Review of The Bourne Identity

The Bourne Identity gives the action genre the kick in the ass it needs

A story about a guy who wakes up with no recollection about who he is or where he’s been but possesses skills of an assassin. Basically, the story of my college days.

This is a great concept for a movie and just as good in the execution of it. A trained assassin, as we’d learn later, wakes up with a couple bullets in his back and a safety deposit box number in his hip on a Russian (or close enough) fishing boat. He has the instincts of an assassin, but doesn’t know who he’s after, who is after him or who he is. Sound familiar? Replace “trained assassin” with “intramural badminton champion,” “bullets in his back” with “wristbands from bars,” “safety deposit box number” with “receipt from Pita Pit,” and “Russian fishing boat” with “the floor” and it’s every weekend at Miami University. See?

He then spends the next hour and a half trying to figure out who he is while evading people who don’t like him and getting mixed up with a girl only to discover he used to be a bad guy but had a change of heart. I know. It’s uncanny.

I can certainly nitpick a detail here and there, such as the sounds from the combat scenes sounding like a Double Dragon video game, but this is everything an action movie should be. In the end, when we found out his past, the movie did a good job of making sure we saw a change of heart in him before he got shot, so we could truly feel for the character. Sure, it gives us the whole “good guys and bad guys” routine, but it’s few and far between that have the guts to give us that pill.

8 bugs/10
Dustin Fisher

Round of 32 Reflections

Once again, you’re going to need your Delorean to take you to six days ago. Because a lot has changed since then.

The Sweet 16

For the most part, the Round of 32 evened out the landscape a bit. There aren’t a lot of surprises in the Sweet 16. With one big exception. The Matrix becomes the first #15 seed to make it to the Movie Madness Sweet 16. It tore through the appointed #2 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind by 41 in the first round, and then surprised the heck out of me by beating the oft-talked about #7 Seven (not a typo – it’s the seed and the movie) by 47. After losing to The Godfather in the second round last year as a #7 seed, it might just be the year of the Matrix. The other stunner in the second round was #7 Independence Day beating #2 The Sixth Sense in a close one. This little-mentioned movie has a curious amount of momentum.

But the most fun match to watch was Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince against The Godfather. Bobby Lubaszewski went ahead and added anywhere from 10-35 people in the morning and begged them to vote for Harry Potter. I’ve been waiting for this to happen, and it certainly added a boost to the Movie Madness numbers, as this was the highest scoring match ever with 132 total votes. Ultimately, Harry (and Bobby) fell short, partly due to Bobby not vetting his emergency help properly, as a few of them voted for The Godfather anyway, despite his plea. And there was another overtime game, with Oceans 11 barely sneaking by Monty Python and the Holy Grail, thanks to a panicked cat lady leaping to her civic duty.

As for the brackets, John Weatherley’s strong Round 2 has flip-flopped him with Tamara Lords for the top spot, with most of the rest waiting to see if Shawshank Redemption, Forrest Gump, or a 3^rd party outlier is going to win the whole thing.

The Standings at the Sweet 16

It’s been an exciting season so far and it’s a shame it will all be over in two weeks, but seeing as how there’s no Star Wars in this, I really have no idea who will win.

Round of 64 Reflections

Sorry I haven't been as diligent at writing these updates that only I will ever see anyway, but here is where we stand after the entire first round has been played:

The Bracket (after first round)

Round of 64 Reflections: West Region

For the first time in Movie Madness history, all 8 first round matches in a region went to the higher seed. So there’s not much to say. The 8-9 match between Field of Dreams and A Christmas Story was fun to watch, since there are so few matches that really go back and forth and come down to the wire. But the big story is that Star Wars is out of the tournament. Completely. I really thought The Force Awakens could make a run based on the strength of its lineage. The Star Wars movies are 14-2 in this tournament. Not too bad. And no, none of the prequels have made it. So I’m a little surprised that given A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back have been retired, that the Star Wars freaks didn’t just latch their wagons to the only movie they could in the tournament. Thank you, Toy Story.

