Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (3/5 Stars)

 

I had the pleasure of watching writer/director Rian Johnson’s first Knives Out mystery, appropriately entitled Knives Out, when it came out in late 2019. (This movie has nothing to do with knives per se, but the marketers perhaps wisely avoided the subtitle “A Benoit Blanc Mystery”). I wrote a review about it, which having read again, I believe holds up.

I can build upon and elaborate on the effectiveness of murder mystery tropes here. There is a moment in the original Knives Out which proves its status as a top-notch murder mystery. Like a lot of the stories in the locked room mystery genre, at the climax the Detective gathers all the suspects in the same room, reveals the killer, and explains how he figured it out. In Knives Out, I posit that one could pause the movie at that moment, rewatch the first 3/4’s of it again, think really hard about it, and actually come to the same conclusion as the detective. For that reason, even though the explanation was complicated, it didn’t come out of nowhere, and an astute observer would be rewarded for paying close attention for the first hour and a half.

The problem with Glass Onion is that when Detective Benoit reveals the killer and propounds his theory, I believe no audience member could possibly predict the killer no matter how many times they watched the beginning (at least with the reasoning given by Benoit). Why? Because Rian Johnson breaks his own Knives Out rules as to point of view and narrative.

I won’t give much away by explaining what I mean. In “Knives Out” the main characters are the maid (Ana De Armas) and Benoit. Their point of view are stand-ins for the audience. At no point, do those characters know or witness something that the audience also does not witness. There are no scenes left out that these characters are not sharing with us. This is not the case in “Glass Onion”. In both movies, we are introduced to Benoit Blanc showing up at an event not knowing who invited him. In “Knives Out”, Benoit didn’t know who had hired him and had no agenda. In “Glass Onion”, Benoit knew who had hired him and had an agenda the entire time. The movie keeps this detail from the audience until the climatic reveal.

The ultimate effect is a sense of deflation when one realizes that they have been tricked by a movie that was not as clever as it seemed. Now this, in and of itself, seems to be a theme here. A Glass Onion is apparently a metaphor for things that appear complicated, but are in fact, pretty stupid. Here, the murder and murderer is staring everyone plain in the face. This is true. The suspects involved, a politician (Kathryn Hahn), a scientist (Leslie Odum Jr.), a fashion influencer (Kate Hudson), a Twitch Star (Dave Bautista) have been summoned to the island of the Tech CEO/Genius Miles Bron (a la Elon Musk?) played by Edward Norton. On the surface, they appear to be successful and interesting people, but it turns out they are vapid and rather silly.

Then there is our hero. In Knives Out, this was the maid who physically could not tell a lie without throwing up. Here, it is Andi Brand (played by Janelle Monae) whose back story is that she was the real brains behind the tech genius’s success and got screwed out of the company in a recent court case. Dare I say it, the maid’s character even with her rare physical disorder made more sense. The problem here is that the explanation for why Andi Brand is the real genius is kind of dumb. We are told that the court case all hinges on an algorithm that she wrote on a cocktail napkin in a bar several years ago. The movie would have us believe that the information on this cocktail napkin is all it took to create a stupidly successful billion dollar tech business and that she could be frozen out of this business if she couldn’t prove that she wrote what was on that napkin. The actual tech on the napkin, (or for that matter what Alpha, the tech business, actually does) is never explained (because how could it be without sounding ridiculous), but given what I know about court cases, and the little I know about intellectual property, it all sounds pretty stupid. A more effective reason for trusting Andi Brand over Miles Bron, and maybe what the movie was relying on, is the modern audience’s inclination for believing that a white man has taken all the credit for a black woman’s work.

As Benoit explains with annoyed incredulity at the end, the murder and the murderer were really stupid and it was merely the inclination that we have as audience members to expect a more complicated mystery. Sure, I guess, but couldn’t this all just be a convenient excuse for writing a lazy and stupid murder mystery. After all, if the characters and the mystery are stupid, well, ahem, isn’t that because Rian Johnson wrote them that way?

No Time to Die (5/5 Stars)

 

James Bond was never intended to be the adult in the room. The early films are exercises in juvenile wish fulfillment, specifically those of white boys. Imagine being a very important person (agent of a world superpower government) possessed with extraordinary skills and intelligence in exceedingly dangerous (see exciting) situations that will never have to actually deal with any of the repercussions. The cleanup is another department. As a bonus to all of this, as a very important person dealing with the less civilized parts of the world, you are offered exotic women by the local power brokers, and if other situations, the women just naturally flock to you because you are more handsome, wealthier, the plot calls for it, etc. I like the old James Bond movies, in particular I recommend “You Only Live Twice” but I will admit they are a guilty pleasure, you know like pornography.

I bring this up in this review for “No Time to Die” because it is quite extraordinary how grown up the franchise has become. With massive popularity comes responsibility (via criticism) and the James Bond of 2021 is more an elder statesman than a juvenile delinquent. What is even more amazing is that the quality of the movies have not diminished. “No Time to Die” is just as entertaining as “You Only Live Twice.” Indeed, “No Time to Die” retains many of the old James Bond tropes: exotic locales, gorgeous women, a disfigured villain in an island fortress, but the mood and tone are of an entirely different genre. “No Time to Die” is like a great cover version song of an old classic. You know the song, but you had no idea it could work so well in such a completely different way.

