Brick

I should find Brick offensive. I should be annoyed at the gimmick of a film noir set in a high school. I should find the whole thing contrived. I don't.

Much has been written about Brick, calling it everything from an homage to film noir to a parody of high school melodrama and all things emo. Indeed, Brick feels written from the outside looking in, like someone unpopular, uninformed, and uninvited watched too many movies and used them as a reference to fill in what he/she did not know about what popular people keep secret.

I remember many Mondays in high school, when I'd hear vague references to what happened or who did what with whom over the weekend at so-and-so's house (I wasn't invited). I grew up in a very protective, overbearing household, and we didn't have much money. I wasn't nearly cool enough to run with the cool people. Most weekends, I wasn't allowed to go anywhere, so invitations wouldn't have mattered. Much of that changed during my sophomore year, when I sat down next to a guy I knew named Josh in geometry class, and we soon found a kinship, a mutual appreciation of comedy, and we spent the rest of high school making each other laugh.

Josh's family is well off, and his dad is a car collector of sorts. On nice days, Josh would pick me up in a Ferrari or an Acura NSX or a Jensen Interceptor and we'd drive around Muncie. I thought I was hot shit for a time, riding around Muncie in some bitchen car, rednecks craning their, well, red necks to see who was in the kickass vehicle running up and down McGalliard, but that hot shit feeling faded when Josh dropped me off at home, mostly because if I acted like hot shit around my family after someone in a Ferrari dropped me off, I'd soon find myself with the hot shit knocked out of me.

I don't give a hot shit about cars now and I don't really know why I did then. Most likely, girls had something to do with me not acting like myself and instead spending half of high school envying the son of a doctor because I thought that having his life would've made me cool. I went to my first party with Josh, had my first whiskey, and ate my first entire box of orange Tic-Tacs to mask the whiskey smell from my parents. (There's no way that worked, but they never said anything.) I grew up a lot, had a lot of cool experiences, and laughed all the time. But I always sort of felt like I was living outside my own bubble, often acting like someone I wasn't. I hated that feeling.

Josh had this other life, and other friends, and some weekends he didn't call, or he'd say he would and wouldn't. Then on Monday I'd hear about things that happened at so-and-so's and I wasn't invited. He was more athletic, dated more, and had other things going on. I cared a lot more about all of this at the time. Everything mattered.

Even then, I knew that who I was and where I was from didn't amount to a hill of beans to Josh and his family because they were good people. Their possessions, which they worked damned hard to get, were not everything. They still ate dinner as a family, and they still punished their kids when they screwed up. Though time and distance has separated us and we're not as close as we used to be, my guess is Josh and I could pick right up where we left off last time, whenever that was, and probably be laughing at the same old jokes and some new ones within a few minutes.

But I still never really found out what was going on at all those parties I missed. Probably nothing, but I had the time to let my imagination run wild during all those weekends cooped up in my bedroom in my parents' house, sorting through baseball cards, reading comics, and really only coming out for food or when Dad came home with a stack of movie rentals. I never came up with an elaborate story like the one in Brick. Typically I just wrote silly, postmodern comedy that I'm now embarrassed to let anyone read.

Brick is a "teensploitation" film. Teens lead such serious, important lives, and everything matters! (Why don't you understand this, Mom and Dad?!?!?) This is a film, unlike teen comedies, that appeals specifically to those teens for whom life is deadly serious, not some big joke full of high school archetypes. I mean, Richard Roundtree, the blaxsploitation actor who played Shaft, appears here as the vice-principal. Coincidence?

Call Brick what you will; people love or hate this film. But there's a definite angle toward a specific type of audience — maybe one I was once in, or wanted desperately to be among, or just sort of got into along the way, or maybe never found at all.

Braveheart

I have a Braveheart poster somewhere. Once, in need of motivation, I took a Sharpie and wrote, "Thanks for all the screenwriting tips. Mel Gibson." I hung the poster on my bedroom wall.

Friends used to come over and comment on the autograph. "You met Mel Gibson? Wait...you gave him writing tips?" I tried, but I could never keep a straight face.

