review

Thunderball

scott

Another day, another Bond escapade.

This time around SPECTRE has cooked up an audacious plan, upping the ante from Doc No’s mere fiddling with guidance systems to outright stealing of a couple of thermonuclear bombs. With one of their operatives undertaking extensive plastic surgery to infiltrate a NATO training flight, making off with a Vulcan bomber and swiping what would, given the timeframe, probably be a “Blue Steel” nuclear bomb. This is a weapon only matched in potency by Derek Zoolander’s Blue Steel “look”.

With the boomy-type things now in the hands of SPECTRE No. 2 Emilo Largo, a demand is issued to, well, NATO, I assume, but this takes a particularly Brit-centric look at the issue, for One Hundred Million Pounds Sterling. Which isn’t far off the eventual worldwide take of the film, according to IMDB, so in a way the plan pays for itself. Actually, given that the bomber has to be landed on a retractable, submersible landing strip, in addition to the expensive plastic surgery, I suspect that most of the blackmail money would go straight back towards paying for the equipment used in the endeavour.

With everyone on the hunt for the bombs, but with no clue as to where they are, it’s indeed fortunate that James just happens to have been relaxing off-duty at the same spa as the SPECTRE agents preparing for their mission. Massively, ridiculously, unbelievably fortunate. At any rate, this leads Bond to the Bahamas on the trail of Largo, as he attempts to sniff out the location of the stolen Vulcan and its deadly payload.

Sean Connery has, as it turns out erroneously, had Thunderball ascribed as his favourite Bond, but that nothwithstanding I’m sure he has fond memories of filming it. I’m sure the Bahamas isn’t a bad place to go on location. By this point he’s clearly massively comfortable in his role and for the time, it had some innovative (and SFX Oscar winning) action set-pieces.

The problem in Space Year 2011 is that “for the time” statement. There can’t have been an awful lot of underwater filming, well, without any disclaimers, really, but certainly not in the arena of mainstream action movies. On a technical and novelty level, you can see why the film doubles down on it.

However, just as with the current infatuation with 3D filming, the gimmick frequently gets in the way of the story rather than supporting it. Putting your main characters in situations where they can’t talk, due to the breathing apparatus, falls somewhere between brave and foolhardy. Putting entire action sequences underwater is boneheaded. As anyone who has been in water at some point in their life will attest to, fast and fluid motion isn’t the medium’s forte. Hence the climactic action sequences that want desperately to be pitched underwater battles become, essentially, wetsuit clad men hugging each other with the occasional harpoon dart penetrating them. Ooh-er, missus.

I don’t have much issue with the rest of the film, but so much of this film’s impact is gambled on the underwater action that it undermines the otherwise solid framework of the film.

Connery is effortlessly portraying Bond by this point, and is a joy to watch in the role. I’m not so fond of Adolfo Celi’s Largo, who appears to have mistaken ‘characterisation’ for ‘wearing an eyepatch’. He’s as hampered by the underwater nature of a lot of the film as Bond is, and only in one scene does he ever get a chance to exude menace, far towards the end of the film by which point the damage has already been done.

While the plot has increased the stakes to nuclear threats against cities rather than government gold facilities, there’s it doesn’t translate into any extra dramatic tension. While it’s far from the most disappointing Bond film in the series, it’s certainly the first one we’ve spoken about in this ill-advised experiment.

Still, bonus points for featuring Bond girl Domino getting a tow from a turtle, an act which is substantially less perverted than it sounds.

Goldfinger

scott

Well, this Bond-a-week project isn’t exactly having the smoothest of starts. In my defence, I’m still not precisely convinced of what time zone I happen to be in. Remedial action must be taken on this front, and also on my increasingly ludicrous stack of photographs to sort, process and publish. Let’s get started with Goldfinger.

In some part, Goldfinger was what prompted this ill-advised adventure. As part of a discussion with my good buddy Craig, our wandering attention turned to the subject of the then recently televised movie on one of the higher-numbered ITV derivative repeat-mongers. I remember commenting something along the lines that for me, the moment when Bond transformed into something that’s substantially less interesting and more stupid is the nanosecond after Honour Blackman declares that “I’m Pussy Galore”. Bond’s addled acknowledgement of the unlikeliness of the name notwithstanding, I declared it the beginning of the end of Bond.

