While Scooby-Doo technically topped the box office this week back in 2002, we made sure to send one of the Treadstone assassins to do to that dog what they did to poor Eamon’s retriever in The Bourne Identity.

This one’s our first 10 on the nostalgia-meter — and quite possibly my favourite film. We get to explore the seedy underbelly of international espionage while witnessing a brand-new way to make an action movie, a style and approach that still echoes through the genre over two decades later.

Some of our favourite questions upon rewatch:

• Does amnesia actually work like this?

• Did Wombosi really think that blackmailing the CIA was a good plan?

• And why did the world’s top assassin decide the best way to handle one fat, middle-aged, probably out-of-practice Frenchman… was to jump off a building?

I love Matt Damon.. but I can't help but wonder whether Burt Reynolds could have just bounced off his immaculate chest hair when hitting the foyer of that appartment building.

chroniclesofcritic@gmail.com

Ah, The Mummy... sacred, ancient, cinema-treasure of a bygone childhood. While I doubt anyone who saw Tom Cruise's effort at the property when they were nine years old will look back with the same level of nostalgia upon the 2017 version as we do the 1999 edition, we’re pleased to say this effort wasn't a total loss!

We went into this expecting that watching it would be like going to the video store to rent Transformers and ending up popping the crappy knock-off Transmorphers into the DVD player instead. Yes, we're in our thirties and remember things like "DVDs" and "video stores." And yes, Transmorphers was a legit movie.

Save for the down-your-throat exposition, the late-to-the-game character reveal that will confuse the uninitiated, and the fact that 48% of this movie’s script was allocated to the ambition of a cinematic universe that never went anywhere—this movie is not a complete and utter waste of time. What you get is a crappy Tom Cruise film... but in the same way that “there’s no such thing as bad pizza,” there’s something oddly satisfying about getting “Cruisified”, no matter how low on the list it is.

Perhaps the one big criticism we did agree with is that the movie just... lacks a little heart. Maybe they should’ve left that organ intact when they mummified this project, am I right?!?

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Not sure if this should be called Notting Hill or Nodding Off... I kid — though it does run a bit long — because honestly, it’s hard to fault another Curtis classic brimming with snappy dialogue, charming meet-cutes, and... manic emotional blowouts?

Thankfully, Hugh’s signature floppy-haired aloofness, paired with an outstanding turn from “Spike” in the co-pilot seat, brings enough charm and hilarity to smooth over the film’s more noticeable cracks — like the runtime, the vague mechanics of how this romance even lifts off the runway, and, oh right, the small matter of white-washing London.

That said, the stellar acting, familiar supporting cast, and warm ’90s rom-com fuzzies are exactly what most people come for — and this movie delivers in spades. What’s not to love?