The more we try to understand one another, the more exceptional each of us will be.

Zootopia (2016)

8.2/10 on IMDb
98% on Rotten Tomatoes

Chloe's thoughts: It's alright
Watch it if you: Like animations; Want an easy, fun and enjoyable movie that still has some great deeper meaning and lessons; Need to watch a movie with a child but still want to enjoy the movie yourself
I've finally gotten around to watching this movie! Back in the beginning of the year, I remember there was a huge Zootopia craze with everyone saying how amazing and funny the trailer looked, but I really did not see what the hype was about. To me, the trailers didn't look that great, as it made the film look like a typical buddy cop story. Surprisingly, though, it was quite enjoyable. I mean, I still don't see it as amazingly as everyone else seems to see it, but it definitely wasn't as stupid as I thought it would be.

In fact, the plot was quite interesting and unique, and I certainly did not realise I was getting into something as deep and layered as this. The film places us somewhere in the distant future where animals have evolved so that there is no distinction between predator and prey. Animals can live in peace now, sharing foods, homes, and workplaces. Our main character, Judy Hopps, aspires to be the first ever bunny cop in the city where dreams come true: Zootopia.

Before watching this film, I heard a lot of people showering this film with praises on how well it handles themes such as discrimination and racism. In fact, it was consistently compared to how well Inside Out (2015) handled depression and mental illness. While it is fantastic that a children's film was able to address this, I did feel like the movie was a little bit too preachy about it. The themes of stereotyping and discriminating felt so in-your-face, it was a bit annoying.

It was also annoying that the film was even a little hypocritical in this regard. As Screen Junkies pointed out, ever single character is stereotypically what you would expect of the animal. It would be like if a film portrayed a hot blonde as stupid, a Jew as stingy, a young person as irresponsible, a woman as a bad driver, and then told you to not assume that these stereotypes would apply to these characters. I mean, even their most aggressive marketing campaign revolved around a scene involving sloths being slow. And while it was a funny scene that was of course deliberately dragged out for way too long, it was a bit weird to have a major gag come from laughing at a character's biological disadvantage in a movie trying to tell us to remove preconceived notions of people having inherent biological disadvantages!!! They try to tell us not to judge a book by its cover, or an animal by it's fur, but whenever we meet a new character, they make that character's personality align with the stereotypes associated with that particular animal. I know that they break this in the end, to complete their "don't stereotype" theme, but it's a bit forced, and these breakings of stereotypes doesn't seem to come naturally.

Of course, I'm probably doing what I do best and just overthinking this way too much. Don't get me wrong, it was great to have a seemingly innocent children's film be really layered with these themes, but I just didn't think it was all that amazing.

However, the film was actually pretty funny, the animation was great, and they had some really clever ways of depicting what it would be like if animals were civilised (and by clever, I mean very vigorously punny). Jason Bateman was a great casting choice, since his ever-chill voice was a perfect fit for the super chill and sly fox. Every time he speaks, I always imagine his head being tilted to the side, while he's got one hand in his jean pocket and one shoulder sort of raised in a perpetual state of half-shrugging. He is one casual man, and this is completely contrasted by the ever-energetic bunny Judy, as well as the stressed-out and very commanding buffalo Chief Bogo, voiced by Idris Elba. While his accent wasn't the best or the most soothing, it was still really pleasant to hear him in this. The other voice characters were great too, with Jenny Slate, Nate Torrence, and even J. K. Simmons being great secondary characters.

So this is a (semi) short review for this film, but overall I think it was decent. It wasn't great, and I don't think it deserved all the hype and praise that it received, but it was still pretty enjoyable. It was funny, unique and interesting, albeit a bit cliché and predictable, and it had some great messages to send to children about racism, discrimination, and notions of genetic superiority/inferiority.


A few side notes:

This film has so many pop culture references, mostly related to Disney, but that ode to Godfather was hilarious!

But there certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are pretty women to deserve them.