Mel's fake autograph and personalized note are funnier now than then, because Mel didn't actually get a screenwriting credit until The Passion of the Christ, which came nearly a decade after I signed the poster, and I assure you, had nothing to do with me.

As a badge of honor and an assertion of my own manly, emotional fortitude, I used to keep a list of only five movies that made me cry. Yes, only five. Braveheart was on the list. I had a sixth, E.T., which also made me cry, but I don't count that one; I was 6 years old when I saw E.T. in the theater, and that's not fair.

[I bawled my eyes out on the car ride home from E.T.. I mean, cry-until-you-hurt crying. I was 6 and I still remember that hurt.]

Thing is, Braveheart never made me cry that much. Sure, I shed a tear when he cries out "Freedom!" while the torturer disembowels him. But I don't have to lean forward in my seat to sob out the lump or something. I can't explain everything.

Last year, I married an English woman. Occasionally, England's bloody history comes up, especially with regard to films like this, but no more than America's, and I have plenty of those films on DVD too.

We hail from countries with dark pasts, but I think we'd be the same people regardless of where we were born, and I like to think we would've found each other anyway. We'd probably still cry at the same movies, and I'd be the guy with the fake autographed Braveheart poster, and she'd be the woman who wouldn't let me hang it in the house.

The Bourne Ultimatum

Matt Damon Week continues here at Little Round Mirrors, where I assure you we're not fucking Matt Damon; we just have a lot of his movies.

The Bourne Ultimatum is the one I've seen the fewest times, but I think I like this one the most. The fight scenes still hold up, unchallenged by the new 007 films, and I admire Julia Stiles' work. However, I still do not understand how a simple dye job can throw off the C.I.A., but in these films that's how to elude them. I'd at least go for a fake beard or Groucho glasses.

There are a few other unbelievable elements here. How does he get into a C.I.A. deep cover facility undetected? Well, because everyone in the building left. How did that happen? How did Landy get into a building with a C.I.A. training facility and send a fax with classified content while the building was being raided? Just...never mind. Play along. This is a Hollywood blockbuster, designed for your entertainment. If I can borrow a phrase from another film: "And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can't feel anything but gratitude..."

Sometimes you just need a film that will take you on a ride so you can forget about life for a while (thank you, Billy Joel). Sometimes you need something to spin after a long day at work so you can put things away in your mind. There's nothing wrong with that — as long as the entertainment is well done — and though they're not perfect, the Bourne films all fit the bill.

The real trouble is I find it hard to watch one of the sequels without watching the previous film(s). I forget things. I like the feeling of continuity. I want to see the story in full.

I enjoy these films for the same reason I'm drawn to the Bond films: the traveling. I've been stuck in Indiana most of my life; we went to England once and I've been around the country on a few vacations to maybe 18 states. I went to Canada when I was a kid and don't remember a thing. I sort of live vicariously through his travels, except no one shoots at me.

Finally, I love how the trilogy bookends. When we first see Jason Bourne, way back in The Bourne Identity, he's floating in the Mediterranean, unconscious but tethered to a life he can't remember. When we see him for the last time, he's floating in the East River (ew), barely conscious, but free.

I like a good bookend, so here you go.

The Bourne Supremacy

Matt Damon Week continues here at Little Round Mirrors with The Bourne Supremacy, the sequel to The Bourne Identity. Like the first film, this one is not perfect, but is still an intelligent action film. Sometimes I just want big, dumb fun, and intelligent, big, dumb fun is even better.

As I re-watch, though, these films seem to be losing steam. Maybe I'm gauging them unfairly, comparing them to other films. Since Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace have rebooted the Bond franchise, the Bourne films just don't seem as exciting or as well done.

They're still well written, solid entertainment, but EON Productions has upped the ante. The Bourne films seem a bit quaint, and I wonder how they will age considering the Bond franchise has entered a new era of kickass.

Bourne seems soft compared to Daniel Craig's Bond. Bourne spares people — even the heavies who chase him across continents sometimes get free passes. Bond really doesn't spare anyone. Cross him and he'll shoot you over and over until you fall dead. Bourne doesn't always do that. Softie.

