Tag Archives: Edward Norton

REVIEW: The Bourne Legacy

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The Bourne Legacy
Directed by: Tony Gilroy
Written by: Tony Gilroy & Dan Gilroy (screenplay), Tony Gilroy (story), Robert Ludlum (series)
Starring: Jeremy Renner, Rachel Weisz, Edward Norton and Stacy Keach

The Bourne Legacy isn’t another installment in the shaky cam spy series as much as it is a thrown together money grab that uses the world.  It takes place largely during the events The Bourne Ultimatum, where the U.S. government apparently was eliminating other super agents like Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne while also trying to track him down.  Damon appears only as a mug shot, though, and the screen time largely belongs to Jeremy Renner.

Renner was a good choice to play Aaron Cross even if the movie, directed and co-written by Tony Gilroy, is way too long for what it’s trying to show.  The biggest draw of the other Bourne films was how the filmmaking techniques were as efficient and fast-paced as its main character.  In this movie’s almost two-and-a-half hour run time, there are long, unnecessary stretches that add nothing.

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ARCHIVE REVIEW: Fight Club

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Image courtesy of Deep Focus

Fight Club
Directed by: David Fincher
Written by: Jim Uhls (screenplay), Chuck Palahniuk (novel)
Starring: Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, Helena Bonham Carter, and Meatloaf

Beloved the world over by high school and college males of all ages as a philosophical masterpiece, David Fincher’s Fight Club has continuously stayed on cinema’s cerebrum ever since it became a cult hit on DVD.   Do I dare challenge the consensus that this film isn’t all it’s cracked up to be?  I almost feel obligated to.

For starters, these so-called philosophical musings.  Is a movie that promotes fighting back against a society that questions your manhood really something we should be promoting?  Isn’t that what has gotten us involved in every single conflict since the dawn of time?  What most consider unique in this film is actually just the same old masculinity complex American males are expected to suffer from.

As critic Lisa Schwarzbaum put it in her initial negative review of the film,

The giant international furnishings chain IKEA is responsible for many consumer-based phenomena, among them our docile acceptance of cheap, hinged desk lamps that droop like spent lilies. But I hadn’t realized that overexposure to IKEA results in limp penises, too, until I saw Fight Club.

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