My Favorite Scene: The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) *Hand Towel Throwdown*

We are now two days away from the fifth entry in the Bourne series: Jason Bourne.  The film marks the return of Matt Damon to the title role and director of films two and three: Paul Greengrass.  Most likely, this will be the last Damon Bourne film.  We’re looking at the first three entries in the series in this column leading up to the film (because really why submit yourself to The Bourne Legacy?).  Two weeks ago, we looked at The Bourne Identity, last week we looked at The Bourne Supremacy, and this week we look at the last film to feature Damon & Greengrass: 2007’s The Bourne Ultimatum.

My Favorite Scene: Skyfall (2012) “Silva’s Rat Monologue”

By the time of Daniel Craig’s third go-round as Bond, he had already owned the role, but he hadn’t been given a legendary villain. Sam Mendes fixed that when he cast Oscar-winner Javier Bardem as Silva, and gave us-arguably-the best Bond film of them all.  Skyfall tells more about Bond’s boyhood and maturation than the previous 22 films combined without actually giving him an origin story. I know they’re going deeper down the rabbit hole in SPECTRE, but I always felt Wolverine lost a lot as a character when his whole origin was neatly laid out, and I think Bond would, as well.

This really is as much Judi Dench’s picture as it is Daniel Craig’s and after six films as M, she certainly earned a co-starring role as she and Bond hunt and are hunted by Silva. Bardem is certainly flashy and over-the-top in the Bond villain tradition, but unlike most, he’s every bit as good as James, and spends most of the film beating him quite handily. There’s so much good and done right in this film that it’s hard to nail a scene as my favorite, but I love a good entrance. When you get your villain making monologues from the get-go, you know you’ve got a good one.  I’m going to cheat and also stick in Silva’s reunion scene with M, because I can’t decide between the two. Bardem should have at least gotten an Oscar nomination for this film. Just brilliant.

My Favorite Scene – Big Fish (2002) “The Story of My Life”

What’s more important: the story of our life or the stories we tell that make up our lives?  If you don’t think there’s a difference, you’re probably much like Billy Crudup’s reporter who’s spent a lifetime being exasperated by his father.  Edward Bloom Sr. (played wonderfully by both Ewan McGregor and Albert Finney) lived a life of stories; stories he delighted in telling.  Were they tall tales, were they exaggerations, were they flat-out lies?  To Crudup that’s all that mattered and to Finney he couldn’t see why the question mattered in the slightest.