Lately I haven't been watching too many movies, but I have been reading a lot! My aim is to read 12 books this year, and I'm nearly finished with my 9th book so far. If all goes to plan, I should be able to reach my goal and possibly even read a few more on top of it!

I never realised how many books I actually read, but because I read quite sporadically, I've always wanted to join a bookclub so that I could get into a more regular rhythm, and also because it's no fun reading a book and then realising you have no one to talk about it to.

Unfortunately, most book clubs meet pretty regularly, and being a busy uni student, I never did join a book club. But earlier this year, Michael and I started a book club where we meet every two months to discuss the book that we previously set! It's pretty fun and it's opened me up to reading books that I wouldn't usually.

It's good too because we pick books around the 400-500 page mark, so if you like reading a lot you can still read other books, and if you are trying to get into reading, these books aren't intimidatingly long.

We've set three books so far, and I'll probably blog about them soon, but for now, I need to geek out a bit about Jane Austen.


I absolutely love Pride and Prejudice, I've read it twice already and it's tied as my favourite book (alongside A Storm of Swords). I've also read Sense and Sensibility, and in between book club reads, I also managed to read Mansfield Park (my review is below). Michael bought me a tome of a book compiling all seven of Austen's novels, and I'm slowly but surely reading through them.

I love the 2005 film starring Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen, and I really want to get into the 1995 BBC series adaptation, but in the meantime I discovered an amazing YouTube adaptation of the novel!

The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is done in a vlog style where Lizzie Bennet is now a college grad student who decides to do a vlog series as part of her thesis. Most of the vlogs are just done with her sitting in her bedroom in front of the camera, so most of it is just recounting notable events that happened in her life, although we do get to meet some of the other characters from the novel.

I honestly recommend anyone who has read or seen a version of Pride and Prejudice to watch this! If you haven't read it yet, then you should read it before you watch the series, but if you are not planning on reading it ever, it's still a really great series to watch. It only has 100 episodes, each being about 5 minutes long, so it won't take up too much of your time.

I found the casting of each character to be perfect, and it's such a groundbreaking way to do a modern adaptaion of the novel! The way they adapt Austenian marriage proposals and marriage scandals to something equally as exciting or intrigueing in the modern day is ingenious. Even adapting some of the ridiculous names to modern versions is great, and that has even allowed for some Asian actors to join the cast, which is fantastic! And yes, the change from Charles Bingley to Bing Lee almost makes me chuckle.

They also have spin-off videos, they've made Twitter and Facebook accounts for the characters, and they have even published a book with secret diary entries of Lizzie Bennet. I'm not too sure if I'm interested in buying that, because I have so many books on my to-read list, but it's definitely cool how they made it almost like Pride and Prejudice really could take place in real life.

They have also done an Emma Approved series, an adaptation of another popular Austen novel, Emma (which was also the source material for the 1995 film Clueless), and I'm keen to watch that after I read the novel, which is next up in the book since I finished Mansfield Park.


Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

3.82/5 on Goodreads
Chloe's thoughts: Really liked it (4/5)
The Price family struggles financially (despite their name), and as a result, Fanny, the eldest daughter, is taken in to live with her wealthy aunt and uncle, the Lady Bertram and Sir Thomas. There, she grows up with her four cousins and the novel details her upbringing in this family.

Mansfield Park is often stated to be the least liked Austen novel, and I can definitely understand why people would say that.

In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet, though not without her faults, is tomboyish, headstrong and norm-defying. Here, the protagonist is the complete opposite. She doesn't quite belong to this new family as she's not treated an equal to her cousins, and as a result she's often neglected and quite passive. She's very obedient though, and has been educated very well on how to be a proper lady, so all of this combined just means that she becomes a pushover. Because of that, many people don't like this novel.

I must admit, that is definitely an issue with this story, since it's really hard to love someone who is so perfectly a lady and yet so completely helpless at the same time.

