Simon's Movie Reviews

If there is one thing riskier than making a film about the war on terror, it’s making a movie about the horrible day that started the damn thing in the first place. Paul Greengrass was brave enough to make such a film and thankfully he was skilful enough to make it in a way that would be tasteful, accurate, and nail biting all at once. With United 93 (2006) he placed his focus not on politicians or soldiers, but on ordinary people who fought back against their captors and more than likely helped to avoid an even bigger catastrophe. Considering its subject matter Greengrass’ film of course did not make a fortune at the box-office and I was also hesitant to see it for a while. Watching any movie that deals with Sept.11 feels a bit like homework assignment: you don’t really want to do it, but you probably should. Everyone who was young enough to have experienced that day knows exactly what happened since the images of the towers collapsing kept playing on CNN all day long. I rememb...

Whenever I despair at the thought of yet another PG-13 action films in which the characters can’t bleed too much, curse, or have gratuitous sex, I turn to the Bourne franchise. With its cloak and dagger plot, high-tech toys, extremely smart intelligence operatives, and beautifully choreographed action sequences, this is one of the best action franchises of the last decade. Throughout each film Jason Bourne has fought assassins with a pen, a magazine, and in The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) he tops that off by using a hand towel to choke a guy. These aren’t R rated films, but there is still plenty going on from start to finish to keep any action hound happy. Like many undercover agents Jason Bourne has travelled all over the world, and in an odd parallel as I watched his movies I was doing a lot of travelling myself. I saw the first film while living in South America, the second a year after moving back to Canada, and the third a year after starting my studies at the University of Sh...