This is Daniel Craig’s fifth outing as James Bond. The story picks up right where “Spectre” of several years ago left with the hopeful retirement of James Bond with Lea Seydoux, that gorgeous French woman. This one is directed by Cary Fukunaga (True Detective Season 1, Sin Nombre) who also shares a writing credit with the duo of Neal Purvis and Robert Wade. (Purvis and Wade, IMDB relates, have written the last seven James Bond movies dating back to 1999’s “The World is Not Enough.” They are getting very good at it.) The retirement does not last very long though as Lea Seydoux’s past comes back to haunt her with James as the collateral damage. This movie is two and a half hours long, its locales span continents from Italy, to Cuba, to Sweden, to Japan, the main villain’s plot, and even his identity, comes quite late, yet it never moved slow and I never felt restless. I was in good super competent hands.

In particular, this movie is a course in actions sequences that work. Unlike the digital acrobatics of Marvel blockbusters, the stunts in “No Time to Die” have a down-to-earth visceral feel to them. It looks like that car really crashed and rolled, that the telephone pole fell down on a live set, that the stunt man really did drive that motorcycle up the side of that Italian building (wow!). At one point, in an extended one shot sequence, Daniel Craig shoots and fist-fights his way up a crowded stairwell. Whatever they are doing, it is just so much better than “Shang-Chi”.

A good James Bond movie is a series of fun set pieces, strong men, and beautiful women. The opening car/motorcycle chase with Lea Seydoux through the Italian village is great. So is the spy mission in Havana, Cuba with Ana de Armas as sidekick. Finally the infiltration of a villain’s island fortress with Lashana Lynch. In between there is humor deftly brought to the fore by wisecracking Ben Whishaw as Q and Naomie Harris as Moneypenney and the classic James Bond score providing the punctuation. In the villain department, Christoph Waltz reprises his Spectre mastermind Blofeld now locked away in a maximum security prison while outside a new threat in the form of Rami Malek.

It is the villain subplot that is finally where this movie comes up short. The danger is real enough. The British government was secretly developing a type of airborne weapon that attacks certain genomic sequences. In this way, the government could conceivably release the virus in a room and it would only kill one person, the intended target. Of course, this weapon is stolen and repurposed so that it may attack whole groups of people with similar genomic sequences, maybe an entire race of people. Evil enough, but the movie does not actually go so far as to suggest what group of people the bad guy is interested in killing. The bad guy’s island fortress is located between Russia and Japan and a simulation of the weapon seems to mainly central Europe. Noone in the movie is from Central Europe. Perhaps the franchise felt that to actually pinpoint a target was not necessary given that the members of the audience could all agree that the idea is nefarious supervillain territory regardless of what group is being targeted. Still, the lack of this detail, harms the viewer’s ability to understand the motivation of the villain, which in turn harms the drama. A minor quibble. Otherwise Rami Malek with his creepy delivery and bug eyes are classic Bond villain.

At the end of this movie, you may come to the realization that this really will be Daniel Craig’s last dance and that the franchise will have to turn to a different actor in any new installment. So who should it be? Well, I think whoever it is, they should redo the entire feel of the franchise, taking it perhaps down a few notches from the stripped down, brutish, and semi-seriousness of Daniel Craig. How about Dev Patel and, please, more irresponsible sex. Being responsible is great for a few movies, as a change of pace, but overall, James Bond should be having more fun.

Knives Out (5/5 Stars)

The Trope (aka Movie Cliché) abounds for a practical reason. They represent to the unimaginative a kind of shortcut in the creative process. Instead of going through the rigamorale of producing from scratch a totally original plot, they reuse tried and tested plot devices gleaned from genre and tradition. Like jokes told more than once, these tropes lose some of their effect each time they are employed, but this should not cover up their inherent truth: They are used so often because they work.

Perhaps the most used plot is the murder mystery. Agatha Christie at one point would churn these stories out annually making her the most best-selling author behind The Bible and William Shakespeare. Someone gets killed: Big Deal. The killer is still out there: Present Danger! Who is it? Suspense! The most used trope within the murder mystery plot is the locked room. That is, all the characters are in the same locked room with the dead body. We don’t know who the killer is but they must be someone in the room.

This story has been told many times over. As stated before, such retelling lowers the effectiveness of the trope. That is unless the writer reemploys creativity to the trope, subverting the audience’s already held expectations. In this way, the plot’s dull edged are resharpened and, once again employ their original effectiveness. Such is “Knives Out” an ingenious locked room murder mystery written and directed by Rian Johnson (Brick, Looper)

The setting is an old mansion isolated in the New England woods. Therein Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer), best-selling author of murder mysteries, is holding his 85^th birthday party. All his family is in attendance, a colorful privileged lot of bigoted conservatives and insufferable liberals. Harlan does many things that night to give a colorable argument for each of his family members to seek his death. And then Harlan commits suicide by slitting his own throat. The police are pretty sure it’s a suicide but then the great private detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) shows up, hired by an unknown someone who suspects foul play.

Benoit Blanc is himself a mystery. He is played by an Englishman (James Bond no less), has a decidedly French name, and employs a southern accent. This is not explained. Without giving too much away, and I can’t because what I am about to reveal happens in the first twenty minutes, the story is not necessarily a whodunit, but more of a how did a particular character didn’t do it?