But the fault isn't there, the fault is that in the end, she is completely the same person as she was at the start of the novel. She's still a pushover and she has almost no character arc. That's my one gripe about this novel. Up until the very last chapter, I actually thought that she had changed for the better, but Austen managed to pull out a really bizarre ending that did not sit well with me.

Apart from that though, I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. It starts off a bit slow, but a few chapters in it starts getting really funny and exciting. It's amazing how so much plot can progress in Austen novels, which have a setting where almost nothing ever happens in the dull and boring lives of women in the 1800s.

We meet interesting characters such as the Bertram family, each of them quite different from the other, with the girls Julia and Maria also looking for love. I must admit, this side plot of the Bertram girls trying to each seduce the charming Henry Crawford is probably more interesting than Fanny's own story. There's also a huge huge HUGE scandal towards the end of the novel which was quite a massive shocker, and just made everything so much more exciting.

Another fun thing about this novel is, just like how most of the humour in Pride and Prejudice comes from Mrs. Bennet, most of the humour in Mansfield Park comes from Mrs. Norris (queen of gossip, contradictions, and annoyances) and the Lady Bertram (the embodiment of a trophy wife, marrying rich and having a life of idling by). Actually, all the females save Fanny are pretty funny here.

"I mean to be too rich to lament or to feel anything of the sort. A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of. It certainly may secure all the myrtle and turkey part of it." - Mary Crawford
So in the end, the overall novel is great. It has flaws in how the characters are and how the end resolves itself (she ended up marrying the guy that I didn't want her to marry), and it's very controversial because of Fanny's annoying morality (I don't think she does a single thing wrong in this novel), which makes her a very hard protagonist to relate with. But it's still very enjoyable, it has some very interesting plot devices, and it's quite humourous, in that lovely Austen-satire sort of way.

Vietnam/Cambodia Trip: Part 4 - Ho Chi Minh City

Over the summer holidays, my family went to visit my Dad in Vietnam for a holiday (he is based in Ho Chi Minh City), and we decided to head up to North Vietnam and Cambodia as well. This is the fourth of a six part blog series on the whole trip!

Part 1 - Siem Reap
Part 2 - Ha Long Bay
Part 3 - Battambang
Part 4 (this blog) - Ho Chi Minh City
Part 5 - Sapa and Hanoi
Part 6 - Mekong Delta and Cu Chi Tunnels


This blog is more of a picture blog, as it was the most chill and least touristy part of our holiday. My dad stepped up to be our tour guide and just took us to random places, so there's not much to talk about here.

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Ho Chi Minh City, VietnamHighlights:

Christmas Eve in a communist country was surprisingly very exciting and crowded

The general overstimulation of everything in your body; the panic you feel when you need to cross the road, the constant honking you hear from cars and bikes around you, and the sheer volume of motorbikes swamping the road

War Remnants Museum; it was an eye-opening experience that ripped my heart out of my soul

The shopping was fantastic because I could finally buy clothes that fit me!

Lowlights:

The food poisoning

Which meant we were too terrified of eating street food until towards the end of our holiday, so we didn't each much of that stuff :(

Weather/Environment:

Very humid and hot

A bit dusty, but not as bad as in Cambodia

Accommodation: We stayed at my dad's apartment here, yay for free accommodation!


Overall:
There isn't too much to do here so I wouldn't spend too long in Ho Chi Minh City (aka Saigon, for the older people, or for those who do not want to refer to the place by its communist name), unless you wanted to focus on the food and shopping. It gives you a good understanding of Vietnamese culture, but there are more interesting places in the rest of the country.

Christmas Eve

We arrived Christmas morning, and so Christmas Eve was our very first night in Vietnam, and what a night to experience Vietnam! It was seriously INSANE the amount of people that come out to celebrate a Christmas holiday, considering Vietnam is not a Christian country.

Here we were thinking that this was just a typical night in Ho Chi Minh City, when even my dad is stunningly surprised, yelling out to us over the roar of motorcycles, "I have never seen anything like this! There are SO MANY motorcycles!"

