119 - The Dark Knight Rises

    Eight years after The Dark Knight, Gotham is enjoying an organized-crime-free existence.  Batman has been out of the picture since the events of The Dark Knight, and Bruce Wayne has become a recluse.  A new villain arrives in town, with a plan to finish what the League of Shadows started back in Batman Begins.
    Much like the other Nolan Batman movies, it's nearly impossible to summarize them.  It's a very complex story, and it ties in closely to both of the other movies.
    This makes me a feel a little mixed about this one.  I really enjoyed it.  And I probably will like it even more over time.  The primary weakness to this movie is that it can't stand without the other two very well.  This is a problem with Return of the Jedi as well.
    There are other, small things.  Early in the movie, we hear that Wayne's legs and arms are in bad shape, among other things.  We see him use a brace-type thing to get around the weaknesses in his joints.  This doesn't feel right.  If he had gotten an operation to fix the problems with his joints, that would be much more believable.
    Personally, I walked around on a torn ACL for several months, maybe a year.  It would periodically feel better, but then it would give out.  In between the time I first had it looked at, and when the operation finally took place, my bones really tore up my cartilage.  So I have a sense of what it's like to have bad joints.  And I know, that despite any brace technology Wayne has, it would hurt, and cause massive damage, to hit anyone with those limbs.
    This might be why the fight sequences didn't feel like they had the same smoothness to them.  I liked seeing the amount of wrestling and grappling that was going on, but… I dunno, I guess I just liked to see Batman being a little more agile.

    None of this is to say that the movie is bad.  It's very good.  The story weaves together wonderfully.  I think the complexity of Nolan's movies is a double-edged sword.  They make it harder to appreciate the movie the first time through, but it makes the movie feel like a work of genius as you delve into the nuances and layers.

118 - The Enforcer

    The third of the Dirty Harry movies. This time, Harry deals with a new, female partner, and an environmental terrorist organization, which kidnaps the mayor and holds him ransom.
    This has been the weakest of the Dirty Harry movies, as well as the clearly most conservative one.  And yet, those traits aren't linked.
    First, the movie is conservative in a strange way.  The environmental terrorist angle, and the implied dissatisfaction with having a female cop working with him are framed in a way that plays into conservative viewpoints.  However, each is tempered with a little twist that allows those who feel uncomfortable with these ideas to write them off.  The environmental group is revealed to not have any interest in the environment.  That was a cover to give their organization some legitimacy.  When Harry questions his partner, he tries to make it clear that his problem with her is her lack of experience.  The movie further clouds this issue by making her save the mayor, but then get killed in an effort to warn Harry.
    But the things that make this movie weak have to do with the pacing, and the difficult focus on the plot.  The movie isn't structured quite the same way as the second one, and it stays on the main plot much longer, but the plot isn't moving forward nearly as smoothly as it should.  Harry isn't up against corruption in the police force this time, he's up against what would be characterized as "political correctness."
    It's not a bad movie exactly.  It's just not as good as it should be.  After reading up on some of the background, the original draft was written by some fans.  Then it went through several other writers in an effort to get the balance that Eastwood wanted.
    Even though it should have offended my sensibilities, it didn't.  Instead, this approach just came across as dated, and reactionary.

    I should also point out that I have no idea why the movie is titled The Enforcer.  Even Magnum Force had a slight connection to the plot.  Also, Harry never gives his "do you feel lucky" speech.  Good.

