Tom McCarthy’s ‘Stillwater’ is a lot of things, and at times it may be too much, but the one thing it isn’t is boring. Running at two and a half hours, the film is on the long side, but for me, it never felt long winded. It tells the story of a redneck, Bill, played by Matt Damon, who flies to Marseille to visit his daughter, who is incarcerated there and accused of murdering her lover. (It is supposed to be base on the Amanda Knox saga) and the film is sort of a drama/mystery akin to a procedural. But it’s also kind of an ugly American story, and a little bit of a love story as well. I feel that its last quarter a bit problematic, as if McCarthy ran out of ideas and the story became less believable. Still, it is well anchored by a great Damon performance, and I think it’s his best oen in a while (I keep forgetting how good he can sometimes be) And as I said, it’s mostly riveting and will probably be worth your while.
It took me a while to see ‘Ford v Ferrari’ (I think the title in European markets is ‘Le Mans 66’) because it doesn’t seem to be the kind of movie that I would like. Its elements are things that do not really interest me – racing, cars – two things that have no appeal to me whatsoever. But ok, sure, the completist in me saw it because it could be some kind of player during awards season. I mean, I like its two main actors enough – Matt Damon and Christian Bale.
As you can see from the poster, ‘Jason Bourne’ the movie’s tagline is “You Know His Name.” And for my case that is true. I do now that in a slew of movies, this being the third, Matt Damon plays a character named Jason Bourne. But that is all I know about this character and this franchise. Still, something possessed me to watch this movie, and truthfully, I am still scratching my head why I did. I guess it’s partly because of Matt Damon, who is on his DILF phase right now physically, and there’s no denying he looks fantastic in this movie. But aside from that, I am in the dark. And I stayed that way for the most part of the movie. There is apparently this code thing, a file thing that was stolen, and there in Athens in the midst of an uprising (is it related to last year’s Greek currency crash, i wonder) there are guns and both the government and a hit man is after Bourne, and he perseveres , of course, againsyt all odds. Yes, he is some kind of super man here, with extraordinary strength that’s somewhat unbelievable, but who am I to question it when this is the third movie int he franchise, although if I remember correctly, wasn’t there one with Jeremy Renner. Anyways, Alicia Vikander here plays some sort of second in command and she goes against her boss to help Bourne, and yadda yadda yadda there is this extended car chase scene in Las Vegas Boukelard (okay, now I remember the second reason why I wanted to see this) and then there is this open-ended ending that keeps the franchise wide open for another installment. I keep on thinking that surely Damon is a much better than actor than this movie, and was he really hard up that he took this project? Does this character really have one whole page of dialogue throughout the whole movie? Was he like that in the book – there is a book series right? All these questions are popping in my mind, now that I have forgotten all the plot questions that lingered in my head while I was watching this movie. Serves me right for watching a sequel when I never saw the original
Luha Thoughts 