Monthly Archives: September 2017

SKYFALL: a bit of a downer

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SKYFALL: a bit of a downer,  a review         ***Spoiler Alert***

Skyfall I have mixed feelings about Skyfall, the new James Bond film directed by Sam Mendes (American Beauty).

Starting with 1963’s Dr. No until the recent reboot (Casino Royale, Quantum of Silence and Skyfall)  Bond films gave us movie-goers lots of beautiful people, cities most of us will never see and fantasy. Evil geniuses hatched outlandish plots to rule the world, requiring ridiculous amounts of money, often wagered in elegant casinos full of tuxes and evening gowns, up-dos and bow-ties.

There was always a seduction, with Bond making love to a dangerous goddess-like bad girl. 

007 would growl and she stretched and purred as the music crescendo-ed. Next came the action and all those Secret Agent gadgets.  Long stretches of chases, fights, dodges and jumps moving through exotic streets and narrow alleys kept us on the edge of our seats. And the streets were crowded by costumed extras.

All of it was played out by vivid characters.

Barely there emotions let us thrill to the stunt because we owed them no empathy when they met their cinematic ends.We expected dreamy, gleaming surfaces that offered an occasional flash of something darker, a secret, a hint of the forbidden. Or at least we did until the last few with a new Bond, and a new kind of Bond.

Skyfall delivers on the beautiful people, the seductions and the long chases. But, Skyfall gives us a different Bond.

James Bond has become emotionally complicated. Now he has a past. There’s still some fantasy. The chases, as always, are entertaining, The convoluted plot takes us to all those far away places for show.

They have little to do with what is at the heart of the Skyfall plot: betrayal and abandonment.

“M,” whose cold pragmatism allows her to apply the cost/benefit dynamic to those who serve the Crown so valiantly. She betrays and abandons both Bond and a former agent, Silva. M’s actions cause Bond’s seeming death. Her desertion of Silva (Javier Bardem) results in his transformation from a dedicated agent to a relentless enemy. For Bond, it seems the sky does fall.

Underneath M’s steely professionalism there’s a maternal caring that both Bond and Silva perceive.

And that makes her betrayal and abandonment of each all the more painful–a pain we the audience can see and understand. No more mere glimpses of dark secrets, we learn of the sacrifices both men make and it makes us and them question M’s decisions.

And so I was never sure how to feel.

Javier Bardem, as usual, was the best thing in the movie. Daniel Craig is growing on me. I’d had my heart set on Clive Owen for the new Bond, but Craig has this battered charm that works. I wonder if the scripts are going to get even darker in tone, sort of in keeping with the reality of the world today. If so, the character may be named Bond, but he will no longer be the same tuxedo-ed hero we knew. I did like Judi Dench’s “M.” Along with the crisp manner, she brought a light humor to the more recent Bond offerings, before they became so dark. Sorry to lose Judi Dench, (if you’ve made this far, I hope you took the spoiler alert seriously), but Ralph Fiennes can send me on a mission any time.

The script could have been way tighter. I did like the youth versus age and experience theme., but I found myself wanting to keep Bond a mystery.

I hope they can find a way back to that cool spy and lover we found so irresistible, the man who was unknowable.

As director Kevin DiNovis, recently commented, “There’s a place in the world yet for exploding pens and volcano lairs.”

I agree, but perhaps that place lies in the “discovered country” of the movies that spoke to who we were–moviegoers relishing a new world that was breaking away from the rules of the past and we were breathless at the idea of all that glamor and sex. Change has sped up and in as in Skyfall, it’s a little disconcerting.

We may not be able to jettison the past so easily now.

For the time being, I’ll look for the gleam in those Arctic- blue Ralph Feinnes eyes and the steely pale blue gaze of Craig’s as the new “M” sends 007 out to save the world again.

Ah the mysteries behind those sexy blue eyes. In the next Bond film, I hope they reveal a secret formula or two.

 

Crimson Peak: Shake, Rattle and Ooze

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Crimson Peak: Shake, Rattle and Ooze a review

**** BEWARE–this review is full of spoilers****

Crimson Peak

 

Crimson Peak is an okay ghost story about Edith (Mia Wasikowska), an American girl (with money) who marries Tom (Tom Hiddleston) an Englishman. Tom, the Englishman comes with a title, an old mansion, and a sister who likes poisoned tea and meat cleavers.

Like the new bride on arriving at her new home, called Crimson Peak, we find lots of motifs (the cold, the ratty mansion) and more red than a mall at Christmas.