117 - The Dark Knight

    The Joker coordinates a plan to take over most of Gotham's organized crime.  Meanwhile, Batman works with the new D.A., Harvey Dent, to take down Gotham's organized crime.  The Joker proves to be a strange type of anarchist who is interested in sowing chaos.
    The Dark Knight was a big step up from Batman Begins.  The story is more complicated.  Each event has every character planning out their own steps to achieve their own goals, but this just makes it harder to tell how any situation will end - or if any of the characters were intending to have things progress that far.
    I don't have any problems with this movie.  The performances are entirely solid.  It's a pleasure to see Katie Holmes replaced with Maggie Gylenhall, who doesn't call attention to her acting in the same way.
    I suppose that's a problem that I have with the movie.  I never cared about the relationship between Bruce Wayne and Rachel Dawes.  I don't care about it in this movie, and I didn't care about it in Batman Begins.  It doesn't detract from the movie, because it does establish motivation.  But it doesn't feel like they actually care about each other.
    I've also felt like the structure of the ending isn't as smooth as I'd like.  The scene between Batman, Gordon, and Dent after The Joker has been stopped steps the tension down too far.  It is a needed scene, and it sets up the next movie.

116 - Beneath the Darkness

    A group of teens suspect the local mortician has something strange going on at his house.  They break in to investigate, resulting in the death of one of them.  The remaining teens work on exposing the mortician.
    This is a movie I'm already having a hard time recalling, and I finished watching it about four hours ago.  It's utterly forgettable.  It plays like an hour and a half episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark? except with a slightly darker plot.
    But it's very tame.  I don't think there's any blood in the movie, with the exception of a small gunshot wound scrape.  The story relies on the standard cliches of the adults refusing to believe the kids.  That's one problem, but the movie suffers from really strange problems with pacing.  The last half hour of it is the material that should have been taking up the second half of the movie.  The first two thirds of the move are mostly packed with strange character building sequences, establishing relationships and such.  The problem is, none of those pay off.
    The only thing memorable about the movie is that Dennis Quaid stars in it.
    For my own reference - and spoilers below…
    The mortician is in the habit of burying his enemies alive.  He also has a preserved corpse of his wife, which he's kept in his house for at least two years.  Knowing enough about body decomposition, I'll ignore how unrealistic the preservation of the body was.

    An addendum.  There's a really bizarre little sequence in this movie.  While our hero is running from the police in his efforts to save the girl, he briefly passes through a parade.  This parade is taking place at night, with lots of glowing lights on participants.  It's very strange.  The movie takes place in a small town, and I didn't have the impression that there was a Main Street.  The sudden inclusion of another setting, a much bigger cast, and the fact that this parade doesn't seem to accomplish anything in his escape makes it a distraction.  It actually stuck in my head as being one of the things that was very amateurish about the movie.  Maybe it would be acceptable if he had managed to fully lose the police there - or if the parade had been mentioned or advertised earlier in the movie.

115 - YellowBrickRoad

    In 1940, an entire New England town walked a mountain trail, and most of them died.  After the location of the trail is found in modern times, a writer forms a party to follow the trail.
    The idea of a whole town going crazy is something I like.  Something feels very Shining to me.  And I liked this movie, but felt a little let down by the ending.  It did a fantastic job of making everything feel just crazy enough.  While they're walking the trail, music starts being audible.  Everyone can hear it, and it never stops.  The sound is mixed very well, making the experience feel authentic.  It never feels like the music is coming from anywhere in particular, but the way it permeates every shot, combined with the direction, makes their descent into madness understandable.
    I did have a small problem with the violence.  When the first death happens, it isn't realistic.  It starts off fine, but after some fighting and cutting, it results in someone's leg being torn off.  That's a level that doesn't work for this movie.  The premise is already interesting, but also strange enough to require that we establish that everything else in the world works the way we expect it to.
    The budget was about half a million, and they did a great job with it.  The picture is very well handled, even nighttime scenes look right.  The sound is handled really well, although I sort of wish they could use music from The Wizard of Oz.  Some of that is really creepy stuff.
    The ending is a problem for some people.  Other people seemed to have liked it.  I think it was a decent ending, but it needed to be a little more explicit.  Not "spell-it-out" explicit, but the script could had been rephrased to make things work.

