Weekly Round Up Reviews - 1.30.22

1.28.22 - A Night To Remember - Walter Lord (Book)

Finally got around to reading Lord's definitive 1955 retelling of the sinking of the Titanic. How it took me this long to finally pick this one, I'll never know. I understand why - even though movies, documentaries, even the discovery of the wreck all happened well after this book came out - it's considered so definitive. Lord tells a brisk but incredibly detailed story of the event, absolutely packed with what feels like hundreds of tiny anecdotes and stories that create a much fuller picture than any other overview has ever done for me. I think Lord interviewed some 50+ survivors from the tragedy and weaves together their stories into a fascinating mosaic. What interested me the most was not the actual stories of the sinking themselves, but the extensive recaps of the survivors in the lifeboats and how they managed the night until other ships came to rescue them. This was a part of the story that had only ever been glossed over for me. Now I want to go back to the Titanic museum all over again. 

1.28.22 - Gwendy's Button Box - Stephen King (Book)

Really a novella, this was co-written by King and Richard Chizmar, and is a fun little fast paced read. Gwendy is gifted a magical box with strange, mysterious, and largely unknown powers by a man in black with initials R.F. (hmm, King, where have we heard these elements before?) and must navigate through her teen years as a guardian of this strange power. A nice simple concept and a nicely sized story, I didn't want it any longer or shorter.

James Bond Movie Project Recap

 Just so we have an index for all of my discussions in a single place - here we are

Dr. No (1962)

From Russia With Love (1963)

Goldfinger (1964)

Thunderball (1965)

You Only Live Twice (1967)

On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)

Diamonds Are Forever (1971)

Live and Let Die (1973)

The Man With the Golden Gun (1974)

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

Moonraker (1979)

For Your Eyes Only (1981)

Octopussy (1983)

A View To Kill (1985)

The Living Daylights (1987)

Licence to Kill (1989)

GoldenEye (1995)

Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)

The World Is Not Enough (1999)

Die Another Day (2002)

Casino Royale (2006)

Quantum of Solace (2008)

Skyfall (2012)

Spectre (2015)

No Time To Die (2021)

1.27.22 - NO TIME TO DIE (James Bond #25)

[Spoilers Ahead]

We've done it. We've made it. It's finally time for 

NO TIME TO DIE, in which Bond must save the world from a murderous gene-altering madman, and also face his own personal demons in order to have a chance at finding love and redemption. 

It is actually somewhat rare - in the history of Bond - that the script is written for a Bond movie knowing without a doubt it will be that actor's last go round as the character. Many times the actual casting decision to move on or for a Bond actor to retire was not made until after their last movie was released and done. But here in NO TIME TO DIE, the end is clearly in mind from the beginning as we reach the end of the Craig era. 

Let's deal with Daniel Craig, just for a minute. He's better with each movie, and yet I'm not sure if this is his personal growth as an actor within the role, or because the material - and character itself - evolves across his span of movies like nothing we've ever seen before. I may wax poetical in another post about how the Craig-era Bond films are practically an entirely different franchise from the previous 40 years / 20 movies that go before - but whatever the reason, Craig is better than ever in this one. His Bond here is older, wiser, more well-rounded, and a far distance from the never-crack-a-smile version from the first couple of his films. I will ponder for some time Craig vs all the other actors, but it's almost tough to make a comparison, because he's playing Bond in a totally different set of films than anyone who's gone before. 

That - combined with the accelerated nature of this viewing project - is one reason I struggled with some elements of Craig's Bond. It's a rebooted / different timeframe, but after the first 20 movies, I had a difficult time watching him make real connection with women in this series - Vesper in Casino Royale (whose presence echos strongly all the way through this movie) - through to Madeline, the most significant and enduring woman we've seen in the entire franchise, having two whole movies to form an emotional, um..bond with Bond. But, by the end of this one, I think I was finally on board with the romantic throughlines of this era - and again, I think any difficulty of that on my part is not necessarily related to the writing, just to my building preconceptions and the immediacy with which they were present when watching these final movies. 

