Film Review - Spectre (contains top secret spoilers)

Film Review: Spectre

Daniel Craig is my favourite Bond. Followed by Tim Dalton. Then (in this order) Connery, Moore, Brosnan, Lazenby and finally Niven (sorry...). Such is the regard I have for his four outings, that I actually quite like the maligned Quantum Of Solace (Marc Forster). He's brought an icy seriousness to a role made silly by an increasingly smug Brosnan, and has a nasty streak not seen since Dalton. For evidence, I give you the killing of a henchman in Quantum where Bond applies a choke hold while checking the pulse to calmly confirm the kill. Craig's Bond is what Bond should have been all along: not a suave, Teflon-coated, womanising super spy, but a damaged, alcoholic killer.

I suppose only Doctor Who is the only other franchise allowed to reinvent itself when age and contractual squabbles rob them of their star, but, overtaken in the excitement stakes by the likes of Jason Bourne and Jack Bauer, the series was forced to reinvent or retire and in the pairing of Craig and director Sam Mendes, Bond found its perfect cocktail. Casino Royale (Martin Campbell) was a fine film, although the final shootout felt a little tacked on. Quantum suffered from a muddled plot and a weak villain but still delivered some fine set pieces. Mendes' Skyfall saw the Craig era, arguably the entire franchise, hit new heights. It simultaneously threw away the rulebook and raised the bar, mixing insane set pieces (the digger-train jump is a stroke of genius) and personal touches (Bond actually comes from somewhere??) which gave our hero an emotional heft not seen since Rosa Klebb (Lotte Lenya) ruined his wedding day back in 1969.

This brings us to latest offering Spectre, again directed by Mendes. First things first: bringing Mendes back is a wise choice; he is a craftsman and not just a bloke who's handy with a set piece. His attention to detail and ability to create an atmosphere makes his two entries into the Bond canon easily the best-looking in the series. Bond movies with distinct colour palettes might sound odd but trust me, these films will endure more than previous efforts. You want evidence? Look at Brosnan's four films: they already look and feel dated, and whose fault is that? The directors. Good films don't get old.

Spectre is also follows the Craig-era tendency for continuity; something quite alien to previous incumbents. Where Quantum took place minutes after the end of Casino, this takes plot threads left dangling in the other three and knots them together in a nice big noose for Bond. While the cynic in me would say that shared universe continuity is in cinematic vogue right now and that this is a marketing strategy, I honestly think its just more satisfying to have them all connected. There surely can't be that many insane billionaires in the world without them occasionally getting together to compare notes, can there?

As a film, it has a lot to live up to and this is perhaps unfair. Pre-Skyfall, audiences perhaps just expected another Bond films every couple of years, with no exploding alarms and no surprises, but now that Mendes made one so damn good and so damn different, we're perhaps asking a bit much of it. As it happens, Spectre is at times disappointingly by-the-numbers. There are satisfying plot turns (finding out who Christoph Waltz's Oberhauser is, and who he is, turns out to be great fun) but at the same time the ease with which Bond finds, escapes and destroys his (actually brilliant) hidden headquarters is quite unsatisfying and feels unearned. Also, the two female leads, the Rome-based car chase and main henchman Hinx (Dave Bautista) are weak (that latter only figuratively). Overall, while it's nice to see him flying round the world doing actual spy stuff, and Craig has only really done this in Quantum before now, parts are a little too as-expected, and other parts could do with a trim in the editing suite for the sake of pace.

There is also a lack of a defined global threat for Bond to combat. This may sound silly, but Daniel Craig has genuinely not had to save the world during his tenure. He's prevented terrorists getting rich through poker, saved Bolivia's water supply, tried to prevent a revenge attack on Judy Dench's M and now prevents the titular Spectre organization from accessing your porn preferences and private emails. Yes, Craig's films have done admirable jobs in contemporising what was originally a Cold War character, and cyber terrorism, environmental issues (Dominic Greene's evil plan in Quantum appears to be just Nestle's corporate strategy, according to this film) and Orwellian surveillance are all real concerns covered by Bond recently, however none of the villains are trying to provoke nuclear war with China like they did in the 70s.

Bond himself, however, is still very good. Mendes likes his Bond just the right side of funny, with the eyebrow primed but not quite raised. He is also emotional but controlled, simmering rather than boiling over. Craig once again nails it: cocky but not arrogant, funny but never silly. Skyfall's genius was in weakening Bond early on; this sees him in full flow, recovered and deadly.