At the time, and bear in mind that I’ve never been the world’s biggest Bond fan, I believed that Goldfinger came far later on in the series than it actually does. It is, of course, only the third trip to the cinema for 007. Unarguably, and perhaps this is where my confusion arose from, it’s the prototype for almost everything that follows it, and establishes all of the tropes that turn the franchise from a series of spy adventures to a series of Bond Films, a sub-genre all of its own.

The car, the gadgets, the opening sequence mini-mission, the overtly high stakes evil plots and most vital of all, the villain parading around front and centre for most of the film. Dr. No was barely seen in the film that took his name. From Russia With Love’s main antagonist, SMERSH killer Donald Grant was seen more, but perhaps heard from less. Gert Frobe’s Auric Goldfinger is all ingrained on the DNA of almost every scene in Goldfinger.

I am, again, rather making the assumption that you are all familiar with the goings on of Goldfinger, which may not be the case. At any rate, the Bank of England bigwigs inform M and our man Bond that they suspect that gold magnate Goldfinger has been illegally smuggling some of the shiny stuff between countries, with some potentially unpleasant repercussions for economies still pegged to the gold standard.

It’s left to Jimmy to investigate Mr. Finger’s operations, wheedling his way into Goldfinger’s dealings by dangling a bar of Nazi gold in front of him and promising there’s more where that came from. This meets with a mixed reception from Auric and his iconic hat-flinging sidekick, Oddjob, but Bond isn’t a quitter, trailing Goldfinger across Europe, getting his ass captured and tied to a table with a pointlessly placed laser bothering him providing yet another boon for lazy comedy writers, then hauled back to the States for the conclusion of his Master Plan, as he attempts to irradiate Fort Knox’s gold repository.

If that perhaps sounds familiar, even if you haven’t seen the film, perhaps it is because with some creative search and replacing, you could apply the above recap to damn near every Bond film that follows it. As templates go, there’s few that have stood repeated re-pressings as well as the narrative bones of Goldfinger.

It’s difficult to know where to place Goldfinger in the grand pantheon of Bond films. It’s surely the most influential of all of the series. There aren’t many films that could claim quite to have made quite the same stamp on the lineage of its descendants as Goldfinger. The only thing that Moore era Bonds have in common with Dr. No is the character name. They’d be far more familiar with Goldfinger.

Is that a bad thing? I suppose from the prospect of someone faced with another twenty odd movies that aren’t going to be a million miles away from this film over the next twenty odd weeks, it definitely is. I am, however, hardly a representative sample, and it’s difficult to argue with the box office results of the longest running movie series since the creation of moving pictures. Regardless, this marks the move away from a (still hardly grounded in reality) world of intrigue to a series where we’re often just marking time until the next curiously prone to exploding thing explodes.

It turns out that calling this the beginning of the end of Bond is wholly inaccurate in any meaningful sense. It’s the beginning of the beginning for Bond. It’s the end of the false beginning of Bond, the spy narratives with a talented but flawed and on occasion vulnerable protagonist. It’s the start of the Bond that’s a cape and incorrect undergarment placement away from being Superman. Commercially, it would be foolish to argue with the results. From a hoity-toity critical perspective, it’s the start of stagnation.

I had intended to end with the previous paragraph, providing as it does a nice callback to the start of this rambling write-up. It wouldn’t be accurate. While it’s possible to position this as the start of an avalanche of cliches, that would downplay how enjoyable Goldfinger actually is. For the first execution of the Bond Formula, it’s as fine an outing as any of the following. At least until post-Brosnan era Gritty Reboot, its only the less polished special effects and back-projection that dates it.

Besides, how on earth can you disrespect a film with Bert Kwouk,  a machine gun toting granny and a shower of Mafia bosses that sound exactly like a parody of Mafia bosses with lines like “Hey, what’s with the trick pool table!”? It also provides a good chunk of the Austin Powers references, so it’s also achieved an inadvertent comic sheen over time. Perhaps that’s why the previous casual thought inspection left this Bond outing a little tarnished in my mind, but in the harsh light of cold inquisition, that’s not a tenable position.