This is a long movie. Two hours and 45 minutes - the longest by some stretch - and yet rarely does it drag. Sure, it could be shorter, but I was very impressed at how handily it managed to keep interest the whole run time. There is a LOT happening in this movie in so many layers, from the romantic plots to the main villain/McGuffin to the re-confrontation with Blofeld to the re-connection and loss of key supporting characters - it's honestly a pretty impressive feat that they've managed to layer it all in to a palatable sandwich - it could have been a lot messier. 

There are some really great touches - I love the Hall of M's (featuring portraits of Judi Dench and Bernard Lee) in MI6's HQ. We also get a real true-blue gadget scene along with Q's ongoing role as supporting tech advisor. These last 3 movies - especially the last two - have really upped the team/squad dynamic that's never been present before. For 50 years Bond was a lone wolf (accompanied by a Bond girl sidekick if anything) - but here it's not just Bond + 4-5 other people (M, Q, 2nd 00 agent, Bond girl, Tanner) who are all working together in the climax. Bond is the leader, the spearpoint, the head - he will always be a lone-wolf at heart - but he has good, competant people on his side, and that is a wonderful thing to watch.

Rami Malek is a great Bond villain. He has that terrifying air and demeanor that lends itself so well to the sort of maniacal mad-man that Bond must always seem to face against. And Christoph Waltz makes the most of his supporting villain role with a truly chilling face-to-face scene with Bond that was absolutely captivating. 

Bond dies at the end. That wasn't spoiled for me, and I'm so thankful. I wasn't surprised, because the movie absolutely makes it work, and yet I was surprised, because whoa that has literally never happened in 60 years / the last 25 days for me. After seeing the Craig era, I will believe anything they do next with the character. Another reboot? An era with old man Bond if they decide they DO in fact want Idris Elba after just hinting at it for a decade? Gender swapped Bond? Anything is possible. The Craig era stands alone as it's own sub-Bond franchise, and I'm impressed with the bold strides they made in how they can tell these stories. 

I'm a little melancholy after finishing this project - not sure if that's the emotional denouement of actually hitting the goal of watching all 25 movies in 25 days, or if the emotional stakes and payoff of the last movie actually did get to me. I do know that bringing back Louis Armstrong's "We Have All the Time In The World" was an inspired musical choice (we heard strains of that the one other time in the franchise they tried to really get you invested in Bond's love life - all the way back in 1969 with George Lazenby's Bond getting married only to have his wife be murdered literal minutes later). It's a great song, it's a great moment, I watched the credits all the way through just to start the process of processing my feelings about this movie, about all these movies. 

I do know one thing - as promised by the credits - James Bond Will Return. Now that I know who the man is - I'm already looking forward to it. 

1.26.22 - SPECTRE (James Bond #24)

The penultimate Bond! (for now!)

SPECTRE, which finds Bond (at long last!) reunited with his chief nemesis - Ernst. Stavro. Blofeld. - Head of SPECTRE!

There's no surprise in this movie at all. I mean I suppose there was for people who went into this with no knowledge of the history and early days of the Bond Franchise (I think I can safely say I am no longer one of those people) - but here we are some 45 years after we last saw Blofeld and SPECTRE in the movies, back again. There is a long and complicated behind-the-scenes reason for this having to do with the rights to the Blofeld character and SPECTRE organization which were in limbo or threat-of-lawsuit for literal decades between Ian Fleming (and hence the Eon-Bond film producers) and an early screenwriter who worked with Fleming and staked a claim to the character. So - that's why SPECTRE has been absent from over four decades of Bond on Screen - litigation. Marvelous. But, finally, the rights were won back, and so here we have the return of Blofeld as played marvelously by Christoph Waltz. This guy could act his way out of a paper bag, and I would absolutely tune in to watch. He's marvelous. 

The rest of the movie is - well, good, but not as good as Skyfall. Sam Mendes returns to direct and I've decided I do just really like the way he puts a movie together. From the opening almost 5-minute long shot to begin the cold open, to the relative pacing and finely-tuned direction of so many great scenes (the slickest Bond car chase yet in Rome, the nod-to-from-Russia-With-Love epic hand to hand fight inside a train, and the Blofeld-tortures-Bond scene) - there are some real fine moments in this movie. It flips the script a bit on how I seem to have felt about a lot of Bond movies - in this one the first half feels like a bit of a drag, but then we pick up into excitement as soon as Blofeld appears and we are ramping into the last act of the movie. Overall there's just a little too much dragged out suspense and a tighter overall script probably would have served the movie better. 