We are shown in the first twenty minutes that Harlan’s in-house nurse Marta Cabrera (Ana de Armas) mixes up his medication, giving him an overdose of morphine. In order to spare her a criminal conviction, Harlan instructs her how to escape the house without attracting suspicion and then kills himself. But is that all to this story? And who hired Benoit Blanc to investigate? And why?

The family of Harlan Drysdale is a cabinet of unique caricatures and good casting. The more important ones are: Linda Drysdale, daughter of Harlan (Jamie Lee Curtis), her husband Richard Drysdale (Don Johnson), and their playboy son Ransom Drysdale (Chris Evans); Walt Thrombey, son of Harlan (Michael Shannon); Joni Thrombey (Toni Collete), daughter-in-law of Harlan. It is to the credit of Rian Johnson, that they are not all terrible people. They have their faults, and some are worse than others. Others, like Walt Thrombey, are not so bad, well, most of the time. In this way, the writer throws the audience leads and red herrings and makes us thinks very hard about how much we trust everyone.

There is one character that Rian Johnson wants us to trust completely and that is the in-house nurse Marta Cabrera. Marta has a medical disorder that causes her to vomit every time she tells a lie. But she is also the one who gave Harlan a fatal dose of morphine and last saw him before he died. How did she not do it? Well, watch the movie and see if you can figure it out before the cliché everyone-in-the same room as the great detective makes his speech scene. The reveal is highly effective.

Logan Lucky (4/5 Stars)

Those searching for a theme to categorize the career of Director Steven Soderbergh will be left searching. He is a man of seemingly unlimited interests. To take just enough examples to prove my point: his projects have ranged from an epic biopic of Che Gueverra, a remake of a Russian science fiction movie, an action movie built around the physicality of a female MMA wrestler, a no-budget movie set in a doll factory starring non-actors, a remake of a rat pack heist movie with the biggest movie stars in the world, a TV show about a hospital in NYC in the year 1900.

Logan Lucky is no exception to the rule that there are no rules. This movie takes place in present day West Virginia and concerns the Logan family’s heist of the Coca Cola NASCAR speedway. You could say it’s like Ocean’s Eleven because it technically is in the same heist genre, but really the movie are not the same at all. Or to put in another way, they are as different as Las Vegas is to Appalachia.

Logan Lucky is a lot of fun. In particular, you sense the deft hand of an experienced storyteller at work in what Soderbergh chooses to leave out of scenes. How the heist itself works is not really explained fully beforehand, so we experience how it works as the heist progresses. This was probably a good move because the heist, being somewhat realistic, is also not super complicated (as opposed to say Ocean’s Eleven). It does succeed in passing the Heist Test, a test I’m making up now (although it probably already exists somewhere).

The Heist Test consists merely of watching the movie and spotting some obvious clue that the authorities have been shown in the movie that should tip them off to the perpetrators. An example of a movie that fails the Heist Test is Spike Lee’s “Inside Man.” In that movie, the robbers make all their hostages shed their clothes, put on the same uniform as the robbers, and they all walk out the front door. The authorities could have easily just had all the hostages put their clothes back on. The people without any clothes to put back on are the robbers. Heist solved. The authorities in “Inside Man” don’t do this thus that movie fails the Heist test.

I think Logan Lucky passes the Heist Test. It does this in a nifty way by transforming the Heist of a Speedway more into an insurance scam. That is it takes away anyone’s motive for solving the heist. That sort of is a spoiler but isn’t really.

Logan Lucky stars Channing Tatum as Jimmy Logan, mastermind, Adam Driver as Clyde Logan, his sibling and sidekick in the scheme, and Daniel Craig as Joe Bang, an incarcerated bank vault specialist. They all sport Appalachian accents. Weirdly this seems the suit the Brit the best. Then there is Seth MacFarlane who plays a racecar sponsor named Max Chilblain. I couldn’t tell at all where his accent hailed from.

Logan Lucky exploits the regular fun from its Appalachian characters and setting while undercutting the stereotypes sometimes in the same line of a scene. For one particular good instance, Joe Bang makes what can best be described as a white trash bomb out of bleach and gummy bears, but then successfully explains it using chemistry equations. I had a good time watching Logan Lucky. It’s a good addition to the Pretty Good Soderbergh shelf.

Spectre (3/5 Stars)

It would be unfair to comment only on the drawbacks of Spectre without at first highlighting the things it brings to the table that other films simply cannot accomplish. That would be the epic globetrotting landscapes of the James Bond franchise. This movie directed by the returning Sam Mendes (Skyfall, American Beauty) with a new cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema (Her, Let the Right One In) is especially impressive in this regard. It was shot on film in the classic style and plays great on a big screen (I saw it at the Ziegfeld). The exotic locales include Mexico City during the Dia de los Muertos festival, Rome bathed in a nighttime orange-green glow of conspiracy, London in a chilly bureaucratic blue, a supervillain headquarters in the middle of the desert, and at least one beautifully soft lit train interior great for white tuxedos and fistfights. It really looks good but enough about that.