Round of 64 Reflections: East Region

Much like the West Region, there weren’t really any surprises here. The only upset, if you can call it that, was the #9 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 2 beating #8 My Cousin Vinny by 2 points. I suppose that’s a compliment to our selection committee. There have only been 4 upsets so far in 24 matches. By this time last year, there were twice that many. For whatever that means.

The biggest surprise in this region came when it looked for a time that Schindler’s List might beat Dark Knight. I had my choice of all 8 matches to put up on Easter Sunday and picked the one I thought would be the biggest blowout (because I figured Facebook action would be lower than usual), and I was pleasantly surprised. Ultimately, Dark Knight won 41-35, but it gave me hope for Life Is Beautiful on the other side of that region (which ultimately scored a region-low 11 points in a blowout loss to The Usual Suspects). But it was nice to see a rather deep movie get some love in this tournament.

Round of 64 Reflections: South Region

#10 Lord of the Rings: Return of the King upset #7 Miracle, but the real story in this region was the redemption of The Sandlot over Office Space, the movie that knocked it out of the tournament last season in the second round. It is the first overtime match in three seasons. When I let it run to the requisite 24 hours for close matches, it was knotted up at 40. In all honesty, I didn’t really have a publicized overtime procedure. I had decided a long, long time ago – before there was even a group for this tournament – that in the rare event of a tie, the win would go to the higher seed. But that didn’t seem fair at all. So I decided to let it go until I checked back and the tie was broken. Which it was within minutes by one of Bobby’s minions. It was a fun ending to watch. Congrats to The Sandlot for the revenge victory and for making it two #12 seeds to advance to the second round (The Breakfast Club). Also, congrats to The Lion King for being the only movie to score in the 70s this entire tournament. Lastly, I am still amazed at how little love Die Hard gets in this group. This is the second time it has gone out in the first round of the three tournaments we’ve had. I understand Big Fish and Frequency aren’t going the distance, but Die Hard is always in the discussion of the best action movies of all time. I’d think it would be more popular. Oh well. I guess that’s why they call it madness.

Congratulations to Tamara Lords, Movie Madness rookie, for correctly picking 29 of the 32 first round matches. She still, in fact, has all but one of her remaining Sweet 16. Also, John Weatherley seems in a good position to repeat as champion (co-champion to be specific), having picked 27 of the first 32 correct, but with all of his Sweet 16 still in tact. Good luck to all of you in the back half of the tournament, and most of all, keep voting! And keep adding people against their will. (Note: I kinda messed up and nobody got credit for picking Monty Python correctly in the first round. I'm not proud, but it's been fixed, just not updated in the list below, so please settle down. Thank you.)

The Standings (after first round)

Round of 64 Reflections: Midwest Region

With 37 brackets filled out, there was a good mix of people who picked what they thought was going to win and people who picked their favorites. After the first 8 matches have been played, there are only 3 perfect brackets remaining. Congrats to Robin Babaris, Gee Stryker, and Steve Jeran. And somehow, randomly, two of them picked Harry Potter 8 to win the whole thing. What the hell do they know that I don’t?

Anyway, not too much out of the ordinary happened in the first 8 matches, at least nothing equivalent to Goonies over Forrest Gump (#neverforget). The biggest bracket-buster was The Breakfast Club’s victory over Jaws. I am getting less and less shocked each time an 80s nostalgia movie takes down a consensus classic. Jaws is after all the grandfather of the summer blockbuster. But there are other movies kinda like Jaws in the tournament. There’s horror (The Ring), a creature flick ( Jurassic Park), and even another open water disaster movie (Titanic). But there is no other teen angst movie in the tournament. Unless Don’t Be a Menace… is about teen angst. Truthfully, I’ve never seen it and unless something terrible happens, I don’t plan to. But I think we all know that it’s because of the movie’s release date and its synthesizer-driven signature song.

Also, a quick congrats to Silence of the Lambs for exercising its comedy demons, taking out UHF this year after losing a tightly-contested first round game last year to Office Space. In fact, of the 8 victorious movies, only 5 have previous tournament wins (The Matrix, Shawshank Redemption, and Goodfellas). So what were the biggest surprises or the most satisfying victories to you?

Player Rankings after the first round - Midwest region
(Note: I forgot to actually add the rankings. Oops.)