Category Archives: Movies

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.

Melancholia is no tiptoe through the tulips.

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Melancholia is no tiptoe through the tulips

A review of Von Trier’s Melancholia.   ***Spoilers***

 

melancholia“I’m trudging through this gray woolly yarn . . .” Justine tells her sister Claire as Melancholia begins.

Justine is a twenty-something woman who suffers from severe depression. Melancholia, a 2011 film, was written and directed Lars von Trier.

Von Trier is a Danish filmmaker (Dancer in the Dark) whose idea of a good yarn is the flip-side of what Disney churns out.

Disney makes feel-good/think-less product while von Trier makes feel-miserable/think-alot art films. After a series of strange slow-motion images where we see Dunst seeming to flee, then stop, stop, then flee, the movie shifts from neutral into low gear where it seems stuck for the length of the film.

It’s not exactly like watching paint dry–I wish it were that easy.

The narrative begins with Justine’s wedding. There’s an uncomfortable tension that made me want to head for the nearest exit. We watch as Justine checks off names on her insult/alienate to-do list–all learned at the sharp knee of her toxic cold-eyed mother (Charlotte Rampling) with a little help from the passive-aggressive dad (John Hurt).

As we watch, we shake our heads.

Why does long-suffering sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsburg) and Claire’s ultra-rich, exasperated husband Jack (Kiefer Sutherland) put up with the little darling? Justine insults her boss (Stellan Skarsgard) a nasty man, but one who just promoted her. She skips out on the after-wedding main-event where the bewildered groom (Alex Skarsgard) sits on the bed in his white shirt and underwear. She tells him to “give her a moment” then makes straight for the golf-course (it’s night) where she practically rapes a wedding guest. The groom takes that as a sign things aren’t going to work and stomps out.

One more thing– We learn that because of Melancholia, the world is going to end.

There’s a planet on a collision course with earth. We know this from the opening images accompanied by lots of somber music. I wonder if von Trier and Terrance Mallick swap ideas and tunes. The planet is called Melancholia and all the heavy-duty scientists, Jack assures Claire, say it’s going to pass us by. Right. In the meantime, Justine goes from bad to worse. Claire decides she needs a sister’s care. This was the only time the movie connected for me. Depression is a serious, painful, often disabling illness. Dunst conveys this in her performance. Because she is virtually catatonic, I kept wondering why she wasn’t in a hospital.  Why would Claire expose her small son to Dunst’s unstable behavior?

As Claire realizes that Jack is wrong and Melancholia is going to collide with the earth, Justine gets better.

Misery loves company, I guess. Justine tells Claire that she’s known all along the world was going to end because she “knows things” like how many beans there were in the “guess how many beans in the jar” game that was a party game at the wedding from hell. Life as a concept is bad according to Justine; when comes to life in the universe–we on earth are all there is and the universe is going to correct its mistake. Despite the theatricality of the ending, I wasn’t moved. I’m sure a lot of people were–mostly critics from what I’ve read. Regardless, this film wasn’t my cup of tea.

When it comes to deep thought, I like to down it with a spoon full of sugar.

Melancholia, deeply profound as some might find it, was pure caster oil.

 

Skull Island: A Review

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Skull Island: Grumble in the Jungle      a review      ***spoilers!!!***

Skull Island is a new twist on King Kong. I’ll just say it: If I were Kong, I’d sue for defamation of character. This King Kong remake is the second film by director Jordan Vogt-Roberts (The Kings of Summer). Screenwriters, Dan Gilroy (Night Crawler, The Bourne Legacy) and Max Borenstein (2014’s Godzilla) wrote the script. Unfortunately, this Kong is not the 1930’s beast beguiled by beauty or the misfit ape competing with Jeff Bridges for Dwan (Jessica Lange). Skull Island‘s Kong is not the monster intrigued by Naomi Watts’ soft shoe. On Skull Island, Kong, who walks upright like Chuck Norris, is Clint Eastwood’s get-off-my-lawn curmudgeon of Grand Torino.

