Weekend Movies: Bourne and Razed

On nearly this exact weekend nine years ago, ‘The Bourne Ultimatum’ opened and set a new August opening record of $69.2 million. After a Matt Damon-less fourth entry in the franchise fizzled at the box office, Universal has brought Damon and the franchise’s shaky-cam director back for a fifth. Opening alongside that are an R-rated comedy hoping to follow in the footsteps of ‘Bridesmaids’, and a millennial thriller that’s bound to make the heads of ‘Pokémon Go’ players spin.

Universal wants to make sure you know that Matt Damon stars in the latest ‘Bourne’ movie. Rather than following the book series by titling the fifth installment ‘The Bourne Betrayal’ (none of the movie plots have ever followed the novels), instead we get the generically-named ‘Jason Bourne‘. The revelation that the amnesiac badass must discover in this installment is pretty thin. In fact, it’s so thin that the writers had to add a completely disconnected storyline that Bourne just-so-happens to cross in the end. Although it features the weakest story of the five movies (including Jeremy Renner’s ‘The Bourne Legacy’), ‘Jason Bourne’ delivers all the awesome and intense hand-to-hand and vehicle-to-vehicle action that made us love the series in the first place. It’s bound to entertain fans of the franchise, but it’s definitely not the best. Returning alongside Damon and director Paul Greengrass is Julia Stiles. Joining the cast are Tommy Lee Jones, Alicia Vikander and Vincent Cassel.

From the writers of one good ‘Hangover’ movie and two bad ‘Hangover’ movies comes this weekend’s female-led R-rated comedy, ‘Bad Moms‘. Attempting to pull in moviegoers who aren’t interested in watching Matt Damon destroy corrupt government agents, ‘Bad Moms’ stars Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell and Kathryn Hahn as a trio of overworked mothers on the brink of snapping. Fed up with the current status quo, they spend a ladies night out on the town getting into the last kind of shenanigans you’d expect from hardworking and wholesome moms. It sounds somewhat like a Christmas-less female version of ‘The Night Before‘, which might not be a bad thing. Christina Applegate and Jada Pinkett Smith co-star.

Getting a jump on the weekend with a Wednesday release is ‘Nerve‘, an A.D.D. thriller that appears to be equal parts ‘The Game‘ and ‘The Running Man‘. Set in a mobile-obsessed reality that’s not far off from our own, the dominant app of the time is one that you can either get paid to play or pay to watch. Emma Roberts rises to the challenge and starts on a string of dares that are televised to all app onlookers. The dares start off simple: kiss a stranger, try on an expensive dress, etc. Before long they turn criminal, dangerous and deadly – and not just for her and her cohort (Dave Franco). Things go sour when her family is threatened and the game hardly seems like a game at all.

Woody Allen’s ‘Cafe Society‘ also expands wider this weekend, but the extent of the expansion has not been announced.

1 comment

  1. NJScorpio

    If ‘Nerve’ is available on demand, as one of those “while in theaters” rentals, I may jump on it. Not something I’d actually go out to see, but it does seem fun for late Saturday night.

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