Hereafter

scott

I’m barely back from China and I find myself faced with another unlikely-to-be-enjoyable business trip out to India. Good job I don’t have a social life or any commitments outside of work. Oh, wait, no. The other option. Let’s just say I’m less than thrilled about the prospect that awaits me, aside from having a nice long flight during which I can revise my C.V.

A small amount of this month’s irritatingly slender free time was spent watching Clint Eastwood’s latest directorial offering, Hereafter. I knew going in that this was a bit of a gamble. The cinema website did, after all, describe it as a ‘supernatural thriller’, which is a sub-genre that in my experience is pretty much a synonym for ‘pish’. On the other hand, Eastwood’s been on a roll of late, delivering a series of worthy, enjoyable, more often than not brilliant movies for the last decade. If anyone could pull it off, surely it’s ol’ Dirty Harry, especially with the typically dependable Matt Damon returning from Invictus.

I guess both of their script quality radars have picked up the same tracking errors that has so afflicted Angelina Jolie’s of late, as Hereafter proves to be an only very barely tolerable snoreathon that, in a world of pure justice and truth, would replace the end credits with a polite apology and an offer of a full refund.

Damon plays George Lonegan, a factory worker doing his best to ignore his ‘special gift’. He can see dead people. By which I do not mean that he is not robbed of his sight anytime he walks into a morgue. That is not a special gift. That is a mere biological function which most of us are already graced with. No, by this I mean he can see into the spirit world and hear what the deadites are saying unto people.

Mmmph.

At any rate, while he had been using his gifts as a medium for a career, he found the stress of the gig unbearable and is in search of a normal life. Meanwhile, a French television star played by Cécile De France struggles to deal with her near-death experience after being caught in a freak tidal wave. Also meanwhile, a young London lad struggles to deal with the death of his identical twin. All have some interest in the afterlife. Will they all meet up by the end of the film in some sort of crazy coincidence, or fate, or whatever?

Well, duh. Quite what all of the above was supposed to say, or mean, or be, is entirely mystifying. None of the struggles any of the characters featured go through are relatable in any way, apart from I suppose a slender few tenths of percentage points of the world’s population that have had, or think they have had, some sort of near death experience. Perhaps I’m having a failure of empathy caused by near-exhaustion, but I just don’t think it’s possible to care about any of these characters, apart, maybe, from the young kid, but even that’s scuppered by the dreadful performance that Frankie and George McLaren inflict on us.

Still, the kids are in good company, with flat, lifeless performances given across the board. Almost nothing happens at all over the course of what IMDB informs me was 129 minutes, although I could have sworn it was closer to 129 hours.

This is a dull, tugid, boring movie in which nothing happens. Even if you have any sort of belief in any kind of afterlife beyond quiet decomposition, there’s not a damn thing that’s of any interest whatsoever for you in here, and you should avoid to the best of your abilities.

Of course, if you’re a “sceptic” or as I like to think of them “sane person”, there would seem to be some opportunity for watching the movie as an opportunity to rage against the screen, given the completely credulous way into which the existence of a spirit world is introduced, and a further chance to descend into apoplexy when Cécile De France starts bawling about all the “scientific evidence” she has got her mitts on, which is never documented so I must assume is “scientific” in the way that homeopathy is “scientific”, which is to say the opposite of “scientific”.

Even then, the combined tedium of the film means we can only sit in front of it in somnambulistic stupor until it has the good grace to come to a ending that answers none of the questions that it hints at. I suppose the intention was to prompt your own thought train on what goes on after you croak, but that’s not a ticket I care to buy.

I’ve only seen two films released this year, so saying that this is the least enjoyable of them is not currently a particularly damning phrase. However, I’m pretty confident I’ll be saying the same thing in June, at which point the judgement may have a little more bite to it.

