Two at the Cinema

Saw two flicks out that the movie theaters lately...both of interest to this blog...

Sinister was rather unexpected. True-crime writer Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke) moves his family into a new house as part of his research into a new book. His family is blissfully unaware that he's moved them into a house where a gruesome quadruple murder had taken place: an entire family had been hanged from a tree in the back yard, and one child had disappeared. It's assumed that the killer abducted the child, but nobody knows why or where the child is...or if she's still alive. Then, Ellison investigates some odd noises in the attic, and finds films of other murders in which entire families are killed. How did they get there? Who is responsible?

I walked into Sinister figuring it to be a serial-killer plot, and the macabre murders captured in the films were memorable. But I was surprised to discover that it was actually supernatural in nature; there's ancient demons and a bizarre cult involved. Ghosts appear...what is their purpose? To warn against evil...or to cause it?

What's really cool about it is how it keeps unfolding, and so much of the menace is kept vague until the end. Of course, sharp viewers will figure out some of the plot twists ahead of time, but they still do it with style. It's also got some good characterization and a good acting job from Ethan Hawke; his Oswalt is torn between caring for his family and being a good father, and his ambition to repeat his earlier success in true crime and become a celebrity again. He's not particularly likable, but he is human.

It's got good reviews, surprisingly for a horror film, and has done well at the box office, costing $3 million to make and raking in over $47 million so far.

And then, being the avowed James Bond fan that I am, I went to see Skyfall on opening night.

James Bond is accidentally shot by field agent Eve while on a mission in Istanbul, to recover a stolen hard drive that contains the names of NATO agents embedded in terrorist networks. Presumed dead, he lays low in the tropics for a while, still thirsting for danger and recovering from his injuries. However, he returns to England when he sees that M is under fire; it turns out the names of the agents on the hard drive are being leaked on YouTube, and Bond must go from Shanghai to Macao to London to Scotland to find and stop the man responsible.

Is it good? I enjoyed it, far far more than the last entry, Quantum of Solace, which I disliked intensely. But I didn't find it as good as Casino Royale, which was pretty darn close to my idea of the perfect Bond film. I had serious misgivings about Sam Mendes directing; I find his films problematic, with a tendency to focus on men who hate their jobs, and a VERY bad habit of looking at people coping with miserable lives and situations, without ever really exploring the decisions and experiences that got them into those situations in the first place. (Which is why I consider Revolutionary Road to be hugely overrated.) But I have to admit, he did a good job with this; it lacked the listlessness that doomed Jarhead, that's for sure. Roger Deakins' cinematography made it very easy on the eyes, and some scenes are very, very memorable.

And I'm going be very spoiler-y from here on out, so please skip the rest of this post if you're wary of those things. The film is really equally about M (Judi Dench) as it is about Bond (Daniel Craig, very dishy this time), and the motherly bond she builds with the agents she chooses, and how that bond can go wrong. That's very obvious with villain Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem), a former field agent with an almost Oedipal loathing of her but who ends up being as self-destructive as he is destructive. Naomie Harris is good as Eve Moneypenny, and Berenice Marlohe is memorable as Silva's mistress Severine. Ben Whishaw is fabulous as a young hipster Q. There was some real tension in the film as it shows Bond not at the top of his game but slowly getting back there, and some real emotion as M dies at the end.

A few things I didn't like included Eve suddenly turning out to be Moneypenny, which annoyed me a bit as she had denied the rumor months ago. Also, an Aston-Martin DBV that was supposed to be Bond's private property turns out to be loaded with Goldfinger-era gadgets; how did they get there? And the dialogue seemed clunky at times, and the last act (at Bond's crumbling family estate in Scotland) seems a little drawn out. Something very minor that still bugged me a tiny bit was the gunbarrel scene which again was at the end; I'm ready for it to be back at the beginning, thank you.

Still, at the end, Bond trades banter with Moneypenny, and then goes into the office of the new M (Ralph Fiennes) which is almost a dead ringer for the traditional office of the Connery films. The viewer is left feeling ready for more action. Reportedly they're planning to do Bond films every two years from now on, and screenwriter John Logan is on board for two more films. It's said that Mendes might stick around (he might as well, he's had a string of box-office disappointments and Skyfall will be his first unqualified success since Road to Perdition). And now we have a new M, Q, and Moneypenny, and I hope in the future they manage a balance between action and cerebral intrigue. And put the damned gunbarrel at the beginning again!

So yeah, go check 'em out if you have an evening to spare...

QUANTUM OF SOLACE

OK, so I'm a James Bond fan. Have been since I was a kid. They've varied in quality, sometimes quite remarkable, sometimes almost painful.

I loved, loved, LOVED the last film, CASINO ROYALE. It had just the right mixture of action, intrigue, suspense, and character development to absolutely thrill me. I saw it three times in theaters. I pre-ordered the DVD from Amazon...and am now kicking myself since the Special Edition just came out.

I was quite interested to see where they went with the next one. I admit....I groaned, loudly, when I heard the announced title. Good grief, not QUANTUM OF SOLACE!!!! For those who don't know, it's one of Ian Fleming's short stories about Bond, actually quite a good one but devoid of any real action or intrigue; it's basically Bond hearing a story about a dysfunctional marriage and pondering how normal life can be more dramatic than his own. (The story uses the phrase to indicate a tiny amount of comfort.)