But there were few scares, not even when the undead plow through a hallway carpet and rise from a vat of what looked like some super red preschool paint. The thing is, these devices don’t have the same effect anymore. The yawning death grin of Norman Bates’ mother scared the popcorn out of 1960’s audiences. Some times, and I’m talking to you, Guillermo, less is more.

I really enjoyed Mama, del Toro’s previous horror effort. But, Mama with her absurdly elongated chin and little manic eyes looked like someone’s blind date nightmare.

Much, much scarier was an earlier film of del Toro’s, The Devil’s Backbone. That one was truly eerie. The little boy ghost with a head of blood floaties was like nothing I had ever seen. I can still recall the chilling buildup to certain scenes. Since seeing The Devil’s Backbone, I avoid looking through keyholes.

 I’ve learned one thing from watching Crimson Peak and Mama, del Toro’s latest scare-fests.  If you’re the star and you die and come back from the dead, you get to be a good-looking ghost.

In Mama, Nicolaj Coster-Waldau plays twins. One kills his wife and attempts to kill his children.  He dies as Mama’s first victim. Given his deeds, the dad should look like quite the troll in the afterlife, but noooo—he just looks sad.

The ghosts of the victims of Crimson Peak’s murderous brother and sister team rattled and oozed.

When Edith was a child, her dead mother appeared as a ghost shortly after the funeral.  Looking like a tar-drenched mummy, Mommy deadest had chattering teeth, ten-inch spikey fingers and wore a funeral dress borrowed from Scarlet O’Hara’s Aunt Pitty Pat. After being stalked by a number of gross looking ghosts, Edith tries to address what is eating (pardon the pun) the shades.

Alas, Edith discovers the truth. It’s murder and she’s next!

But it’s complicated.  Edith and Thomas (the brother) are in love. Tom’s having second thoughts about murdering her (though he had offed his previous wives). Then sister Lucille (Jessica Chastain) discovers that she and her brother Tom are no longer exclusive as a couple. Hell hath no fury like Chastain. Seriously I would never want to have a fight with Jessica. She’s almost as manic here as she was in Zero Dark Thirty. A very fine actress, she steals every scene. And like every imperiled Victorian damsel, Edith’s old American boyfriend (Charlie Hunam—none of these actors are American other than Chastain), makes it just in time to feel Lucille’s steel, saving Edith.

Lucille, who makes quick work of the boyfriend, decides to teach Tom a lesson by shoving a knife through his face. Edith has had enough.

She takes Sister Dearest down, by whacking her with the business end of a shovel. Though the brave boyfriend, thanks to Tom, survives, Tom does not and his ghost distracts Lucille long enough for Edith’s shovel to make it count. And his ghost, looking rather gray, with blood floaties around his head, makes sad eyes at his soon to be out of there and on the way home bride. Hiddleston’s ghost had no chattering oversized teeth and no head parts with a gaping hole where your brains once sat.

What about Lucille? There’s not a hair out of place nor is there a bow untied as her ghost plays the piano. They wouldn’t dare.

In The Haunting of Hill House, what walked there, walked alone. And we never saw it. It was one of the scariest novels I ever read and the 1963 film, made of it, The Haunting, was incredibly creepy. During the 1999 remake, there were tons of scary special effects and each over-the-top one detracted. Though I love a good monster and a good acid-dripping alien, when it comes to ghosts, less is more.

The Passage: Dronely the Lonely

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The Passage: Dronely the Lonely, a Review

WARNING: BIG SPOILER ALERT–GO NO FURTHER IF YOU PLAN TO READ THE PASSAGE.

Okay you’ve been warned about THE PASSAGE. So trudge along with me.

ImageThe Passage is a novel written by Justin Cronin, a professor of English at Rice University. Random House published The Passage in 2010. Before I began to read The Passage, I read the back page, a list of acknowledgements. This list contained many famous names like Ridley Scott, higher ups at Random House, Creative Artists Agency, Orion, and Ballatine. In other words, he knows people. In addition, Cronin has written some award winning material and earned an MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, a great place to network. Plus, Justin Cronin is cute. All of those Rice girls likely agree.

 Here’s an overview of The Passage. As I read the last page, here are my reasons for wanting to throw it against a wall.

Cronin’s The Passage is 766 pages.  The first 208 pages are really, really good, almost brilliant. The novel begins with the plight of a five year-old girl Amy, when Amy’s  friendless single mother abandons her at a convent. We meet a nun named Lacey, a survivor of civil war in Sierra Leone.  Hoping to care for Amy and keep her at the convent, Lacey tells little white lies.

Then the narrative changes to first person in emails that detail research that is going on in the Amazon jungle.