Spectre seems to be the culmination of the last three Daniel Craig Bond films. At various times in the movie the images of past characters find themselves on screen. Included are Eva Green from Casino Royale and Judi Dench from Skyfall. Conspicuously absent are any characters from Quantum of Solace; a movie that I really liked for reasons everybody else hated i.e. a realistic supervillain scheme. All of the shadowy bad guys in the previous movies are connected to a secret organization called Spectre that has an octopus as a mascot. It’s really big and does a lot of things. And here is where the last series of movies finally experiences a thematic disconnect between the reactionary pedigree of the franchise and the radical version of the Daniel Craig James Bond.

The James Bond supervillains have historically been colorful silly things. They generally have some outlandish goal like wanting to take over the world (or blowing it up). They have exhorbitantly expensive secret lairs. They have exotic henchmen with quirky ways of killing people. None of these things are all that believable. The Daniel Craig series of movies took the silliness out of the franchise. They took away almost all of the gadgets. They took away the scene stealing physical deformities of the villains. They involved evil schemes that were more or less real (in fact the scheme in Quantum of Solace actually happened which is the main reason I thought the movie had some serious chutzpah.) Heck even the blatant promiscuity is gone. I believe Daniel Craig refuses sex at least once in each of his movies. In this one, the refusal takes place within the first ten minutes during an impressively long tracking. It feels like a nice inside joke. The effect of all this seriousness combined with the retention of superior action sequences and decent character development has produced, I would argue, the best Bond movies in the franchise. Spectre has the look of the last three art house Bond movies but the plot of one of the old sillies. The whole thing feels like a setup to the production of more of the forgettable kind of Bond movies. It seems counterintuitive to me that the last three great James Bond movies would culminate into a standard James Bond movie. But that is me. James Bond movies do have a structure and the franchise has been around for a very long because that structure works for the most part.

If you have many Bond movies there are plenty of tropes here that you will recognize. The running joke of Bond’s propensity to destroy all of the equipment built by the continually annoyed Q (Ben Whishaw) is on full display here. Bond flirts with Moneypenney (Naomi Campbell). Bond rebels against M (Ralph Fiennes now). Bond gets captured by the bad guy, tied to a gurney, and uses a trick watch to escape. There is even a scene involving the love interest (Lea Seydoux) tied to a chair with a ticking time bomb and Bond has to decide whether to save her and probably die or just save himself. You have seen all of this before, but rarely in the Daniel Craig series, (or shot so beautifully by a great director and cinematographer team), which always took itself more seriously than the previous installments.

Nowhere does the disconnect present itself so glaringly then when the evil scheme presents itself. Spoiler alert I guess although I don’t think you will care so much by this reveal. The scheme is a world dragnet of surveillance, the sort Edward Snowden told us about and is in vogue currently as a supervillain plot. James Bond’s part of the British Secret Service MI:6 is portrayed as the responsible old fashioned way of doing spy stuff. Of course it isn’t. I mean the first scene of this movie has James Bond going AWOL in Mexico City having a fistfight in a helicoptor over a parade of several thousand innocent bystanders. It is a seriously dangerous irresponsible stunt by a agent going rogue agaist all orders. I know this is a James Bond movie but I wouldn’t judge the scene on its safety to the public if the movie itself did not intend to grandstand against the surveillance issues of our times and take the position that those are worse. There are too many dramatic conversations where characters inveigh vaguely against the danger of a police state in between set pieces of extraordinary violence that only with movie magic would not kill scores of innocent bystanders.

But let’s be positive about some of those set pieces because they are very good. My favorite parts of the movie have to do with the henchmen, played by a former pro wrestler named Dave Bautista who first came on the movie scene in last year’s Guardians of the Galaxy. He is a big brute of a man. After an awkward introduction he becomes the antagonist for a great car chase through Rome. It’s thrilling and very prettily shot and I was impressed that they got access to the Vatican. James Bond gets away but Dave Bautista catches up on a train as James Bond, in a white tuxedo, and Lea Seydoux, in an elegant dress, are sitting down to drinks. He bursts in from another car and havoc ensues. The fight is interesting in that it becomes clear that James cannot win it. Bautista is too big and too strong. It is a very cool thing to watch. I was wondering if they could end it in a way that wasn’t bullshit. They did.

I wish Cristoph Waltz was more entertaining as a Bond villain to me. On paper he would seem to be perfect. But I can’t say it was a particularly memorable performance or character. Oh and the bad guy from BBC's Sherlock Holmes is in this movie as well. He had far more potential on paper too. 

Skyfall (4/5 Stars)

Arthouse Bond

M recites Tennyson; Q critiques an oil painting, Adele sings the theme song, and the villain displays homoeroticism and serious mommy issues. This is not your father’s James Bond and considering how this movie ends will probably not be your father’s Bond for several more movies.

What is a James Bond movie? I do not count myself as a huge expert in the franchise. I have seen all of the Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig movies but only two or three of the Sean Connery ones and none from the 70s and 80s. What I can tell though is that they all have a similar format: Action Sequence: either escape or chase. If in cars be sure to run into fruit carts - Song and Credits – Mission Briefing – Gadgets – Exotic Locale – Exotic Woman - Disfigured villain with crazy plans – Action Sequence: guns if men, melee weapons if women – Sex – Action Sequence: explosions this time? – Pithy one-liners over martinis and poker – Action Finale: use any gadgets not previously used – Sex: if not all gadgets have been used, here is your final chance – Credits and hook for next movie.

