Star: Alicia Vikander

Jason Bourne (2016) – Matt Damon, Tommy Lee Jones and Alicia Vikander

This movie gets off to a strong start with an engaging, rich-action, rich-plot set of inital scenes, and the return of Matt Damon (as Jason Bourne). We’re also treated to the return of an aging Julia Stiles (as Nicky Parsons) although she’s killed quite early, on top being treated to the additions of an aged Tommy Lee Jones (from Men In Black, acting here as Robert Dewey, CIA boss) and Alicia Vikander (star of Ex Machina 2014, joining us here as Heather Lee, CIA team leader – responsible for tracking down Bourne & Parsons).

Having said that, once the strong first 10 minutes are out of the way, the next 10 minutes are little more than messy irritating noise and moodfest. But this builds into a decent action scene around half an hour in.

In the end, with its mix of strong-ish bits and extended weak patches, with a strong-ish cast and decent genre, I’m going to rate this movie just Above Average.

Tomb Raider (2018) – Alicia Vikander

Several annoying modern trash culture pop songs in the first 10 minutes set this movie off to a bad start for my liking. Not helped by awkward British soap opera style dialogues either.

This movie also seems conveniently timed to push contagion theory, ready for global lockdown events that kicked off just 1 or 2 years later. This nastiness puts the final nail in the coffin to fix it Below Average which is a couple of levels down from both of Angelina Jolie’s Tomb Raider movies.