From Russia With Love

scott

I’m rather falling behind on this Bond project, and so early into it too. Let’s attempt to arrest that slide by looking at the second cinematic Bondular outing, From Russia With Love.

This time round we are introduced to the concept of Bond’s reputation preceding him to the extent that he can hardly be called a secret agent, as MI6 get word of a Red Communist clerk offering to defect from those evil Russians to the Brits, bringing along a top secret decoding doohickey on the condition that she’s met by Mr. James Bond, Esq., whom she has taken a bit of a shine to.

Realising that life is very rarely that simple, Jimmy suspects a trap, but having no pressing luncheon appointments that day presses ahead with it anyway. Naturally, he is correct, the Russian lass being a unwitting pawn in a game designed by the international criminal mastermind Phil Spector to play Britain and Russia against each other to warm up the previously rather boring Cold War in Istanbul.

Terence Young returns on directorial duties, and he claims that of the Bond films he directed, this is his favourite. He could make a pretty solid case for it being the best Bond film period, but seeing as he isn’t typing this, I suppose I’ll have to fill in. I don’t have the exact quote to hand, but Young says something along the lines of the screenplays and Connery’s performance are adding in the one thing that isn’t in Fleming’s novels that went on to define the film series – charm.

From Russia With Love is where the charm offensive begins in earnest. While Connery’s Bond in Dr. No isn’t exactly a complete cold blooded psychopathic killer, he shows certainly shows moments of steely dispassion. These vanish in From Russia With Love, making it more like the Bond we’ve come to know and love.

That may not necessarily be a good thing. Sure, Bond is now a far more likable protagonist. However it seems as part of the trade off he’s also lost any sort of sense that things are not going to work out exactly in his favour at all points, even while in the middle of a murderous melee that requires the SPECTRE agent to save Bond’s life. This is the start of the end of Bond’s dramatic credibility. It seemed that Dr. No’s Bond might fail. Savour that sensation, as there’s going to be almost none of it over the remainder of the series.

At least in this film, there’s some trade off in as much as even if Bond wanders around with a God Mode cheat code enabled, he may well inadvertently trigger a full on international crisis with his flagrant disregard for Russian embassy territorial sovereignty.  For a globe-trotting superspy, the Great Game doesn’t seem to be high on Bond’s list of priorities. He goes on to tackle a number of one-off SPECTRE backed madmen, but there’s very little political manoeuvring to speak of.

I suppose that’s the difference between Bond and The Ipcress File. It also means the From Russia With Love presents another degree of differentiation from the formula that would go on to be so successful and ultimately repetitive for the series.

As a franchise, Bond isn’t big on supporting characters sharing the limelight. There’s the Bond girls, sure, but until relatively recently those on the side of the Right and Just were more of the damsel-in-distress type than the kickers-of-ass and takers-of-names. The closest we’ve got to a co-hero is the CIA’s Felix Leiter, who’s more often than not a combination of sounding board and phone line to the inevitably fashionably late Marine Corps.

As such, it’s both a delight and shame that Pedro Armendariz’ Istanbul section chief Kerim Bay is reasonably heavily featured and killed over the course of the piece, respectively. Almost as magnetic a personality as Bond himself, I’d far rather have watched a spin-off series starring him than the once mooted, now spiked Jinx franchise expansion starring Halle Berry.

I can’t go quite so far as to agree with Young. While this is still a tremendously enjoyable film, from where we sit there’s more of interest in Dr. No and from a purely dramatic standpoint there’s more danger to get your teeth into. From Russia With Love veers a little too heavily into intrigue, while at the same time being  too over-the-top to be believable. Of course, it’s positively understated compared to later Bond outings, but at this embryonic stage of proceedings it’s still judged against other spy films rather than the now sizable reservoir of Bond movies.

That aside, there’s little else wrong with From Russia With Love, which provides a more enjoyable and arguably far less dated, Soviet bogeyman aside, watch than most of the Brosnan-era Bonds. If, by some unbelievable set of circumstances you have avoided exposure to this film thus far in your life, I recommend that you give it a chance. It should impress you.