I'm glad Blofeld and SPECTRE are back, my only real complaint is - well, they really kinda felt shoehorned in. There's this whole deal about "Hey Danny Craig, aCtUaLlY the bad guys you've been fighting the last 3 films have all been my minions, I've been behind it all!" The problem is this...feels forced. There's nothing other than Blofeld's word to tie this together, and no real evidence. Based on when the rights for Blofeld/SPECTRE came back, they obviously weren't planning this from the start, but you know what I would have loved, would have been some flashback scenes (even if having to be recreated) from previous movies showing a little more concrete evidence of Blofeld - him behind the curtain in a shot from Casino Royale, or a meeting between the Quantum dude and Blofeld - something like that - versus just a quick shot of previous movie villains "oh yeah they were all my dudes". 

It's still a pretty good movie, just not perfect.

Observations - 

- I forgot to mention it yesterday but I chuckled that the last act of Skyfall was basically Bond Does Home Alone. And here Mendes brings back the same script structure only this time it's Bond Does a Heist With Friends. 

- Ralph Fiennes is a great new M and I'm glad they spent so much time introducing him in Skyfall, so he hits the ground running in this movie. 

- Great to see Judi Dench in one last cameo giving Bond a mission from beyond the grave. 

- Bonk Count - 2 bonks with 2 women - total is now 64 with 52

1.25.22 - SKYFALL (James Bond #23)

Finally we get the James Bond we need, the James Bond we deserve, in 

SKYFALL, wherein Bond must go head to head against a former MI6 agent out for revenge.

This is the Bond movie I have been waiting for. Just gonna lead right off with the call that this is absolutely my favorite Daniel Craig Bond movie so far, and easily one of my top two or three in the whole series. This film is SO excellent, start to finish. 

First off, what a great cold open that has some great elements but also - very importantly - is just exceptionally well paced. Judging pacing/editing is very much just an intuitive/by-feel process for me - but just as the opening car chase cold open of Quantum of Solace was too frenetic, too insane, the open here has a style and pacing where after 10 minutes I simply knew I was going to enjoy how this movie was put together. I'll give props to Sam Mendes here for direction, and the whole team (whomever might be responsible for the choices that click for me) - but here at last I find the perfect merging of what makes me enjoy a Bond Movie with the new 21st century gritty-realistic Bond feel that equals an absolute winner. 

Craig not only finds his footing more each time he plays Bond, but he just has better material here. Bond being left for dead, then resurrecting himself out of retirement, is a nice new mini-arc, and drunk/unsteady/unshaven Bond is a side of the character that Craig gets to put his teeth into and bring the first real believable humanity to Bond that I've seen yet. This whole Bond coming back to face a new threat takes up all of Act 1 of the movie (and it took a while) - but I loved every minute of it. 

Then we get into a little more of the familiar rhythm of a Bond film, but even so we're firing on all cylinders. We get a (brief) casino scene, we get some good chases and fights (the extended shot of the silhouetted hand-to-hand combat fight scene between Bond and Patrice was one of those real "wow" moments of cinematography for me). We get a new Q with totally new Q energy and yet some familiar prickly vibes. I'm a Ben Whishaw fan so - even though we're still very gadget-lite, his presence on screen makes me happy. I really enjoy him in the latter half of the movie as well when he's providing not just gadgetry, but being a general computer/tech wizard for Bond. This is a great, great role for the character to graduate in to, and even though it took them a couple movies to decide what to do with Q, it was worth the wait. 

Javier Bardem is a great actor, and a great villain. He brings terrific characterization here, and his plot/story/reasoning is excellent, plain and simple revenge on MI6 with a focus on M. One of the downsides to Trevalyn from GoldenEye was a lack of focus along with the totally unnecessary extra plan to make a lot of money and EMP London back to the stone age (just to give Bond a Big Scary McGuffin Weapon to take down). There's no McGuffin here, and we see that when well focused, written, and acted, a villain doesn't actually need one. 