Like the first film, this one is based on the Ludlum novel by the same name, which I never read because Robert Ludlum (or his editor) uses italics too much, among other quirks. I'm superficial. I have too much time on my hands. I worry about stuff. Then again, you're reading a blog. Shouldn't you be working or watching your kids or something? I bet your house is on fire or your boss is monitoring your computer. Maybe both?

I preach to my students about telling your story visually rather than verbally. Show me don't tell me. Sloppy storytelling bothers me, and for the most part the Bourne films are good in that department, but for my liking, there are still too many shots of loving photos, elegantly doodled journals with phrases like "WHO AM I?" and lists of stuff the audience should remember from the first film.

Hollywood thinks we're stupid. I always resent this kind of stuff. I don't mind doing some work to keep up with the film. Tony Gilroy, the Bourne franchise screenwriter, also wrote Michael Clayton, a film that really seems to trust the viewer. I like when a film doesn't give me every answer and assumes I'll still figure things out and keep up.

Maybe my complaints with this film aren't so much with the film as they are with Hollywood in general. Films out of Hollywood typically don't challenge viewers as much as I think they should, but then again, what do I know?

I forgive much of this because the Bourne films are enjoyable popcorn flicks. Sometimes that's all I want. Sometimes a movie is just a movie. Trouble is, when I want an intelligent action film, I'm liable to reach for the new 007 films instead of the Bourne trilogy. That's a bigger issue than the occasional clunky visual.

My tastes and moods are always changing. Ask me again in five years and I'll probably tell you something totally different.

The Bourne Identity

Okay, get it out of your system and come back. I'll wait.

...

Back? Good.

This is the first time I've watched The Bourne Identity since attempting — and failing — to read Robert Ludlum's novel on which this film is based.

I picked up the book in a shop in Oxford, England, because that's where you buy crap novels. I tried reading while we were in England in 2008 (and on the flight back), but mostly I couldn't get past how much I hated Robert Ludlum's writing style.

His plotting isn't bad (for mass market fiction, anyway), but the thing I remember most about the book is how important passages were always in italics, and he (or his editor) would do that over and over, sometimes a few times on the same page. I mean, I use italics sometimes, but all the time? If everything is important, then nothing is important, Bob. Some little annoyance like that is enough to get me to stop reading, even on a transatlantic flight.

I gave up on the book, but I still love the films, warts and all. They're paced well, plotted pretty well, and really do a great job of redefining the genre. Ludlum's writing still drives me nuts, but the concept is fine, and in the hands of worthy screenwriters to adapt (Gilroy was here), you've got a hit.

Also, the Bourne films are imbued with this awareness of how action heroes and excess have been intrinsically connected over the years, and how that's not what a self-conscious America wants to watch. This article articulates some of those ideas better than I'll attempt here.

But let's be fair. Films like The Bourne Identity always remind me of what I'll tolerate and what I won't. A spy who can remember everything about his training except, conveniently, his own identity and who trained him? Okay, I'll bite. A spy who can get into fight after fight and still not have a bruise on his face despite mauling dozens of adversaries? Sure, fine. A spy who drives a little, red Eurobeater at whiplash-inducing speeds all over Paris, outrunning authorities, crashing through stuff, and driving down staircases without so much as losing a hubcap? Okay, now I'm just smiling and playing along, like when Grandpa tells the grandchildren a story no adult in the room believes.

The Bourne Identity has some real holes, and I notice more every time I watch them, and I get a little more critical when I see more, but nothing is so annoying that I can't enjoy the film for what it is — the post-9/11 action film that forced a 007 reboot and led us to the best James Bond since Sean Connery.

I've gotten more critical of films as I've gotten a bit older, and having my wife in the room doesn't help, because we spend a lot of time in front of the television making fun of what we're watching. Example: We watch "Jeopardy!" a couple of times a week while eating dinner, and we wait for Alex Trebek to say something in French so we can make fun of him. This is what we do because we're too poor to go out. You should've seen our faces when the category was "Uranus" a few weeks ago.

We're a couple of critics, but when I'm alone, I can get absorbed in The Bourne Identity. When she comes into the room? This.