I was really impressed with The Bourne Identity. I didn’t see it until the second movie had already been out on DVD for a while, so I’d already heard the consensus, that it was better than you’d expect from an action movie starring Matt Damon and directed by the guy who did Swingers. But even with the advance notice, I was still really surprised by how good it was.

So now The Bourne Ultimatum is out, and it’s been getting really favorable reviews, and they’re all completely deserved. It really is one hell of an action movie. I definitely recommend it to anyone, especially if you liked the first one.

And if you’re wondering whether to see it in a theater or wait for DVD, I’d recommend the theater. Not for the big screen — almost all of the movie is filmed with shaky handheld cameras — but for the crowd. About halfway into the movie, there’s an extended chase scene through Tangier that you can really only describe as masterful. When it finished, the audience was dead silent for a few seconds, and then just burst into applause. I honestly hadn’t realized that I’d been holding my breath for the last minute or so.

One of the things that impresses me so much about the movie is how they do so much with so little. Not so little action, or sets — they shoot on location in at least 5 different cities, and have a big, stunning car chase — but so little dialogue. It wouldn’t surprise me to hear that Matt Damon has less than 50 lines in the entire movie, and Julia Stiles even less. The plot isn’t all that convoluted, but still, for somebody as long-winded as I am, watching this movie is like seeing acrobats perform without a net. Aren’t the filmmakers afraid that the audience won’t get it? Don’t they want to explain that bit a little more? After having my intelligence assaulted by movies like The DaVinci Code and Transformers, it’s really nice to see one that just expects you to be able to keep up.

Reviewers are saying that this is the best in the series, but the first one is still my favorite. The second one, The Bourne Supremacy, had the most interesting plot twists; and the third one, The Bourne Ultimatum, has by far the best action sequences; but Identity was more complete in terms of setting up characters and how they relate to each other. I wasn’t that impressed with Supremacy; in the end I thought it was entirely competent but mostly forgettable.

Ultimatum is pretty much five extended action sequences strung back to back, but none of it is disposable or forgettable. They’re genuinely suspenseful, and they’re all filmed so as to give you no room for disbelief. There’s none of the detachment of spectacle that you get from most action movies; you’re convinced that everything is really happening, and the cameras just happened to catch it all.

And you can follow Ultimatum just fine without having seen the first two, but I highly recommend seeing Supremacy beforehand. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I’ll say that the epilogue of Supremacy plays a very important part in Ultimatum, and it’s really impressive how they structured it.

Edited to add: Reading a review by Stephanie Zacharek of Salon (warning: there’s a big spoiler in there for The Bourne Supremacy if you haven’t seen it yet) reminded me of another thing that really impressed me about this movie. It’s got a very clear sense of morality. More than you’d expect out of a movie this sparse, based on pure action. And not the pig-headed false patriotism of most action movies. It’s entirely human, not American, and it’s summed up in actions, not words. I’ve already spent more words describing it than the movie uses. It’s all basically summed up by a simple line from Joan Allen’s character after Bourne asks her why she does what she does; it’s something like, “That’s not what we’re about.”

Before the movie there were two trailers for Very Important Movies Starring Meryl Streep: Lions for Lambs and Rendition. I’m sure they’re going to be well-made. And I’m mostly sure that, in some sense, it’s important that they’re being made, that people are speaking up as best they can against injustice. But they still struck me as being insufferably self-important, dismissible as yet another case of liberal Hollywood poking its nose into politics. I liked that The Bourne Ultimatum dispensed with all of that, saying in effect, “it’s really not that complicated: People are important. Try not to kill them, or reduce them to simple ‘targets’ and ‘assets.’”

I’ve already confessed on here that when it comes to Apple products, I’ve got less self-control than Eve, Snow White, and the guy from American Pie put together. So the day after they announced the new iMacs, I made the pilgrimage to the local Apple store just to feel of them. (Key finding: the 24″ iMac looks to be the best desktop computer they’ve ever made).

I would’ve gotten one of their new absurdly thin keyboards, but they’re not selling those individually yet, so I was lucky to make it out of there with just a copy of iLife ‘08.

