Spectre

Casino Royale (2006) ushered in the Daniel Craig era of James Bond films and made its mark by giving the superspy a darker, violent edge while downplaying the humor that was abundant in the Roger Moore era and, to a lesser degree, during Pierce Brosnan’s run. The next two films took Bond into uncharted territory as their plots were interconnected instead of the usual stand-alone adventures and also shed light on the character’s background – something that some Bond fans felt was a betrayal of the franchise. Personally, it was exciting to see Bond fall in love only to have her die tragically in Casino Royale. Then, he sought revenge for her death in Quantum of Solace (2008) and dealt with the fallout of his actions in Skyfall (2012). With Spectre (2015), it turns out that the adversaries he faced in the previous films were all part of a master plan orchestrated by the shadowy terrorist organization known as Spectre, a famous nemesis of Bond during the Sean Connery era.

Returning director Sam Mendes hits the ground running with a bravura long take tracking shot of James Bond (Craig) in Mexico City during the Day of the Dead celebration as he walks through the crowded streets with a lovely lady on his arm. Hoyte van Hoytema’s (Interstellar) fluid camerawork follows Bond into a busy hotel, up to a room and out a window as he travels across several rooftops until he reaches the target. After the elegance of this sequence, Mendes and Hoytema switch to kinetic hand-held camerawork as Bond chases his prey through the noisy, chaotic streets, culminating in a white-knuckle intense fight aboard a helicopter. And this is just the film’s prologue!

After the Mexico incident, Bond is suspended by his superior, M (Ralph Fiennes), for acting on his own and told that MI6 is merging with MI5, which will result in the 00 program being scrapped. It turns out that Bond was carrying out the previous M’s (Judie Dench) last request: find and kill a man named Marco Sciarra (Alessandro Cremona) and attend his funeral in Rome. It is here that Bond uncovers a secret organization known as Spectre and discovers their connections to all the villains he’s faced in the three previous films.

Daniel Craig plays a much more competent Bond in Spectre than in Skyfall where several bad decisions that defied logic resulted in the deaths of key characters. In this film, he makes much better choices for the most part. Craig also does a fantastic job of continuing Bond’s personal journey to finish what he started in Casino Royale. The actor even gets to insert a little more humor, in particular, his interactions with Q (Ben Whishaw) and not play such an overtly grim Bond as in previous installments. That being said, Bond is still not someone to be messed with and Craig never lets us forget that his character is a ruthless assassin.

Spectre finally brings back the Bond villain henchman in the tradition of Oddjob and Jaws with the introduction of the burly Mr. Hinx played by Dave Bautista (Guardians of the Galaxy) whose considerable physical presence makes him a formidable foe for Bond. The film’s mastermind villain is played by Christoph Waltz who brings his trademark cultured panache to the role. The award-winning actor uses his distinctive charisma to command a given scene. All of the bad guys in the previous Craig Bond films have been leading up to Waltz’s villain who is the most powerful and evil of them all, even more so because of his personal connection to Bond.

Much was made this time out about how Bond was going to finally encounter a Bond girl (*ahem* woman) his own age and while this is true with the casting of the lovely Italian actress Monica Bellucci it is such a shame that she’s hardly in the film as Bond quickly moves on to the requisite younger love interest/sidekick played by French actress Lea Seydoux with whom Craig has very little chemistry with. At least Bellucci isn’t resigned to the same fate that befalls a lot of the initially introduced Bond girls in the films. A far more radical move on the part of the filmmakers would have been to swap the roles for Bellucci and Seydoux so that the latter has the glorified cameo and the former is given the bigger chunk of screen-time with her leading man but sadly things are played safe and Spectre suffers a bit for it.

Spectre continues the recurring notion of Bond’s apparent obsolescence in this modern age and how the powers that be within the British government threaten to shut down the 00 program because it is considered an antiquated relic of a bygone era in this post-Edward Snowden age where surveillance is omnipresent. This comes to a head in the film when a smug, young politician (Andrew Scott) openly challenges M, looking to replace Bond and the other 00 agents with drones and hi-tech surveillance.

However, as Spectre amply demonstrates, there is something to be said for the human component and looking at someone face-to-face that no element of technology can replicate. “Info is all, is it not?” says Waltz’s bad guy late in the film and while all of this state-of-the-art technology is supposed to make us feel safe it is really taking away our personal freedoms and making us paranoid and scared. During this film, Bond is often at the mercy of intense scrutiny by both the British government and by Spectre, prompting him to go to some very exotic and remote locations to uncover the truth.