114 - Election

    A high school teacher, played by Matthew Broderick, manipulates a high school election between an overachiever (Reese Witherspoon) a dumb jock (Chris Klein) and the dumb jock's sister (Jessica Campbell, who showed up toward the end of Freaks & Geeks).
    That summary doesn't make sound nearly as interesting as it is.  It's much more complicated, it has some very serious questions about what constitutes moral or ethical behavior in these situations, and how much the results of these actions justify them.  The direction is first-rate.  Alexander Payne is perfectly solid with his work, and does some pretty flashy work, but it all serves a sense of humor that runs under everything.
    This movie doesn't make me laugh as much as it used to, but that may be because I burned out on it by watching it way too many times.  But I admire how simple the story feels.  The actions that the characters take all feel completely natural, and this makes them feel fully realized.
    If you haven't seen this, I'd advise watching it.  Probably a few times.
    Also, Paul Metzler is the role the Chris Klein was born to play.  And this is this best I've seen Reese Witherspoon in anything.

113 - Pee-wee's Big Adventure

    Man-child Pee-wee's bike is stolen, leading him on an adventure to recover it.  Along the way, his path crosses with a broad cast.
    I remember that there was a joke that pulled me into this movie, even though I didn't have any real interest in Pee-wee, and it was a really small one.  When Pee-wee is about to visit the psychic, some toughs try to harass him on the street.  He gives a hiss, and they run away.  I think it was that gag that persuaded me to give this a chance.
    It's classic.  The script is hilarious, and the performances are fantastic.  There are so many lines that are perfectly memorable, even the guy that says "Bux-ton."
    Despite how much I enjoy the movie, there are two parts that drag the movie down.  First, the part right before Pee-wee loses the convict he's riding with, until he reaches the diner is surprisingly dull.  It's got the Large Marge bit, but the slowness is just too much.  The other part is the dream sequence where Pee-wee sees his bike being destroyed by a dinosaur.
    As bizarre as Pee-wee is, the rest of the world that he inhabits is just as strange, just in a slightly different way.  Pee-wee isn't unique in his fascination with his bike.  In fact, for the first fifteen minutes or so, it's implied that there's a huge population that's really into bicycles.
    And of course, Tim Burton's direction is nearly flawless, and Danny Elfman nails the perfect manic sound.  I think Tim Burton might work a bit better with more studio interference.

112 - The Pact

    After their mother dies, a pair of sisters return home.  One of them disappears.  The other one is left to investigate how that sister disappeared.  Supernatural forces seem to be at work in the house.
    This was a much more interesting movie than I expected.  It started a little slowly, and I thought it was going to have more content focused on brooding over objects in the house, but that seemed to be over with by the half hour mark.
    There are a lot of elements to the story that are predictable.  A psychic of some sort is brought in, and that played out almost exactly as I anticipated.  But the story does have a twist to the structure that makes it a little more satisfying than expected.
    I was a bit annoyed with the very end.  Tacking a scare onto the ending didn't make any sense in the context of this movie.
    I was also happy that the title remains a mystery for much of the movie, and is never explained explicitly.  While this might seem like a trivial point, wondering how the title figures into the story is something that keeps things interesting.

111 - Lifeboat

    A variety of survivors from a U-boat attack are joined in their lifeboat by a German.  They survive, care for each other, bicker, and try to make their way from the wreckage over to where they feel they'll be saved.
    A 1944 Hitchcock movie, I wasn't sure what to expect.  While I like some of Hitchcock's work, some of his work has very dull pacing.  While I didn't dislike this movie, it didn't stand out at all.  The writing is dated, and there are a lot of actions that don't ring true to me.
    What feels very out of place is the idea that self-preservation would be overridden by a desire to avoid being implied in cooperation with a Nazi.  I'm not sure if I phrased that right.  There's an attitude that comes out early on, which has people making their decisions strictly in opposition to the ideas expressed by the German.
    This idea could have been interesting, and it could have made a fantastic villain.  If he were willing to misdirect the boat for the sake of leading them to their deaths, in something more akin to a slow-motion kamikaze… that would be a really dark ending.
    There are a lot of conversations to work on character building and establishing relationships.  These were interesting enough that I did remember them, and felt myself being a little curious about where they were going.  But I didn't feel like any of them paid off.
    I didn't care for the ending either.  At first, I thought it would have a more concretely downer ending, but it never came.  Then I realized that, because the movie came out in 1944, and WWII was popular enough, it would be hard for them to depict the war in anything other than a positive light.

