Simon's Movie Reviews

The suburbs can be a fascinating place in America. On the surface it seems idyllic, with its white picket fences, happy parents who love their kids, and perfectly mowed grass. However you don’t have to dig too deep to find kids selling drugs, crumbling marriages, and middle-aged husbands having fantasies about their daughter’s friend in the cheerleading squad. Such is the suburb depicted in Sam Mendes’ American Beauty (1999) featuring Kevin Spacey as one of many men from that world having a mid-life, and potentially existential, crisis. However you have to admire the fact his character seems intent on having not just a regular crisis, but the mother of all mid-life crises. Mendes’ film went on to win four Oscars including Best Picture and Best Actor, which at the time I found quite surprising because I was really pinning for The Hurricane starring Denzel Washington as Ruben Carter. I was having a hard time understanding how a movie about a dead-beat dad could be better than a st...

One of the few spies to give James Bond a run for his money, Jason Bourne re-shaped Matt Damon’s career and gave the world one of the best action franchises of the last decade. Although more a hyperkinetic assassin than an actual spy, Bourne can slip in and out of a place without getting noticed, disarm a roomful of armed men and walk out of deadly car chases with no more than a slight limp. His adventures have taken him from France to England, from India to Russia and to a (presumably) last stop in New York. The more impressive trait is that he can do all this while suffering from brain damage that has left him with amnesia. If I recall correctly, I saw the first Bourne adventure, “The Bourne Identity,” while flying somewhere over the Andes. This first chapter, directed by Doug Liman, first came out in 2002 and back then I was living in Santiago, Chile. Every time my parents and I would fly home to Québec it would take approximately ten hours by airplane, so that is a ...