Finally we get the payoff we've been building as well for a couple movies with this more personal relationship between Bond and M. They've been playing at it, but I wasn't sure if they were going to do anything with it. It's a great arc and a great payoff here. Remember how I said it was great a few movies ago when they gave Judi Dench more to do but wished she could have gotten even more action? Here it is. Here is the fulfillment of that wish. She is wonderful in this role and this part and the end of her journey feels totally validated once we get there, never rushed or forced. This movie made me care more about some of these key characters than anything else in the last 20+ movies has, and they have only earned that right after so long. 

Skyfall made me realize this - a Bond movie is good when it's being CONFIDENT in whatever elements it's using to tell its story - not just when it uses any of the Bond Narrative Linchpins as crutches to fill in the Mad Libs plot/script. Skyfall is confident, and that is key. 

I could go on, but I won't. A marvelous movie. Also 2 bonks with 2 girls so - 62 with 50. 

1.24.22 - QUANTUM OF SOLACE (James Bond #22)

Daniel Craig returns in 

QUANTUM OF SOLACE, wherein Bond seeks revenge for the death of Vesper Lynd from the last movie and finds himself squared against an environmentalist-capitalist seeking to monopolize the water resources of Bolivia

We continue making big bold brave choices in the Daniel Craig era. Look, I'm going to say this right out, my biggest complaint about Quantum of Solace is that it feels less like a Bond movie than anything that's gone before. Don't get me wrong - this is still a good movie - but I don't feel as though it's a particular good Bond movie. We get some of the clear hallmarks of the franchise. Bond up against a villain with a natural-resource based plot to make a ton of money - this feels pretty traditional. We have Craig as Bond, who I am still on the fence about, he's still stone faced and has Deep Emotional Trauma but I can't quite figure out what he's doing about it other than a lot of brooding. This movie also has chase scenes - a LOT of chase scenes. Good night, it's the shortest Bond movie (at just over an hour and 45 minutes) and yet they manage to squeeze a car chase, a boat chase, a plane chase, and at least two foot chases into this run time. 3/4 of this movie is Bond running from things. Which - knowing that the script was barely done when the Writers Strike happened and Craig and the director were having to make up some things as they go - extenuating circumstances, etc etc I suppose. But I mean also - does this film have ANY gadgets? I mean any? Other than fancy cell phone tracking? Look, I'm not saying we need Q and a whole slew of gadgets, but to have virtually nothing in this department is one of the reasons this feels like a great action/spy movie - but not a whole lot like a Bond movie. 

They still pack in a lot of plot, confusingly at times, but enough so that the short run time still feels quite full. We get the return of the dot-dot-dot scene and a true gunbarrel sequence to END the movie (had this just not shown up at all I might have actually thrown this movie out with the bathwater). It's good, it's fine, but if I was really trying to highlight to someone what makes Bond Bond - this is the last movie I would show them. 

Only one Bond Bonk here, we hit the 60 mark with 48 different women. Only three movies left!

1.23.22 - Weekly Round Up Reviews

1.19.22 - Eternals (Movie)

This movie...didn't do much for me. It's a Marvel movie, it looks like a Marvel movie, it smells and tastes and sounds like a Marvel movie, but there's just nothing compelling about the story or characters whatsoever to me. I think there's something about coming in with a large band of new characters that keeps me from caring about any of them. Individual movies work (Shang Chi), and group movies work once we know and care about the individuals (see all Avengers movies basically, for the last 10 years), but coming in with 10 new characters and expecting me to care about them and their plot is a big ask, and one that reaches too far for me. 

1.23.22 - On Stranger Tides (Book)

So - this was delightful - my new gold standard for a "rollicking pirate adventure". To be frank, at times this book feels all over the place. There is what I'd consider our central character / protagonist, John "Shandy" Chandagnac, but it's a widely-cast net of other pirates, both real and invented, with multiple plot themes and elements just all slung in there all over the place. Piracy, magic, legends, sorcery, the Fountain of Youth, Blackbeard, voodoo rituals, puppets, swordfights, I could go on and on. And yet it all works - it took me a couple chapters to get in but once I did I didn't want to put it down. And it crackles right up through the epilogue to the final pages. This book is about to inspire a 2022 Pirate Bender, and I'm not even mad about it. 