And that’s where I just don’t get Apple anymore. On the hardware side, it’s been easy to see the trend: they’ve got a bulimic’s obsession with getting thinner and thinner. But on the software side, they’re sending mixed signals.

As far as I can tell, the philosophy for Apple-supplied software has been the same since the days of MacPaint and my beloved HyperCard: supply a full suite of creativity software for free with every new computer. Programs that any user can pick up and start using immediately, and then discover more powerful features as they get more familiar with them. It was excellent branding, building Apple’s reputation as the left-brain computer. And it was practical — with fewer third parties developing software, it was necessary for Apple to provide it themselves to keep Macs from getting a reputation for being unsupported.

But the last few iterations of iLife have been all over the map, when it comes to functionality and ease of use. Some of the additions are clearly welcome and downright ingenious. Others are just baffling.

The only iLife program I use consistently has been iPhoto, and that’s basically just as a glorified file browser. All the keyword and album stuff has been too clunky, unwieldy, and tedious to use; I use flickr for all the organization, picture naming and keywords, and sharing. The new version centers everything around Events, one of those things that you can tell is ingenious because it seems obvious in retrospect, but never occurred to me before. Apart from that, there are some genuinely improved editing tools, but nothing revolutionary. The other big batch of “new” stuff is all about .Mac photo galleries, and new publishing and printing options.

Which means templates. Back when iWeb was first announced, my initial excitement faded to disappointment as soon as I realized that the fancy show they put on at Macworld was the limit of what the program can do — it does allow you to set up a nice-looking web page just by dragging and dropping, every bit as quickly as they do it in the demos. But there’s nothing behind the curtain; once you’ve filled in their stock layouts, that’s the limit of what you can do. The company stresses how these programs allow you to express your creativity and individuality, as long as your creativity and individuality fit within their predesigned constraints.

GarageBand’s biggest new feature is a Microsoft Bob-like interface that lets you lay a single track on top of one of their prerecorded songs. iWeb promises greater control over your websites, but it’s really just a couple of new widgets and a way to insert a small bit of HTML on a page; nothing’s really been fixed in the inherent limitations designed into that program. And iDVD only adds more new templates and overall, feels like an afterthought — at least they’re prescient enough to realize that DVDs are on the way out and publishing via the web is the way things are going. (And they’re still trying to push the overpriced and limited .Mac service throughout, of course).

The standout for me has been the new version of iMovie. With earlier versions, I never saw the appeal. Like iWeb and GarageBand, it was a case of playing around with it for a few minutes, getting frustrated with the limitations, and never touching it again. Trying out the new version, though, was actually fun. I threw some clips together, added transitions and titles, and put it up on YouTube, all in about 30 minutes.

It’s a lousy, boring, and amateurish video, but that’s not the point: the point is that I enjoyed making it. I felt like I knew what I was doing the entire time. I tried things, and they worked. I scrubbed the mouse back and forth over the clip and could see exactly how it was going to turn out in the final, at any point. I understood how my clips were organized, I understood the effect most of the buttons and drags were going to have, and I felt encouraged to experiment. I wanted to put it online, as boring as it is, just to say, “Hey, look at what I made.” And I was encouraged to go out and shoot more video.

For all I know, it could very well be another case of iWeb syndrome: it seems powerful on the surface, but the more you try to play with it, the more you run into limitations. More than a few other Mac zealots were immediately incensed that Apple had “dumbed down” iMovie from its previous version (and Apple has made the previous version downloadable for those who don’t like the change). But based on what I’ve seen so far, it does what it’s supposed to do, and it actually makes it enjoyable. And it seems to be designed exactly like they claim: somebody started not just by looking at what other video-editing programs do and iterating on that, but by stepping back and saying, “I want to edit a video. What do I need to make that easy to do?” There are plenty of built-in transitions and titles and sound effects, but it still doesn’t feel like being locked inside Apple’s predesigned sandbox.

Then again, I’ve never tried to do much with flickr’s default layout. And I am completely at a loss to explain the popularity of myspace. Maybe people do like being constrained to templates and told what to do. I still can’t help but think that we’re taking a step backwards, though, trying to make computers easier to use by limiting what you can do with them.