(Sorry, I'm not sure why you can't fullscreen it, but just click it to play/pause)
We went to the Nguyen Hue Mall, which is an outdoor pedestrian strip in the heart of the city, and it was incredibly crowded.

The City Hall

Statue of Ho Chi Minh himself
We also had dinner at the Bitexco Financial Tower, which is the tallest building in Ho Chi Minh City. It was a cross between my belated birthday dinner and a Christmas Ever dinner, together with a "We are finally reunited with Papa Lim" dinner.

We had the buffet there, and it was pretty great, although we do believe that this may have been one of the sources of our food poisoning.

Bitexco Financial Tower, tallest building in HCMC

War Remnants Museum

The War Remnants Museum is arguably the thing that stood out to me the most on my visit to Ho Chi Minh City.

It has really cool displays of military equipment, ranging from planes, to weapons, to little personal belongings of soldiers, which was all pretty cool.

There is one section where they show the torturous tiger cages that the Americans used on their Vietnamese prisoners, which was horrific and terrifying.

Description: "Tiger cages" are in fact special cells for the detention of political prisoners considered "stubborn" by the Saigon authorities. There are 120 cages of such type in Con Dao Island. Each cell measures 2,70m x 1,50m x 3m. During the hot season about 5 to 14 prisoners were kept in one cell. In winter time there was only one of two of them kept in it with their feet shackled to a long iron bar. Eating, drinking, sleeping etc... are only allowed in this place.
Narrow passages were reserved to jailers who went back and forth and were ready to harass the prisoners. Talking, laughing, coughing, even slapping on mosquitoes might serve an excuse for the jailers to use violent measures against the detainees. They injured them with sharp sticks or shovel lime on them. A lot of prisoners received serious burns or vomited blood.
The detainees' meals consisted of handfuls of rice of very poor quality and small pieces of decayed dried fish. Vegetables and meat were definitely non-existent. Each prisoner was given half a tin can of drinking water a day let alone water for bathing or washing. The lack of water was really a punishment inflicted on women, specially during their menstrual days.
Prisoners' health got worse day after day. Obviously, casualties among the political prisoners kept in "Tiger cages" were high.

The different torture techniques they used on prisoners. Definitely worth the read (click to enlarge the picture)
The most outstanding part of the museum, though, was the Agent Orange section, which was just a gallery of images of those affected by Agent Orange. It was so incredibly sad that I couldn't help but cry... a lot. In the end I just couldn't take it any longer and I had to go out and sit down, wiping my tears away.

"Only as little as 85g of dioxin could kill a whole city with a population of 8 million."

Reunification Palace

The Reunification Palace was pretty cool too. The outside looks really incredible, and when you go in there's one floor where you can look out and have a stunning view from the balcony.

It's so called because this was the building where the communist North Vietnamese came to an agreement with the South Vietnamese people, thus reunifying the land. It's also sometimes called the Independence Palace.

Apart from that, the building isn't that amazing to look at; it's mainly just an exhibition of how all the rooms of the building look. It can be interesting since they're done up really formally and neatly, but many of the rooms look quite similar and you can get a bit tired of it. I did enjoy the private cinema room they had though (of course).

Oh yeh, they had a tank out at the front too.


Miscellaneous

The Rex Hotel: dining on the rooftop made me feel like I was in the middle of a Hercule Poirot story and someone was about to drop dead at any moment. Oh, and they make a mean clam chowder, too.

Saigon Central Post Office: a pretty cool pit stop as you walk around the city

Inside the post office

Saigon Notre Dame Cathedral

Saigon Opera House

The American couple we met in Ha Long Bay recommended us this crab shop and it was actually really great. The place is PACKED and we had to go up to the fourth floor or something just to get a seat. It's also so good that another crab shop opened RIGHT NEXT TO IT with the EXACT SAME NAME (ain't no such thing as IP in Vietnam). The only way we knew which crab shop to go to was because I looked at the phone number on the business card and made sure it was the correct one.

