will Smith (as Daddy Warbucks) and Quvenzhane Wallis (as Annie, natch!), this new slick update has the catchy tunes we all love, a possibly flawed portrayal of Miss Hannigan by Cameron Diaz (who lacks the zing of Carol Burnett), but a general charm that could see it rake in some serious family-friendly dollars. Annie’s 2014 update is released in December.

Check out the trailer after the jump, and tell us what you think!!

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Vroom vroom, baby.

Cast your mind back, to 2001. Better known as the year of the World Trade Center attacks, 2001 also brought us the action flick “classic”, The Fast & The Furious, a film borne of a magazine article about the underground street-racing subculture. Directed by Rob Cohen, the man behind films such as Dragonheart, Daylight and xXx, the original Furious film kick-started the careers of Paul Walker and – to a lesser extent – Michelle Rodriguez, and placed lead actor Vin Diesel on the path to action hero stardom. While the death of Paul Walker in 2013 has cast a long shadow over the Furious franchise, looking at this film after almost a decade and a half, I can easily see why this series of films simply will not die. At the time of writing, Furious 7 (filming at the time Walker was killed in a car accident) is yet to debut, but it’s a testament to the foundation set here by Cohen that the characters, the premise and the cars all created a legacy of entertainment that has befuddled serious critics and enraptured the millions who have gone to see it. The Fast & The Furious was merely another summer action flick, the kind of fast-food cinematic junk designed to wash over you without eliciting much movement from the brain patterns of its audience. Yet, considering many other franchises (most of which with considerably larger budgets, too) have fallen by the wayside in the years since, yet Furious continues to go from strength to strength. Perhaps there’s something here, in the original, that sets the tone for what’s to come, or is it – as I suspect – a magnificent case of lightning striking at just the perfect moment?

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Ya’ll, Michael Bay’s fourth Transformers film is due to unleash itself mid-year, and the promotional material is about to launch itself on a full-scale assault in the months to come. Here, in all its high definition glory, is the first official trailer for the film (there was a short teaser during the Superbowl, which showed Optimus Prime riding a freakin’ Dinobot – which was enough to get this G1 fanboy’s juices flowing), and although it’s filled with typical Michael Bay slo-mo porn, there’s only one part of this film that I don’t quite see fitting into the rest of what’s on display…. The scene right at the end with Optimus Prime punching a Dinobot in the face. I really am hung up on how a robot has decided to assume the form of an extinct Earthbound lizard, but I await the explanation!

Check out the trailer after the jump!

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More murderous mayhem.

Long time readers of this site will know my thoughts on the original Hunger Games flick: I couldn’t get past the “sanctioned murder” elements of the franchise, and the “entertainment” of the film was… less than satisfying. Going into Catching Fire, the sequel to the hugely popular original film, I fully expected to be just as annoyed with the central premise as earlier, only this time I tried to put my personal feelings to one side and appreciate the film on its merits. In saying that, it’s damn hard to not watch a film without one’s emotional responses to a film coming out, so this review will reflect that inability on my behalf. Did I find Catching Fire to be as hard-to-stomach as the original, or is it a sequel that achieves everything Hunger Games could not?

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So the Oscars have been run and won – and the awards season for Hollywood comes to a close. Now that all the hoopla has died down, we can go back to doing what we do best: film reviews.

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The 86th Academy Awards have been run and won, with 12 Years A Slave snagging the Best Picture Oscar, a hugely worthy winner in my opinion. As usual at this time of year, I sit back and reflect on what the Oscars did right, wrong, and everything in between. Here, then, are my random thoughts on the 2014 Oscar ceremony!

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Morning folks! The Academy Awards begin shortly in Los Angeles; join us here for live updated results as they come to hand. All the winners updated as they are announced! Refresh this page throughout the afternoon for current information.

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Picking the winners at the Oscars has become quite a big money spinner for betting agencies. Little wonder, considering the world wide interest in the ceremony. As usual, everyone with a keyboard and fingers has an opinion online, so we figure, hell, why not join them! Here are our rough-chance tips for the winners this year!

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One billion would have been better. But I guess for Nebraska, eh, a million ain’t so shabby.

After many years of boozing, whoring around and sitting on his lazy rump, Woody Grant (Bruce Dern) finally gets the opportunity of a lifetime: The chance to claim a million dollars. The way in which Woody finds out about this offer is through the mail, which obviously means it’s a scam put on by some of these magazines, in hopes that they’ll get more and more subscriptions. Everybody around Woody sees this, but he doesn’t, so therefore, some go along with it. That “some”, ends up being his youngest son David (Will Forte), a guy who is stuck in a rut of his own as well. Together, the two embark on a road trip to Lincoln, Nebraska where Woody hopes that the money will be, even though David knows this not to be true. On the way to their destination, however, they meet up with old family, friends and acquaintances, telling them all about the path they have set in front of them, and for what reasons. Some see this as a joke and know it’s crazy-talk, but some actually take this story to heart, and get a little bit threatening, feeling as if they’re owed a bit of that cash-flow just as much as Woody is.

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 Editor’s Note: We’d like to welcome Dan O’Neil from Dan The Man’s Movie Reviews to our hallowed pages. Philomena marks his first review with us; we hope you enjoy it, and please feel free to compliment him in the comments section below!

Wanna see some REAL “evil nuns“? You’re welcome.

After failing in his ill-advised decision to be a politician, Martin Sixsmith (Steve Coogan) decides to return to the world that he knows he’ll safe be in, considering he’s practically been in an expert in it for 20+ years: Journalism. However, Sixsmith isn’t the type of journalist who goes out there and writes fluff for the mainstream. No siree! In fact, the type of writer he is an important one that gets straight to the facts, and doesn’t leave anything dangling. But all that changes once Sixsmith is given the opportunity to cover a “human interest story” concerning one Philomena Lee (Judi Dench). The story is simply this: When Philomena was a young and confused girl, she got knocked up. Seems normal, right? Well, at the time, she was an orphan who had a bunch of nuns breathing down her neck for every simple act she committed, which meant that she could either a.) take the kid and leave the orphanage, or b.) leave the kid at the orphanage to be looked at adoptive parents, while she still lived and worked at the orphanage, giving her the chance to see her kid every once and awhile. She decided to go with Option B, but it wasn’t before long until her own boy was snatched up from her, with little to no idea of who this family was, or even where they went. 50 years later, Philomena and Martin go out to discover the truth, which sadly, isn’t only just Philomena’s story, either.

There’s been a lot of talk, a lot of hype and a lot of buzz surrounding this movie and quite frankly, I don’t get it. Sure, it’s got two supreme, British heavy-weights in the forms of Steve Coogan and Dame Judi Dench in the lead roles, and is even a true-life story, but does that really mean it deserves all of the praise it’s been getting? Actually, let me rephrase that: Does it REALLY deserve an 89% (so far) on Rotten Tomatoes?!?!

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