While Bond uses technology in his missions in the form of fancy cars, etc., he still believes in getting his hands dirty via car chases, gun battles and hand-to-hand combat to the get job done. There’s a certain intimacy in going up against someone one-and-one and testing your skill against theirs. The big reveal in Spectre is that Bond finds out he was never in control of his own fate – it was all an illusion. He is a killer unbound by conventional relationships, like marriage, which makes the film’s climax a bit illogical and a betrayal of his personal ethos, especially considering what has happened to him over the course of these four films. I guess this was done to show some personal growth but it feels more like Mendes and co. leaving the door open for a sequel that we all know is coming eventually. That being said, with the exception of a weak third act, Spectre is a strong film and a fitting conclusion to a four-film story arc. It should be interesting to see where the producers take the Bond franchise from here.

For further reading, check out John Kenneth Muir's perceptive review and the Film Connoisseur's.

Cowboys & Aliens

Jon Favreau has certainly come a long way since his independent film roots with Swingers (1996), the film he wrote and starred in. Over the years, he’s increasing spent more time behind the camera than in front, directing Made in 2001. The modest success of that film saw him transition to studio films with larger budgets like Elf (2003) and Zathura (2005). Then came Iron Man (2008), his most ambitious effort up to that point, and he rolled the dice with the casting of Robert Downey Jr. as his leading man. The gamble paid off and the film was a massive success, paving the way for the inevitable sequel. Rushed into production, the end result was a commercial triumph but a critical failure, which upped the stakes for his next film, Cowboys & Aliens (2011), an adaptation of the graphic novel of the same name by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg.


The premise is an intriguing hybrid of the science fiction and western genres with an alien invasion set in 1873 New Mexico. To hedge his bets, Favreau corralled Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford to headline his film, which caused epic seismic ripples through the fanboy community at the prospects of seeing the actors who played James Bond and Indiana Jones in the same film together. As a result, expectations were understandably high. Could Favreau and company deliver the goods or would this be another Wild Wild West (1999)?

A man wakes up in the middle of nowhere wounded and with a strange, futuristic device strapped to his wrist. He has no idea who he is or how he got there. Three men on horseback show up assuming he’s an escape convict and try to take him in. He quickly and brutally dispatches them, taking their gear and heading towards the nearest town – the former mining colony of Absolution. He eventually learns that his name is Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig), a notorious outlaw wanted by the law for a variety of offences. One of which was robbing local cattle baron Colonel Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford) of his gold. When he learns that Lonergan is in Absolution, Dolarhyde and him men intend to lynch the outlaw in retribution.

However, a strange light appears in the sky just as Dolarhyde arrives into town. The device on Lonergan’s wrist activates and the light turns out to be several alien spacecraft that proceed to blast the town to smithereens and kidnap several of its townsfolk. Lonergan discovers that his wrist device is a weapon, which he uses to take down one of the alien craft. The film sets up Dolarhyde as a mean son of a bitch while Lonergan is a no-nonsense criminal. They represent two unstoppable forces of nature and one of the pleasures of this film is when they have to put aside their differences, repel the alien invaders and rescue the kidnapped townsfolk.

For years, Harrison Ford has made bad choices in the films he’s decided to be in and phoned in one-note performances, playing the same gruff character, but with Cowboys & Aliens acting against someone like Daniel Craig has inspired him to bring his A-game this time around. Ford actually looks interested and engaged in the material and the role. It’s great to see him go up against Craig and their scenes together crackle with intensity and tension. Best of all, Ford has two scenes that expose his character’s gruff exterior and reveal a more vulnerable side. They are poignant and heartfelt because we’ve become invested in these characters by this point. This is the best Ford has been in years and reminds one of when he used to play characters we cared about.

Craig adds another man of action to his roster. He excels at playing edgy tough guys and is well cast as the enigmatic outlaw. The only drawback is that Lonergan is underwritten and there isn’t much for Craig to work with except for some standard motivation for his character revenging a lost one. As a result, the character comes across as a one-note Man with No Name, at times. Favreau does a good job of surrounding Craig and Ford with a solid ensemble cast of character actors. You’ve got Clancy Brown as the upstanding town preacher Meachum, Sam Rockwell as Doc, the mild-mannered saloon owner, Keith Carradine as Sheriff John Taggart, the always watchable Adam Beach as Nat Colorado, Dolarhyde’s right-hand man, and Olivia Wilde as a mysterious woman named Ella whose exotic beauty gives her an almost otherworldly aura. Hell, Favreau even throws Walt Goggins in for good measure as a member of Lonergan’s gang.