    And I suppose that's one thing that makes the movie interesting - how different the same premise would play out in modern times.

110 - American Reunion

    The class of '99 comes back to the hometown for a class reunion.  The typical American Pie-esque hijinks ensue.
    I hadn't planned on watching this, but I was much more impressed than I expected to be.  I remembered being kind of mildly bored with American Wedding.  And I had seen the first and second movies several times, mostly during college.
    There was a guy in my social circle that was roughly the same person as Stiffler.  To be honest, I never saw him during party situations, but he was similarly loud, crude, and unusually cruel to girls.  He cheated on his girlfriend for a long time while he was at college.  I have no idea what he's up to now.
    Stiffler is somehow the heart of this movie.  Everyone else had already established some traits that made them good people.  In this movie, Stiffler gets an arc.  He comes out of the movie having grown up a little.  He acknowledges that he's a jerk, but he also makes a few noble gestures toward the end.
    Each of the characters gets a bit of a story, but most of them aren't too noteworthy, or they don't resonate as well with me.  What I did like was Finch's story.  Finch arrives, and tells how he's been living this wild, bohemian life, traveling all over the world.  By the end, it's revealed that none of that is true.  He's working as an assistant manager at Staples.
    This made me realize that we spend most of high school comparing ourselves to each other, competing for grades, competing for friendship, recognition, sexual experience.  And as we get older, we view those types of competitions as meaningless.  But we replace them with other ones.  We get caught up with who has a better job, who's bought a better car, who managed to make national news.
    I found that after getting married, I didn't really care about other people's dating habits.  I still cared about my friends, but that's because they were my friends.  But it was no longer a point of competition.  Now the race is on to have babies, to buy houses.  To become millionaires?
    I have a soft spot for nearly everyone I graduated with, although I don't express it often… or ever.  But I would never hold their job against them, their spouse, or lack of one, their children, or lack of them.  The only thing I hold against them is how they treat me.

    Yeah, that got pretty far off of the movie.

    Some of the character's stories aren't interesting.  Tara Reid and her guy have an annoying plot, that seems to be filled with getting needlessly offended and being dumb.  Chris Klein's story is a bit more entertaining, but still seems to be hammed up in a way it didn't need to be.  For a guy like him, he really should have known better.  Jim and Michelle have a decent story, but the overall message - about the need to make time for each other in a marriage - doesn't seem to be the point that the story makes.  The actual message is more about being honest and communicating with each other.

    So the more I've thought about it, I suppose there are a lot of things not right with this movie.  But it still had some redeeming aspects.

109 - Bill Cosby: Himself

    A solid hour and a half performance by Bill Cosby.  This was a very popular recording, and seems to be a reference point for many people as to what Bill Cosby was about.
    The Cosby Show kicked off the following year.  I wouldn't be surprised if this production encouraged the network to put more effort into The Cosby Show.
    As a stand-up routine, it doesn't lend itself to reviewing in a typical way.  The direction is focused almost solely on him, and there's very little to distract.  He has a chair to sit in.  He's holding a microphone.  No stand.  There's a solid backdrop, which is lit with a solid color during different sequences.  Most of the time, that lighting is cued to a change in subject or a particular line that changes the mood.
    Cosby is a fascinating comic.  He's been spoofed so much since he disappeared from the public eye that it's hard to remember what he's actually like.  He's charismatic.  It's hard to look away from him, especially in the moments between jokes.  His movements come across so deliberate, that even when he moves in slow motion, he remains compelling the entire time.
    His act is remarkable, and plays less like a routine, and more like an extended conversation.  He moves between subjects effortlessly, and there never feels like an obvious end point for a "bit."  Phrases that have been established earlier like "brain damage" or "I don't know" reappear later, in other stories, giving the whole work a very cohesive feel.
    While I had heard the audio of this show during family trips, there are many sequences I don't remember at all.  Time has changed the feeling of some of these segments.  In particular, there's a segment toward the end, which he calls "Same Thing Happens Every Night."  During this, he talks about the post-dinner ritual of getting the children set for bed.  And how they invariably misbehave, necessitating "a beating."  The tone of this isn't very…modern.