The set pieces are again mostly brilliant. The Mexico City-set pre-credits sequence is stunning, both perilous and cheeky, and a train based throwdown between Bond and Hinx is brutal and well choreographed. It also features a nice hat-tip to Jaws, thereby acknowledging Robert Shaw's Red Grant (From Russia With Love), who was the first of Bond's first 'superhuman' opponents, of which Hinx is the latest.

Mendes does a nice line in referencing previous Bonds without being all Die Another Day about it: Skyfall saw the “for her eyes only” line and the obvious Goldfinger special edition of Top Gear. Spectre is loaded with them if you know where to look. The exploding watch is a Brosnan device (in the plot sense...) all day long, as is the MI6 boat launch from The World Is Not Enough. The train smackdown echoes Russia as well as Live And Let Die. Oberhauser's costume design and choice of pet are obvious callbacks to Telly Savalas and Donald Pleasence villains from previous eras (but I won't get into that...). The enemy base in a freakin' meteor crater is a pure Bond villain moment and recalls You Only Live Twice or even Moonraker. My favourite, however, was the almost Joker-like house of horrors booby trap left for Bond in the ruins of MI6. The whole sequence is pure Man With The Golden Gun and works a treat, even if the ensuing chase is one helicopter-in-peril too many.

I liked Spectre but I didn't love it. It's a well crafted film, not just another Bond film with trope after trope, and as such will endure. Mendes uses every trick at his disposal to make Bong jump out of the screen with maximum practical effects and minimal CGI nonsense. It has a strong, if underused villain, half the battle when you have such a brilliant hero. It's contemporary, relevant and to my knowledge only the second film (after the 9/11 reference in Casino Royale) to make reference to an actual date. So don't get me wrong, it's a fine evening's entertainment, even if it's an evening that is naggingly familiar in places. If this turns out to be Craig's swansong, and I really hope it doesn't, then he's doing out with a bang and on top of his game. It's a very very good entry to the Bond canon... but it's just not Skyfall.

Film Review: A Walk Among The Tombstones

A Walk Among The Tombstones

A heavily-hyphenated-review

Admittedly, I was less than excited about this one. It's fair to say that this was only made on the back of the success of Taken (Pierre Morel, 2008) and its sequels; a producer hoping that the very idea of Liam Neeson as a retired dangerous-man-of-some-type running about with a gun and distributing righteous vengeance to deserving bad guys would be enough to entice the same audience. See Non Stop, Unknown or Run All Night for further evidence. Well, I sincerely hope that people hoping for Taken 4: The Piss, were left disappointed because this was not the film the posters pitched.

Don't get me wrong, this was an interesting film, containing some good moments and a decent central thread: two psychos kidnap and murder the relatives of drug dealers, knowing they can't call the cops. They try a bit of extortion, but are really just sick bastards intent on rape and murder. Retired badge Liam Neeson investigates, prick-teasing us into thinking that he's going to dish out some torture a-la Taken. He doesn't. What he does do is investigate the shit out of the case through grim New York locations. This part of the film is good, with Neeson convincing as the seen-it-all-before detective. Director Scott Frank creates some effective mood, using non-Manhattan New York locations in almost French Connection-like states of decay.

Neeson's character is good enough without being particularly memorable. His frankly ridiculous name, Matthew Scudder, escaped my memory almost instantly, leaving me to refer to him as 'Liam Neeson's character' throughout. He's a dedicated and moral man, one that we can get behind, but I got the impression that the filmmakers were relying on Neeson's current 'hard man' reputation rather than the script to generate dramatic tension. Scudder is good at what he does but will he throwdown with a goon? Will he kick and ass or two? Well, no, this is not that film and its much better than Taken for it. What it's less effective at is building Scudder's (seriously, guys?) backstory. An opening shootout which feels tacked on, is followed by some by-the-numbers personal tragedy and a barely developed alcoholism sub plot. I was, however, grateful that they didn't develop his relationship with homeless try-hard TJ (Brian Bradley) into a full-on sidekick thing. For the most part, this works nicely but the less said about a scene where Scudder tries to convince TJ that owning a gun is a bad idea the better. So cheesy you could top a pizza with it.