Dr. No

scott

Between some conversations about Timothy Dalton’s stint as James Bond with my buddy Craig a few weeks back, the recent confirmation that the next Bond instalment has been green-lit after MGM’s financial wobble and a conversation on one of the best Mac analysis podcasts, the underwhelmingly named “The Talk Show“, ol’ Jimmy-oh-seven’s been on my mind a little lately. So what better way to de-mindify him than by committing to watching a Bond film a week until I run out of them?

We’ll see how enthusiastic I am about the project once I hit the long dark days of Moore’s run, but I’ll kick things off with the obvious starting point, 1962’s Dr. No.

Perhaps the strangest thing, at least for someone who’s grown up with the idea of Bond films firmly entrenched in popular culture thanks to the Bank Holiday TV saturation Bond-bombing that used to go on in the days when it was occasionally worth tuning the telly to ITV, is that Dr. No isn’t really a Bond film. It’s a spy film about a spy called James Bond.

That sounds a little strange. Let me back up a little here. The Bond franchise had been going strong for seventeen years before I’d been born, and thanks to the above mentioned telly viewings going back as far as I recall most of the Bond films pre-Goldeneye, I think, all merge together into one big messy gestalt. By that time, “Bond film” really was a recognisable sub-genre of films, with it’s own familiar set of over the top cliches that fit like a comfortable pair of slippers.

Much like other “genre” films like horrors are generally judged in relation to other horrors, rather than to some set of generalised critical standards, Bond films tend to be judged in relation to other Bond films, at least until the recent reboot. Just as you understand the most of the horrors are about the stabbing and the screaming, the Bond films are about the silly gadgets, silly names, casual womanising, action set pieces and the villains with self-image and plans above their station. You know what you’re getting, and set expectations accordingly.

Going back to the original, it’s odd to see that few of what would come to be all-too-familiar narrative crutches are present, or certainly not to the extremes it would very quickly be taken to. For example, the most elaborate gadgets Q branch have cooked up for 007 are a geiger counter and a Walther PPK.

It’s not without its trips into the unusual, but even when Bond’s trying to fend off an assassination by spider, it’s played straight down the middle. On occasions, Bond is as shaken as the martinis he orders, which isn’t something that happened again to Bond until Daniel Craig’s current incarnation. Well, apart from a brief time under Dalton’s auspices, but we’ll get to that in due course.

Generally in Bond movies, Jimmy saunters through underground lairs filled with henchmen without getting so much as a crease in his shirt, let alone seeming to be in real mortal danger. Sean Connery’s first run through comes as close to Bond being portrayed as a human being rather than an immortal boogyman as you would have seen in decades, had you payed your money at the cinema on release. Hell, we’re even introduced to his day-job with M berating him for carrying a sub-standard gun that led to his hospitalisation.

Narratively, Dr. No stands head and shoulders above most of its stablemates. For those who forget the details, Bond is simply sent out to Jamaica to investigate the disappearance of the local MI6 agent. For about an hour or so, what happens is.. well, police work,  an actual investigation of the sort that Bond wouldn’t normally sully his hands with. In later instalments, Bond just has to walk near a place and secret plans just unfurl themselves around him everywhere he goes. He works for his supper in Dr. No.

Speaking of the doctor, perhaps the least Bondian thing about Dr. No is the villain himself. Not, perhaps, in scope or achievement, but in as much as the bad guy in any given Bond film is usually waved about in front of us near-continuously. We don’t even hear Dr. No’s voice until over half-way through the film, let alone see him. In terms of a ‘normal’ investigative narrative this makes perfect sense, and it works well here, but it’s so different from the standard Bond operating protocol that it feels a little strange.

Secret island base notwithstanding, even Dr. No’s scheme itself doesn’t seem to be utterly implausible, certainly by comparison with later films. Remotely fiddling with America’s missile guidance systems seems to be an almost achievable and sane goal, although exactly why it has become so important to do so isn’t particularly well explained. Joseph Wiseman’s portrayal of No is suitably enigmatically restrained, and a welcome change of pace from the frothing madmen this franchise can occasionally throw at us.