They discover a batman statue in the jungle.  I don’t mean the super hero. This thing sports fangs and attitude. The US military is involved. In a horror novel, that’s never good. The scientists aim to conquer death. One scientist, Lear, is grieving the death of his wife. While in the jungle, several scientists are killed and eaten by vampire bats. We’re left wondering what secret the scientists discovered before they became bat food.

Now, we’re back at secret research facility. The military, with Lear’s help, experiments on a dozen condemned murderers.

Plagued seeping creeping dreams, the sex-offender personnel record vitals and clean up the guano. The new “bat men” hang upside down in their cells! This part of The Passage rivals the vampire dreams of Salem’s Lot. It’s very scary.

When two FBI agents recruit a death row inmate, Cronin’s skill really shines.

We meet Carter, a bewildered little man on death row for accidentally killing his benefactress. His victim, a housewife, rescued him from under a bridge and gave him work, a home and dignity. Carter, a gentle soul, accepts his fate. Wolfgast, one of the FBI men, grieves the death of his infant daughter. Wolfgast reluctantly recruits Carter. He knows the man is not a killer.  Carter’s journey to the research facility is Cronin at his best. We see Carter’s enjoyment. He is amazed at the America that his poverty and friendlessness denied him.

When Lear wants to test the serum on a child  Wolfgast and Doyle, his partner attempt to find one who won’t be missed.

That child is Amy. When Lacey takes Amy to the zoo, the little girl makes the TV news. All the animals freak out and try to follow the little girl. Amy explains that “They know what I am.” Okay, except that this whole segment is never revisited. We never find out what about Amy made the animals crazy. The zoo scene happens way before the events that led to Amy’s weird behavior. You assume that the zoo incident, along with Lacey’s prescience, will be given an explanation. Not.

Wolfgast tries to rescue Amy but trigger-happy government guy Richards stops him. Richards is the poster child for overkill.

The guy kills all the nuns for pete’s sake! At this point, the writing has been so good so far that you forgive the cartoon excess. The best two hundred pages ends with Wolfgast rescuing Amy after she’s been given a giant dose of refined bat juice. Then the convict batmen get free and kill everyone. Lacy wasn’t home when Richards killed the other nuns. Alive and determined, Lacey finds Amy. We leave Lacey the nun as she distracts the batmen (later called virals) allowing Amy and Wolfgast to get away. The last page of these 208 ends with Amy being alone with no one to protect her.

The rest of the book, all remaining 548  pages, begins almost one hundred years after the virals have pretty much killed the world.

It centers on the “Colony” a small group of survivors located in California. Exposition is in the form of a document presented at a “World Conference” in “1015 av.” Okay, so we know that there’s a world and conferences and that mankind as a global civilization ultimately survives. Now back to the document, a first person account written by Ida, a woman who was the oldest person at the “Colony’. Think The Stand’s “Mother Abigail.”

Ida makes awful tea and blurts out remarks like she knows what’s going to happen. She doesn’t!

The Colony survives by vigilance and keeping the lights on at night to keep out the virals. The adults protect the “Littles” (as in Lord of the Flies “little-uns”) who stay segregated in a schoolhouse. Unfortunately, the batteries are dying. In desperation, the “Watchers” turn on the forbidden radio, hoping to signal for help. It comes in the form of a teenage girl. After a hundred years, Amy has managed to hit puberty.  She is also mute.

I could name some of the zillion characters who continue the story. The novel jumps from one character to the other in a third person narrative.

Not one character pops out. Cronin doesn’t give enough weight to any of them to make us care. I kept waiting for the writing to get better, to get anywhere near the caliber of the first section.  There’s a series of forays, attacks, discoveries. We finally learn that all forty something million virals are telepathically connected to one or the other of the original twelve convicts. Like giant bee colonies, each convict is a queen bat-bee. If you can kill one of the originals, then those connected will remember who they are. Then they’ll wait until the sun comes up. These queenless virals will burn. And they fly to that great hive in the sky. Right. 

What really frosts my shorts is that Cronin leaves us hanging. He doesn’t tell us how or when the world is saved.

In fact, the last “document” presented at the “World Conference” reveals the assumed death of one of the major characters. We don’t know for sure. Cronin has a habit of killing someone off at the end of a segment. The next chapter informs us that they were rescued by some fluke. This is lazy writing. Cronin knows better and we the readers deserve better. The ending was very frustrating and I felt had.

Though much of it is engrossing, I can’t recommend The Passage.

I suspect others might disagree, I found much to like and a lot that was frustrating.

