Month: August 2016

A key element of the Bourne franchise’s endurance is the thrill of watching amnesiac super-spy Jason Bourne run headfirst into his past with nothing more than his skills and a belief there is an answer somewhere in the darkness. The Bourne Ultimatum—the third film in what we can now safely say should have remained a trilogy—ended with an answer of sorts that was far from the one Bourne had hoped for, putting a poignant cap on this modern spy masterpiece. The filmmakers seemed to know where it was all heading while the hero didn’t, a crucial ingredient to any successful suspense story.

Since Ultimatum, Universal has neglected the franchise or (more appropriately) forgotten why the world wanted more Bourne films in the first place. First was the perplexing attempt to continue the franchise without its title character in The Bourne Legacy, with no involvement from star Matt Damon or director Paul Greengrass, an endeavor that wasn’t without merit, but had little reason to be despite a committed performance from Jeremy Renner.

Now Greengrass and Damon have returned for Jason Bourne, a movie that only seems to exist because the team behind the best entries in the series were disappointed they made their high-tech thrillers before the explosion of smartphones and social media. The story kicks off with a montage of the previous films that’s only missing a deep voice declaring “Previously, on Bourne,” before we find our hero living in anonymity in Greece on the illegal streetfighting circuit. Meanwhile, Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles), who is also in hiding, hacks into the CIA and locates files on all of the mysterious and morally questionable programs involving Bourne, including details about his father. She tracks Bourne down—that’s right, the film starts with the two supposedly most difficult things to do in this universe—and is then pursued by CIA director Robert Dewey (Tommy Lee Jones) and Heather Lee (Alicia Vikander).

At the same time, tech giant Deep Dream founder Aaron Kalloor (Riz Ahmed) is ready to go public about a privacy flaw at the core of his massively popular social network that was included at the behest—and with the funds—of Dewey and the CIA. The two plots don’t actually have much to do with each other except to give all the characters a reason to be in the same place at a dramatic moment, and to take some stabs at social commentary, trademarks of both the series and the director (United 93, Green Zone, Captain Phillips). However, this rarely rises above namedropping Edward Snowden and suggesting that there might be a problem with privacy in the modern connected age, hardly a new message or one worthy of Greengrass or the Bourne movies.

One of the most appealing and enduring aspects of the series was the way it was able to channel decades of espionage tropes into a fresh story that feels rooted in the present day, but the waning inspiration in Jason Bourne is evident in everything from its lack of message to the title, which reveals no central theme worthy of its established naming convention. There are a few nifty spy shenanigans here and there, and the conclusion combines one of the most thrilling car chases since Fast & Furious 6 and possibly the most visceral hand-to-hand combat sequence since They Live, but that comes long after mountains of pointless setup, disposable characters, an insultingly simple death of a once-central character and an ending that is more interested in leaving room for sequels than concluding its own story. Jason Bourne is occasionally good, it’s just not Bourne good.

Jason Bourne / PG-13, 121 minutes
Violet Crown Cinema and Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Playing this week z Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX The Shops at Stonefield, 244-3213 z Bad Moms, Central Intelligence, Finding Dory, Ghostbusters, Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party, Ice Age: Collision Course, The Legend of Tarzan, Lights Out, Nerve, The Secret Life of Pets, Star Trek Beyond z Violet Crown Cinema 200 W. Main St., Downtown Mall, 529-3000 z Absolutely Fabulous, Bad Moms, Café Society, Captain Fantastic, Dheepan, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Ghostbusters, Ice Age: Collision Course, The Infiltrator, The Secret Life of Pets, Star Trek Beyond, Time to Choose

Back in May, a sandwich board adorned with a painted skeleton key advertising the Cville Escape Room popped up on the Downtown Mall, between the Main Street Arena and Violet Crown Cinema. Intrigued, a couple of friends and I book three slots in the fortune teller’s Secret room.

Passing by the sandwich board we climb a staircase full of M.C. Escher prints. “Are you here to see the fortune teller?” escape room co-owner Jessie Stowell asks when we reach the top. We are.

Jessie and her husband, Keith Stowell, lead us to a room with a large, oval conference table and a whiteboard full of instructions; de-motivational posters cover the walls. After a brief tutorial letting us know what we are looking for (clues, puzzles, riddles) and not looking for (trap doors, clues hiding behind furniture or under the carpet), Jessie leads us down a short, arched hallway to a nondescript door.