Favreau has all the traditional western iconography down cold and the fun of Cowboys & Aliens is seeing these motifs clash with the science fiction elements. So, we see cowboys on horseback being chased by fast-moving alien spacecraft. This film doesn’t stray from the conventions of either genre or try to reinvent them but instead merges and fulfills them in a crowd-pleasing way. Cowboys & Aliens has impressive special effects, nasty-looking aliens, several exciting action sequences, and two cool heroes to root for. This may not be the classic that people were hoping for but it is a very entertaining film in its own right and sometimes that’s enough.

 

DVD of the Week: Quantum of Solace: Two-Disc Special Edition

With the successful reboot of the James Bond franchise with Casino Royale (2006), fans speculated what the next adventure would be and who would be the director. With the new look and attitude expertly established by Martin Campbell, the producers made the decision to have Marc Forster helm the next one, Quantum of Solace (2008). At first, he seems like a rather odd candidate to direct as he’s known mainly for edgy independent films like Monster’s Ball (2001) and the sentimental biopic Finding Neverland (2004). However, his choice makes more sense once you realize that his films are predominantly character-driven and Casino Royale had much more of an emphasis on character than most other Bond films. The question would be could Forster handle the demanding action sequences?

He proves that he’s got the action chops in the film’s prologue where James Bond (Daniel Craig) ruthlessly dispatches several adversaries in a thrilling car chase along busy, twisty country roads in Siena, Italy. This film also returns to the franchise’s trademark opening credits sequence with barely silhouetted naked women float around in some kind of trippy limbo with Bond repeatedly firing his gun as Alicia Keys and Jack White provide a suitably hard-hitting, bombastic duet called, “Another Way to Die.”

Bond is still dealing with the death of Vesper Lynd, the woman he loved in the previous film. He’s also investigating a shadowy organization that boasts having operatives everywhere, including MI-6, much to the chagrin of Bond’s superior, M (Judi Dench). He uncovers one of the secret organization’s high level operatives, Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric – a dead ringer for a young Roman Polanski), a man who specializes in overthrowing governments in Third World countries in exchange for their resources. He currently has his sights set on Bolivia but of course Bond is determined to stop him because he also tried to kill the woman he loved in Casino Royale.

Daniel Craig builds on the foundation he established in the previous film. With the death of his lover, Bond has little to live for except for revenge and this gives him an icy intensity that Craig conveys so well with his penetrating blue eyes. He’s been one of the consistently fascinating actors to watch in the last ten years. He’s got undeniable charisma and backs it up with some serious acting chops.

Forster does a surprisingly excellent job creating a lean, no frills revenge story under the guise of a Bond film. He is more than capable of handling the action sequences, of which there are many, and invests us in Bond’s personal quest for vengeance all the while fulfilling the usual expectations of a Bond film: beautiful women, death-defying stunts, exotic locales, and world-dominating villains. In a refreshing break in formula, Quantum of Solace is not a stand-alone adventure but instead wraps up the narrative loose end left hanging at the end of Casino Royale. This gives the film a truly satisfying conclusion as Bond is finally able to put a painful part of his past to rest and move on to the next mission and, of course, the next film.

Special Features:

The first disc features a music video for “Another Way to Die” with Alicia Keys and Jack White in a slick video done very much in the style of the opening credits sequence. As far as Bond songs go, it’s actually quite good and a definite improvement over Chris Cornell’s song for Casino Royale.

Also included are teaser and theatrical trailers.

The second disc starts off with “Bond on Location,” which takes a look at the challenge of finding original locations all over the world for the film that fit the specific visual look that Forster wanted to achieve. This included set design, how the extras looked and so on.

“Start of Shooting” examines the daunting task of following up the phenomenonal success of Casino Royale. Craig had to do much more extensive training for this film, including things like stunt-driving.

“On Location” sees Forster viewing the film’s various locations as characters unto themselves. They shot in some pretty remote areas.

“Olga Kurylenko and the Boat Chase” takes a look at the new Bond girl and how they viewed her character as Bond’s equal. The actress did a lot of physical training so that she could do many of her own stunts.

“Director Marc Forster” talks about what he brings to the film. The cast speaks admiringly of him.

“The music” examines composer David Arnold’s work on the film and how he tried to reflect its themes in the music. Alicia Keys and Jack White talk briefly about working together and we see footage of them shooting the music video for their song.

