Jason Bourne

Belmont. Sunday morning. Long ticket queue. Even longer pocket-shafting snack bar queue (not required, thank you suckers). Bouncy castle for screaming kids in foyer. BUT $10 TICKETS!!! I'll suffer all that for a tenner, no mistake.

To see Jason Bourne, the 4th film in the Matt Damon Bourne series. Let's gloss over the Bourne Legacy, just as director Paul Greengrass and the other writer, editor Christopher Rouse, did. Poor old, marginalised Jeremy Renner. He's got to be the richest "poor man's Matt Damon" going around.

This 4th Bourne, coming nearly 10 years after Damon did one into a river, manages to track down our battered and bruising protagonist pretty easily. Lots of neat tech on display here. Damon himself looks grizzled and serious as ever.

Cards on the table here. I'm a big fan of the Bourne films (again, leaving aside Legacy) so I brought some positive baggage into the cinema, and I wasn't disappointed with Jason. It's exciting where it needs to be, dramatic in places and fun all the way through.

Greengrass is a master of watchably frenetic camerawork and co-writer Rouse edits without falling into the 'Transformers' trap of not being able to fucking see ANYTHING! Alicia Vikander steals a few things and Vincent Cassell is sneeringly fine but Tommy Lee Jones seems to be turning into a caricature.

The action could be perfunctory but Bourne action is always a bit above the norm. Sniper sights through smoky Greek streets and London crowds, motorcycle up staircases in Athens, a very Bourney lift in an old European building. But the pinnacle of HAVE THAT is a ridiculous car chase where a SWAT truck driven by Cassel ploughs through a traffic jam, most likely killing and injuring dozens of hapless Vegas punters. And they call that guy the 'Asset'.

There was one slight query plot-wise.
Vikander and Riz Ahmed's IT entrepreneur seem to have a relationship that isn't explained. Something set-up for next installment, maybe. I'll be there.

Oh and the remix of Extreme Ways at the end was mint too. Thanks for listening. Bye.

Star Trek Beyond

Hey you, don't watch that. Watch this! This is the heavy, heavy monster sound. The nutsiest sound around. It's Star Trek Beyoooooond!

Anybody else feel like getting up on a stage and dancing with some trumpets or whatever when they hear that title? Just me then. Still a good tune.

So the film. Nothing new.

Big ship gets decimated by some weeny bee ships. Nicely done but seen it before.

Crew crash-land on a planet and are right up against it. Seen it.

Meet a troubled individual who may just help them. Seen it.

Bit of 'buddy buddy' stuff between captain and 1st officer. Seen it.

Civilians running in peril on a big floating city. Seen it.

The one barnstorming moment of using 'Sabotage' by the Beastie Boys when the swarm are all but about to buzzfuck the space station is rendered a bit twee by focusing on crew members toe-tapping and jiving along with it. Oh, and heard it. In the first reboot.

[This kind of sequence was done with more panache and oddly, more tension in Serenity. Do check it out if you haven't seen it.]

In fact, you may have noticed I'm more than angry. I'm disappointed in Simon Pegg. As co-writer and a bloody near-genius, I expected a lot more from him. The cliches are rife. The Enterprise is destroyed and then rebuilt. Someone says something about 'strength in unity'. Spock is amusingly deadpan, even after finding a little more emotion in the last film. The villain is beaten....but wait, he has one final crack at Kirky. Colour by numbers, I'm afraid.

There's another irritating point that I've just noticed, but which may have been in the other Trek reboots. Shit, maybe in myriad films of this ilk. It's a common dialogue tick - someone asks a question or makes a comment, there's a pregnant pause, then a glib punch - "That was not my intention" or "You're kidding, right?" or "Only one way to find out" and so on. These seem to be either for laughs or oral money shots.

I know this is not going to happen but I'd really like to see the crew deal with internal ship stuff. Maybe a whodunit on board, Agatha Christie style. Or some shape-shifting spy action.

But ideally it'd be with the cast of Pegg's old mates from Big Train plus Richard E. Grant as Withnail and Maggie Smith as the much hoped for screen incarnation of Cider Woman from Viz. Make something of that, you bastards!