Of course, the problem with any formula movie is that they tend to be formulaic. At the same time, if one tried to do something that strayed from the formula, they might capture the wrath of die-hards that flock to these movies to get just what they have come to expect. It’s the franchise paradox: Do something original and make the core audience uncomfortable or do something standard and succumb to a barrage of comments that the first movies were better. It’s a lose-lose situation (not counting the box office.)

It is kind of amazing then that “Skyfall” can be persuasively debated as the best James Bond movie in the fifty years of the franchise. It is actually debatable. Whether this is true or not should be left to someone who has seen all the movies. (Not me!) I do however feel comfortable in saying this: This is the best-looking James Bond movie ever.

In this sense, the franchise has embarked on something truly original. It has gone through the trouble of hiring an Oscar caliber heavyweight duo to be the director and cinematographer of this movie. I am speaking of Oscar Winning director (American Beauty) Sam Mendes and his frequent collaborator and perhaps the world’s best living cinematographer Roger Deakins. I do not know the name of many cinematographers but many a time I have seen a truly good looking movie, looked up the credits and found the name Roger Deakins. Amazingly he has never actually won an Oscar, but there is hardly a year that goes by where he has not been nominated for one. His list of nominated movies include: True Grit, The Reader, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, No Country for Old Men, The Man Who Wasn’t There, O Brother Where Art Thou? Kundun, Fargo, The Shawshank Redemption.  I believe after Scorsese finally won for “The Departed,” Roger Deakins has rightfully taken over the title of most snubbed. He should be nominated for this movie it is about time that he finally won.

Outside of a Tarantino movie or something from China, this particular skill is rarely used in action thrillers. But here it is. When James Bond engages in a fistfight with a sniper on the 50^th floor of a building, they are silhouetted against a serene vision of skyscraper blue. When he tussles with some heavies and a couple of komodo dragons in a casino, the scene is ensconced in delicious Chinese red. Back in Scotland the moors are distinctively gray, bearish, and heavy with the past. When there are explosions, the characters are framed just right for the audience to feel the full effect of the raging fires. Take your girlfriend to see this movie and if she doesn’t approve of the sex and violence tell her she does not appreciate great art. How many times after a James Bond movie do you expect to truthfully be able to say that again?

But hey we did not see this movie for the beauty of it, did we? Let’s talk about sex and violence.

The action has thankfully been returned to “understandable” after that sojourn into chaos, which was “Quantum of Solace.” I especially liked how each set piece differed in the type of action from the chase scene in the beginning to the standoff in the end. It’s good stuff and people die well, especially the victim of that giant lizard.

The women are not especially memorable and Daniel Craig continues his trademark Bond style of not being particularly focused on swinging his way through his movies. This is the third movie in a row where a female is introduced, seduced and murdered (by the bad guys) in a span of let’s say five to ten minutes. In fact, I think it is fair to say the Bond Girl in this movie is none other than Judi Dench, as the MI6 boss, M. Her part in this movie is substantial as the bad guy’s plot revolves around specifically exacting revenge on her. Much has been said about the misogynistic nature of James Bond, but like “Casino Royale,” this movie provides an actual excuse for his behavior. Bond is already taken. He is married to England and M, well, that abbreviation may as well be for ‘mother.’ At least that is what the bad guy, a disgruntled ex-MI6 agent out for revenge, played by Javier Bardem, seems to think.

It has been noted before that the novelty of franchise movies is contained in its villains. They are after all are the newness of the installment. I think it is a less of an insult to Javier Bardem’s Julian Asssange tinged cyberterrorist and more of a big compliment to the sure-handed competence of the last three movies to say that Daniel Craig’s orphaned thug of a James Bond still remains the most interesting character in these stories. That’s a big thing. This is not just a great Bond movie; it is a very good movie in general. Not just for diehards, for everyone.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (3/5 Stars)

Rooney Mara does not look like Lisbeth Salander. Lisbeth is small, skinny, and sharp. Rooney is of average height, healthy, and round all over. She lost weight for this role and somehow managed to pinch in her cheeks a little but it is not enough. Rooney is a doe-eyed babyface. Lisbeth is not. There is no getting around it.

It is hard to say why this matters so much. For some reason I am thinking of something obscure that I saw in the special features of a completely different movie. It was in “Three Kings” a movie about the first Iraq War. One of the Iraqis (Said Taghmaoui, I just looked up his name on IMDb) that played a bad guy was speaking of meeting the actor Ice Cube for the first time and how he could tell that he came from a rough neighborhood (Compton to be exact). He said he could tell by the eyes. People who have grown up in a rough neighborhood have it ingrained around their eyes. He knew that because he grew up in a rough neighborhood in Iraq. And then he said Ice Cube knew that simply by looking at him as well. Ever since I heard that I became much more interested in eyes. Does being witness to rough things over a period of time really leave its mark on the eyes? I don’t know honestly, but as a person who watches many movies I will say that there is something about the eyes that can create a certain seriousness or desperation in a character, which incidentally can convey a history of seeing rough things. Good examples are Viggo Mortenson in “Eastern Promises,” and Charlize Theron in “Monster.” And perhaps the best example is Noomi Rapace’s take on Lisbeth Salander in the original Swedish version of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” Those eyes were piercing. Rooney Mara’s are not. The role has been miscast. Rooney would make more sense as a Disney princess.

