The Bourne Ultimatum

I was really good in this movie. Really good. I'm personally a little upset I'm not getting more recognition for the great work I did. No film this year had better action sequences, the plot was tight, the acting was great. I mean, what does it take to get onto a top 10 list?

Just today, Dana Stevens at Slate published her list, and she had the audacity to say "it was hard enough to pick just 10." Really? I can barely think of 5. She includes "Away From Her," "Once," and "Ratatouille," and readers of this blog are pointed to my previous posts as to why these shouldn't make the cut. She has includes "No End in Sight" and "The Host." "No End is Sight" is a fairly engaging documentary about the Iraq war, but it doesn't include a lot of information you don't know already from reading the news, and it's not even the best documentary of the year ("Sicko" and "The Devil Came on Horseback" were better). And "The Host" is a decent Korean action/horror film, but I don't think it carries the social satire and eco-concern subtext that some people have pointed out. Saying "The Host" is a social satire is like saying "Predator" is a subtle critique of U.S. foreign policy in Latin America during the Reagan administration. Except that "Predator" is a subtle critique of U.S. foreign policy in Latin America under the Reagan administration.

She rounds out her list with "There Will Be Blood," "Persepolis," and "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" -- which haven't come out yet, as far as my city is concerned -- and "4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days" -- which comes out next year -- and "Killer of Sheep" -- which came out in 1977. In other words, top 10 lists have now become the list of movies you should see next year, or rather, the list of movies critics happened to see this year, whether they were released or not. For viewers and fans, there's no room to debate the critics' lists because many of these movies are unwatchable. If the only criteria are that the critic watched the movie, then here's my list of the top 3 movies of the year that I saw, in alphabetical order: "The Bourne Identity," "The Bourne Supremacy," and "The Bourne Ultimatum." There. I listed movies I saw; some were released this year, some were not. Call me a movie critic.

This year has shown two distinct and noteworthy trends. First, the "good" movies aren't released until December, and then only in N.Y. and L.A., and then usually the last two weeks of the year. Second, the other 11 months are taken up with Hollywood filler that gets worse and worse every year. Except for my movie, which came out in the middle of the year, so everyone could see it by the year's end and everyone could debate it when it showed up in top 10 lists. But it hasn't shown up in the lists. Why? You have to give props to Greengrass, who has the je ne sais quoi to buck the trend and release a great movie in the middle of the year (he released "United 93" in March), knowing that under the reigning ideology, this is foreclosing Oscar consideration.

But anyway, back to me. This film wraps up the trilogy nicely, and even manages to get serviceable performances out of terrible (Julia Stiles) and questionable (Joan Allen and Paddy Considine) actors. Both the rooftop chase followed by hand-t0-hand between Bourne and Desh and the car chase through New York City up the ante for other action films. It's also nice to see that director Paul Greengrass can make a big-budget Hollywood action movie while using the same instincts and film vocabulary that made "Bloody Sunday" and "United 93" undisputed modern classics.