108 - Batman Begins

    After his parents are killed in a mugging, young Bruce Wayne travels the world, trying to understand the criminal element in order to fight it.  After some training, he returns to Gotham with a plan to rid the city of organized crime.
    There's plenty more to the plot.  It's a pretty dense movie.  Christopher Nolan makes quite a bit out of the 2:20 running time, cramming a lot of work into a short time by telling the story out of sequence.  This is something he really enjoys doing - giving the audience just exactly what information they need as it becomes necessary.
    Like many Nolan movies, I don't like them as much on the first viewing.  It takes a few viewings before I realize exactly how much I like them.  In this case, I had a serious reservation about Batman causing as much damage as he does to the city when he runs from the police in the Tumbler.  At least Alfred bugs him about that as well.
    There's another really minor complaint.  It's a single line.  It's Jim Gordon saying "I've got to get me one of those."  It makes me cringe every time I hear it.

    I don't know what my ideal Batman movie would be.  I feel like every movie has let me down in some way.  I was crazy about Tim Burton's Batman, but now when I see it, I realize how flawed it is.  The pacing was strange, Gotham felt like it was mostly deserted most of the time.
    Even though Nolan's movies are spectacular, and Dark Knight was nearly perfect, the complexities of the plots are a little annoying.  They get in the way of seeing villains being more fully realized.  Scarecrow is a pawn in this movie, but he never gets as much of an opportunity to shine as he should.
    Cathy pointed out something that hadn't occurred to me; both Batman and Scarecrow aim to control people through fear.  This idea never seems to be explored as fully as it should be.  I don't know if I would expect that in a movie, but I don't even know if that shows up in comics.

107 - Shallow Grave

    Three roommates, seeking a fourth, wind up with a guy who promptly dies, leaving behind a suitcase with a lot of money in it.  They decide to dispose of his body.  The roommates start getting paranoid, and plotting against each other.  This gets worse as two thugs come looking for the deceased.
    I saw this once, around four years ago.  While the story is memorable, the problem with the movie is the title.  I think there are a few other horror movies with the same title, and none of them have the same level of class as this one.
    This was directed by Danny Boyle, who went on to do Trainspotting, 28 Days Later, and a few other ones that I've seen.  He has a noteworthy style.  He's a bit frantic, almost like Joe Dante, but toned down, and more focused on emotional resonance and tension.  Dante's usually more cartoony.
    The story moves faster than I remembered.  And the direction is solid.  Boyle shows off a little, mostly at the beginning, but he restrains himself during the story.  There are some interesting colors, but the characters, and not the direction, are moving the story forward.  There's a bit of gore, but it's also very restrained.
    It's also a difficult movie to write about, because so many of the developments need to be seen for yourself.  What's remarkable is how close the script comes to revealing the ending early on, but it never feels like foreshadowing.
    To be honest, the movie isn't as great as it could be, but it's remarkably great for a first effort.  Boyle went on to earn further indie credit with Trainspotting, but he hit his commercial stride with 28 Days Later and Sunshine.  Not to mention Slumdog Millionaire, which I actually didn't care for.

