'Bourne' Again

Hey, you only get a chance for a headline like that once in a blue moon, so sue me.

I enjoyed "The Bourne Legacy" a bit more than a majority of critics, whose cumulative reviews for the picture have placed it at a mediocre 53 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, if you pay attention to that sort of thing. I thought it was a decent entry in the series and an intense film.

I also had a soft spot for "Hope Springs," which follows Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones as an aging couple who attend a marriage counseling program in Maine. It's a charming film that is, at first, funny before it veers off into more serious territory. On the whole, it was likeable.

My feelings were more mixed toward the weekend's other two new films - "The Campaign" and "Red Hook Summer." The first has a few sidesplitting moments, including one in which Zach Galifianakis hears some outrageous confessions at the dinner table with his family, but the film is, on the whole, a mixed bag. It doesn't really break any ground or tell us anything we don't already know about politics and its ending, which involves a complete about-face from both characters, is not earned. At least, in my humble opinion.

As is the case in most of Spike Lee's films, "Red Hook Summer" provides some serious stuff to chew on. But it's not among the director's best. For every riveting sequence, there's another with underwritten dialogue, overlong sermonizing (literally) during its church sequences and some amateurish acting. I'd almost recommend it because it's ballsier than most other films in cinemas right now, but the film is a mixed bag.

Here are my reviews for Patch.

This coming weekend, I'm getting all revved up for David Cronenberg's "Cosmopolis." I'll also catch up with "The Expendables 2" and, either this weekend or next, the controversial "Compliance."