 

Cloud Atlas: Six Stories in Search of Ovaltine

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Cloud Atlas: Six Stories in Search of Ovaltine –a review:       ***Spoilers***

Images from the movie, "Cloud Atlas"

Cover for “Cloud Atlas,” the movie

If you plan on reading the book or if you plan on seeing the movie, this Cloud Atlas review may rain on your plan.

Before I saw the movie, I decided to read the book.

The novel, Cloud Atlas, is the third book by British author, David Mitchell.

Cloud Atlas has won awards, including the British Book and the Nebula. Cloud Atlas is a collection of six related stories, described as a puzzle or a set of Russian nesting dolls. I think paper dolls would be closer.

Each of the six stories takes place in a different time and setting.

Mitchell writes all but one in first person and that is where the similarity ends. Each story is written in a different style. Mitchell’s command of the narrative style of the 19th century and his inventiveness in terms of language are exceptional. The detailed settings of the future worlds in stories five and six are impressive.

Of the Cloud Atlas stories, five are in two parts. Story six, in one piece. is in the middle of the novel and it follows the five half stories.

Story six, “Sloosha’s Crossin’ an’ Ev’rythin’ After,” describes the gasps of a dying Earth. Except for a dying few who cling to what’s left of civilization and scientific study, humanity has devolved into superstitious tribal societies where the strong prey on the weak. After story six which is in one piece, Mitchell completes the other five in reverse order. Story five, “An Orison of Somni-451” resumes after Story six until he ends the novel by completing story one, “The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing.

“The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing,“ written ala Herman Melville is the first story in the Cloud Atlas.

The story is a first person narrative. After a shipwreck, thirty something American notary, Adam Ewing writes in his journal. It’s the 1850’s. We meet Ewing as he waits on a South Pacific island. Along with Ewing is his companion, Dr. Goose, an eccentric English physician. Following this story was tough sledding. Ewing learns about the victimized peace-loving Morioiris, enslaved by the Maoris (part of the evil “White Man” plan). Ewing learns of this injustice as he witnesses a Moriori being flogged.

When exploring the island, Ewing discovers thousands of carvings of faces.

Frightened, he scrambles to safety and encounters a beating heart hanging from a tree. He speculates on what kind (hog, human?) but never solves the mystery. As his sea voyage continues via a Dutch ship, Ewing rescues a stowaway, Autua–the Moriori he saw being beaten. The mid sentence ending thing was annoying.

Story two, “Letters From Zedelghem” takes place in 1931 Europe, beginning in England then moving to Belgium.

A young English musician/composer, Robert Frobisher, writes his best friend and lover, Sixsmith, telling him of his plans to travel to Belgium and exploit Ayrs, a famous composer who hasn’t written anything since contracting syphilis. Frobisher is something of a snot and the black sheep of his family. Leaving a trail of bad debts, he asks Sixsmith to send him money. Frobisher means to convince Ayrs that he, Robert, will help him to continue his work.

Rather than Frobisher exploiting Ayrs, crafty old Ayrs takes credit for Frobisher’s new compositions.

There’s no sympathy for Robert. He’s a narcissist and a schemer. Out of the blue, not related to anything else in the story, Robert finds the first half of Ewing’s journal. Also, we learn that Robert has a crescent shaped birthmark on his shoulder. We’re left hanging, the story unfinished. There isn’t been one character in either story whom I’ve found interesting, nor have I cared.

Cloud Atlas story three, “Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery,” has two ties to story two (“Letters …”) and one to story one.

Three is the only one of the six written in third person. We know this story takes place in the 1970’s because Disco music plays. Stuck in an elevator Luisa Rey, a journalist in her 30’s, meets Sixsmith, a sixty-something scientist and Frobisher’s friend from story two. Although they are strangers, Luisa and Sixsmith spend over an hour together feeling very comfortable. Luisa has a birthmark on her shoulder, just like Frobisher’s. Sixsmith has written a report, blowing the whistle on plans for a dangerous new energy plant, an atomic energy plant like Three Mile Island.

And so the killing begins.

First, someone murders Sixsmith and you know Luisa’s on that list. Luisa is the daughter of a cop, a dead hero. There’s a hit-man named Smoke after her.  We leave the story as her car plunges off a bridge and into some deep water. I found story three to be the weakest. The plot would have been at home on any Hawaii Five-O, Columbo, or Rockford Files episode. The characters were paper thin and totally forgettable.

Story four, “The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish” begins with the second murder in the Cloud Atlas.