This is a pity because this movie is technically better than the Swedish version. We have none other than David Fincher, one of the best American directors, at the helm here. Fincher has excelled at serial killers (Seven) and has excelled at complex subjects (The Social Network), sometimes both at the same time (Zodiac). The convoluted 40-year-old murder mystery that is the centerpiece of “The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo,” is a ready made plot for the likes of Fincher. If you have a story that requires a journalist to do a realistic investigation (i.e. painstakingly go over evidence, hit the books at the library), Fincher is the guy who can make it interesting, lend it humor, and give it momentum. Here the disgraced journalist Michael Blomvist (played by Daniel Craig) is hired to solve a family mystery that involves a close-knit family with Nazi connections. The mystery is intricate to the highest degree but Fincher’s clear direction shines through it. In fact, for the first half of the movie where the mystery plotline runs parallel and separate to the introduction of Lisbeth Salander, it is the more interesting plot to watch unfold. In the Swedish version it was the other way around. Now if only we could insert Noomi Rapace into the American version.

Not that all of Fincher’s choices seem to be entirely correct. There was something wrong with this movie that was hard to put my finger on while I was watching it. So I went back and rewatched several scenes from the original version. The plot is exactly the same of course. What is different may be as little as tweaked dialogue, different camera angles, or simply physical gestures. But it is unmistakable how the movies have different impacts precisely where it is most important: how it regards Lisbeth Salander. This is touchy subject because there are two scenes of sexual assault in the story, one being a rape. Now I suppose I could be like the MPAA and basically judge the difference between the two versions by how many seconds of nakedness were shown in each. (There is far more in the American version. It actually surprised me upon a second viewing how little is actually shown in the Swedish version. Only about a half-second. The rest is all inferred. Both distort and mute the screaming after awhile, a rather merciful thing to do for an audience.) But the more important differences take place before and after the rape.  The rapist is Lisbeth’s legal guardian, newly appointed after her old guardian had a stroke. The sexual assaults start as a form of extortion. Lisbeth won’t have access to her own money until complying. Now, in the Swedish version it only takes one meeting before the first sexual assault. In the American version, it takes a back-story and two meetings to get around to it. It seems as though the American version is trying to ease us into the sexual assault. A pointless exercise in futility it would seem to me. The biggest difference though is that the American version also adds scenes right after the assaults where Lisbeth dresses herself, goes into the next room where the rapist is waiting to give her check, takes it and leaves. The Swedish version simply cut from the assault to Lisbeth washing out her mouth and painfully walking home respectively. What is the point of these extra scenes? At my least cynical moment I will assume that the makers were attempting to make the rapist look pathetic (in the movie he seems a bit frightened and apologetic after the assault). But even so, who gives a shit? What does it matter how the rapist feels about what he has done? It is enough that the actions exist as they do in the world. Time to move onto the next scene. 

There are some styles and genres of movies where it is okay to objectify women (or rather people in general). I wrote about this in some length when I defended “Sucker Punch,” a comic book movie that came out earlier this year. But when the original title of the book the movie is from is called, “Men who Hate Women,” I think we have entered territory where any objectification at all should be barred entirely. Take a look at the movie poster above, which shows a topless Lisbeth Salandar. Is it really appropriate for the marketers of a movie about one of the most powerful symbols of sexual violence to sell their movie with the promise of sex? (You may also ask what exactly the poster means by “Evil shall with evil be expelled.” Are they insinuating that Blomvist and Salandar are evil or using evil? How so?) The Swedish version at least seemed to understand that sexual abuse is not such an easy thing to get over. The way Noomi Rapace played the character in the consensual sex scenes, and there a couple of those, was for lack of a better word, tragic. She could go through the motions but was incapable of intimacy. That makes sense considering the character’s history. The way Rooney Mara interacts with Daniel Craig in the American version would work much better in a James Bond flick. Rooney Mara would not make a bad Bond girl.

For the record, I still don’t fully understand how the epilogue heist worked in either version of this movie. Perhaps if I read the book.

The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn (5/5 Stars)

Billions of Blistering Blue Barnacles!

When Steven Spielberg’s action-adventure classic “Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark,” opened in France way back in 1981, plenty of the reviews kept on repeating an obscure word, Tintin. Curious as to what the French word meant, Spielberg asked for a translator to find out. It turns out the French critics were consistently comparing Indiana Jones with a long cherished French series of comic books by Herge named “The Adventures of Tintin.” Indiana and Tintin had plenty in common. They were both intrepid adventurers (Indiana an archeologist and Tintin a journalist) whose exploits brought them to exotic locales in search of mysterious artifacts or ancient treasure. Both stories employed a break neck pace of action adventure and situational humor, not to mention some classic colorful characters met along the way.  So it is no wonder that Spielberg (with much help from Peter Jackson) would be the perfect choice to adapt Tintin into a movie and apparently has been working on this one off and on for more than twenty five years. As one who has read almost every single Tintin comic book (they are great!) I can say that this movie could not have been done better. It is Tintin and everything that was great about it. I hope they make many sequels. If you were one of those that were disappointed by the last Indiana Jones movie, than you must go and see this one. It is exactly what you want from that type of movie.