A Walk Among The Tombstones delivers some (pleasingly) unpleasant moments. The kidnappers' deeds are genuinely horrible, the film again playing on our knowledge of Neeson's recent work to make us want him to break out the jump leads and go to town on them. However.. this is not that film. Tombstones wins when it tries to find its own feet: Neeson stalking dingy cafes, graveyards and deserted apartment blocks for information. It's less successful when it reverts to type. Scudder is almost inevitably put in phone contact with bad guys (who are a more threatening cover version of the kidnappers from Fargo, underdeveloped and by-the-numbers: one is a too clean-looking Dexter-alike, and the other has a goatee), resulting in gravelly exchanges of threats. Again, I've seen Neeson do this before (not as well as he does it here, as it happens) and for me this was more desperate coattail-riding than it was tension building.

It also throws in a post-climax set piece, which is supposed to be tense but by this time the main plot is pretty much resolved and we care so little about the characters involved that the outcome barely matters. In the previous scene, Scudder informs kidnapper Ray (David Harbour) that he doesn't really care if he dies, so why the hell would we care? It ends in a downbeat fashion but establishes enough of a relationship between Scudder and TJ that, if I were a more cynical man, I would swear was angling for a mismatched buddy-cop sequel. (A Walk Among The 2mbstones anyone?) Sorry guys, but this is not that film.

Overall it has its moments, it has its awful moments and it has its moments where you just want to roll your eyes and wish you'd never seen Taken (last mention, I promise). For a better version of the retired-hard-man-solves-crimes-in-his-spare-time sub-genre, I would recommend The Equalizer (Antoine Fuqua, 2014) or even Jack Reacher (Christopher McQuarrie, 2012). For me, A Walk Among The Tombstones does exactly what the title suggests: it's impressively gloomy, but unlikely to raise your heart rate and comes with an unfortunate sense of inevitability.

Blockbusted Part 2 - Androids and Dinosaurs

Blockbusted Part 2 - Androids and Dinosaurs

Anyone who read my last article, decrying the lack of originality in blockbuster cinema, should not interpret it as a statement of preference for independent cinema. I'm not going to start bleating on about obscure French auteurs and brave new voices in moody Scandinavian drama, or how Shane Carruth is going to save cinema. I still love a blockbuster: one of those films that gets your blood pumping, your eyes open that little bit wider. Let's face it, would you rather pay what is now bordering on a tenner to sit in the dark among a legion of rude-to-the-point-of-offensive teenagers, and feet sticking to the floor to watch the new Woody Allen movie, or watch Captain America and Iron Man throw down? Be honest...

Don't get me wrong, I love Woody Allen; few directors see the world as the horrible Godless place that it is like Woody Allen does. But this article isn't about introspective drama and meditations on the human condition, as littered with zingers as they may be; no, this article is about explosions, insane stunts, implausibly attractive women and dinosaurs eating children. Actually, Woody...

I participated in a conversation recently (not unheard of for a blogger...) and it got me thinking about how I watch films and why the medium is so important. Over the last year it has been recommended to me several times that I invest in an Android Box. The reason? People know I'm a cinephile and would get a lot of use out of it, watching films for free and thereby depriving the medium from which I derive hours of entertainment and inspiration of much needed revenue. I don't want to get into the ethics or legality of downloading and streaming; I lack both the knowledge and motivation to talk about it. No, I want to talk about the experience of watching a film. Not just a film, but a bloody great blockbuster of a film.

I mentioned in the last article that I went to see Jurassic Park when I was about 12 years old. It's amazing now as it is then and I'm the proud owner of the DVD, but somehow the experience of seeing it now isn't the same as it was for the naïve, pre-critical faculties 12-year-old. Maybe I'm just a cynical mid-30s keyboard warrior. Maybe the weight of the world has long since crushed my fragile spirit, but something has changed. The thrill of Spielberg's masterful use of suspense. The pockets of sheer terror. The virtuoso, almost nonchalant direction, making you love one character and despise another with minimal characterisation, never wanes and never gets old. What I don't get these days is the sense of awe. Remember when you first saw those grazing brontosaurus? When Dr Grant (Sam Neill) stood up in the jeep and removed his hat, just as amazed as you were? When John Williams' score swelled and just owned you? There was a freakin' dinosaur on the screen! Remember the shiver down your spine? That, ladies and gentlemen, is cinema. That moment of awe, that moment where you're always 12 years old. It doesn't happen on DVD.