1.23.22 - CASINO ROYALE (James Bond #21)

We graduate to the Daniel Craig era in 

CASINO ROYALE, in which Bond must go all-in in a high stakes poker match against a terrorist financier.

This is the one and only Bond movie that I have seen all the way through before this watch-through project. I saw this at some point a few years after it came out, easily over a decade ago - still remembered much of it although viewing it now in light of the previous 20 Bond movies proved quite illuminating. 

Here's what's most illuminating - it is hard to overstate exactly how much Casino Royale breaks the Bond Movie Mold. The distance between Die Another Day and Casino Royale - while only 4 years on the calendar - feels like AGES, for so many different reasons. Where to begin. With Bond himself, probably - here's Daniel Craig playing a for-the-most-part quite stone-faced Bond as an early incarnation of himself - earning his 007 status in the cold open and references being made to this being the start of his career [this is...confusing in some respects. After 40 years of establishing that there both is and isn't straight continuity in the universe, and coming to terms with that, here we have a new Bond, early in his career - yet Judi Dench's same M that we had in the Pierce Brosnan era. It hurts my head if I think too much about it so, I try not to]. Anyway - Craig is definitely an action hero with a great physique and plays Bond pretty cold and smooth. It is interesting to me that (given his "turn" at the end of the movie") - he isn't more glib at times, but the character is what the character is, and even at worst it's hard to complain about Craig. He looks the part and handles it all with ease. 

But let's just talk about the rest of the movie, the production. Die Another Day, the end of the Brosnan Era in 2002, still kept a lot of that 90s feel. What's astonishing to me is that here in 2006, Casino Royale feels like it could have come out this year. It's a four year leap that feels like 5 times that. I don't know what overhauls they made in the creative/production department, but THIS movie feels totally different from anything that's come before. If anything it's more action oriented (and that's saying something coming from the Dalton and Brosnan eras where big gun fights became more the norm). But not only do they get a new Bond and updated production values, they leave out quite a few standard elements - no Q, a real reduction in gadgetry, no opening dot-line-into-gun-barrel sequence (replaced entirely with a black-and-white cold open that recasts the gun barrel moment into an actual end-of-scene device - again - totally new!). This is not your father's (or your grandfather's Bond, in any way shape or form. And yet - it still is. Bond is still Bond. Keeping Judi Dench as M was probably vital for keeping some feel of continuity. I've said before that Bond movies are at their best when they are doing new things, and include casino scenes - that's this movie, in its entirety. It frankly amazes me that they were able to reinvent the wheel this much and nail it so squarely. It would have been very easy to alienate a lot of Bond-fans with just a few missteps, but somehow they avoid the pitfalls. 

The story itself is fine and good - the motivations are somewhat background in favor of the action and tension - terrorist financing and lost money and high stakes winner-take-all poker games. It's great writing to put the entirety of the poker game as Act 2 - where Bond movies so often drag, this one paces the card game well (interspersed with some action) and is able to hold the tension marvelously throughout. Mikkelson's characterization of Le Chiffre is terrific, while concern over money seems considerably lower stakes than some villain plots, his persona makes up for any shortcomings. 

I am going back and forth on the bonks for this movie. I cannot decide if he did or did not for sure bonk the red dress lady in Act 1. He certainly seduced her for information, but he makes the call for champagne and caviar for one and then immediately is shown going off to confront the dude at the body exhibit. I actually DON'T think he went all the way to making love with her. He certainly bonked Vesper later, so I'm just going to give him 1 with 1 this movie, for a total of 59 with 47.

Whew, that's a lot of words. It was great to revisit this movie. I'm most interested now in what the rest of the Craig Era looks like. We'll find out this week!

1.22.22 - DIE ANOTHER DAY (James Bond #20)

Today Bond enters the 21st century in 

DIE ANOTHER DAY, wherein Bond must thwart a face-swapped villain's plot to use a giant diamond space laser to do a little political reconfiguring of the Korean peninsula. 