An author murders the reviewer who panned his book by throwing the reviewer off a balcony. Oops, better be careful.Timothy Cavendish, the book’s publisher, is in his late sixties. When the book starts making money, Cavendish joyfully pays off debts until the imprisoned author’s thuggish brothers threaten him, demanding 60,000 pounds. Before he flees, Cavendish receives a submission: “Half Lives, The First Luisa Rey Mystery.” Cavendish begs his own estranged brother (Cavendish slept with his wife) for help and then the story breaks,

His sneaky brother traps Cavendish in an old folks’ home, where a Nurse Ratched running things.

This story was marginally more interesting because of Cavendish’s chaotic nightmarish journey. His randy reminisces of past romances makes use of Mitchell’s florid narrative style. Mitchell showcases literary flourishes while the character declares: “I disapprove of flashbacks, foreshadowings, and tricksy devices; they belong in the 1980’s with M.A.s in post-modernism and chaos theory.” Style-wise, the story goes from being The Lavender Hill Mob to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest with Alec Guinness as McMurphy.

Story five, “An Orison of Somni-451” is a dystopic science fiction piece set in Korea. Corporations run what’s left of a polluted world.

The narrative is a dialogue between Somni-451, a rebel “fabricant” and the “Archivist.” Somni began her life as a customized clone, working for “Papa Song” a fast food franchise where fabricants serve twelve years, and then are rewarded with a glorious retirement in “Hawaii.” Tinkering with her programming results in a wiser, more informed Somni, who becomes a pawn of the “Union,” the rebel entity trying to upend the Establishment. Most of the story involves Somni on the run to rebel headquarters, where she will become a figurehead and mentor to facilitate a fabricant uprising. Along the way, Somni encounters a statue of Buddha. When a nun explains the meaning of the symbol, we encounter the “author’s message,”

Whenever I see an overt “author’s” message in fiction, I remember Woody Allen’s movie, Bananas.

Or was it Take the Money and Run? I’m not sure but I do remember the joke. In the Allen movie, during the “death” scene dialogue, the words “author’s message” kept flashing on the screen. “An Orison of Somni-451” was the first story I actually enjoyed. I did notice elements of other works of science fiction. The layered corruption and the Asian setting evoke Philip Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.” Somni’s reflection on the Union’s true purpose echoes O’Brien’s speech in 1984: “The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power.”  And what really happens aboard that fabricant ship bound for Hawaii? Think Charleton Heston screaming, “It’s people!”

Before her execution, Somni asks to see the movie version of The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish.

It is my opinion that this connection to Story Four is imposed on the Somni story. I can’t find any indication that shows Somni’s choice as an outgrowth of the plot or her character development. Why does Somni want to spend the remaining minutes of her life seeing a movie? Like characters in Stories One, Two and Three, Somni has a crescent shaped birthmark on her shoulder. I recognize this as a device that implies connection and identity.There needed to be more.

After story six, Mitchell completes the rest of the stories, starting with five.

As I said, I did enjoy Somni’s story. In the second part of Story Four, I got a kick out of the wild prison break in the Cavendish tale. However, the only intriguing part of Luisa Rey was her recognition of Frobisher’s music. The music could have been used to connect all of the stories. And there’s Luisa’s hesitating when she passes The Prophetess, the ship in “The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing.” The Prophetess should have appeared in all of the stories. But it doesn’t and Frobisher’s suicide at the end of Story Two made me shrug. Unfortunately he was too unlikeable.

Then I read part two of Story One, “The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing.”

I assumed that Mitchell would unite all the stories into one, universal narrative. He didn’t. I read again, assuming I didn’t read it carefully enough.

 As I finished Cloud Atlas, I was reminded of another movie, A Christmas Story.

Like the nun’s speech and Buddha’s statue, Mitchell wants to make sure we understand. So the last two pages are pure “author’s message.” It’s 1939’s middle-America and Christmas time. Ralphie, a nine-year old boy, schemes for a bee-bee-gun to be under the tree. A fan of Little Orphan Annie, Ralphie has sent in all the boxtops to get Annie’s secret decoder ring. When the ring finally arrives in the mail, he eagerly listens to the radio show for Annie’s secret message. This message is accessible only to those in the inner circle of decoder ring-bearers. Ignoring the protests of his younger brother who has “to go,” Ralphie locks himself in the bathroom. Outside, little brother Randy wails and pounds the door.

His breath labored, a defiant and determined Ralphie turns the ring to find each letter.

Then, his excitement barely contained, he reads Annie’s message. Rather than a secret formula or news of a decoder ring-bearer secret meeting, Annie tells him to “Be sure to drink your Ovaltine!”  Ralphie is disappointed to say the least. Disgusted, he feels Little Orphan Annie has played him. When I read the rest of “The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing,”I knew just how Ralphie felt.