106 - Timecrimes

    A man and his wife move into a new house.  As they're still unpacking, a series of strange events lead the man into a time machine nearby.  He has to deal with the other copy of himself.  I'm sorry, I just can't summarize beyond that.
    Back when I first saw Triangle, I saw that a lot of reviews for it were claiming that it was a ripoff of this movie.  Now that I've seen it, I can safely say that if it is, Triangle surpassed this one by a massive amount.
    To begin, while the version I've watched offered an English-dubbed track, the voice acting is laughable.  I was curious if the original audio track would have better acting, but I'm not about to go back and check.
    Second, while the premise was actually decent, everything in the script is written around it.  The main character doesn't try to undo the loop - he performs actions in order to reinforce the sequence of events.  He seems sort of… dumb.  He does things, especially after the first half hour, that are so mind-blowingly dumb that it hurts the credibility of the movie.
    When the movie ends, he comes across as finally having grasped the idea that he's been doing some time travel, but he kills someone in the process.  This makes the ending feel very unsatisfying, especially because his entire problem could have been solved by simply talking to himself.  Or, if he felt like that wasn't safe, he could have left a note for himself.  Or even just talked to the third party that walks him through the movie.
    I had some problems with Primer, but that was because the movie was so complicated, and the cast looked too similar.
    Triangle works because we feel for the lead's frustration in her situation - and we learn why she does things the way she does them.  And she's willing to try changing her approach in order to seek out a new ending.  This movie is about embracing the inevitable.  Not too inspiring.

105 - The Amazing Spider-Man

    Peter Parker develops a relationship with Gwen Stacy, and Dr. Curt Connors, who he helps by providing a formula.  Peter changes into Spider-Man after being bitten by a genetically engineered spider (?).  Connors becomes The Lizard in an effort to regrow his lost arm.

    Let me start off by listing all of the changes or elements of the movie that I don't care about.

•     The change in costume
•     webshooters rather than organic webs
•     Gwen Stacy rather than Mary Jane
•     the direction
•     the action
•     the quips
•     inclusion of Richard and Mary Parker
•     The Lizard as a villain

    I just want to make that clear.  Despite being a huge fan of Spider-Man, I don't mind having his origin re-written.  In fact, there are many aspects to the Spider-Man universe that I think can be made much more interesting by rewriting how the elements interact.
    But what I don't like is that they messed with the area that makes the character work - his personality.  This is not a Spider-Man movie.  It's a movie about a kind of jerky teen, who seems to be fairly smart, who doesn't become a better person by the end of the movie.  Instead of helping to save the city from The Lizard because he's a hero, he saves the city because he's personally responsible for The Lizard's existence.  This isn't a big distinction, but it makes him less of a hero.
    The origin was re-written to make so that Peter is less responsible for his uncle's death.  And he doesn't feel guilty about it either.  But he's looking for revenge.  Way to go.  He's not a hero now, he's a jerk.  He's not looking to do what's right, he's looking to do whatever he feels like.  We don't really know how responsible he feels, since the killer never reappears.

    Peter was reinvented as a more passive person.  He's less compelled to do good, or even do well.  We never see him putting in any effort at school.  He carries his skateboard around, and generally doesn't project the impression of being a bright guy.  He comes across as a bit of slacker, missing out on his potential.  He's aware of science, but he doesn't seem nearly as fascinated by it as I expected.  And besides… he uses Bing.  How bright can he be?