Worst. Heroes. Ever.

Suicide Squad (2016)

7.2/10 on IMDb
26% on Rotten Tomatoes

Chloe's thoughts: It's alright; Watch it in cinemas (for the action, but if you can't be bothered paying, then don't worry you're not missing out on much)
Watch it if you: Want to watch a fun, enjoyable, and light-hearted movie; Like the DC universe; Like the concept of this film; Aren't taking it too seriously
The government, concerned with the possibility of having an 'evil' Superman show up to terrorise the world, gathers a group of villains to do their dirty work. This expendable 'suicide squad' becomes a puppet for the intelligence operative Amanda Waller, who is ready to kill them and/or chuck them under the bus if need be.

So despite what Rotten Tomatoes is saying, I thought this movie was fun and enjoyable, and I would rewatch it if I was in the mood for something that was just that: fun and enjoyable. It's by no means anything spectacular, it's not even great, it's just decent. And that's completely fine, I didn't go in expecting a spectacular film. I was hoping for a fun film, and it met that criteria.

And I feel like I also need to explain how Rotten Tomatoes works. Remember that Rotten Tomatoes is not like IMDb. So while IMDb's scores is the average of all users (not just critics), Rotten Tomatoes is the percentage of critics who have rated the movie above a 6/10. In this case, 26% of critics thought the movie was at least a 6/10. The average of Rotten Tomatoes critics actually rated it a 4.7/10 (right underneath the big "26%"). So while it's still not a great score, it's still better than a 2.6/10. So you can theoretically have a movie with 100% on Rotten Tomatoes but with all the scores being 6/10. You can also have a movie with 0% on Rotten Tomatoes with all scores being 5/10. Also, Rotten Tomatoes critics are CRITICS. They have a distinct taste, and they also don't really include younger critics, so naturally the films they like would be different.

And no, there's no conspiracy of Rotten Tomatoes buying off critics to give bad reviews to DC films. In fact, Warner Bros (the studio behind these DCEU movies), actually owned Rotten Tomatoes up until February, and they still hold a stake in the website. So no, there's no conspiracy happening.


Back to the film.

I think the opening was the strongest part of the film. The way it was edited made it really upbeat and fast-paced, and it was really entertaining. During the start of the film I was thinking, "Yes. This is the film I wanted to see. The critics will be wrong. It will be a good movie."

Unfortunately, once they get into the actual plot, that's when the holes start to appear. Firstly, the dialogue is terrible. I was concerned with the trailer, I was uncomfortable at the start of the film, and by the end of the film I just hated the scriptwriters. Most of the lines were so cringeworthy because you could tell that they were trying to be either really funny, or really epic, and it just ended up being cheesy. The script was also pretty immature. Do they not realise that you don't need to constantly say "bitch", "shit", and "balls" (among other similar terms) to have good, fun and dark dialogue? It's almost as if the script was written by a 12 year old who just realised he could make his calculator spell out '8008135'.

The plot was quite weak too. They had many minor plot holes, plus a major one. No spoilers here, but some of it just didn't make sense. I didn't mind though, because as I said, I didn't expect a perfect film. In fact, most films have major plot holes anyway, but they can still be fun. However, it was a bit of a disappointment when the end battle was resolved way too quickly and with little thought or sense to it.

Another thing that I didn't like was how they tried to let a plot hole slide by making us laugh. Again, it comes down to writing, but you cannot just push aside a plot hole by having someone say, "How are you not dead yet?!" I mean, we as the audience laugh, but seriously... how? And then they move on as if nothing ever happened.

This may be due to the editing though, because after the first part of the movie, the editing becomes really sloppy, there's a lot of things cut out from the movie, and that results in it just not making sense. Everything becomes clumsy and disjointed, and I think there would be a director's cut that adds maybe 30 more minutes to the film to try and explain what's going on.

Also because of this editing, sometimes the tone of the film would suddenly change, from happy to suspenseful to epic to happy again, and that makes for a really jarring and unsettling experience. Sometimes this was due to the score of the film, but most of the time it was the editing.

