Another Week (and a Half) Roundup Reviews - 3.2.22

I always intend to get these done on the weekends but here we are on Wednesday again. 

2.19.22 - Rain Man (Movie) - A semi-impulsive rewatch that I had been wanting to get around to for a while. Why? I don't know, it's a great movie and it had been several years since I watched it last. Young Tom Cruise is great and Dustin Hoffman is even better in this brotherly road trip story. This is such a well-paced film. Nothing is wasted, every scene is either touching, comedic, or dynamic and the story moves along so efficiently you don't even realize how moved you are until you get to the end. I don't know where this movie stands on my All Time List but I would watch this every 5 years or so, easily.

2.25.22 - Uncharted (Movie) - I didn't have any plans to watch this but it was showing at the drive in theatre that Lindsay and I enjoy frequenting so - why not. You know, it wasn't as bad as I expected. Thankfully I knew just what to expect - it's a pretty generic feeling action/adventure movie, with two characters that by name come from a video game series although they bear absolutely no resemblance to those characters whatsoever. The best part of this movie is Nolan North's cameo. Although the absolutely bonkers final action sequence deserves some praise as well - I felt like that sequence hewed closer to the video game origins of this franchise than anything else we saw in the entire film. 

2.25.22 - American Crime Story: Impeachment (TV) - A ten episode miniseries (third season in the ACS franchise) focusing on the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal of the mid-90s. This show really did a great job of fleshing out the narrative for me. From cursory reading, I knew a lot of the names and general ideas of the scandal, but now I have a lot of depth in my understanding. The human element is really leaned into very heavily and that makes for good dramatic entertainment. Can't pretend there is no bias (Lewinsky was a consulting co-producer on the show), but even with that understanding, this show really hammered home the point that in this whole multi-year situation, it's safe to say that There Were No Good Guys - everyone was just a terrible person to more or less extent, and that's depressing in a way, but like I said, it also makes for great dramatic TV. Really good casting as well, Sarah Paulson is unrecognizable as Linda Tripp, Clive Owens turns in a solid if at-times one note performance as Bill Clinton, it's great to see Edie Falco again (fresh off my binge of Sopranos!) in the under-utilized role of Hillary, and even the B and C tier character level casting was terrific (Coby Smulders as Ann Coulter and Billy Eichner as Matt Drudge were two particular highlights). 

2.26.22 - The Postmortal - Drew Magary (Book) - Going backwards in Magary's bibliography after last year's The Hike and The Night the Lights Went Out. This book falls into that old category of "not unenjoyable, but kind of a mess". The concept is good - Science discovers the cure for aging and it becomes widely available. The narrative unspools through a series of journals/record-type entries by a main character who gets The Cure and then lives through the next 80 years of human history, and we see just how civilization handles this radical change through his eyes and experiences. The first half - the setup - was all pretty interesting, but as the narrative gets larger and larger it feels like Magary can't control where he's going - even what could be several threads of interesting main-character growth/introspection feel painfully shallow and weak as we reach the climax. Not one I'd widely recommend. 

Week (And a Half) Round Up Reviews - 2.17.22

It was a busy weekend, okay?

2.10.22 - The Book of Boba Fett (TV) - As Micah artfully pointed out, this was an anthology show masquerading as a show about Boba Fett. This wasn't a bad show, it just didn't have much going for it outside of those two episodes that furthered the big-picture lore for Star Wars right now that people are really interested in. The problem is that everytime we see Boba Fett without his helmet on, he becomes less interesting. Some characters are destined to be the greatest when they're at their most mysterious, and we lose more and more of that mystery here. 

2.11.22 - Man In The Arena: Tom Brady (TV) - A nine (soon to be 10 in the spring) episode look back at Tom Brady's career. I don't know if TB will ever get around to writing a book, but if he doesn't this will stand in as a pretty good memoir of sorts. A recap of his career focusing primarily on the seasons he led the Patriots to the Super Bowl, but with good chunks of time dealing with all sorts of various elements of his life. At times I felt this series could have been shorter, but parts of it I loved and wanted to go on forever, so it's complex. Easily one of the strongest parts were the unique "guests" brought on as additional talking heads for each episode. 

2.12.22 - Don't Look Up (Movie) - Satire is always going to be divisive, but I'm firmly on the side of really enjoying this one. It works on a lot of levels, not just the obvious metaphor of an impending asteroid strike on Earth for climate change, but in the way it sends up a lot of different personas, ideas, and political aspects that we all are forced to laugh at these days, lest we cry. Great well-rounded cast - Jonah Hill as the Chief of Staff was particular enjoyable. 

2.13.22 - The Lincoln Highway - Amor Towles (Book) - After the masterpiece that was A Gentleman in Moscow, I was very excited for Towels' fresh new fiction, and it delivered quite nicely. It feels both very different and yet the same from AGIM. A lot is different - a wider ensemble cast, with changing POV, lots of movement and travel - but Towles' prose is just as eminently readable as AGIM. It is what I could call "comforting" prose. It's just delightful to read. It doesn't challenge me, or blow my mind, but it feels so very nice, like a warm bath. I like the story a lot, it never bogs down or gets comfortable, although the POV switching sometimes feels a bit herky-jerky in ways I'm not sure were intentional. The characters have stayed with me in the days after reading it, and I'm glad I went on this journey with them. 

2.13.22 - Eight Days A Week: The Touring Years (Movie/Documentary) - A documentary regarding the first half of the Beatles' career on the public-performance circuit before they become reclusive studio musical hobos. It was well put together but I didn't feel like this docu did much for me in the way of new or even newly-presented info - so it was enjoyable but ultimately unmemorable. 

2.14.22 - Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner's Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause - Ty Seidule (Book) - Ty Seidule is three things - 1) A career Army man, 2) a West Point historian, and 3) Mad as Hell that he grew up in the South swallowing the Lost Cause narrative wholesale. This book, while working to discuss historical truth, mostly feels like Seidule's personal reckoning (or perhaps longform written therapy session) with the mythology he grew up believing. There's a lot of good historical information in this book, but Seidule's tone (he self-acknowledges at least twice that "my passion can verge on self-righteousness", and I couldn't agree more) isn't going to do anything more effective than preach full-throated to the choir. 

2.16.22 - What If...? (TV) - This was a pretty entertaining Marvel show - and easily the best part was how all the disparate episodes came together in a united thread over the last couple of episodes. I did not see that coming at all, and I REALLY enjoyed it. Fun animation, compact episodes, good voice acting, not afraid to be a little goofy at times - this was a delightful little show.

Weekly Round Up Reviews - 2.6.22

2.6.22 -  The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger - Marc Levinson (Book)

Whew, what a title. And what a book of similar stature. This wasn't the longest book ever but it sure felt like it in places. Levinson tells the highlighted history of the intermodal shipping container, with a big focus on the two decade period from the mid 1950s to the mid 1970s. This was a very intelligent book, but it was not....always the most interesting. In places it really shined. The focus on Malcolm McLean, a key figure in the development of container shipping, was great, and the overarching threads of "what the big picture of large-scale freight was, and what it transformed into during this key period of history", was really interesting in a lot of ways. But Levinson is not afraid to get into the nitty gritty details, and some of these gets more than a little dry. Even within each chapter I felt like there would be 5 pages that were engrossing, and then another 10 pages that dragggged on, and back and forth and back and forth. I would have loved a more Rich-Cohen-Banana-Republic style of narrative here (still my gold standard for how historical-topical non-fiction books can be as thrilling as well-written fiction). Read a good synopsis of this book, but I won't recommend it except to the most devoted of product-transportation nerds. 

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.