Two is company: Shirley MacLaine and Jack Black in Bernie.
Bourne is back: Jeremy Renner, not Matt Damon, in The Bourne Legacy.
MATT Damon was Jason Bourne to fans who love spy thrillers — like me!
But as the third Bourne film — The Bourne Ultimatum — ended, there was Matt Damon in his third Bourne role, seemingly alive but wounded and floating down a river.
I remember walking out of the cinema convinced Bourne would survive, that he would be back.
Flash forward to 2012 and he is back! Jason Bourne, that is. But, apart from his photo seen on a computer screen halfway through the movie, Matt Damon is not.
According to Hollywood gossip, Damon turned down Hollywood megabucks to play the hero for a fourth time and now Australian audiences can see a new Jason Bourne — Jeremy Renner, last seen as another cinema hero, Hawkeye in The Avengers.
After a preview screening of The Bourne Legacy this week your movie critic reports that Renner carries the role brilliantly.
The first three Bourne films took audiences around the world, especially Europe. This time our hero is in snowy Alberta, Canada, and the Philippines. A surprise: look for a well-known Aussie comic actor who turns up in Manila!
¦ Pardon the rhymes but Jack Black is back in a black comedy called Bernie, a film about murder.
His co-stars are Shirley MacLaine and Matthew McConaughey, who stars in the current release Magic Mike but keeps his clothes on in this film.
For Bernie, Black is back working with director Richard Linklater who directed School of Rock in 2003.
Set in Texas and based on a true story, Black plays an undertaker who moves in with a wealthy widow, played by MacLaine. McConaughey is the local DA who will investigate the widow's death.
There's a twist. No one in town, except the DA, can believe their likeable undertaker could undertake such a nasty crime.
¦ Storm Surfers 3D is an engrossing film in which surfing legend Ross Clarke-Jones and champion surfer Tom Carroll go on the prowl for great storms which, they hope, will lead to giant waves in the Great Southern Ocean.
The setting is the 2011 winter and they find many monster waves before making it their quest to find the biggest wave of their careers.