The music, for the most part, was very entertaining and enjoyable. They included popular songs, and some were even included in the trailers. Some may not like the extensive use of pop songs, but I actually enjoyed it, it added character to the scenes that the actual dialogue couldn't provide for us.

I will have a side rant though, that there was a teenage girl sitting next to me who sang along to every. single. song. Seriously, she was so annoying, she would keep saying out her feelings, like, "Oh I like her, she's cool", or "Oh wow, that's so cool", "Is that the Joker? I think that's the Joker", and two seconds later, "Yeh that's the Joker." The worst part was when she told her friend, who must have whispered something to her although I couldn't hear her at all, she told her friend, "STOP TALKING!" really loudly, despite no one being able to hear her friend, and her herself being ten times louder and a hypocrite.

Please, if anyone I know does this, then please stop, or you will be dead to me.

As for the characters, I thought they were fun, but sometimes there were a few things I could nitpick.

Firstly, Will Smith as Deadshot was amazing; you can really see how great of an actor he is in this, and the character of Deadshot himself is really really cool. I can see why there's quite a lot of focus on him, as you get to understand his past and his situation and you really feel for him. He also feels like the only sane person in the entire cast (not just in the Suicide Squad itself), and he was the best part of the film for me.

Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn started off great, but by the end she got way too annoying. Every line she said just grated against me and I was so sick of her. Once again this comes down to the writing, but I do feel like she was over-acting just a tiny bit. Of course, I really do love the concept of Harley Quinn and some parts were a bit heartbreaking, but in the end, her crappy dialogue was too embarrassing.

Jared Leto's performance as the Joker was THE WORST THING EVER. I absolutely hated him in this, and compared to him there's no way you would think Margot Robbie was over-acting. Every single movement, syllable and noise this guy made was way too overdone and I hated him from the get go. I definitely had my reservations about him from the first pictures released, and this just confirmed them. Also, he seemed pretty useless. If you go in thinking that he is going to have a major part in this film, then be prepared because he doesn't do much at all. I'm pretty sure he was there just to set up the next film, since a lot of his scenes seemed to have just been shot for the trailer, and actually add nothing to the actual film. Which then begs the question, What on earth is Harley Quinn doing on the Suicide Squad if she's not there to try and get the Joker?! You realise that it makes absolutely zero sense for her to be there. Her weapon of choice is a freaking baseball bat for crying out loud! And she's on the same team as Deadshot, the guy who never misses! It makes zero sense.

As for the other characters, I'll just make some brief points:

Amanda Waller: I hated her too. Every time she was on the screen, the movie was terrible. Which is a shame because I loved Viola Davis in The Help

Enchantress: I like Cara Delevigne so I guess I wasn't being as harsh on Enchantress as everyone else was, but I will definitely concede that her powers needed to be better defined, as some of the movie didn't make sense, and this led to a major plot hole towards the end of the film. Again, this is a shame because I felt like there was great potential for her character

Diablo: didn't really like his character; his 'big reveal' is anticlimactic, and every time he opened his mouth, it was unconvincing to me; also the CGI attached with this guy was shockingly horrendous

Katana: she didn't really do much, but her action sequences were really cool

Captain Boomerang: everyone who hates Jai Courtney, you should actually watch him in this, he was pretty great here! He was really funny and brought out a lot of laughs, although he could have toned down the Aussie accent a tad.

Killer Croc: man his body looked weird; his head was so large and menacing, but his body was not proportional to it at all

Rick Flag and Slipknot: I don't really have much to say about these dudes, sadly.

Overall, I would watch this again if someone wants to have a stupid fun time. It's definitely enjoyable, and if you're not expecting a perfect film, then you should be fine. It has plot holes, but it also has (some) interesting characters, fun action, and some good chuckles throughout. I definitely would rewatch this over Jason Bourne.