Cover image Skull Island

IMDB Skull Island image

When old enough, I often stayed up late to watch the 1933 version on Saturday nights.

Despite the wooden acting, the surreal jungle and Kong’s terrifying entrance always pulled me in. The sexual undercurrents of Kong’s attachment to Dwan is all I remember of the eighties version. Later, I found Peter Jackson’s effort moderately entertaining, especially the Jurassic Park dinos. However, I enjoyed it more on DVD; the huge bugs weren’t nearly as gross.

On Skull Island, it isn’t Kong who loses his freedom; there’s no tragic fall. Instead, humanity might fall.

Waiting within the earth are monsters that can wipe us out. Skull Island begins with a WWII dogfight. Planes weave and dive above a sandy shore. When two crash, pilots, an American and a Japanese, struggle out of the wreckage. As they fight, something huge rises on the other side of a cliff; it’s Kong.

Then the scene fades into 1973. The Viet Nam War is ending and Skull Island beckons.

Monster hunters Randa and Brooks (John Goodman and Corey Hawkins) plan a trip to a mysterious island. Randa believes that someday, monsters will emerge from the earth and kill us all if we’re not ready. And oh, yes, they’ll need a military escort.

In Viet Nam, Lt. Colonel Preston (Samuel L. Jackson), who hates to lose, prepares to leave for Skull Island.

A mission to a dangerous island could take the sting out of defeat. Along with tracking specialist Conrad (Tom Hiddleston) and photographer, Weaver (Brie Larson), Preston and his men board a ship. Later, they’re on their way to Skull Island. Nearing the island’s mysterious clouds, the explorers pile into helicopters to scout.  In a few days, more helicopters will meet them.

Ala Apocalypse Now, ‘70’s music blasting, helicopters drop bombs on Skull Island.

Testing the depth of the island, they discover Randa’s “monster.”  Predictably, it’s Kong, who reacts with a “who left the screen door open” glower. Unprovoked, Preston attacks and bullets fly. Kong bats the choppers away like giant flies. When they all crash, soldiers die.

Outraged, Preston vows revenge. He and his surviving men will pursue Kong on foot.

Conrad’s group (Weaver, researchers, etc.) looks for the rendezvous site. This means wandering through arid terrain that pales in comparison to the dreamy jungle of the original or the bug infested nightmare of Jackson’s movie. Suddenly, the American pilot (John C. Reilly) of the opening scene appears. A chatty eccentric, the pilot introduces them to the locals. The locals are a National Geographic tribe of mutes who taught him how to avoid the island beasties.

Don’t mess with Kong, the pilot warns. On Skull Island, Kong fights the monsters.

It’s all a misunderstanding, you see. Like Walt, the old man in Grand Torino, Kong defends the neighborhood by removing the undesirables. While Preston seeks revenge, Conrad’s group, including the pilot, scramble for safety. Flesh-eating wildlife dine on several before the rest are rescued. Of course, Preston’s plans do not go well, especially for Preston. Thankfully, Kong lives to grumble another day.

Despite its A-list actors, I was glad to leave Skull Island. I didn’t care who got eaten.

And the monsters? I’ve read several reviews of this movie. Many describe them as innovative and scary. Maybe it’s just me; I couldn’t connect to the story enough to be scared. I missed the sticky hot jungle. Dinosaurs belong on Kong’s Skull Island, not a weird buffalo, giant daddy-long-legs or skeletal things that looked like dead possums. Plus, I want a huge wall hiding terrible things.

There was one thing I liked. I’ve always wondered where Kong came from, meaning: did he have a family?

Was there a Mrs. Kong, a Kong clan? Skull Island takes us to the Kong family plot. Sadly, Kong, we’re told, is the last one. Is this the last of Kong? I hope not. If not, lose the daddy-long-legs and bring back T-Rex or even Godilla. Bring back the stop-motion charm of Faye Wray’s lovesick ape. Most of all bring back the mystery; bring back the wonder.