When you've been waiting for a movie for over 10 years, it's hard to really be objective about it. Especially when the series has been in a decline for so many seasons. But I'd say they really did right by The Simpsons when converting it into a big screen adventure, and the results are better than I expected.
A lot of old writers from the glory days of the show returned to work on the movie, and it definitely shows. The first half of the movie is as comical as some of the better episodes. Homer's manner of disposing of a hornet's nest, and his reaction to Bart almost falling off the roof, are classic bits sure to earn laughs. And of course there's Spider-Pig, something I'm particularly fond of. The majority of worthwhile characters from the Simpsons universe make funny, albeit brief, cameos, and the first half hour or so is just spent coasting from one laugh to the next. There are a couple good jokes on the nature of making a movie out of a TV show, and one really good jab that pokes fun at the very studio funding them.
The Simpsons formula has always been pretty familiar - the first act appears totally random and offers many jokes, and then somehow meanders into whatever the main issue is by the second act. Then there's some kind of major dilemma, and finally all is resolved in some unorthodox way in the final act. That's preserved here fairly well, just stretched a bit to fit the new hour and a half format. In some ways, the movie is just like a really long TV episode - but honestly, it's a pretty damn good episode so I don't mind. Not everything can be the South Park movie, and I honestly didn't expect it to be anything like that.
The film slows down a bit towards the end, and you have the usual thematic hokeyness - love conquers all, we're nothing without our friends, blah blah blah, the usual - but it stays consistently entertaining and restores the status quo in a (semi) plausible manner. Overall, I enjoyed my movie-going experience. This isn't a redefining of The Simpsons, but it's another solid chapter in a very long career that was starting to look like it had run out of steam.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Monday, August 13, 2007
The Bourne Ultimatum
I just saw the last film of the Bourne Trilogy, The Bourne Ultimatum, and I'm definitely of the opinion that this series is one of the better ones to grace the cinema in some time. Each movie is strong in its own right, but as one cohesive story it is really quite outstanding.
Watching the first film, The Bourne Identity, you'd really have no idea where the series was headed. Very much an action movie, Identity is filled with a lot of set pieces and adrenaline-fueled moments. But there's also a lot of exposition that serves to really create a framework for the world you're entering, and there's a lot of character development. By the end of the movie, you really like Jason Bourne, and you really feel he's found love. And you feel he's really found closure, having thrown off the collar of the agency he believed brainwashed him and forced him to become a killer. This happy ending to the first chapter is risky, because it makes the entire ordeal seem extremely easy to resolve, and kills a lot of interest in any subsequent movies. But if you stick it out, the payoff, the betrayal of this ending, is when things really start to get good.
In The Bourne Supremacy, Jason learns he can't simply run away from his past. It catches up to him, kills his love, and places him back in the middle of things. We begin to question who Jason Bourne really is. We're terrified of him when he holds a gun to Julia Stiles' head and screams that he'll kill her if she doesn't tell him what he needs to know. Is he really the killer the government groomed him to be? Initially I didn't like Supremacy. I went into it expecting another action movie, and it's really far from it. There are some fights, yes, but it's all filmed in the shakiest, jerkiest manner I have ever witnessed. I didn't really appreciate it for what it was, only lampooned it for what it wasn't. Watching it again, it's easy to see what a dramatic, emotional movie it is. The scene where he speaks with the daughter of his first two victims is heartbreaking. As is his final confrontation with the leader of the program, where he doesn't kill the old bastard because "she wouldn't want me too."
Ultimatum takes the emotional ambiguity of Supremacy and the action of Identity and runs with them. It is an exhausting movie - over 2 hours of near constant momentum. The camera manages to stay still a couple of seconds longer here and there, and we're able to see some truly impressive fights. The sense of urgency is overwhelming at times. And we learn, at the same time Bourne does, how he became the man he is today. This is a movie about accountability. About responsibility. About how, at the end of the day, we have to come to terms with the things we've done.
"Look at what they make you give." Clive Owen's character says that, as he stares down at his fatal gunshot wounds towards the end of The Bourne Identity. The Bourne series is about what Jason had to give. In The Bourne Ultimatum, we see what he had to do to start to get it back. By the time the haunting 'Extreme Ways' by Moby (the song that ends all three movies) started to play for the third and final time, I felt I had witnessed something remarkable.
Watching the first film, The Bourne Identity, you'd really have no idea where the series was headed. Very much an action movie, Identity is filled with a lot of set pieces and adrenaline-fueled moments. But there's also a lot of exposition that serves to really create a framework for the world you're entering, and there's a lot of character development. By the end of the movie, you really like Jason Bourne, and you really feel he's found love. And you feel he's really found closure, having thrown off the collar of the agency he believed brainwashed him and forced him to become a killer. This happy ending to the first chapter is risky, because it makes the entire ordeal seem extremely easy to resolve, and kills a lot of interest in any subsequent movies. But if you stick it out, the payoff, the betrayal of this ending, is when things really start to get good.
In The Bourne Supremacy, Jason learns he can't simply run away from his past. It catches up to him, kills his love, and places him back in the middle of things. We begin to question who Jason Bourne really is. We're terrified of him when he holds a gun to Julia Stiles' head and screams that he'll kill her if she doesn't tell him what he needs to know. Is he really the killer the government groomed him to be? Initially I didn't like Supremacy. I went into it expecting another action movie, and it's really far from it. There are some fights, yes, but it's all filmed in the shakiest, jerkiest manner I have ever witnessed. I didn't really appreciate it for what it was, only lampooned it for what it wasn't. Watching it again, it's easy to see what a dramatic, emotional movie it is. The scene where he speaks with the daughter of his first two victims is heartbreaking. As is his final confrontation with the leader of the program, where he doesn't kill the old bastard because "she wouldn't want me too."
Ultimatum takes the emotional ambiguity of Supremacy and the action of Identity and runs with them. It is an exhausting movie - over 2 hours of near constant momentum. The camera manages to stay still a couple of seconds longer here and there, and we're able to see some truly impressive fights. The sense of urgency is overwhelming at times. And we learn, at the same time Bourne does, how he became the man he is today. This is a movie about accountability. About responsibility. About how, at the end of the day, we have to come to terms with the things we've done.
"Look at what they make you give." Clive Owen's character says that, as he stares down at his fatal gunshot wounds towards the end of The Bourne Identity. The Bourne series is about what Jason had to give. In The Bourne Ultimatum, we see what he had to do to start to get it back. By the time the haunting 'Extreme Ways' by Moby (the song that ends all three movies) started to play for the third and final time, I felt I had witnessed something remarkable.
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