A few side notes:
CONTAINS ~SPOILERS!~

- Ezra Miller made a Flash cameo!
- Did no one realise that one random soldier gave his life for that bomb to go off? No one? Okay, I guess just keep moving on then...

You Know His Name

Jason Bourne (2016)

7.3/10 on IMDb
57% on Rotten Tomatoes

Chloe's thoughts: It's alright; Watch it in cinemas (unless you don't like shaky cam)
Watch it if you: Like action films; Are not too fussed about intense character-driven plot; Like Matt Damon; Are okay with shaky cam

Ten years ago, Jason Bourne left the Treadstone program and he is now successfully off the grid, doing what he has to do to survive in this new life. One day, though, he gets a blast from his past as Nicky Parsons gains information about Bourne's history, as well as the sinister future of the CIA.

Firstly, yay for Matt Damon coming back! And with him, the director of Supremacy and Ultimatum, Paul Greengrass, is back too. And you know what that means! Yep, shaky cam.

The shaky cam in this film was honestly horrible. I know this is pretty much his signature move, but I really was not feeling it this time. At least in The Bourne Ultimatum it added to the storytelling, but I felt like the shaky cam here was just done for the sake of having the signature shaky cam of Bourne films, as it didn't add much except more mess to the already messy film.

Don't get me wrong, it was a good action film, but there's always been something more than just action in the Bourne trilogy. There was wit, character, intellect, awe, suspense, and very high stakes. Here, it's just action, action, and more action.

The plot is nothing new. It's essentially the same as the overarching plot of the original trilogy, which you think wouldn't be such a bad thing since the trilogy's own individual films were quite similar, and the fact that they were great means it should be good if this film followed it. However, the rehashing of the original plot just resulted in quite a boring story that 1. feels super long, 2. feels super messy and 3. does not bring anything new to the table. There is nothing unique about this plot except the new names they have attached to projects or the new actors playing characters we have already seen. And, because it's a franchise, there is the possiblity of a sequel to this, which I have a feeling will just be another rehash of this film, since there seems to be no new material they can provide us with.

One of the film's issues is that they are trying to cover a lot of ground and a lot of different subplots. This means the film ends up with a really diluted plot, and the whole story is one big mess. In fact there was one part of the story that I couldn't care less for, and if they just focused on one thing I think the film would have been much better.

Another issue was the writing. Sometimes the dialogue just didn't quite capture that Bourne essence we all love. They try to emulate the "That's Jason Bourne. Holy shit." moment but it leaves me feeling nothing.

So, in the end, this becomes another Bourne Legacy film that is a good action/spy movie, but it's not a good Bourne film. It doesn't properly capture or emulate the magic of the original trilogy. We no longer have that jaw-dropping awe in seeing how Bourne works under pressure, how he can throw off his scent from the entire CIA who's trying to go after him, or how he can handle himself in a pinch (think using a magazine against a knife). In the Bourne trilogy, we get plot-moving character-developing story taking place, but this film, while it attempts to do that, just ends up falling very short of it.

Apart from that, the actors are still great, and the appearance of Tommy Lee Jones, Vincent Cassel, and Alicia Vikander were very welcomed, as was the return of Julia Stiles. And of course Matt Damon is great in this too. It was just unfortunate that the actual story, plot and dialogue was not convincing enough, which may have made their performances suffer ever so slightly.

On a final note, I have a feeling that many people would love that car chase, but I seriously thought it was just insanely ridiculous. I mean, don't get me wrong, it was highly enjoyable, but I couldn't help but laugh at just how insane it all was. It felt overwhelmingly silly, particularly because I didn't feel like the movie had any stakes involved, so I felt like it just didn't really belong.

In the end though, this is a very fun and enjoyable action movie, but if you are going into this movie as a huge fan of the Bourne trilogy and expecting another superb Bourne film, then just lower your expectations. It does nothing to add to the original trilogy and it falls very short of the high quality of what we were left with in Ultimatum. But, if you go into the movie knowing this, then you are sure to still have a fun time.