Best Picture Nominee Catch Up Movie: The Favourite

The Favourite (2018)

Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos

Screenplay by Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara

Stars: Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz, Emma Stone, Nicholas Hoult, Joe Alwyn, James Smith, and Mark Gatiss

Ever since Olivia Colman's surprise Best Actress, I wanted to see what the fuss was all about. I don't know what to say. I did not care for this movie.

Queen Anne (Colman) is ailing as a new servant Abigail (Stone) is brought to her services. Anne's close confidant is Lady Sarah Marlborough (Weisz) and also cousin to Abigail. The two cousins try to win favor for Anne's attention by any means necessary.

This type of movie would check all the boxes for me; gorgeous costumes, sharp dialogue, fabulous women and a lush score. It checked some of the boxes for me. The costumes were exquisite.

The problems I have with the film outweighs the positives. The score. Oh, dear. The repetitive chords drove me crazy. I learned that they were repurposed music from the musicians at the time period of Queen Anne's reign.

The fish eye lens shots were a terrible choice. I hated it so much.

The movie was billed a black comedy. I laughed once in the entire movie. The tone was all over the place. You have Queen Anne yapping like a chihuahua one minute and then you have one of the characters being poisoned and dragged. It was jarring.

The supporting performances by Stone and Weisz were far better than Colman. Colman's performance consisted of yelling, falling, stumbling, and being carted around. I don't get the hype with the movie.

Rating: 4/10

The Bourne Legacy

The Bourne Legacy (2012)

Directed by Tony Gilroy

Screenplay by Tony Gilroy & Dan Gilroy

Story by Tony Gilroy

Based on the Bourne series by Robert Ludlum

Stars: Jeremy Renner, Rachel Weisz, Edward Norton, Stacy Keach, Donna Murphy, Michael Chernus, Corey Stoll and Zeljko Ivanek

A fellow LAMB Dan reviewed The Bourne Ultimatum recently, I remarked on his post that I loved the trilogy, but I thought that the movie I am reviewing would be meh. Slap a turban on my head and call me Miss Cleo.

The storyline coincides with the events of the second half of what happened in The Bourne Ultimatum. If you haven't seen that movie, I might spoil that movie for you. Don't read any further. Jason Bourne has exposed Operation Blackbriar and the Treadstone Project where Bourne was trying to see what happened to his identity. An Outcome agent named Aaron Cross (Renner) is holed up in the Alaskan wilderness, survive the elements and popping pills provided from his superiors.

Meanwhile, when the shit is about hit the fan, the FBI and CIA want to destroy the program and eliminate all of the participants of the projects which include the agents the doctors that supplied the drugs. Somehow, they got Dr. Donald Foite (Ivanek) to shoot up the people in the lab except for Dr. Marta Shearing (Weisz) who manages to survive. Cross needs to find Shearing to keep him alive and out of the hands of the people that are trying to kill them.

I was doing research on the movie that the title did come from a 2004 Bourne book called "The Bourne Legacy" after original author Robert Ludlum died in 2001 from Eric Van Lustbader. The book was a complete story about Jason Bourne. Since Matt Damon didn't want to do the movie without Paul Greengrass, we get this movie.

The trouble with this movie is that movie feels unnecessary. There is a character that knows his true identity from the get go and we are supposed to be on this journey with him. I felt like it is one of those "message movies" that Hollywood crams down our throats like Traffic, The Constant Gardner, Syriana or Blood Diamond. We get it! Big business = bad, everything else is good. I don't want to hear Renner or Weisz talk about making drugs that change your DNA. Yadda, yadda, yadda. I don't give two shits about it.

There were less car chases in movie with more phone tag with everybody being one phone. Let's get that onscreen. Track them down. Here is some surveillance photos. Who cares? I want to see action not long polemics about drug dependency and all that. The original trilogy were solid because they were based on Ledlum's books. Deviating from the books to tell a side story about a rogue agent with the Bourne is insulting to me.

My Rating: