G.I. Joe: Retaliation

2013, d. Jon M. Chu

[So my original post got bollocksed up, a grand masterpiece covering 30 years of GI Joe culture, gone and lost forever.  So, instead of 20 immaculately constructed, brilliantly reasoned, perfectly spelled, grammatically correct paragraphs, you get this less eloquent, half-sized assembly of thoughts about the movie.]

G.I. Joe: Retaliation is an authentically awful movie.  It comes by it's lack of grandeur honestly, as it is a true successor to the works of Buzz Dixon, Ron Friedman and the other writers of the Marvel Productions cartoon of the 1980s, as well as Larry Hama's impressive decade long run on the series with Marvel Comics.   

The primary impetus for these source materials was, without a doubt, to sell toys.  The comics and cartoons featured on-model representations of the characters, vehicles and playsets found on toy shelves and in toy chests all over the world, much to the delight of the children who play with them.  To think there's not any creative or artistic merit to stories crafted out of a set of action figures is a cynical position to take.  Action figures are, inherently, a vehicle for storytelling, a ferry for children's imaginations.  Kids will do what they will with the action figures they have, but they also love to see their toys come to life (see Toy Story's enduring popularity for example) and how they act and behave without their guidance.  

The cartoon was richly detailed and wonderfully animated, in such a regard that visually it holds up well today.  It often featured multi-part arcs to convey that the threat Cobra presented wasn't always so easily overcome.  The episodes were primarily story-driven, so the characters were rather broadly constructed, their personalities driven more by the voice cast than any character-expanding stories.  Due to FCC regulations, violence had to be, well, non-violent, so all bullets and ballistics were converted to lazers, and despite frequent spectacular fire fights and exploding vehicles, nobody died.  It was always a Cobra versus Joes affair, both sides seeming somewhat buffoonish overall.  It was in the comic books that Larry Hama worked in a hard military angle (he addressed military rank frequently and used military jargon and acronyms which were helpfully explained in footnotes), provided stories that were character-driven as often as story-driven, worked in martial arts philosophies, and dabbled in simplified politics.  And characters died, often noble, often senseless deaths. Hama's took a more serious approach to his storytelling, but also seemed to understand that there was something inherently goofy to the whole situation, and would just as often play into as well. In both cases, the comics and cartoon played into the concept that the toys set up, that each Joe has a specialty, and thus they frequently featured large casts.  

The first film, by Stephen Sommers was a train wreck.  Ugly and incoherent, but also unaware of what the characters were supposed to be all about.  The film presented spectacle but it wasn't good, and it was disingenuous to the G.I. Joe brand.  Retaliation acts as more of a reboot as well as a sequel, fully aware that the "hyper-suits" (or whatever they were called) and other ideas of the first film were not authentic to the Joe experience.  Despite the sometimes drastic difference in the presentation of the characters between the comic and cartoon, there was a consistency between them that fell right in line with the toy brand.  Retaliation is many broad steps forward to finding that same consistency that the first film ignored in favour of trying to "modernize" (or "futurize") its military fighting force.

Retaliation brings back the idea that the Joes are soldiers, and hits the military angle hard (well as hard as a movie based on action figures will support, in line with Hama's portrayal of them).  Channing Tatum's Duke returns as the commanding officer, and Tatum has developed considerable screen presence since the first film.  I mercifully don't recall much about "The Rise of Cobra" save for the general impression of its awfulness and Tatum's decided lack of charisma.  Here he's loose and leading charming, matching the always enjoyable Dwayne Johnson.  Tatum and Johnson have considerable chemistry, and the film spends time building their close relationship, only to take it away as the catalyst for the titular "retaliation", as nearly the entire Joe platoon is massacred.  (Johnson and Tatum should most certainly appear together in another vehicle).

The story that plays out could have appeared in either the cartoon or the comics (but is original to the film), which Joe faithful will certainly appreciate.  Zartan is masquerading as the president, and with patience has executed Cobra Commander's scheme to destroy the Joes, take control of the country and potentially destroy the world.  Meanwhile, a story straight out of the comics, Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow bury the hatchet when they learn that it wasn't Storm but Zartan that killed their master years ago.  

Like the cartoon, the characters in the film are pretty flimsy.  While Snake Eyes was a star in the comics (the central figure in the title in its later years) where others can speak for him and his physicality can be placed in more focus, be more pronounced or exaggerated, he doesn't work so well as a feature player in motion.  As such, the B-plot is more Storm Shadow than Snake Eyes focussed and even then it feels disconnected and slight.  Still it does result in one of the most engaging and inspired action sequences I've seen, in which Snake Eyes and Jinx (Storm Shadow's cousin) square off against a seemingly neverending swarm of ninja while tethered to a mountainside.  It would have had even greater impact if we were more invested in the characters and their situation.

The trio of Roadblock, Lady Jaye and Flint are the sole survivors of the assault on the Joes and they lead the remainder of the film.  Johnson's charisma carries much of the film, though Roadblock has no real arc (only Storm Shadow truly has anything approximating a character arc).  Adrianne Palicki (who played Wonder Woman in a failed pilot recently) succeeds at being tough as Lady Jaye , but is too often undermined by having to play sexy.  D.J. Cotrona is Flint, a perfunctory character without purpose or definition.  Bruce Willis stubs in as the original G.I. Joe, Joe Colton, another flimsily assembled character who seems to be in the film because they could get Bruce Willis.

The bad guys consist of Jonathan Pryce in the dual role of the President and Zartan-as-the-President and he seems to be truly enjoying himself.  Both roles are steeped in cliches but Pryce's zeal goes a long way to making it entertaining.  Ray Stevenson as Firefly does most of the physical legwork in the bad guy department, but he's impressive and imposing, even if his cajun accent barely holds for a few minutes.  Cobra Commander finally appears like Cobra Commander should appear.  He's serves no other purpose than as a figurehead, and looks the part.

There's plenty of cool vehicles in the film, HISS tanks and Raptors and Rippers and Fangboats... the vehicles were about the only thing the first film got right, and it's nice to see them in action here, if only minimally (there's more focus on gunplay and physical fighting).   There's one land battle sequence with the vehicles and another boat fight, both happening in quick succession, inter-cut with a half dozen other gun fights, and it's endemic of the film's problem.  Watching a lot of Bond films recently, it's apparent that the key to their success is the fact that they let the action sequences breathe, stand on their own.  They become more memorable as an island than a part of the landscape, but you have to have plenty of meaningful plot and/or character to focus on between the action scenes, which is what Retaliation lacks.

In rating the quality of the film you have to contextualize it three ways.  The first is against it's predecessor, "The Rise Of Cobra", and in comparison it's a triumph.  The second is judging it against the beloved cartoons and comics from the property's heyday.  Retaliation is as readable or watchable as the comic and cartoon remain.  It's a kitschy '80's sensibility with a modern budget.  It's literally toys come to life and there's something delightful about it.  However, it's comparing retaliation against the standards of quality in cinema where Retaliation fails big time.  It's not a good movie.  Like a carnival ride, Retaliation provides momentary entertainment, but there's not a lot to think about beyond the initial experience.  Joe fans will celebrate this film, just as I'm sure the film will likewise create new Joe fans (it's violent, but moderately so for interested kids 10+).  And it will sell some toys.

Double Oh...13: Octopussy (1983)

d. John Glen


Octopussy preamble: Well... ugh?  This was the first James Bond film, I'm pretty sure, to be made into a video game.  I certainly remember the advertisements for the video game prominently displayed in comic books of the time.  Octopussy, and it's risque-sounding title, has been embedded in the public consciousness since the film debuted, and generally referred to in a derogatory way, as if to say it's a franchise low and the height of ridiculousness in Bond (particularly in Roger Moore's oeuvre, which has no shortage of ridiculousness) and that's not far off.  It came out in competition with Never Say Never Again and even though it's not official, I think I'd prefer to see the latter.

Villains: Ugh, here we go
- Kamal Khan (Louis Jourdan) is an Afghan prince in exile.  He's got gobs of money, a thirst for competition (gabmling) and is a renowned sportsman (of the hunting kind, not ball-playing).  You can bet that, at one point, he hunts Bond for sport, on elephant-back no less.
- General Orlov is renegade in the Soviet military.  He has grand plans on how Russia can dominate much of Europe, bringing it's filthy communist and socialist practices across half the globe.  Of course, the coalition of communism seemed to think these tactics would be inviting major retaliation from the US, so they shoot it down.  Orlov has other plans, funding his own communist revolution by selling off fakes of many of Russias treasures, using a traveling circus to aide in his smuggling and terrrorism.  He has a good plan conceptually, but exceptionally convoluted in the execution.
- Turban guy, Gobinda.  He's a mammoth of a man.  Not as freakish as Jaws, but very brawny.  Like Jaws, though he's exceptionally tough and strong (though not superhumanly so).
- Sawblade guy ("Thug with Yo-yo"), he's not even given a proper name, but he has this really funky (and as far fetched as Oddjob's bowler) yo-yo that's a giant saw blade.  I serious doubt it would do any real damage in real life (though it would probably not feel nice if you got hit with it).
- Mishka und Grishka are the carnie knife twins.  They're a throwing act who have expert skills with knives.  They're kind of small, and quite one-trick, so they're never much of a threat.

Bond Girls: There's two main Bond girls, Octopussy (Maud Adams back in her second Bond girl role) and Magda (Kristina Wayborn).  Octopussy is a smuggler (not the first, and not the last Bond will get with) in league with Khan and is also a circus owner/operator/performer.  She's wowed by the money and the Russian trinkets passing through her hands, completely unaware of the intent behind the smuggling.  She has a past with Bond, in that her father was a rogue MI-6 agent, and Bond was tasked to bring him in, but wound up killing him in the process.  Strangely, Octopussy doesn't hate him and seems to have had a long-time crush/fascination with him.  But, overall, there's very little to Octopussy, particularly for a main character, there's certainly no personality and dull chemistry between her and Moore.
   Magda is one of Octopussy's girls (the bulk of Octopussy's circus are girls), she's seen early on paired with Kamal Khan, leading one to think they're together, and there's a bit of a fake-out when Bond encouter's Octopussy's girls, thinking at first it's Kahn's harem.  When Bond makes Kahn aware that he has the original Faberge Egg, Magda allows herself to be seduced, sleeps with Bond and takes the egg (a very Bond thing to do), escaping out the balcony window in an acrobatic twirl of cloth.   One can tell later that Magda isn't all that taken with Bond.
   After learning that Khan betrayed her, all of Octopussy's girls mount a major assault on Khan's palace, doing lots of flipping and acrobatics, very little of which looks particularly threatening.  Of James Bond raid sequences this is the weakest of the lot.  Very cheap looking.  It starts off kind of empowering, watching these karate-chopping, high-kicking, cartwheeling women unconvincingly bust up some of Khan's goons, but then Octopussy gets captured and Bond and Q (!?) have to save the day in a hot air balloon (what?).  So much for empowerment.

Credits/Theme: Rita Coolidge sings "All Time High" over some of the cheesiest opening credits of the series.  I don't know what this era of Bond's obsession with trampolines is, but how many is this in a row now where the silhouettes are bouncing into the air?  The women are out of silhouettes in this one frequently, leading to some blatant nipple exposure (which I guess is why it's not on youtube?).  Somehow taking the women out of silhouette greatly reduces the sexiness and ups the cheese factor, mostly by having them smile and react to the lazers tracing across their bodies.  The lazers were perhaps at the time very advanced, but they look really corny now.
As for "All Time High", I don't hate it, but it's rather bland.

Bond: In the cold open, Bond once again fails at his infiltration.  I'm sensing a pattern here, that Bond doesn't really care about having or maintaining a cover.  Bond shows off some slight-of-hand capabilities, as he swaps out the recovered fake Faberge egg (he also shows off his expert eye, as he spits off his knowledge of Russian dynasty heirlooms, and spies the egg is a fake) for the real one during the auction (it shocked me that the auctioneers would allow them to handle the merchandise).  Bond's letching seems really gross in this one as he still thinks he's quite the Lothario.  I imagine the younger women of Octopussy's gang find him kind of unsettling.  At one point Octopussy offers James a job with her, but he affirms that he's a company man.

Movie: This is really one of the worst of the lot.  In a fruitless bid to try and hone in on Indiana Jones territory, Bond goes to India, fights on top of trains, eats a sheep's face, and searches for treasure (at least initially). It's overly convoluted in a thoroughly unpleasant way, to the point that one doesn't really care at all about the intricacies of its story.  The script lays the double-entendres on thick and sloppy, they're overall not very creative and Moore delivers most of them with an eye roll.  It's shocking how director John Glen can come off of one of the smartest of the Bond films and go right to the dumbest.  The circus/carnival motif is something that has appeared a few times throughout the Bond films, I wonder what that association is all about.  There have been a lot of painful, groan-inducing moments in Moore's Bond repertoire, but I think the swinging on the vines with the Tarzan jungle call is about as bad as they get.  That Bond also wastes precious minutes applying a clown costume and clown make-up then must stumble through a circus crowd seems more stupid than inventive.  Surely Bond, number one secret agent guy, can think of a better way to get into a circus tent than floppy shoes, especially since, as we've established, he's the goddamn worst at infiltrating. 

Q-gadgets: there's a mini jet plane hiding in a horse trailer that ejects out of the back end of a horse. (Blue screening in the flying sequence is some of the best in the series but then some of the worst later on).  In Q's lair, there's some Indian-themed apparatus, like a killer door, and a climbing rope that comes out of a snake charming basket.
Bond is given a fountain pen that contains a bug & receiver & metal dissolving acid in a pen
In very progressive thinking, Bond's wristwatch has LCD color TV in it
Bond infiltrates Khan's palace via a crocodile-shaped submersible (and later appears to be eaten by it when he escapes).

Classification (out of 01.0): 00.2 (it really is one of, if not the worst Bond movie.  The gauntlet has been thrown down, Die Another Day)

3 Short Paragraphs: Sinister

2012, Scott Derrickson (The Day the Earth Stood Still)

If you really don't want to know the twists and turns of this movie that any horror fan will see a mile away, beware spoilage below.

Yes, he did the Keanu version, not the original.  This time round, Derrickson is doing another found footage movie, but no, not that kind... it actually has found footage and it plays as much a character as the family in jeopardy.  Ethan Hawke, the washed up writer, has moved his willfully oblivious family into the home where, not so long ago, an entire family was murdered in their own back yard.  Stupid huh?  Not the plot, the writer.  It sets the desperate tone for Hawke's Oswalt.  He needs this true crime book to be successful, no matter the danger to his family or his own life. With whiskey fueled stupidity he watches previous family murders, left for him to consume.

We start with the assumption that the killer is manipulating Oswalt.  We are not wrong.  But its not a serial killer who plays with the minds of his next victim before slaughtering them along with their family.  No, based on the black metal character hiding in the shadows of the 8mm film, its a boogie man.  And not just any boogie man, but the original Babylonian demon god, consumer of children and apparently fan of bad heavy metal.  Bughuul needs the souls of children willing to kill their family and while he is playing with Oswalt, Boogie is also manipulating his daughter to be the next star of his films. And maybe if Oswalt hadn't been down downing bottle after bottle and revealed a bit more of his suspicions, he might not be recorded for the potential sequel.

But despite some downright creepy spirit filled scenes meant entirely for us, not so much as eliciting a raised hackle in the protagonist, this was a scream at the screen by the numbers stupid actions horror movie.  Turn on some fucking lights !!  Seriously, if I ever buy a creepy 70s ranch or Victorian mansion, I am installing giant halogen lights all on a single switch.  One creepy sound and FLASH no shadows left anywhere, not in the basement, not in the attic.  And just to contradict myself entirely, I rather enjoyed it all.  It could have been a plot line from the show Supernatural, if any heroes had been present, perhaps a good idea for the sequel in which Opie the deputy sheriff figures out what happened and is stopping the next film from being produced.  Add in a flashie magic dagger to kill Boogie and we will be good.

3 Short Paragraphs: The Punisher

2004, Jonathan Hensleigh (Kill the Irishman) -- Netflix

Yes, I never saw this in the decade since it was released.  But seriously, considering the shameful initial entry of this comic book based franchise, can you blame me?  But despite the litany of good reviews from fellow comic book readers, I was not swayed.  I was soured and to be honest, not a great fan of the original comic book anti-hero.  I liked him much more as the four colour enemy of Spiderman, in his minimal super villain outfit and a vast array of weaponry that didn't include death rays or super powers.  But his later more edgy life seemed dependant on creating a character meant to be adapted for the big screen.  And then Dirty Laundy came out (scroll down), the short fanfilm that really shows Thomas Jayne's affection for the character and his ability to live the character.  I felt honour bound to see the original portrayal.

Rebooting the origin story again, we get Frank Castle, an effective FBI agent doing his last job before retirement to an idyllic life with his family.  During that last undercover job, one of the lowlifes is killed.  That lowlife happens to be the son of lower life-form Howard Saint (John Travolta), a sleazier than thou money launderer (banker?) for Florida drug cartels.  He discovers Castle is an FBI agent and sends his mooks after Frank.  And at the behest of his moll, Saint asks for not just the death of Castle but his entire family.  And conveniently they are all gathering for a reunion.  Its brutal, horrible and sends Castle over the edge to be reborn soon after as The Punisher, skullie shirt and all.

I don't exactly know how but the movie seems to retain the grim violence of the comics while seeding in humor and heroism.  Castle, while planning the downfall of all of Saint's empire, shacks up next door to a bunch of misfits including a weirdo Ben Foster, very at odds with his current attempts to be the next Ryan Gosling.  They become sidekicks giving him a new family support system as he creatively takes down Saint, domino by domino.  But not via a simple kill bad guy, kill next bad guy and so on.  He actually encourages them to as much implode as an organization as he does kill them off. In the end, Saint has killed his own wife and best friend before becoming the final fatality of the movie. The movie sums itself up with elements of four color comics and revenge action flick.

Bonus paragraph: For a more faithful adaptation of the actual later comics I don't care, they actually did Punisher: War Zone, which was originally going to be Punisher 2, sequel to Jayne's, but ended up being a third depiction of the character independent of the others.

Oz: The Great And Powerful

2013, Sam Riami -- in theatre

I have written previously (in my Return to Oz review) of my lack of affection for the 1939 classic Wizard of Oz.  In spite of my borderline disdain, there's something within the concept of Oz that has always intrigued me.  Like all great fantasy, especially fantasy for children, there's a representation of darkness, the threat that everything is not going to be all right.  In Wizard there's the implication that Dorothy's parents have passed, what with her living with Aunt Em and Uncle Henry.  There's the devastating tornado that uproots her from her family and tears her away into foreign terrain.  There's the horror of witches and flying monkeys, and that's just the obvious stuff. When the Wizard is exposed as a tired old man from Kansas himself, there's a sadness there too, of a man having to pretend to be someone he's not for a very very long time.

Return to Oz was by far darker throughout, starting with everyone thinking Dorothy was disturbed, leading up to her potentially getting electroshock therapy, before escaping back into an Oz that seems virtually post-apocalyptic.  These sorts of dark tinges in the movie have long made me curious to explore Oz more, yet I never have.  I just keep going back to the films (even Wizard I have seen countless times... in spite of my troubles it's an alluring production, especially the final act in the Emerald City).  Eventually I'll get there, but for now I'm excited there's another feature.  However, the realization that it was not an adaptation of one of L. Frank Baum's many, many Oz stories left my expectations low (alongside the many middling and unfavourable reviews that passed my way).

The biggest disappointment of learning it's an "original treatment" is that it's quite obviously drawing upon the continued popularity of the 1939 feature rather than its own adventure (but having not read Baum's stories I cannot say whether building off of, or piggybacking on preceding stories is a thing or not).  The thing that sunk Return to Oz though, was the expectation (both from the critics and the public) of a repeat of the the classic, and I feared Oz: The Great and Powerful would try too hard to correct that financial mistake.  They did indeed lean heavily on the original Wizard for inspiration, but they have their cake and eat it too, as the writers, director and studio found their own legs to stand on.

In taking a minor player from the 1939 classic (but major player in Oz mythology) and centering an adventure around him it also doubles as an origin for the Wizard we're familiar with and expands upon the land we've seen before.  As a child I always wanted to explore the Emerald City more, and this film gives you a guided tour.  Oscar "Oz" Diggs starts off (in black and white 4:3 aspect ratio, no less) as a small time con-man and illusionist, a teller of lies and an purveyor of fakery, and a big-time skirt-chaser, a genuine cad on top of it all, affording himself no love or friendship.  Working in a carnival in Kansas, he's chased off stage by an angry mob, and a short while later chased into a hot air balloon by an angry strongman (whose wife he made the moves on).  In between the two chases, he meets with an old flame, Annie, who notes she's marrying a man named Gale, an obvious tie to Dorothy (I presume this to imply she's their mother).

The balloon ride is ill-fated, as Oscar is swept up in a 3-D tornado (I'm not certain that Baum always used the tornado as a portal to Oz, it was a river in a storm that took Dorothy there in Return) and arrives in a strange land of waterfalls and giant flowers and biting river faeries.  He meets Theodora, a wide-eyed witch who believes that Oscar is the wizard of a long-told prophecy who will bring peace to the land.  Theodora also believes she has a part in this prophecy by his side, whether she constructed this as her own delusion or was something her more deceitful sister Evanora seeded in her mind is unclear.  But it's Oscar's rejection of her that sends her already volatile emotional state into deeper despair (her tears burn and scar her face, a nice allusion to her fate in Wizard).  It's clear Theodora is a pawn of her sister (perhaps Evanora realizing that her sister wields more power naturally), and Evanora continues to play her, up to and including poisoning her goodness so all that remains is her rage.  Evanora, likewise, is the evil witch who has divided the land of Oz and created the strife that infects it.  She portrays herself as a Good Witch and deflects all of the land's ills on the Witch of the South, noting that Glinda killed her own father, their former ruling wizard (and as is noted, the people of Oz are forbidden from killing), when indeed the wizard died by her own hand.

Oscar, a trickster, is tricked himself by Evanora, sent on a journey to kill the "wicked witch of the South", in return claiming his throne and the ample riches of Oz.  Reluctant to kill anyone (for all its weaknesses I adore this film for it's conceit to non-violence), even if all it entails is breaking a wand, Oscar hesitates and recants his mission when he discovers Glinda, the Good Witch, is the spitting image of Annie.  Glinda, like Annie, sees Oscar for what he is, a charlatan, a liar, a cad and a fake, but also full of potential, and inherently a man who wants to do good.  She knows he's not a great wizard, at least not in the strictest sense of the prophecy, but he is a man who can theoretically guide the people of Oz as the prophecy declared, so long as the people believe in him and what was foretold.

Glinda is, quite obviously, a pacifist.  Soft spoken and kind-hearted, she needs Oscar to be their leader, their general in battle, because she hasn't the heart or mind to do the deed herself.  Cunning is not in her nature, kindness is.  It's her kindness that bolsters Oscar, that raises his confidence and allows him to be the man he always wished he was.  Though he's no great wizard, he can be a good man, and be good to people.  He will learn from others and change, as he promised to the sky when thrust at the center of the tornado (although Baum's stories, I believe, remained religiously neutral).

Oscar, like Dorothy in the other Oz films I continue to reference, collects a couple of curious accomplices, including a flying monkey named Finley and a china doll who never gets a proper name.  The discovery of China Girl (as Oscar nicknames her) is one of the most conceptually gruesome moments in children's cinema.  Though nothing outright horrifying visually, when Oscar and Finley discover China Town, it's buildings and people smashed, it's a curious scene.  Upon hearing the sobs of China Girl, then finding her behind a table, legs broken underneath, the weight of the scene takes hold.  This was a town once rich with life and China Girl witnessed its death, shortly before she was crippled herself.  She's a tough girl (she carries a knife) and Oscar repairs her legs with quick-drying glue, but the loss of her family weighs on her, and the darkness in her story runs very deep, though the film makes a point of not getting too lost in it.

The performances in the film waver between sound and broad.  With the minor players all doing their part to keep things in check, while James Franco, Rachel Weisz, Michelle Williams and Mila Kunis (in a brassy reprise of Margaret Hamilton's Wicked Witch when she turns) play it bold, old-timey film style.  Cinema rarely gives actors the opportunity to do that, but it's surprisingly fun to see when they do (last year's Oscar winner The Artist had it, only limited to broad physicality).  Unfortunately, the script drags the bigness of the performances as well as the pace of the film far too often, as it spends so much time mincing over Oscar's willingness to be the hero that's required.  It's nailed up early in the film and continually hammered home.  The film clocks in at almost 130 minutes and could use 30 minutes of trimming and tightening (and I could easily tell where to start).  It's a kids movie, through and through, and the lulls will find even the most patient child anxious in their seat for the scene to move on.  The biggest drag is the film's seemingly endless love affair with its own special effect.  It spends laborious amounts of time trying to wow and flutter the audience with fantastical landscapes, which in all their digital glory, look about as impressive as a cartoon.  Cartoons tend not to languish on their scenery too much because time is too precious, these live action fantasies could learn a thing or two by studying them (in fact, I wondered why this wasn't a digitally animated feature in the first place).  A few establishing bits and we're good, we don't need multiple 3-minute travel/falling sequences.  All the awe and wonder becomes a little tiresome when it's awe and wonder all the time.

As an addition to the Oz mythos, it fares pretty well, in fact (that Oscar introduces scarecrows and fireworks, among other things, to Oz makes a certain amount of sense), and Kunis' turn as the Wicked Witch was one of the great pleasures I've had in the cinema of late.  It's not the singin' and dancin' Wizard, but I'm quite thankful of that.  It's got some pretty major flaws, but as entertainment with the kids (I'd say 6+ depending on if your kid gets scared easily... my 11-year-old found some scenes scary, but he's a softie when it comes to that stuff) you can definitely do worse.

Double Oh...12: For Your Eyes Only (1981)

d. John Glen

For Your Eyes Only preamble:  I really need to take a couple weeks off work just so I can get back to the pace that I started this Double Oh series at.  Anyway...
     When I think of Bond, the cold open at the start of this film is what I think of.  I don't know how, I don't know why, or when, or where, but I've seen this teaser dozens of times.  Or at least, I feel I have.  The memory of Roger Moore flying a helicopter into the back end of an electric wheelchair, the bald man within attempting to race away from it on a long stretch of factory rooftop, picking it up off the ground then dropping down a factory smokestack is burned into my memory, and for some reason it epitomizes Bond for me.  Vengeful, yet quippy.  Action oriented and fearless (or senseless maybe).  I'm sure I watched the rest of the film before but strangely this is the only part I remembered.

Villains: Blofeld appears, sort of, in that opening sequence, which again defies continuity, upholding Bond's marriage and his wife's death from On Her Majesty's Secret Service.  Bond boards a helicopter after tending to Tracy's grave, only to have it remotely hijacked by Blofeld.  Only seen from behind and his face never revealed (a return to his anonymous origins in the early Connery films), neither is Blofeld referred to by name, perhaps a concession of the legal issues then-still revolving around rights ownership of Thunderball.  He only appears in the teaser, and, after Bond finally gets his revenge, I believe, is never heard from again.
  The main film's main nemesis is Aris Kristatos (the suave Julian Glover), a former resistance fighter, now rogue and smuggler.  We meet him first as an ally of sorts.  Bond's contact in Italy introduces him, and Kristatos tells Bond of "the Dove" Columbo (no, not played by Peter Falk, but instead by the delightfully exuberant Topol), a rival smuggler, and one time accomplice in the resistance during WWII.   Kristatos is full of lies, however, and Columbo engages Bond to set things straight.
   The main source of confusion was who the East German Olympic Biathlete/henchman Eric Kriegler was working for, as Kristatos indicated he was in the employ of Columbo (Locque murders Bond's Italian contact and leaves a dove pin in his hand), but turns out he was really under Kristatos' thumb.  Kriegler is almost too much a match for Bond.  He's a better skier, in far better shape, he's bigger and stronger, but his failing is he's not as resourceful.
    Locque is a hired killer who doesn't have much of a role, but is the central instigator to much of the plot.  He's also part of one of the best Bond scenes ever, Bond kicking Locque's car off a cliff



    Kristatos is cunning and sly, and his plan to obtain the film's Maguffin and sell it to the Russians, in hindsight was perhaps a little too elaborate but made for some interesting twists along the way.  Columbo turned out to be a wonderful associate for Bond, and a thoroughly enjoyable character.

Bond Girls:  Melina Havelock (Carole Bouquet) is the primary Bond maiden in this one.  She's the twenty-something daughter of the marine biologists who are gunned down by Locque for discovering the whereabouts of the British naval sub carrying the ATAC (Automated Targeting Attack Computer) that could threaten the security of all of the British and American military communication channels, or something like that.  Melina is out for revenge, but perhaps a little too in-over-her-head.  To her credit, no matter how deep and troubled it gets, she's always ready to put up a fight.  She also gets plenty of opportunity to show off her own intelligence, skills and resourcefulness.  All around, she's a very confident and bold, crossbow-wielding character.
    Countess Lisl von Schlaf (Cassandra Harris) is Columbo's mistress. She works his casinos in a bit of a grifter role, dazzling winning patrons with her cleavage, egging them on to bigger bets until the house wins. Bond, well, naturally, pumps her for information, and just as naturally his death cock strikes and she's dead shortly thereafter, run over on the beach.  She at least seemed a more mature vixen and age appropriate for Bond.
    Finally there's Kristatos' ward, the aspiring Olympic figure skater he's sponsoring, Bibi Dahl (oh, Baby Doll, I just got it!).  She's a brash, forthright, sexually empowered American teen who doesn't chase boys, she tries to maul men.  She takes a shining to Bond and turns up naked in his bed, much to his horror.  Bibi Dahl proves that even Bond has standards, and he turns her down, repeatedly.  She's a really fun character serving a very useful purpose in the series.

Theme/Credits:  I must have stuck around after Blofeld gets dumped down the stovepipe, because just as that epitomizes Bond to me, this kind of epitomized for me for a long time, for better or worse, what a Bond credit sequence should be.  Essentially, a music video.  Sheena Easton, an attractive lady herself, is featured prominently in from and behind the silhouettes and projections of dancing, swimming and jumping nude figures.  Water is a prominent theme in the visuals, implying that there will be water work in the film, and of course there is.
    As for the song, it's the gateway between the '70's romantic ballad and the '80's power ballad.  You're either going to dig it or loathe it.  I know I should hate it, but I really like it.



Bond: Wow.  It's so weird for Bond to have standards, but here, a decidedly aging Bond (though not directly pointed at) seems a lot more paternal to Melina and Bibi.  Moore has a weariness here for Bond that is directly juxtaposed to his frequent quipping.  He's not quite Dirty Harry grizzled, but he's not as thoroughly cheeky as he once was.  Strange that as Moore aged as Bond, he's also called upon to appear more physical, in his fights and his chases, but he seemed up for the challenge, though it's hard to believe he can sustain it for another two films.  It's also rare that Bond isn't so focussed on sex, and I always appreciate it when he powers past his primal urges and focuses mostly on the job at hand.

Movie:  I really dug the weave of the characters in this one, how it introduced and brought all the players together.  It's not straightforward, but also not overly complex, just the right level of complication.  Kristatos' elaborate deception is a clever tweak for a Bond film, while the influence of Locque in bringing Melina into the plot was just another of the moving pieces in the film.  The Maguffin of the ATAC is typical of a Bond film, but it's only one of the motivators for the characters.
    For Your Eyes Only seemed to ramp up on the exotic action setpieces.   The 1956 Winter Olympic village of Cortina provides dangers for Bond including another deadly ski-chase that heads into a bobsled run, a ski-jump action sequence (which is far superior to Superman III), and hockey rink.  Later Bond and Melina take a 2-man submersible to the submarine wreck to retrieve the ATAC.  They don heavy deep sea scuba gear and venture out to the sub, having to deactivate the self-destruct device, only to be ambushed by Kreigler.  It's an intense fight sequence where the good guys are incredibly vulnerable, and terribly cool underwater sequence unlike any other that I've seen (instead of trying to recreate the mania of Thunderball's melee, they go for something more like Alien).
    The final act of the film includes another methodically paced lead in as Bond scales the side of a rock pillar to reach Kristato's retreat in an old monestary, but before he can reach, he's discovered and there's a dangling melee which is really quite cool.  I have to wonder if the film was poaching the Eiger Saction (Clint Eastwood's repectably writer-director-star stab at a Bond-like role).  Again the lair, perhaps not quite as cool as a space lab or a submersible habitat, but still very unique, visually and conceptually appealing.
    I should also note that it ends with a parrot talking to a Margaret Thatcher impersonator, which, you know, kind of plays both silly and charming (though that Bond invariably does wind up with Melina is kind of icky).

Q gadgets: beyond the Lotus that Bond drives (and wrecks again), we're treated to a few ridiculous items in Q's lair: a fake cast that can bust up a wall and an umbrella which can gore it's holder when it closes (... how would that ever be useful?).  The main purpose for Bond's visit is to use the Identograph, primitive facial recognition software.

Classification (out of 01.0): 00.8.  This one is solid through and through.  A couple of too-cheesy bits, and perhaps not the most memorable plot, but otherwise very engaging and still dazzling today.

3 Short Paragraphs: Silver Linings Playbook

2012, David O. Russell (I Heart Huckabees, Three Kings) -- cinema

Silver Linings Playbook was an Oscar-contendor structured movie about the damage caused by unchecked mental illness mirrored against how many of us deal with the triggers of it every day.  If you only saw the trailers leading up to the Academy Awards (excuse me, now rebranded officially as The Oscars) you might have thought of it primarily as a dance movie with love story.  But no, it really is mostly about crazy people in love. And some dancing.

I originally caught interest in the movie when TIFF trailers were circulating.  It looked to me like a darkly comedic movie, a small story about a man returning from his stay at the psychiatric hospital, to discover healing through his family and a new love. The subplot was that there is crazy in all of our lives and it is how we deal with it that makes the difference. I was hoping for something darker, more challenging, along the lines of Rachel Getting Married.  Alas, we got Oscar-fodder, and by that, I mean the plot elements they focused on were a dance competition and the big lead up to a grand exclamation of love, only missing a jog through a field of flowers... while wearing a rainshield made of garbage bags, of course.

A few minutes into the movie Marmy leaned over to me and whispered, "Imagine Ben Affleck playing the Bradley Cooper role."  Suddenly it all made sense to me -- the perpetual facial scrub, the working class family, the hoodie & sweats, and the bulky shoulders.  This was meant to be an Affleck vehicle and could have even inserted Matt Damon into the friend in the terrible marriage role.  Its not that Cooper wasn't good at playing Pat, but you could easily envision Ben doing the gestures, the rants, and the detached attraction to Jennifer Lawrence's Tiffany.  But at least Lawrence carried this movie for me, as the not so much damaged as traumatized young woman surrounded by neurotic "normal" people.  Very grounded in her role, she owned (pwned perhaps?) the character keeping hurt, angry, vulnerable, caring, thoughtful and sexy all tightly wound in her portrayal with the appropriate bursts of emotion expected from a person dealing with so much. And yeah, I heart Jennifer and all her post-Oscar reactions to her win.

Double Oh...11: Moonraker

Moonraker preamble: if you will recall (or even if you won't), at the end of the credits to The Spy Who Loved Me it read "James Bond will return in... For Your Eyes Only".  What wasn't foreseen at the time was the outrageous success of Star Wars, leading to a mad scramble to assemble something more sci-fi/space related to try and shamelessly exploit the burgeoning SF geek market.  It worked, on me at least.  Moonraker still stands out to me as my favourite Bond movie as a kid, almost entirely because of its exploitation of sci-fi.  Some Bond watchers loathe this film (*ahem* my wife) and generally rank it towards the back end of Bond features, and I wondered if my childhood fondness would hold up in adulthood (because, as I've been discovering over the past few years, it rarely does).

Villains: Oh, look who's back in the opening sequence... it's Jaws!  Hooray!  I honestly love the big lug, primarily because I know well his redemptive arc in this one.  He's a monster, a monolithic man mountain whose feats of strength and durability obviously triggered my youthful fascination with him.  In the opening sequence, Jaws and Bond wrestle in the sky in a fabulous skydiving sequence.  Jaws loses his parachute and crash lands in a circus big top ("SPOON!").  Later Jaws is hired by megalomaniac space pioneer Hugo Drax to keep Bond off his tail.
   Their repeat encounter takes place in a Rio back-alley during Carnival.  Jaws, in a very creepy (to a 10-year-old me, anyway) carnival costume, slowly stalks Bond's Brazilian station agent, Manuela, in the alley, before he reveals himself, picking her up, and getting ready to take a bite out of her jugular with those big silver chompers.  When Bond shows, they exchange a charming set of smiles in recognition before they get on with it.  Later Bond and Dr. Goodhead tussle with Jaws on top of a stranded cable car (after Jaws bit clean through one of the cables).  They're seriously outmatched.
    At the end of that sequence, Jaws has a meet-cute with a busty blonde in lederhosen and braided pigtails, and they literally fall in love at first site.  It's adorable and sweet and I can understand why people hate it but I just find it charmingly campy.  Finally, Jaws turns up again in the space station as Drax's right-hand thug, but Bond wisely convinces him that he won't be included in his little space eugenics project and he turns hero, protecting his adorable special lady.  They're the last survivors on the station, as it explodes, but the main capsule detaches and survives the landing to earth, we learn in a goofy bit of exposition at Mission Control.  Jaws is really a star player in this film, and while I understand that more appearances by him would be too much, I'm also kind of sad this is the last we see of him.
    Hugo Drax has a thug, Chang, a trained kendo fighter, who is his right-hand prior to Jaws, but Bond squares off with him in a glass objects shop (naturally destroying everything possible) before winding up in a beautifully lit and decorated stained glass clocktower set (that seems to me to be what Sam Mendes was riffing off of in the wonderful skyscraper sequence in Skyfall).  Naturally Chang is sent flying out through the stained glass into the throngs of evening diners below.
    Finally there's Drax himself, seemingly yet another Blofeld substitute.  He's hits all the right notes as a full-on destroy-the-world-and-rebuild-it madman, much like Stromburg in the last film.  Michael Lonsdale plays him as a no-nonsense, powerful man with little conscience and massive ambition.  He's not a cunning adversary for Bond, but rather sees Bond as little more than a pesky nuisance, and never feels like his plan is in any danger of being derailed.  He dies with a dart in the chest before being sucked into the vacuum of space.

Bond Girls: We start with Corrine Dufour (the lovely Corrine Clery), Drax's personal pilot.  Bond literally pumps her for information.  Once he gets it, she's pretty much expendable.  I swear Bond has a death-dick which leads to a 50/50 chance of you being dead after he beds you.  Corrine is good with the one-liners, but she winds up as dog meat for Drax's dobermans.  Sad, I liked her.
   Next is Dr. Holly Goodhead (Lois Chiles).  She's a CIA agent who has infiltrated Drax's organization to expose his dirty deeds and bring it down from within.  She's exceptionally smart, so naturally Bond's charm takes a lot longer to work its way into her pant.  She first sees him as a patronizing smart-ass know-it-all, but has a grudging respect for him when he survives the centrifuge.  As well, she's a trained astronaut, and a lot better at a lot of things than James, except perhaps fighting, which she doesn't get to show off a lot.  Overall, she's a pretty great character.
   There's Manuela (Emily Bolton), Bond's Rio station agent.  He spends all of about 40 seconds getting to know her before he's sexed her up, and I was certain Jaws was going to kill her in that alley afterwards (Bond's death-dick strikes again).  Manuela doesn't have much fight in her, and after the Jaws incident we don't see her again.
    Finally, there's Dolly (Blanche Ravalec), Jaws' girlfriend.  She seems absolutely sweet and adorable and seems to have the biggest heart, falling for Jaws like she did.  I couldn't really tell though, was she supposed to have braces?

Title/Theme: Shirley Bassey's back to sing yet another batch of awkward and awful lyrics.  Bassey's a hell of a singer but she's never given anything good to work with.  It's orchestrated well by John Barry and sung well by Bassey, but it's dull, dull, dull.  And then there's a disco version over the end credits... ouch.
     The visual sequence is supposed to represent flying, and I was wondering if it was in response to Superman, but it's terribly cheesy (and even more obviously trampoline-ing than in the previous film's title sequence).



Bond: Moore's over 50 at this point, still very handsome, but starting to encroach upon his age.  He still has the vigor of youth though, and seems more up to physically fighting in this one than in any of his preceding pictures.  Bond is back to being more interested in sex than super-spying, but thankfully Dr. Goodhead is actually more invested in the case than he, so she keeps him on the right path.  Bond actually achieves a successful infiltration into one of Drax's laboratories, however his sneaking around makes a bit of a neurotoxic mess.  Oh and he also delivers this wonderful bit of sexism to the CIA Doctor Lady:

"But then again I keep forgetting that you're more than just a beautiful Woman"

Movie: The initials sequence, in which a pair of Drax's men steal a space shuttle off the back of its airplane ferry mid-flight was conceptually sound, but executed poorly visually.  It bode ill for the rest of the film, but I was pleased to find that it actually recovered quite well from there.  Through to the final act, this is very much your garden variety Bond movie, with women and mystery and henchment and not one, but two boat chases, one in Venice, the other down the Amazon (oh yeah, Jaws falls over a very nasty waterfall and survives that too).  After the waterfall sequence (in which Bond escapes certain death with an emergency paraglider, crashing down near a Mayan(?) temple which Drax has stocked with beautiful people and a massive network of space shuttle launch bays (and a snake grotto).  As far as evil hideouts go, it's not the best, but also not too shabby.
    Of course, this all makes way for their launch into space, at which point Bond and Dr. Goodhead have stolen away in one of the many shuttles routing towards Drax's cloaked space station.  There, with all the pretty people gathered, Drax unloads his masterplan of wiping the earth clean of humanity and restocking it with only the best looking people (I don't recall if he considered their intelligence as well, but they all seem capable of working in a space station so I guess that's good).  Bond disables the cloaking device and the US government rapidly deploys a shuttle full of space-lazer troops to combat Drax's space-lazer troops.  It's frightfully silly, but it's so reminiscent of the great underwater battle in Thunderball that I still manage to appreciate it.
    The effects and models throughout the space sequences are quite good (which can't always be said throughout the film).  The fuck city in space (because, really, that's what it is) is a creaky looking thing but so apt for its time.  Lewis Gilbert's third directorial effort is perhaps the best of the series so far, capturing some wonderful vistas and applying most of the effects well, increasing in skill with each outing.

Q-gadgets: wrist dart gun, cigarette case /safe Cracker, 007 embossed mini cam, explosive bolas, lazer guns, a tricked out speedboat (Mines, torpedoes, emergency paraglider) to cruise the Amazon and C4 hidden in a watch.  It all, naturally, comes in very handy.

Classification (out of 01.0): 00.7

3 Short Paragraphs: Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters

2013, Tommy Wirkola (Dead Snow) -- cinema

It is with unreserved glee that I state out loud that I really liked this movie!  Sure, you might want to lump it into the same sub-genre as Van Helsing but I am one of the nine people who really enjoyed that movie too.  Sure its silly and over the top.  Sure its so antagonistically anachronistic I have to internally explain the presence of modern guns in an 18th (??) century setting by saying it all happens in a post-apocalypse age where society has collapsed to a semi-medieval state but technology has survived.  Pshaw I say to all the haters; just relax and enjoy leather bound monster hunters with cool weapons fight a plethora of creatively nasty witches.

So, plot, as if the one sentence above doesn't cover it all, is that Hansel & Gretel are led into the forest by their hunter father and left in the dark.  They follow their noses to a cabin made of candy and are capture by an evil witch.  But rather than lying down and being baked (that's the other movie) they kick ass and cook the witch.  Thus are born the legend making witch hunters.  But by now, shouldn't they be Hans and Greta? Anywayz, the movie begins with our heroes in a town where the witches are doing more than eating the odd child here and there. Some sort of prophecy is in action!

While Werewolf: TBAU claimed to be a failed followup to The Wolfman, it turns out to be this movie's mockbuster with the same plot structure -- the usual monster is not so usual, the town's established law & order do not trust the hired guns and the main characters have their history revealed.  But unlike TBAU it doesn't elicit cringes.  I am not sure if this is Tommy Wirkola's you-did-a-popular-foreign-film-here's-an-hollywood-script intro but he did a good job of blending traditional horror with humor in Dead Snow and he does a good job here as the guffaws blend in well with the, well, on-par action bits.  And it was nice to see Arterton lead the genre action for once, instead of just being the girly support for the hero. It was nice to note the female hero cried out in shock and pain as much as Renner did.

Double Oh...10: The Spy Who Loved Me

The Spy Who Loved Me preamble:  We're starting into "foggy memory territory" with the Bond films now, as I think I've seen this one before, and all of the Moore films to follow, but I remember very little about the specifics.  Except this is where Jaws debuts, and Mrs. Ringo Starr has a starring role (pun intended!).

Villains: It's quite evident to me the moment that Karl Stromburg's crab-like aquatic base of operations emerges from the depths that I actually haven't seen this film before.  That emerging- from-the =-sea sequence is utterly impressive, model or not (it's a model).  The fact that the Stromburg base, Atlantis, became the inspiration for the Legion of Doom's evil lair in Super Friends (and beyond) only serves to make it more impressive. Stromburg (Curd Jurgens) is an obvious supplement for Blofeld here (as Blofeld was entangled in the Thunderball lawsuit and off limits), but he has his own distinguishing affectations and characteristics, namely a strange longing for humanity to return in the sea, as well as webbed hands.  To this end he's kidnapping atomic submarines (first British, then Russian, then American), to steal their warheads and set of the nuclear holocaust, after which the only option will be for the surviving countries to invest in his plans for an undersea kingdom (really shouldn't he have that ready before he nukes the place).

    Stromburg has a pair of henchmen, the burly wrestler-type Sandor (who gets dropped off a roof within minutes of meeting Bond for the first time) and perhaps the most infamous henchman in the series, Jaws.  Actor Richard Kiel stands an impressive 7 feet, 2 inches, and seems even bigger here.  With a mouth full of metal (one can't even call them teeth), inhuman strength (he picks a van up off its rear wheels), and seeming nigh-invulnerability (he gets crushed between the truck and the wall at one point, barely phased) he's the most challenging henchman Bond has faced.  The fact as well is Jaws (at least here) isn't stupid, and he's a lot faster than he looks, which are the two usual failings of burly henchmen.  Jaws is last seen swimming away from the wreckage of the Atlantis at the end of the film (though we know we'll be seeing him again soon).

Bond Girls: Stromburg has an alluring woman-at-arms, Naomi (Caroline Munro), whom, I suppose, shares his evil lair with him, as she certainly knows her way around the place.  She gives Bond the googly eyes, and Bond can barely keep his tongue in his mouth when she shows up in a itty bitty bikini, but he has no qualms with blowing her up in a helicopter (which she was piloting I might add. Good pilot, terrible shot) when the time comes (and he doesn't even sleep with her first).

  Besides Naomi, there's Agent Triple X, Major Anya Anasova (Barbara Bach), Bond's equal over in the Russian secret service.  We're introduced to her in one of the greatest fake outs ever.  The opening sequence has the Russians needing to call in their top agent, and cutting to the bedside phone ringing as a couple are... mid-romance.  He's a terribly handsome, chiseled  hairy and barrel-chested fellow so reminiscent of Connery.  He answers the phone, and then passes it to the attractive, saucer-eyed woman he was bedding.  "Agent Triple X", she answers.  Bach is a bit dead eyed in the role, frequently lacking in emphasis in her delivery.  The character, however, is exceptionally capable but not entireIy given the latitude to show it off (certainly not like Michelle Yeoh or even Halle Berry or Olga Kurylenko in later films).  Her relatively equal status beside Bond certainly puts her in the upper echelon of Bond Girls.

Title/Theme:  Carly Simon sings the hell out of "Nobody Does It Better", and I think I'm close to declaring it the best song from a Bond movie.  Perhaps not the best theme, but I love that song.  There's a bit of a disco influence in the Bond theme in this picture, but I kind of like it.  It perks it up nicely and doesn't outright crass like the Disco Star Wars theme.
     The title sequence is the best of the series so far, with Bond actively injected into the silhouette proceedings.  There's a lot of gymnastics involved, including the high-bar acrobatics on the barrel of a Luger, and a lot of nude women in Russian military imagery.  It's a very well orchestrated piece, but I'm all too aware of the sexism of the naked-women, besuited Bond pairings (but then again, men find naked women sexy, women generally find men in a suit sexier than naked men).

Bond: Bond in this film is incredibly restrained from his more primal tendencies (for both killing and for sex).  The fact that he has an woman who is as much his equal (if not more intelligent and shrewder than he, though perhaps not as skilled a fighter) goes a long way to tame those baser elements.  He's still a bit of a sexist pig, but here it seems more a pointed character trait, rather than the sexism of the writers as in previous films.  I like that they kept Tracy's death as part of his background, and Moore's reaction when it's mentioned is perfect.  Bond shows more physical prowess in this one, certainly less afraid to fight physically than in other films, but he's still very reliant on accessories.  Oh, and we're back to Bond being the worst infiltrator once again, as every attempt at infiltration is a complete wash.


Movie:   Oddly, this film cannibalizes great sequences from previous Bond features:  a ski sequence that doesn't quite measure up to On Her Majesty's Secret Service, an underwater sequence that doesn't quite match up to Thunderball, and a massive good guys vs bad guys sequence in the belly of a super-cargo ship that rivals if not exceeds the assault on Blofeld's volcano lair in You Only Live Twice.  Despite plundering its own resources The Spy Who Loved Me is judged better as the sum of its parts.

    The editing can be clunky from time to time... a particularly stilted kissing sequence and an awkward drop from Jaws being most notably.  I disliked that Triple X was kidnapped and kept by Stromberg, and that Bond had to rescue her.  She really shouldn't need to be rescued.  Also I liked that the film put an actual human side to one of the toadies Bond killed: from the opening sequence, one of the Russian agents Bond killed was Triple X's lover.

Q-gadgets: The Lotus Esprit converts into a submarine and is loaded to the gills with doodads (of which Triple X knows all about since she stole the designs two years ago).

Classification (out of 01.0): 00.9 (I loved this one)

(Crossover part 1) Stake Land / Sweet Tooth vol 1

Stake Land (2010, Jim Mickle) - Netflix
Sweet Tooth volume 1, DC Comics/Vertigo

From alien annihilation to crippling pandemics to robot uprisings, zombie plagues, and nuclear holocausts, so often in post-apocalyptic fiction (as opposed to non-fiction?) we're left unaware of the specifics of how the near-obliteration of came about.  We're often given small clues through the progression of the story, yet the characters we're following are rarely privy to the true source of their condition, and the cause of the apocalypse is rarely relevant to their survival.

A lot of post-apocalyptic fiction is derived from the elements of the western genre.  The idea of the wasteland is akin to the wild west replete with roving gangs of marauders, rapists and opportunists, run-down towns, bounty hunters and/or the lone wanderer, lawlessness and a general lack of technology amongst other tropes.

Stake Land and Sweet Tooth are not of the same sub-genre of post-apocalyptic storytelling (nor of the same medium), yet they utilize many of the same tropes, starting with the lone wanderer rescuing a boy and taking him under his wing as they navigate the treacherous terrain that remains, a specific end destination, a supposed safe-haven, in mind (its a genre staple, this same starting point was also used in Winterworld, an comic mini-series from the '80's I recently recapped).

Toasty wrote about Stake Land here a year and a half ago, and has brought it up occasionally in conversation since (including making a point to let me know it was recently made available on Netflix).  My initial impression, before actually watching it, was that it was a low-budget, vampire riff on Zombieland, but beyond the title and the lone-wanderer and his protege, it's a vastly different film owing more to dire hopelessness of Cormac McCarthy's The Road than the Jesse Eisenberg-starring pop-art semi-comedy.  It's actually a very well made, well acted, and well conceived film which takes its characters journey very seriously and, besides a single mis-step towards the end, presents a bleak vampire-infested future that doesn't just recycle but actually adds something to the genre.

Teenaged Martin witnesses his family being slaughtered and eaten by vampires, and is only spared himself by the intervention of Mister, a grizzled veteran hunter of the vamps.  Mister takes Martin under his protection as they travel through middle-America towards Canada ("New Eden") where it's too cold for the vampires to live.  Along the way they pick up a couple of strays, and come into contention with a burgeoning religious sect (founded by racists and rapists) called The Brotherhood.  They believe that the vampires are a tool of God to cleanse the land, and men such as Mister work in defiance of God's will.  They also proliferate the vampire infection by "bombing" communities with bloodsuckers.

Though The Brotherhood is a dominant presence in the terrain that Mister and Martin (and strays) travail, they seem to be in the clear once they cross the border, until their car breaks down and they must survive the wilderness, where food and other resources are sparse as they'd been warned.  They'd also been warned of cannibals, and as their numbers diminish, they're unsure of what they're facing.  Unfortunately, the script takes an unnecessary turn in trying to loop back the Brotherhood into the story, and it's a somewhat goofy escalation, five minutes of facing down "the big bad", attempting some form of resolution to a story where no resolution can possibly be had.  It's not enough to destroy the film, as it quickly recovers with a solid epilogue.

Most post-apocalyptic stories will take one of two paths, hope or hopelessness, but in both cases survival is always the core focus.  Stake Land clearly follows the hopeless path, since the characters affect very little change in their surrounding, and their continued survival at the end of the film remains in question.  Like the Western, the landscape is what it is, until there's institutionalized change, one man (and a boy) can't make a tremendous difference.  All they can do is survive.

Unlike Stake Land, Sweet Tooth does have a bigger picture to the story than just a man and his ward finding their way to a safe haven, although that is the focus of the first volume of this series (which concluded with issue 40 last month), equally taking inspiration from The Road.  

Review continues over at Second Printing...

3 Short Paragraphs: End of Watch

2012, David Ayer (Street Kings) -- download

If anyone is going to pen the story of Chris Dorner, the recently killed cop-killing ex-cop, it will be David Ayer.   He is known for his cop dramas such as Training Day (writer) and Street Kings (director) normally set in South Central LA and in more than one instance, about that infamously corrupt police force.  In light of the media depiction of Dorner, as a murderous paranoid, would he be able to set a story of one cop's unsuccessful war against perceived corruption and injustice?  Hollywood has never been about the realism of "as based on" but it would be interesting to see what direction they would take.

Ayer takes this story from a found footage flick, where we have Gyllenhaal's Brian Taylor shooting with a handicam for a class project, into a multi-format movie seen through various hand held cameras as well as the traditional film camera.  This is not about the gimmick of video cameras but a choice of style, carrying some realism through real world perspectives.  And it works.  It really does, making it more personal than anything.  We are thrust into the lives of the cops and criminals, via dash cams and wedding videos, class projects and amateurs just fucking around with a camera.

Are all south central cops assholes?  Are they assholes who we grudgingly acknowledge as necessary with their bravado and in-your-face attitude?  Does it take this attitude to survive those dangerous neighbourhoods and actually make a difference?  This is what we are given when we meet Taylor and Zavala, products of their job and their world. And we also get heroes, not seasoned and corrupt veterans, but grunts driving their beat every day and seriously seeking to make it safer. We also get the tragic consequences of what happens when an unprepared police force runs into the unrepentant brutality of these new Mexican cartels.  You know those ones known for killing politicians, journalists and even bloggers who dare to write about them? Ayer does what few others do when telling stories about South Central LA, he leaves us caring about the cops we watch through the lense.

Double Oh...9: The Man With The Golden Gun

The Man With The Golden Gun preamble: This is the infamous film that features a superfluous third nipple, a defining character trait of Christopher Lee assassin-for-hire Scaramanga.  As well it features famous Little Person actor Herve Villechaize as Scaramanga's right-hand man.  These are the two most notable things about this film, and since I couldn't recall either,  I was fairly certain I had not seen this one before.  From the numerous "Best of Bond" lists I read, this was not among the favourites of the Moore era, but then, most of those lists ranked all of Connery's movies quite high and I didn't respond to those all that well.

Villains:  Christopher Lee as Scaramanga is a mysterious ex-super spy, now gun-for hire.  Nobody knows what he looks like though his aforementioned third nipple is widely known, as is being the titular "man with the golden gun"... (Double Affectation!).  We're introduced to him emerging from the water (no trace of a Honey Ryder homage, unlike Die Another Day or Casino Royale), and after a long pan up, and a pause on his triple teets, he's toweled down dutifuly by his woman, Miss Anders (Maud Adams).   Scaramanga grew up in a carnival and keeps an odd funhouse in his home... more of a trap for unsuspecting assassins (because that has to happen so often).  His Golden Gun can be disassembled to resemble smoking attaches, and it only holds one bullet... but for a killer of his caliber, one bullet is all he needs.  He stacks up well against Bond, much like Javier Bardem in Skyfall... men of similar capabilities, intelligence and background. 

   Herve Villechaize plays Nick Nack, because he's small and the Bond writers are real assholes.  Nick Nack is Scaramanga's accomplice as well as a master chef.  It's hard to truly suss out their relationship, but he seems a lot more than hired help.  Nick Nack is actually written as quite a capable character, so it's frequently at odds with the film's more insulting attitude towards Little People.  As a threat, Nick Nack doesn't really stand up (no pun intended, seriously) to Oddjob, Jaws or Tee Hee, but he's equally as memorable an henchmen as there ever was.