After possibly the most complete cold opening yet (we see infiltration, spycraft, gadgets, Bond-being-found-out, escape, explosions, a vehicle chase scene, hand to hand combat, another escape, recapture, and torture - all in the first 12 minutes) - we get into what is possibly the most derivative Bond movie of them all. Now - this does seem to be a purposeful choice. This is the 20th Bond movie occuring at the time of the 40th anniversary of the opening of the franchise, so they naturally seek to highlight that. And highlight it they do. While it's most obvious in a Q scene in a relics room just filled with props from previous movies, it also was VERY clear that the screenwriters decided to mad-lib this movie's plot directly from every other Bond movie up to this point. I'm sure there are more complete articles out there documenting every single reference and element gleaned from the previous 19 films, but suffice it to say that almost every major plot beat feels like it has roots in a previous Bond installment. 

This...isn't necessarily all bad. It's 2002 now, and (apart from a few mangled scenes), the action is better, the cinematography more impressive, and it's not a terrible thing to revisit Bond's Greatest Hits all crammed into 2 hours and 10 minutes. But - as I've said before - a Bond movies greatest strength is what it can give you that's fresh and new - not just an updated and better-looking-version of what's come before. There are some new elements - we have a real honest to goodness sword fight that is quite impressive, we have Bond being tortured and recovering with long hair and beard, we have a...car that turns invisible? I actually kind of liked that. Oh and nice to have car chase/fight between Bond's superpowered car and an evenly matched villain car with just as many shotguns and rocket launchers on board as Bond's. 

It's still quite watchable. Halle Berry's Jinx is a well-placed ally (though not able to compete in the badassery department with Wai Lin from Tomorrow Never Dies) - and Frost's turn from Bond-Girl-Ally to Evil-Henchman is handled better than Elektra's same turn in the last movie. But some of the primary baddie's motivational aspect is weakly sustained, and mostly we have to drift from action piece to action piece to make it through. 

Observations

- John Cleese is a worth successor to Desmond Llewelyn as Q, I like him very much here. 

- Moneypenny's ahem...creative use of the mission simulator in the final beats of the denouement got a hearty guffaw out of me, this was a terrific gag. 

- Bond gets with Jinx twice and Frost once for an update B.B. total of 58 with 46

So long Pierce Brosnan, you made the 90s a fun place - tomorrow we graduate to the final (as of now!) era with Daniel Craig. 

1.21.22 - THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH (James Bond #19)

We go back underwater with Bond in 

THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH, in which Bond must figure out who the bad guy (girl?) really is and stop a plot relating to a gas pipeline in some way or something

Okay so he's not spending a TON of time underwater here - but a good chunk culminating in a nice fight on a giant submarine which makes a nice set piece. Brosnan continues his mostly inoffensive portrayal of Bond, while still gunning down just TONS of people, so much more gunplay in this era of Bond. Strongest parts of this film are the dynamic between Bond and Elektra - even though she's a little obvious as a femme fatale from the start - seeing her go from Bond Girl to Bond Villain is a fun twist. Renard is a gimmicky little henchmen who I felt could have been more interesting.

Overall the movie held my attention a little better than Tomorrow Never Dies - but still thoroughly in the slightly-above-average realm. 

Observations

- They redeem the slide-whistle corkscrew car jump from the Moore era with a really nicely executed corkscrew boat jump in the cold open

- I suddenly have a theory that any Bond movie with a scene in a casino is immediately a couple points better than any that don't. This is something to analyze more on the next watch-through. 

- Strong choice to have M captured / in danger. That was a fun dynamic - although I wish we could have gotten her into some kind of action beat or something. 

- Also nice to see Russian Hagrid again - good to bring a Bond ally back - and he really makes the key sacrifice play in the closing minutes

- I'm fascinated by these tree-trimming helicopter contraptions. Are these real things? I'm fascinated. 

- Last appearance by Desmond Llewelyn as Q - pour one out for this legend of the franchise. 17 appearances over 36 years - a true lynchpin of the series. 

- Definitely three bonks with three different women here - our total is up to 55 bonks with 44 women