But c'mon...using that for a title? In this day and age? Holy crap. What the hell were they thinking? Some of my fears about public reaction to it were justified, as it seems most of the public who weren't fans of the literary Bond either had no idea what it meant, or thought the movie would deal with space travel or time travel (thanks a lot, QUANTUM LEAP), and critics used terms like "forbidding" and "pretentious" when describing the title.

Still, I hoped the movie would be good. I really did. I wanted to like it.

But alas. I am SO disappointed by QOS.

There's lots of action, to be sure, but most of the action scenes are so over-edited that it's hard to keep track of what's going on, or who's doing what to who. In the opening chase scene, for instance, Bond's car loses a door, and I have no idea how, because the editing is so frantic that it's almost impossible to make out. This has been pointed out by many critics and fans, and I went in feeling actually fairly skeptical that it could be so bad...and it was. It was just all wrong.

I guess some of the blame for that can be laid on the shoulders of director Marc Forster, who has never directed an action film before. Yup. He's good when it comes to exploring emotions and relationships (I thought his work with FINDING NEVERLAND was exceptional), but he was so out of his element with a Bond film. He seemed to be aping the style of the MATRIX films (which I detest, btw), and the Bourne series (which I think are OK) with the shakycam work and the frenetic editing. He often seems to be afraid of pulling back and just letting the camera sit and watch, so we can see for ourselves what's going on.

The plot is OK...Dominic Greene, who hides behind a facade of environmental charity, is really part of a vast criminal network called Quantum, and is plotting to seize control of Bolivia's water supply and reap billions. Really, not all that bad a plot, esp. when you consider the concern in the scientific community about a potential water crisis in the real world, with parts of the world potentially becoming uninhabitable due to water shortages. It's a little spooky. But the film fails to focus enough on the plot; it's really secondary to the real plot. Bond is out for revenge on the criminal network that deceived the woman he loved in the last film, and drove her to commit suicide.

Now, I thought, since they called it QUANTUM OF SOLACE, we'd get some real exploration of Bond's feelings as he went after the villains. There is some, I'll admit...but not enough. It often seems perfunctory, especially coming from someone like Marc Forster. That sort of thing is his bread and butter; he SHOULD have done better with it.

The REAL emotional link in this film is the prickly relationship between Bond and his boss M, negotiating their trust for each other and dependence on each other. In fact, a much more appropriate title would have been A MATTER OF TRUST or something along those lines, as that's really as much a theme in this film as Bond's search for comfort. Early in the film, M is betrayed by her own bodyguard, and is angry over her trusting a traitor, even though there was no reason to doubt him, as they find out. M doesn't trust the CIA. Bond gives trust in Mathis. The CIA doesn't trust Bond. There's even issues of trust among the villains. It's everywhere in this film, and deserved more playing up than what it got. Even the film's final scene is more about trust than solace.

There are some good parts. The scene at the performance of Tosca, where Bond eavesdrops on a conference of Quantum officials, works well. There are flashes of nice scenery in Italy and Bolivia, although they're not used to best advantage. I did like the final bit with Bond confronting Vesper's lover Yusuf, who had played her and abused her trust. (See? Trust again!) Agent Fields' tripping of a henchman, followed by a wide-eyed "So sorry!" The imagery in the opening credits scene is often quite clever.

But when it goes wrong, it goes very wrong. There's a lot more that's wrong. The horrible theme song from Jack White and Alicia Keys. A henchman who's more of a buffoon than a menace. A confrontation between Bond and Greene that lacks any real heft or impact. Gemma Arterton's negligible role as Agent Fields (we never actually hear her first name, but she's listed as "Strawberry Fields" in the credits, which had my friends gagging). A few overobvious homages to past films, that started to seem forced and clumsy. Bond's inexplicable ability to overhear a conversation several hundred yards away (the prelude to the big boat chase in Haiti...how the hell did he know what Greene had planned for Camille?) And the absence of the phrase "quantum of solace" from the film, and an accompanying explanation, that would help clue audiences in as to what the hell it all means.

In fact...a bit of trivia...the title was not settled on until the film had been shooting for a week or so. Not long after that we heard that the evil organization was called Quantum. Ah ha, I said, they must have named that after they figured out the title. No no no, said some other Bond fans, they had that figured out all along, really! But in the movie, the organization is not referred to as "Quantum" until almost the end...in fact, that's the first time we heard the word used in the movie at all. Even if they had named it before choosing the title, it really looks like it was a last minute piece of retrofitting.

Well, I'm hoping the next one will be better. Ever since they rebooted the series with CASINO ROYALE, I've expected a few missteps and miscalculations as they find their way and redefine the series. I don't miss some of the slapstick comedy or overabundance of gadgets or cheesy one-liners that had come to dominate the series and turn it into a parody of itself. I do kinda miss the old opening gunbarrel visual, the presence of Moneypenny and Q (but please, don't bring back John Cleese, I hated him as Q), and some other bits, and I hope they come along. But I really think they lost their way somewhat with this film. It's not quite as bad as some reviews make it out to be (MOONRAKER, DIE ANOTHER DAY, YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE and LIVE AND LET DIE are the worst of the Bonds in my view, and QOS is better than them), but it's most definitely not a brilliant piece of art or the greatest Bond film ever. It's too confused and unfocused, the work of a director out of his element. Let's hope they fix what went wrong and get things back on track with the next film.