Naturally, I saw Jurassic World (Colin Trevorrow) this year. And I did it properly: I bought snacks and went to see it at the pictures, and not at home via an internet stream. My home town, Newcastle is lucky enough to have a fine independent cinema, but due to scheduling times I saw this at a frankly disgusting multiplex, complete with sticky floors, horrible children and questionable hot dogs. So in front of a stupendously huge screen, I witnessed a blockbuster done exactly how it should be done. Trevorrow absolutely nails what previous sequel directors Joe Johnson and Spielberg himself failed to manage: the sense of sheer awe, shared by us and the characters. The tracking shot taking us through the window of the Jurassic World Hilton to the first 'reveal' of the park sent shivers up my spine. I was 13 again. That scene where the island's SWAT containment team are effortlessly taken out by a largely unseen creature: efficiently establishing a threat for the audience while adding a nimble 2^nd act set piece, it's more Spielberg than Spielberg.

Now, I've asked some of the few people I know if they've seen Jurassic World and an awful lot of them who have, said that they watched it via an internet stream at home. Home cinema is fine by me. Most nights, I will choose a film over television. I have an embarrassingly huge collection of DVDs, but for a childless man in his 30s I suppose I have to spend my heard-earned on something, so it might as be something I love. However, if there's a film out that I expect to be spectacular, impressive, awe-inspiring or just plain huge, then I will make the effort to go see it at the pictures. These people I asked: sure, they know what happens in Jurassic World, (spoiler alert: the dinosaurs get loose, the cute kids don't die) but have they truly seen it? Not the way I have.

This doesn't apply to everything; much depends upon your particular brand of vodka (as Danny Ocean would put it). I'm not likely to go see Woody Allen's latest existential comedy in IMAX, neither am I going to queue in line for popcorn before seeing Noah Baumbach's latest offbeat mumble-core drama about too-cool-for-school New Yorkers. Earlier this week, I saw Ridley Scott's latest sci-fi, The Martian. Did I fire up the Android box and look for the strongest stream? Did I hell. The latest Bond is out this month. Will I be scouring the web for a link so I can see it first? Not a chance. Films like that are made to be seen on a huge scale. When they're done well, they deserve to be experienced in full-on projected glory. I already know James Bond will win; he'll pull the mysterious woman, kill the bad guy, fire off a one-liner and probably have a drink. I already know that; I just need to see it happen 20 feet high in front of me. That's what blockbusters are for.

Blockbusted - Rise Of The Planet Of The Reboot

Blockbusted - Rise Of The Planet Of The Reboot

I love a blockbuster. One of those films that you just have to see at the cinema because it's so massive and, well, cinematic that your TV at home just wouldn't do it justice. I remember being a kid and being in awe of the sheer size of the films that came out. When I was 12, Jurassic Park came out and was so huge I remember it being difficult for my mother to get tickets. It was also something new and original; something that hadn't been seen before and I remember it being more than just a big new film, but that it had a cultural impact. Had you seen it yet? You almost weren't a proper person if you hadn't.

Well fast forward several years and I think we've lost something in the live action blockbuster. With very few notable exceptions there is a serious lack of originality in the big scale tentpole movie. Yes, box office records are broken year in year out, yes there are some great films made, but films from new ideas? Few and far between (yes, I know Jurassic Park was based on a Michael Crichton novel, but so was The Andromeda Strain, and you don't hear anyone talking about that). Studios, it seems have become so interested in sure things that they have forgotten how to take risks. Granted, if $200m is going into making a film, I would want to see some serious return, too but there's being risk averse and then there's being just plain cowardly.

I'm drawing out some pretty strict boundaries here to make my point. For example, the Harry Potter, LOTR, Twilight and Hunger Games movies (and to a lesser extent Divergent and Maze Runner) are based on popular books and carry with them huge amounts of cultural currency; people will go see them no matter what. I'm also discounting most superhero films. With the exception of a few surprise successes, these films are based on popular media and have as ready-made an audience as Harry Potter. I'm also discounting the odd drama that makes huge amounts of money. For example, the likes of Argo or American Sniper are not what I would call blockbusters, despite their huge success. Were they not so culturally relevant at the time of release, they would probably not have been so successful, critically well received as they were. They are intended as dramas rather than crowd-pleasers.

So I took a look at the most successful live action films of the last few years (info taken from www.the-numbers.com) and from 2010 onwards, the vast majority of successful films have come from pre-existing properties, sequels of the aforementioned films which are already in the zeitgeist through popularity in other media. In terms of truly original products, 2010's Avatar (James Cameron) is the stand out example (I know I'm pushing it a bit by saying it's live action, and anyone who's seen Pocahontas might argue that it's not original at all). And what do studios do now that they have a massive hit on their hands? Invest in finding the next big new idea? Don't be silly. They have greenlit several sequels to Avatar, due in the next few years.