Connery is the quintessential Bond, and this is perhaps the best acting performance he gives during his tenure,simply because he’s given some sort of emotional range. Later films would tend to have Bond be… smug, for want of a better term, throughout. Here, Bond occasionally gets rattled, and perhaps more of Fleming’s Bond rather than the one that visits the moon is seen in Dr. No than anything until the modern era. The ice cold delivery of “That’s a Smith & Wesson, and you’ve had your six” is a glimpse at an emotionally deadened killer that the series would soon shy away from in favour of quips and kiss-off lines.

The only glaring element that dates Dr. No, apart perhaps from the first delivery of the series’ iconic introductory catchphrase with a fag dangling out of Connery’s mouth, is the effects work. It’s perhaps churlish to complain about it from this timeframe, but even amongst its contemporaries the back-projection on the car chase scenes is decidedly poor, and some of the miniature models used for the explosions would look no less realistic if Wallace and/or Gromit  was in there with them.

That aside, there’s really an awful lot to like in Dr. No, and very little to dislike. It’s a good film, and without the disclaimer of “compared to other Bond films”. This first outing, by virtue of not yet fully embracing the elements that made it the longest-running and most-successful film franchise, becomes a strong candidate for being the best of the franchise. Ain’t that a kick in the head?

Winter’s Bone

scott

I’m in the process of preparing for tomorrow’s podcast recordings for theOneliner.  While I can probably improvise something for the catch-up reviews of films appearing over the past few weeks that we’ve yet to cover, I’d hoped to do a little more for our review of 2010. Specifically, watch a few of the better regarded or at least interesting films from the past year, including Enter the Void and Un Prophete. Might not get to them, but I did at least get round to watching Winter’s Bone.

Set in the wilds of Missouri, seventeen year old Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) soldiers her way stoically through a life that she’s firmly grasped the shitty end of. With her mother permanently zoned out on medication, she has to look after her younger brother and sister on a budget of nothing, bar occasional acts of kindness from her neighbours. Her father has, until very recently, been locked up awaiting trial for cooking up methamphetamines.

This less than ideal situation becomes more challenging when a bondsman shows up to tell Ree that her father appears to be jumping bail, which is unfortunate given that the family home and acres of timberland form part of the guarantee. If Daddy Dolly doesn’t show for his day in court, the family is going to be turfed out onto the street. Well, given the area we’re talking about, the dirt track.

While Ree doesn’t really give a damn about her absentee father, she’s left with no option but to track him down and find out either where he is, or what’s happened to him. In a part of the world where people keep themselves to themselves, do not appreciate others asking awkward questions, respect their own unique codes of honour over the rule of law and own a wide variety of firearms, this is a risky business.

Coming into conflict with various local strongmen of the drugs trade, most of whom she’s related to in one way or another, Ree’s dogged pursuit of answers makes for compulsive, if often uncomfortable viewing. There’s a tremendous atmosphere built of an underlying menace, with a tangible risk of something unpleasant happening at any moment. Indeed, the whole film feels one leather apron away from a chainsaw massacre.

Characterisation is always going to be tough in a story where no-one’s given to talking a great deal, which is perhaps why it’s so remarkable that young Jennifer Lawrence gives such a strong, complete sense of a strong-willed, independent young woman without having to resort to stereotypes or inspirational montages. She’s just there, taking care of business in a very matter of fact and realistic way, or at least as realistic as someone with no first hand knowledge of the situation (hello, me) can judge.

For what is nominally a thriller, there’s not an awful lot going on in Winter’s Bone, but the minimalism works to its advantage. The conflict points that do occur are given all the much more heft and weight given the anticipation that’s gone before them. It doesn’t make for comfortable or cheery watching, but it’s certainly powerful and absorbing.

While I can’t immediately justify my thinking behind this, it feels very similar in tone to No Country For Old Men. This is a far better film in my humble estimation, although I’m not part of the ra-ra brigade for that particular Coens outing. I am, however, getting sidetracked from the point of this piece, which is to say that while I don’t have quite the distance from viewing to properly judge it, Winter’s Bone definitely deserves at the very least a place in the discussion when we’re rounding out the best films of 2010 lists.