The plotline of this movie takes elements from several great Tintin books, most noticeably “The Crab with the Golden Claws,” “Red Rackham’s Treasure,” and especially “The Secret of the Unicorn.” Tintin notices a model ship of the pirate Red Rackham’s 17^th century galleon at a flea market and pays a pound for it. Almost immediately other interested parties ask to buy the ship from him. They give him dire warnings. Tintin takes the boat home with his journalistic curiosity fired up. He does research on Red Rackham at the library and comes home to find his apartment ransacked. There is something about that boat that people want! Could it hold the secret to Red Rackham’s lost treasure! What follows is a series of holdups, secret messages, code-breaking, marvelous coincidences that lead to strange far off adventures, espionage, intrigue, and the like. Tintin (voiced by Jamie Bell) is accompanied by his faithful dog Snowy. Along the way he meets an alcoholic skipper named Archibald Haddock who has a tendency for swearing colorful phrases like “Billions of Blistering Blue Barnacles!” and happens to be one of the two last descendants of an age old feud between two pirates, Captain Haddock and Red Rackham. Captain Haddock is played by Andy Serkis, the best motion capture actor in the business (he also did Gollum, King Kong, and the Ape in “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”). The last descendant of Red Rackham is played by Daniel Craig. There are also plenty of thugs with guns that like to capture and kidnap Tintin and to be outwitted by an escaping Tintin. We are also treated to two bumbling police officers named Thomson and Thompson. They are identical twins that wear the same black suits and bowler hats so try not to get them mixed up. They are voiced by the comedic duo of Nick Frost and Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz), an inspired choice of casting if there ever was one.

The Adventures of Tintin employs the best use of animated motion capture that I have ever seen. This is a particular type of animation that was pioneered by Peter Jackson for the character of Gollum in LOTR and made into entire movies by Robert Zemeckis. It is a poor substitute for live action in that the humans never quite escape the uncanny valley (this was one of my main dislikes with a movie such as Beowulf), but since Tintin is a comic strip, the characters make more sense inhabiting the uncanny valley than they would in the real live action world. The Tintin drawings themselves were rather simplistic. To search for an actor that looked exactly like Tintin would have resulted in finding a pretty weird looking actor. It is better this way.

Not to mention the control that animation gives the makers in constructing some ridiculously intricate action sequences. Take a look at the climatic chase scene that starts at a palatial villa and goes all the way down to the Oceanside through winding streetscapes while a tidal wave of water from the local dam gushes down right behind them. It is shown almost entirely in one shot without any edits or changes in camera angles. This is something that would be impossible to shoot in live action, but since it is animation we get to view a ridiculously intricate sequence that never cheats or confuses. The planning that must have gone into it was obviously extensive and the result is very good. Of course a movie that is live action like “Mission Impossible” will always be more effective thrills wise (you won’t get vertigo watching an animated film) but that doesn’t mean animation can’t be exciting or fun and Tintin is all of that.

The Adventures of Tintin should be a lock for the Oscar for Best Animated Picture. This should be the first time in many years that Pixar (Cars 2) does not come home with the trophy. 

Quantum of Solace 11/15/08

Sometimes Hollywood makes me proud. Most of the time it's through investigative documentaries like 'The Smartest Guys in the Room' and 'Deliver Us From Evil.' Other times its from small indie films like 'City of God,' or 'Slumdog Millionaire' (which I will review shortly). But there is also that rare time when a mainstream blockbuster will make me proud. A good example of that would be Blood Diamond: A successful message movie that masquerades quite well as an action adventure story. It is truly a feat to make a movie that is important to our time and still have a huge amount of people go see it. 'Quantum of Solace' is such a film. It portrays a sinister plot that is much closer to reality than any other Bond film has ever been (Thus it is actually somewhat educational) and it managed to rake in 70 million dollars over the first weekend. That means a huge amount of people went to see a popcorn blockbuster and unknowingly left with a generalized knowledge of how real world atrocities and modern government coups are actually performed. A viewer that sees this movie might have a better understanding of what is happening right now in the Congo or Darfur. In fact, this movie's nefarious scheme is loosely based on real events that took place in Bolivia in 2000. They were called the Cochamba Water Wars. Look it up. To me, seeing a bad guy doing evil that actually happened is a little more chilling than a bad guy with a volcano hideout threatening to take over the world.
What isn't realistic is how James Bond, played by Daniel Craig, is able to take down the entire conspiracy by brute force. He's quite a fighter yes, but he really is only one man. In many ways this movie is the opposite of 'The Dark Knight.' Instead of an 'insurmountable enemy' we have a 'indestructible hero' cliche. Bond is a man that can dodge machine gun fire, win fist fights in a matter of seconds, and spend quite a long time in burning rooms without getting too hot or dying of smoke inhalation. Still on principle I will give the movie a fresh rating. One because it succeeds, like 'The Dark Knight,' on a popcorn blockbuster level. And Two because I happen to agree with its political views, (unlike 'The Dark Knight.')
In comparing this movie to Casino Royale, it is hard which is better. Both have superior and inferior sequences relative to the other. The first picture had a much better action sequence. The second suffers from 'Michael Bay' syndrome. That is to say that it is cut so fast and so close that it is hard to tell what exactly is going on. Compare the roof chase in this movie to the roof chase in 'The Bourne Ultimatum.' They are shot in roughly the same style, but the 'Bourne' chase was much more effective because every once and a while they had the camera zoom out and give us some context as to the distance between the people, where they had come from, and where they we're going. 'Casino Royale' did that (with jokes I may add). This one didn't. 
The bad guys in 'Quantum' are vastly superior to Le Chiffre in 'Casino Royale.' Mathieu Almaric plays the very sleazy Dominic Greene, the head of an organization that is using nefarious means to take control of the country's water supply. Once they have it, they will create a drought that will topple the democratic government. Through their corporation they will subsidize a renegade general to take over. In exchange for the subsidy the general will grant the corporation a legitimate monopoly over the supply and a large grant of land in which the underground reservoirs lie. Greene possesses no deformity like regular Bond villains. He doesn't have weird henchmen, or insane plans. He doesn't plan on taking over the world. He only wants the water. What makes this villain so scary is that he is the face of modern evil. People like him are not a fiction. (Another great movie about an evil water scheme based on true events: Chinatown.) 
'Casino Royale' on the other hand was funnier than this movie. Craig was not so brooding, he had some witty banter going on. In this movie he is presented with situations that aren't so funny. A woman receives a tragic death, one that tops the gilded fate of an earlier bond girl. In this movie, Bond finds her on his bed covered in oil. She had been drowned in it. 
'Quantum' has a better bond girl than 'Casino' did though. Her name is Camille and is played by Olga Kurylenko. Camille mirrors James in that she too is out for revenge. The general murdered her family in Haiti. (Quite believable. Generals have been doing that for centuries in Haiti). She has been waiting to get back at him for her entire life. Olga has a perfect delivery and timing to her lines. Her eyes burn hatred. She's beautiful but has a face of stony determination. She and James make a great pair. (I loved the little details here too. Notice the vaccination marks on Olga's arm. She truly is from a third world country.) 
Overall Quantum is a very satisfying revenge tale and a righteous antidote to 'The Dark Knight.' It is one of this year's best blockbusters and a worthy addition to the Bond canon. Truly the entire Bond series has peaked in the 21st and 22nd installment.

