Tag: Matt Damon

Movie Review: THE GREAT WALL – Utterly forgettable, underwritten monsters-attack movie. Even Damon looks uncommitted.

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Image result for the great wall poster

D’you remember last year when Matt (Jason Bourne)Damon had to defend himself from accusations of what is referred to as “cultural appropriation” after doing a press junket for his movie The Great Wall?  The accuser here was TV actress Constance Wu, who clearly only knew two things about the movie: that it was set in ancient China and starred white actor Matt Damon.  Of course, it had to be racist casting, right?  Trouble was, Wu had not read the screenplay and likely had not looked at the trades before jumping to her conclusions.  The Chinese influence behind the camera on this movie is significant, and Damon was hired specifically because of worldwide name recognition.  With a budget of $135 million on the line, it made sense to put someone like Damon in the lead role in order to guarantee a healthy global return.

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Movie Review: JASON BOURNE – Matt Damon’s return to the franchise is marred by awful writing and by the numbers action.

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Bourne

If there’s a worse big-budget action movie screenplay than Paul Greengrass’s Jason Bourne, I haven’t seen it.  That’s not to say that the movie is an out and out stinker, but it comes really close, and for me, it clocks in as the worst of the series.

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Movie Review: THE MARTIAN – pretty faithful adaptation of a good book, but the Earth scenes fall flat.

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The Martian

The Martian, Matt Damon’s latest “please come get me!” movie, is a good adaptation of a mostly poorly written novel. But, caveats!

I do consider Andy Weir’s novel to be poorly written, from a technical standpoint – though I personally found the book to be a terrific listen, especially because it isn’t JUST Robinson Crusoe-on-Mars-meets-Mission-to-Mars (Watney’s scenes are basically what Don Cheadle was doing offscreen in the latter) with Contact‘s big deus ex machina thrown in for good measure – it’s a book that’s bursting at the seams with conflict and science and logistics, and I recommend it to anyone. A good friend of mine was turned off by the book’s biggest flaws, and I completely understand his reasoning, but I would still recommend it, regardless. Continue reading “Movie Review: THE MARTIAN – pretty faithful adaptation of a good book, but the Earth scenes fall flat.” →