Tag: Matt Damon

(Not-so) Dirty Dozen.

The trailer for Ocean’s Twelve also hit today, and it looks as fun, well-crafted, breezy, and instantly forgettable as the first outing.

Grimm-Visaged War.

Argh. Terry’s Gilliam’s spate of studio trouble continues, with The Brothers Grimm getting pushed back a full year to November 2005. (Star Matt Damon suggests it may be due to FX.) It was already shaping up to be a particularly lousy fall film-wise, and this doesn’t help.

Bourne Again.

As I noted in my blurb on The Bourne Identity a few years ago, “I’d rather see another Bourne than another Bond.” Well, I got my wish, and thankfully The Bourne Supremacy is just as intelligent, fast-paced, gritty, and near-plausible as the first outing. Joan Allen has joined the agency this time around, and Karl “Eomer” Urban has replaced Clive Owen in the role of Eurobad assassin, but otherwise the gang’s all here again: Matt Damon, Franka Potente, Brian Cox, Julia Stiles (still miscast)…even Chris Cooper.

But, even if you missed Bourne I, if you’ve seen the ads, you know what you’re getting here: chilly European ambience, highly-trained fisticuffs, and Ronin-style car chases. The surprise here is how well everything’s executed — until the last fifteen minutes or so, when Bourne turns into R.E.M.’s The Apologist (the guy who insists on making everyone feel worse to make himself feel better), the film moves at a kinetic, captivating clip. Much credit goes to director Paul Greengrass (who also directed Bloody Sunday, which I’ve been meaning to see for awhile) for making each punch, kick, or crash provoke a shudder or a wince. (It’s nice to see a flick where the injuries actually take a toll on the hero for once…here Bourne hurts his leg two-thirds of the way through the movie and ends up limping the rest of the film.)

In sum, Her Majesty’s Secret Service should really take a gander at Treadstone…’cause while 007 was tooling around Iceland with Halle Berry last iteration, Bourne once again managed to deliver a quality cloak, dagger, and action payload.

Eyes, Spies, Tom, and Cat.

It’s Friday, and at the end of a grim-visaged week, the world needs more trailers. In the bin today, we’ve got a new view of The Chronicles of Riddick, Vin Diesel and David Twohy’s follow-up to Pitch Black (sadly, it still looks like a very expensive Sci-Fi Channel original movie), evil Tom Cruise in Michael Mann’s Collateral (The LA gunplay of Heat meets the visual style of The Insider), the first look at The Bourne Supremacy (Identity was a nice surprise, although this one seems very similar), and the teaser for Halle Berry’s embarrassing-looking Catwoman (The early buzz has been awful, and this blah clip won’t change it.)

Brothers and Arms.

Dark Horizons and Dreams (a quality Terry Gilliam fansite) gets the first look at The Brothers Grimm (a.k.a. Heath Ledger and Matt Damon.) I for one am looking forward to seeing the inimitable Jonathan Pryce and the incomparable Monica Bellucci. Also in cinema news, for those of you who shared my confusion over the weekend’s Arthur pics, Clive Owen discusses the film, and why he’s apparently running around in legionnaire’s garb.

Grimm Amusements.

Terry Gilliam fans take heart: Although Don Quixote may be dead and buried, it looks like The Brothers Grimm has now secured funding from a parnership of MGM and Dimension. The film currently stars Heath Ledger and Matt Damon as the eponymous brothers, with Robin Williams and Jonathan “Sam Lowry” Pryce as the villains. Dimension, the senior partner, has a pretty lousy track record with regard to burying films they don’t have control over (Re: Existenz and Below), but hopefully Gilliam can buck the curse this time around.