“You’re private investigators investigating a series of missing person cases,” she tells us in a hushed voice, one hand on the doorknob. “The common link you’ve found is that they’ve all visited this mysterious fortune teller. You’ve learned that she has a very dangerous book, and you have now been hired to get that book. You have one hour until she returns.”

We step into a dimly lit aubergine room and Jessie closes (but doesn’t lock) the door behind us. We pause to notice our surroundings: bookshelves full of framed, spooky daguerreotypes, books and carved boxes, a side table with a globe, tarot cards, a Ouija board, scarves, a violin and sheet music. A silver mirror and some old-timey posters hang on the walls. In the middle of it all is a round table and a crystal ball.

The three of us spend the next hour opening every drawer and container in search of clues, locks, codes and keys, solving puzzles and brain teasers.

Some of the puzzles are easy enough for us to solve individually; others take teamwork. A series of small victories, like finding a lock combination or deciphering a riddle, leads to an “Aha!” moment at the end.

This is all by design—the Stowells want players to feel like they’re being sufficiently challenged and subsequently rewarded for their achievements.

Keith conceives of and designs the story-driven rooms. First, he devises a scenario, then creates a story around it. Next, he comes up with the clues and puzzles, working everything out on a trifold cardboard presentation board with sticky notes, pins and string. From there, they collect furniture and props to physically build the room. Keith says he starts big and narrows it down to what players of all ages can likely solve in an hour.

Everything players need to know exists in the room, and they can ask Escape Room staff for hints by holding a big pink poster board with a cutout question mark up to a surveillance camera hooked up to a screen in the lobby.

If groups continuously request hints on the same puzzle, the Stowells revise it—Jessie says the Spy’s Demise room has changed quite a bit since it first opened.

The Stowells learned about escape rooms while watching “The Intimacy Acceleration” episode of “The Big Bang Theory,” where some of the characters visit an elaborately designed, laboratory-themed escape room and finish the whole thing in just six minutes. (“To be fair, we do all have advanced degrees,” one of the characters notes.) Jessie says she had to try it for herself. She, Keith and their two children visited rooms in Washington, D.C., and Richmond before deciding to open their own. “I thought it was an amazingly fun thing to do–and a fun thing to do with our kids—so we wanted to bring the experience to Charlottesville,” she says.

Leah Combs, a Charlottesville resident who, along with her husband, Jon, has done escape rooms in other cities, recently solved the Spy’s Demise room. “Compared to other rooms we’ve been in, it was minimalistic, but just as challenging,” says Combs. “Other rooms we’ve tackled had hidden doors to other rooms or puzzles you had to solve through holes in the wall…but these puzzles were creative and not like ones we’d seen before,” Combs says.

The quality of the experience relies on the quality of the puzzles, Combs says, and the Cville Escape Room has it down pat.

The Stowells say they will eventually trade the stories out for new ones, perhaps in a year, or when players have completed all of the challenges and reservations start to drop. In the fall, they’ll add a fourth room with a Jack the Ripper theme to the mix. Keith says they’d intended to open an Alice in Wonderland room, but customers have requested darker scenarios, and they are up to the challenge. “We enjoy creating a theater scene where people can come in and play,” says Keith.

The fortune teller exists only in the story created by Keith, but when Jessie opens the door to tell us we have 15 minutes remaining, we are so absorbed in the story and the scene that we all jump, expecting to see the wicked fortune teller at the door, the death tarot card in hand, ready to hand us our fate.

After 64 exhilarating minutes, and with some help from Jessie, we find the fortune teller’s book and dash from the room, delighted by our escape from reality. —Erin O’Hare

Cville Escape Room’s current quests:

Fortune Teller’s Secret

In a room full of tarot cards, a crystal ball and the occult, up to six players race to save our dimension from a clairvoyant’s deadly ambition.

Spy’s Demise

Up to eight secret agents work to save themselves in a room full of double agents, deadly toxins and other wicked things.

Mad Scientist’s Laboratory

Up to eight players enter the laboratory of a deranged scientist to stop him from creating an army of the dead. If you’re into gruesome props, blood and guts, this is the room for you.