Casino Royale 01/23/07

fresh: This is the best bond movie I've seen. It's a top notch thriller in its own right but unlike most other Bond films, it works also as a charachter study. For the first time, James Bond is more interesting than the villain, and the big impetus for the movie is not gadgets and explosions and world takeovers. It's James bond himself. He's interesting enough to carry the movie all by himself. This is evident when the movie calms down halfway to conversations between Daniel Craig, the new bond, and Eva Green, a three dimensional bond girl, and of course a poker table. Just watching these people talk is as enjoyable as the great chase scene in the beginning. It probably helped alot to have an Oscar winning writer, Paul Haggis, help out with the script. 
The director, a man named Martin Campbell, I have never heard before. But this guy is legitimate. Whether it's the black and white opening to the druggy poisoning sequence, he has some unique and great ways of telling the story. I hope he directs another bond movie, and I plan to look him up and see his other movies.
The only complaint I have is the soundtrack. There is a great Bond theme which they don't use till the credits. To not use that song is unfathomable. They're using subpar musical sequences during the entire film when the trademark Bond theme is a thousand times better. Why they didn't use it during the first chase scene boggles my mind. It would have made the fantastic sequence super fantastic. oh well. Although this movie probably won't get much attention from the academy because these movies usually don't. It will definitely win a ton of awards at the MTV movie awards. (Best fight, Best villain, best actor, etc.) And I can say this, These guys deserve all that golden popcorn. 

Munich 01/09/06

This movie is three hours long. That's a long time. I wasn't expecting it to be that long. Once I felt the two hour mark go by I was always looking for the inevitable telling signs of the conclusion. I was looking for them for about an hour. There's a real problem here and it's all about pace. Spielberg is a genius in the commercial thriller sense. If there's an action sequence, this guy can do it. But almost noone can do it for three hours straight. A movie that moves this fast has only the energy for two hours max, Otherwise simpleminded viewers like me get tired of the constant action. Which I did. 
Another thing to point out for future reference. (Again all due respect to Spielberg, great filmmaker with good intentions). Thriller and 'prayer for peace' don't exactly mesh. He moved the camera too much. This three hour movie needed a slower pace to fulfill the time requirement. Less is more they say. Here it is.
If I must say another thing. I don't really know that much about the Munich 'incident' that this film is based on. After watching the movie, I still don't know any exacting details of what happened. It's shown in brief and only for the purpose of spurring the story of vengeance exacted by Israeli secret agents. I got the feeling that Spielberg already assumed I knew everything about it. Like what happened, when it happened, how it happened, and what exactly was Black September. I have a suggestion, maybe a little brash, but here it is: It may have been a better idea not to base this story on any real events. Maybe Spielberg should have just made the whole thing up. That way he could give his message, tell it the best way he can, and wouldn't have to deal with all the critics who say he didn't get it right. I mean all the characters technically don't exist anyway right. Right, exactly my point.
As I conclude I feel I must say something about the good parts. I liked the reality of it. The way that assasinations never seem to go completely right. That the assassins make mistakes. The fact that they have to rely on those who aren't trustworthy. That once a man starts killing, he becomes overwhelmed by the fear that those harmed will seek revenge. This movie shows those realities that most movies don't show. This may not be a perfect movie, but it is honorable. It's a prayer for peace.