skip to main |
skip to sidebar
James Bond returns and so does another “B” name guy in “Spectre,”
Daniel Craig’s fourth 007, starting were 2012’s bloody “Skyfall” ended,
with Sam Medes again as director. We open on Mexico City on Dia
de Muertos with Bond, silent, glaring, and donning a skull mask as he stalks a
man in a white suit. A religious parade blares on the street as Bond creeps on
rooftops. “Godfather, Part II” vibes bounce hard. Bond takes his shot. Boom. Shit
hits. Roll song. It’s down hill after. The song’s a shrieky-dude bust, and the
movie that follows has great moments –- Craig fights a silent, giant killer
(Dave Bautista) aboard a train as in “Russia With Love,” but when we get to the
big bad in this big data flick, “Spectre” turns into a goddamn joke. And Christoph
Waltz -– he of “Inglorious Basterds” fame –- is the punchline. He plays He Who
Should Have Remained Unnamed with the lamest motive I’ve seen in years. It’s not “Quantum of Solace” or some other series duds –- what’s the one
with Halle Berry? -– but this one flick trashes four. Even new-era champ “Casino
Royale.” B-
“Goldfinger”
is arguably the high-point of Sean Connery’s run as James Bond, when the series
stormed pop culture and the world. It’s also damn awkwardly dated as far as the
women go as it plays with forced entanglement as foreplay. Take a breath, it is
of its time period. The plot –- unlike later, unnecessarily busy Bond films -– is
simple: Bond must track down gold smuggler Auric Goldfinger (Gert Frobe) who
has a perverse idea about knocking out Fort Knox so that he can take control of
the world’s gold market. Or some such. Who cares? The bad guy’s pilot/dame is
named Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman). And Bond’s first bed quest ends up smothered
in gold paint. There’s also a mad granny with a machine gun, and that Aston
Martin, plus Oddjob and the killer bowler hat. It’s camp entertainment delivered
dead pan, and that’s missing in the newer run, for better and worse. Connery is
effortless. Bond is Connery, and Connery is Bond, is there any argument? And as
Goldfinger, Frobe is a plain-spoken man of evil, but a man. No disfigurement. No foamy outbursts. Just a snake. The crazy good music? That’s never been better. A-
James Bond is back in form in “Skyfall” after the dive that was “Quantum of Solace,” a film
as meaningless as its title. This third in the Daniel Craig series nearly equals 2006’s “Casino Royale,” the best of the 007 series since the Connery
days. The plot: A mystery man from M’s (Judi Dench) past is plunging MI6 and
London into chaos, unveiling secret agents and blowing HQ to chunks.
The weapons of death and madness are not nukes or giant lasers hidden in volcanoes,
but laptops; the trigger is the [ENTER] button. The sword cuts both ways: Both
the villain (Javier Bardem, sexually ambiguous in an Oscar-worthy turn) and the
new Q (Ben Whishaw) both hawk hacking as their life’s
trade, setting old-fashioned Bond off his game. Craig as Bond is at his best when thrown
off, clawing back from the dead and irrelevance. The admittedly comic-book plot mechanics clank, but director Sam Mendes (“Road to Perdition”) and his writers invoke the Connery era as if were
Scripture, pulling a “You Only Live Twice” stunt and a ’64 Aston Martin
homage, and then set a new path for the 50-year-old franchise by tearing down its
past. A-
Director
Guy Ritchie’s 2009 “Sherlock Holmes,” with Yank actor Robert Downey Jr. playing
the Brit detective, was an entertaining farce that tripped too
far into the superhero arena. The Ritchie-directed sequel “Game of Shadows” gallops
full force into silly Hollywood cliches with “top this” action pieces minced
into slow-mo chunks of film that may irritate even the most Ritalin-deprived
viewer. A third-act chase through a forest sticks out as the sorest thumb,
smashed by Ritchie’s antic edits. Ditch the deerstalker hat and get this Sherlock
a cape as Holmes’ pipe, careful contemplations, and witty word play are
for the most part dumped in lieu of a 007-worthy plot involving arch-nemesis Moriarty
(a ho-hum Jared Harris) as the instigator of a 1890s European war that plays
out too broadly and with inane clues (to the winery!) that reek weak. Worse,
great actress Noomi Rapace (the Swedish “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and “Prometheus”) is stuck glaring
in silence as Downey along with Jude Law as Watson ham up literature’s
oldest bro-mance, making this outing shrivel under the shadow of greater
Holmes adaptations, including the stellar BBC modern-day-set mind-fuck “Sherlock.”
C