    There was one scene in particular that exemplifies nearly everything wrong with this movie.
    The Lizard is on a rampage.  It seems to be a weird rampage, because there doesn't seem to be a particular destination in mind.  And given how lucid the Lizard is, this is very peculiar.  But, the Lizard is on a bridge, pushing cars around, slashing stuff up, and so forth.  Spider-Man shows up.  Spider-Man is mostly just saving some people as some cars get pushed off the building.  A guy points out that his kid is still in his car, which is hanging from a webline off the bridge.  Spider-Man makes his way down there.  The kid is scared, since he's sideways, facing the water.  He's too scared to unbuckle himself and climb to Spider-Man.  So Spider-Man takes off his mask, and tosses it to the kid, telling him it will make him powerful.  The kid puts it on, blah blah blah.
    Anyway, the kid is saved.  The car catches on fire, then plunges into the water.
    The writing in this scene is nakedly manipulative.  Besides trying to make a heart-wrenching heroic scene (like the train scene in Spider-Man 2) it's drenched in an effort to sell the Spider-Man masks for sale at most toy stores.  In fact, prior to the movie, there was an ad where a kid becomes Spider-Man after putting on one of the masks.
    Spider-Man has already been merchandised massively, for a long time.  Costumes…toothbrushes…lunchboxes… But it never felt intrusive.  There even used to be these one-page comics involving Spider-Man and Hostess products.  I didn't feel like those cheapened the character.  They were clearly outside continuity.  But if they inserted this kind of adventure into the middle of an actual story, I'd wonder what the hell they were thinking. 

    And that's exactly what's wrong with this movie.  It pulls in many directions, and tries to appeal to too many audiences at the same time, instead of focusing on the character that made the whole thing work.  I'd place this into the same category as Batman & Robin.  Maybe in time, I'll enjoy this the same way I enjoy that.

104 - The Apartment

    C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon) works at an insurance company, where several superiors are all using his apartment as a rendezvous location with their assorted mistresses.  Baxter is interested in an elevator operator, and it turns out that she is having an affair with the big boss, who also starts using the apartment for their meet ups.
    This is directed by Billy Wilder, who also made Some Like It Hot.  There are a lot of similarities.  The direction is solid.  The performances are broadly comedic, and very satisfying.  The writing is incredibly similar.
    But this is a darker movie.  The plot revolves around infidelity, and regardless of how well they turn it toward comedy, it still has an undertone of cruelty.  The script  reflects these cruelties really well.  Nearly every instance of the boss talking to the elevator girl is perfect in how casually he mistreats her.  It never comes across as him being aware that he's a jerk, just that he naturally is, and doesn't understand how to be a decent person.
    I was also thrilled with how well the script was put together.  There are many instances of setting things up that played so naturally that it didn't feel that way.  When Baxter returns a ladies mirror to his boss, it doesn't feel like it sets anything up.  Then when he sees the elevator girl with the mirror later, it pays off.  The difference is only that it was handled so well that I didn't see it coming.  Same thing with a story about an attempted suicide with a gun, paying off in a joke involving popping a bottle of champagne.  The steps - telling the story, having the champagne left at his apartment - neither felt like they were trying to set things up.  When it pays off, it feels completely natural.
    I liked it quite a bit.  But I need to think about it for awhile before I know how much I like it.

103 - The Bourne Ultimatum

    Bourne returns, this time, he's starts by finding a reporter who has written an article on Blackbriar.  When Bourne finds the reporter, he finds that the reporter is now a target, because the agency assumes that Bourne is the informant.  Bourne tries to follow after the original source, but ends up in New York, facing down the agency, and the creators of his program.
    This time, I didn't feel as passionately positive about it.  I still really enjoyed it, and I think Bourne is fantastically clever in this one.  The weakness is in Bourne's motivation.  I'd like it if he were a little more provoked to action.
    The part of the story that stands up very well is the handling of Pamela Landy/Noah Vossen.  We see her competence, we see his weaknesses, but we also see how much authority he has, and his willingness to abuse his power.  He acts without thinking too hard about things.  He underestimates Bourne, but constantly thinks he's outsmarting him.
    It's the conflict between those characters that's more satisfying.  I don't actually care too much about Bourne discovering the place where he was turned from David Webb to Jason Bourne, but I did find it very pleasing to see Landy faxing the papers.
    By the end of the movie, I think I feel like The Bourne Identity is the clear winner of the three.  But both Supremacy and Ultimatum have strong benefits, and I love returning to each of these movies periodically.  Even if I don't care for the shaky-cam work.