Finally, there are “Crew Files,” a collection of mini-featurettes spotlighting various crew members who introduce themselves and then explain what they do on the film with behind-the-scenes footage.

DVD of the Week: The Invasion

To say that The Invasion (2007) had a troubled production history is a mild understatement. Director Oliver Hirschbiegel set out to make an artier and edgier take on Jack Finney’s classic science fiction novel, The Body Snatchers. However, Warner Brothers did not like his version and producer Joel Silver was brought in along with his pals, the Wachowski brothers to rewrite the ending with director James McTeigue (V for Vendetta) to reshoot it. The result was a film that flopped both commercially and critically. Now that all of the dust has settled and it is finally being released on DVD, The Invasion can be reassessed. Is it really that bad?

When a space shuttle breaks up and is destroyed re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere, strange fungus-like stuff is found on the debris. Anyone who comes in contact with it and then goes to sleep becomes unfeeling hosts for an ever-growing alien menace. Psychiatrist Dr. Carol Bennell (Nicole Kidman) meets with a patient (Veronica Cartwright, in a nice nod to Philip Kaufman’s 1970s take) who claims that her husband is not her husband and recounts a chilling story about how he killed their dog in cold, ruthless fashion. Later that day, while taking her son (Jackson Bond) trick or treating, a dog attacks one of his friends who doesn’t seem the least bit upset or traumatized.

The next day, she witnesses more strange incidents and people who act in almost robotic fashion – they lack any kind of emotion. Carol mentions this to one of her colleagues, Dr. Ben Driscoll (Daniel Craig), on their way to a black tie dinner. Later that night, she’s attacked by an anonymous census taker. Carol, with Ben’s help, researches this strange new phenomenon and uncovers a pandemic – a virus that infects the DNA and reprograms how we act and behave. The film becomes a surprisingly effective race against time as Carol and Ben try to stay awake while finding a way to repel these invaders from another world.

Hirschbiegel gradually ratchets up the tension as Carol races to find her son, who has been kidnapped by her ex-husband (Jeremy Northam), one of the first people to be zapped by the alien fungus. Along the way, she witnesses people who are still human being taken off the street by alien-controlled police and helped by others who tell her to act emotionless. There are a few annoying jumps in logic, like Carol abandoning her vehicle for no good reason and dropping a gun on two occasions that she could have used later on. For a supposedly intelligent character, she doesn’t make very smart decisions at times.

This is the fourth adaptation of Finney’s novel and so far all of them have paled in comparison to the first one, directed by Don Siegel, which was also the most faithful to the source material. This latest incarnation’s take is that the alien threat is virus-based, but it still adheres to the book’s threat of sleeping as the process to becoming one of them. The reason that this story keeps being remade is that the allegory for the stifling oppressive nature of conformity is so powerful and still relevant after all these years.

I’ve always had soft spot for Nicole Kidman and she is quite good in The Invasion. She has great chemistry with Jackson Bond, who plays her son. He is refreshing free of the annoying little acting tics that often mar the performances of kids in films. They really convey the deep, meaningful bond between mother and son and their scenes together are some of the best in the film. Kidman, as always, looks great and fares much better in this thriller than she did in the flawed, yet interesting The Interpreter (2005).

While the aliens offer a world without pain and suffering, it is also one without joy or happiness. The Invasion updates this classic story for our times as it channels some of the anxieties of our age: avian flu, SARS, 9/11, the Patriot Act, and so on. In a nice change, this film also deviates from previous adaptations by going in a different direction with how it ends. Some may cry sell-out but it feels true to the rest of the film. The Invasion is hardly as awful as some critics would have you believe. If you go in with low expectations you may come away pleasantly surprised by the end result.

Special Features:

“We’ve Been Snatched Before: Invasion in Media History” examines how the Body Snatcher films commented on the times in which they were made and this new one is no different. This featurette also examines the fears that the film addresses, including virus-based threats and how he deal with them, in this informative extra.

“The Invasion: A New Story” takes a look at how this film updates Finney’s original story for our times in this brief, pretty standard promotional featurette.

“The Invasion: On the Set” examines how they shot on location whenever possible and picked Washington, D.C. because it is the centre of power in the United States.

“The Invasion: Snatched” takes a look at how the alien menace spreads in the film.

Arbogast on Film has an excellent look at this film that manages to convey my feelings about the film in much more eloquent fashion than I ever could. Check it out.