herbiehancock

No 365 - The Bourne Identity Director - Doug Liman The concept of an unreliable protagonist, one with amnesia, is nothing new . It runs the risk of feeling a bit like a lazy plot development in order to hide things from the viewer. However, when done well it allows the film to explore themes of identity, of self and of ethics. Which sounds pretty deep for a bash people up action film. When we meet Bourne he is left for dead and has no memory of who or what he is. And so the film sets a wonderful little mystery as Bourne tries to figure out his name and his identity through a series of clues and chases. Throughout this we have a dodgy secret agency run by Brian Cox's Ward Abbott but mainly managed by Chris Cooper's Conklin . They believe that Bourne knows everything and is trying to punish them for their past misdeeds (past misdeeds which remain hidden from us and from Bourne ). They believe Bourne must be killed. We also have Bourne's former quarry, Adewale Akinnouye...

No 380 – Children of Men Director – Alfonso Cuaron Recently I’ ve been watching a lot of silly shallow films. Explosions and pithy banter. It is time to break away from that, but to ask an important question. How can this film be so many places below a piece of tosh like Transformers? Really people? I’m a bit disappointed. I had actually forgotten what a harrowing yet beautiful film this is and how masterfully it tackles its mission. To not only convey the future, but to show a future where there is no hope, nothing to live for. The last generation of a dying species . Let me, for the last time, return to Transformers for an important comparison. In Children of Men we have a science fiction story which requires a lot of exposition. However here we get to witness it through snatches of conversation, snippets of news. Pictures and scenarios. We don’t have a scene where Morpheus spells out what the Matrix is. We don’t have a scene where Optimus Prime pulls out hologr...