Weekly Round-Up (8/5/12 - 8/11/12)

I apologize for not posting in so long. My laptop is not working and my files are all there. Anyhoo, here's the round-up.

L'Atalante (Jean Vigo) **** - This is director Jean Vigo's first (and unfortunately, last) feature-length film but it's such a groundbreaking classic that despite his sparse filmography, Jean Vigo is considered a major film figure. This one tells the story of a newlywed couple who live in a shipping boat. It's actually an extraordinarily realized love story with unexpected, sneaky eroticism. This is actually my second time watching this picture and I like it even more now.

Rope (Alfred Hitchcock) **** - This is another film that I revisited this week. This one is a classic by Alfred Hitchcock about a gay couple who kills their fellow classmate and hides the body in their house as they hold a luncheon with their teacher, the victim's girlfriend and the victim's father. The fact that the two killers are gay is cleverly only hinted at (but modern audiences will catch on to it). The film is composed entirely of very long takes. The technology of the time only allows for 10 minutes of film at a time so Hitchcock had to hide a few edit points here and there.  It's not my favorite Hitchcock but still a great, great film.

The Bourne Legacy (Tony Gilroy) **1/2- I'm not the biggest fan of the Bourne franchise so I really don't regard this as any kind of sacrilege. This one doesn't have the title character or the actor who plays him, Matt Damon but that's not the film's biggest problem at all. Its biggest problem is that it's a fairly generic action picture that's both way overlong and ends way too abruptly. It is however made quite watchable by the great performances of Jeremy Renner and Rachel Weisz. Plus the climactic chase sequence in Manila is pretty cool to watch (especially as a Filipino, of course).