Comic book films are an interesting example. Once seen as nerdy and niche, they are now absolutely the mainstream thanks to the success of Avengers and Batman franchises. But even they started small, Marvel dipping their toe with Blade (Stephen Norrington, 1998) before adapting bigger properties in Spider-Man and X-Men. These were risks at the time, and one could argue that Marvel took a big risk with their current 'MCU' crossover series. Iron Man was not a widely known character but in throwing a lot of money at the property with a less-than-A-list director in John Faveru and a former star in Robert Downer Jr., they took risks and it paid off. One could argue that subsequent successes of Captain America and Thor have largely fed off and built on the cultural impact of Iron Man. Now, I'm a comic book reader (there, I said it) and I had never heard of Guardians Of The Galaxy before James Gunn's 2014 adaptation. This could be taken in two ways: that the studio took a risk with an unknown property and an idiosyncratic director, or that it's a safe bet, attracting punters vicariously following the success of The Avengers. Nevertheless, it made more money than Man Of Steel and is a lot more fun. Now, though, you can hear barrels being scraped for caped characters to use because producers can smell more money. Shazam, anyone? I reckon it'll be the new Ghost Rider...

Looking at the last few years, only really Oz The Great and Powerful, Ted and Malificent have breached top ten lists littered with comic and literary adaptations, sequels and films based on theme park rides. Ted, being an adult-oriented comedy rather than a made-for-the-multiplex blockbuster, is a surprising inclusion but then again so was The Hangover (2009) and they spectacularly failed to recapture the magic with their safe-bet sequels to that. The others have done well to turn over as much business as they have but don't forget they too are follow-ups and variations on pre-existing films.

2012 is a great example of studios using the safe bet model with varying results. Some great films were made, but also some turkeys which did less business than expected. Take the top grossing films: Avengers Assemble (comic/sequel), The Dark Knight Rises (comic/sequel), The Hunger Games (popular adaptation), Skyfall (series), The Hobbit (series/popular adaptation), Twilight: Breaking Dawn (sequel/popular adaptation), The Amazing Spider-Man (comic), and then Ted. After that we have prestige films such as Lincoln and Les Miserables, which attract a broad mix of audience. It's pleasing to see that Django Unchained did so well but it's not an original film either (although I doubt many people went to see it on the strength of the 1966 Franco Nero original). True blockbuster fare such as Snow White And The Huntsman, Prometheus and The Bourne Legacy all did less well than studios expected and the less said about John Carter the better. And none of those films came from original ideas. Further down the chart of 2012's box office, it's pleasing to see originals such as Looper (Rian Johnson) and Chronicle (Josh Trank) do decent amounts of business but both were dark enough to dry up beneath the $100m mark. Ho hum.

So where do we stand now? Looking at the most popular films of 2015 (before either Bond or Star Wars is released), the highest grossing film that isn't a sequel or drawn directly from other popular media is American Sniper (Yeah, its based on a book but not in the same popularity league as Harry Potter or 50 Shades). Avengers, Jurassic World, Pitch Perfect 2, Ant-Man, Fast & Furious 7 and Mad Max; all sequels, series and 'reboots'. I actually quite like to see studios fail when they try this: The Lone Ranger was both an attempt to cash in on the Pirates popularity (director and star) and an old TV series. While no means bad, it didn't exactly tear up any trees. This year saw Terminator: Genisys be both awful and rightly unpopular and Josh Trank's Fantastic Four blighted by apparent studio interference and die on its arse. Original ideas such as Tomorrowland and Jupiter Ascending enjoyed varying degrees of success; for the Wachowskis, The Matrix must seem like a very long time ago. Perhaps studios have simply backed the wrong horses there.

There is talent out there and it should be encouraged to flourish. I will defend Christopher Nolan's work to anyone and his recent non-Batman films have been fine efforts (The Prestige, Inception and Interstellar). Some of the directors hired to take over major franchises have cut their teeth on some brilliant original work: Colin Trevorrow (Safety Not Guaranteed), Gareth Edwards (Monsters), James Gunn (Super), Rian Johnson and Josh Trank have all been trusted enough to helm some seriously big names (Trusted? maybe not Trank...) but I would argue that they should be encouraged to pursue their own ideas and not simply tethered juggernaut sequels. If they don't do something soon, we'll be stuck with horrible remake after horrible remake (Robocop, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and ...Ghostbusters). Mark my words, it'll be Indiana Jones and Back To The Future next, and then we'll all be sorry...