   Hai Fat is a wealthy Thai businessman who has paid Scaramanga to kill a scientist and steal his newly developed solar energy technology.  He's not really a major part of the film, or a major villain, more a necessary plot device.

Bond Girls:  Andrea Anders is a chilly mistress, and her role in the plot of the film is crucial, as she's the instigator for Bond and Scaramanga's tete-a-tete.  She's in such utter disgust with her life as Scramanga's woman that she essentially dupes Bond into being his assassin.  Of course, she meets a cruel end for her betrayal at a Thai boxing match, which is one of the more memorable deaths in a Bond movie.

   Anders proves a bit of a foil for Goodnight, Bond's contact and station agent in Hong Kong.  Goodnight has been carrying a bit of a torch for James, perhaps not as long as Moneypenny, but certainly more desperately.  Goodnight isn't an outright ditz, but she's also meant somewhat as comic relief.  Her character isn't really given many strong moments, but Britt Ekland plays her with such buoyant life that she's utterly likeable and she sells the comedy very well, from being stashed in the closet while Bond sexes up Miss Anders, to being stashed in Scaramanga's car boot.  It's a lot of cramped-space comedy I guess.

   There's a handful of minor Bond girls as well, with Cha and Nara, the giggling nieces to Bond's Thai associate, Hip.  Cha and Nara turn out to be quite useful, being daughters of a karate master, as they help Bond square off against a school of martial artists.  Early in the film Bond meets a belly dancer, a former flame of the recently killed-by-Scaramanga 002, from whom he tries to retrieve the golden bullet which she now uses as a lucky charm in her navel.  She's a saucy woman, good to go, as they say, and Bond seems to be thinking only business.  Finally there's Chew Mee, notable only as the naked swimmer in Hai Fat's pool and for her ridiculously suggestive name. 

Theme/Credits:  The title sequence is terribly dull, with lingering shots on nude women (or silhouettes thereof) beneath a rippling water effect (why the water effect?) and frequent screen penetration from the barrel of the titular golden gun.
The title theme, as sung by Lulu, is awful.  Just terribly written lyrics and sung with far too much gusto.  I hate it so... and yet, I kind of like it by the end.  The underlying composition is actually really really good, which carries it a long way from being a total disaster.

Bond: Roger Moore seemed settled into the role within minutes of his first outing.  Here he seems completely content, and has the charm meter set to 11.  He's an effortless Bond, not cocky or brash.  He's not as dangerous as Connery was, but he seems a bit more capable.  Here his libido seems oddly in check.  Whereas in Live and Let Die it seemed Bond was driven quite solely by his trousers, this film it seems like every woman has to coax him out of his pants, and if they do, he plays it as if it were a service he performs for his country, somewhat tongue in cheek, but with equal earnestness.  Goodnight seems to have the good manner to resist his casual overtures, holding out for something more from him, but she ultimately cant resist him.  But then he honestly doesn't have the time of day for her. James seems a lot more focused on the job, slapping Anders around for intel not even trying to seduce her.   I truly like Bond and Goodnight's dynamic though, there's a great awkward chemistry occurring between them that really takes its time in aligning.

Movie:   Scaramanga is on the hunt for Bond so Bond is pulled off assignment from tracking down the film's maguffin, the Solex agitator.  Forced into a holiday, Bond redirects his efforts to finding Scaramanga first.  Along the way, Bond meets Lazar, the weaponsmith who makes custom guns and bullets, including a triggerless gun for a 3 fingered man, and, of course, Scaramanga's unique ammunition.   I don't think Lazar became a recurring character, but he should have.  His gadgets were far more interesting than most of Q's.   This film features a truly great set in the half-sunken ship RMS Queen Elizabeth, which doubles as a secret MI6 base of the coast of then British occupied Hong Kong.
  Though the film starts off as a seeming cat-and-mouse game of death between Bond and Scaramanga, it actually weaves back nicely into Bond's dropped case on solar energy (apparently there was an energy crisis early in the 1970's which this film was reacting to.
   Oddly, this film features yet another boat chase sequence (as"Live and Let Die" did, but not nearly as high-octane), and also, for some unfathomable reason, also features another J.W. Pepper cameo.  Because there's never enough time for racist comic relief, although this film portrays Pepper as a truly ugly America abroad.  Yes, Moore's Bond seems to have a greater focus on comic relief, but far too much screen time is spent on J.W. Pepper and the Dukes of Hazzard-style antics that result when he's on screen (there's one particularly pained moment where Bond's car does a spinning jump over the river, and they use a slide whistle to punctuate the moment.. A FUCKING SLIDE WHISTLE).  I'm just surprised they didn't spin J.W. off into his own film.
   Scaramanga has a great trick with an airborne rocket car which takes him to a private island off the coast of China.   There the island is powered by the solar generator Hai Fat had installed, which also, naturally has a weaponized component.  Scaramanga plans to Show the science to Countries that can afford it, then sell to the highest bidders, so they can monopolize the market.   Bond naturally duels with Scaramanga in his fun house and comes out the victor.  The film ends with a big explosion... or should have ended anyway.  Bond winds up on the water with Goodnight, only Nick Nack has stowed away and he decides to fight James in a very indignant fight sequence.
   Honestly, despite a few over-the-top gags, I quite liked this one.

Q-gadgets: none, really, but Q actually proves to be somewhat useful as a scientist in this one.

Classification (out of 01.0): 00.6

3 Short Paragraphs: Mama

2013, Andrés Muschietti -- cinema

There are some movies that I have to see at the giant cineplex, on the big screen with the great sound and crisp glory.  There are steps up I can aspire to, AVX or IMAX, but they just give me headaches.  And then on the other end of the spectrum we have our re-run theatres that have screens not much larger than my coworker's TV.  Those are not for me either.  So if I decide it can live without the big screen, I go see a flick at the nieghbourhood cinema, smaller screens and not always the clearest but satisfactory.  But then sometimes a movie comes along that I honestly cannot tell if it is the sub-standard quality of the projector or screen or is it really that the movie intended on being shown as if through an Instagram filter[1].  Mama was one such film, but to be honest it sort of lent itself to the character of the movie - small, gritty, unadorned and visceral.  The ever present greens and brown fit the tone of the movie.

This movie is based on a short [2] that Guillermo del Toro loved.  He, in his current status of clout and influence (which confuses me considering how he speaks about his derision of Hollywood), helped the director turn the 3 minute vignette into a full-fledged movie.  Its a creepy movie about creepy kids being stalked by a creepy (who was probably a creepy woman in life) ghost.  This is one of those movies where it will scare you if you borrow from the emotional state of the characters.  But it also takes on the tactic of revealing the ghost very early on, more interested in telling the story of how the characters will deal with the ghost than the build-up to the reveal.  Oh, the japanese / korean style scares made me pee my pants a little but my true enjoyment came in how the characters dealt with what they learned.  There was very little cliche blind panic followed by ignoble death.

Jessica Chastain also stood out for me, which isn't hard, considering she is the adult with the most amount of screen time.  She is a rocker chick, a tattooed punker [3] with no interest in kids or family, thrust into responsibility by circumstances.  She adapts to the role and embraces it even as she embraces the creepy cabin kids.  Chastain is a bit of an enigma to me.  Based on how the Hollywood machine has portrayed her, I assumed she had been around for ages in smaller movies only now coming to light.  But no, not really just a few flicks that actually are from the same time the machine focused on her. But she is wonderful here, not at all the statuesque redhead of the runway. And for the life of me, I cannot remember who I think she looks like, which gives a nod to the power of the machine.

[1] There is going to come a time when everyone, and not just people actually using Instagram, forgets an Instagram filter is a computer approximation of a real world camera effect, like a Diana camera using cross-processed Ectachrome film.

[2] Embedded for your  viewing pleasure.... that sounds dirtier than it is.


[3] Does she have Derek Powazek's kraken tattoo ?!?!

3 Short Paragraphs: Skyfall

2012, Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Jarhead) -- cinema

This is the one where we take the reboot back to the Broccolis.  This is the one where Bond comes home.  This is the one where they resurrect Bond for , IMO, another take on the films.  The reboot is done and whether they continue with Daniel Craig or not, the franchise has changed (again) by the end of this movie.  That is rather bitter sweet for me as I am quite fond of Craig's Bond, of the "gritty reboot".  I was let down by Brosnan, I was let down as I considered the last few movies as the Batman & Robin of the franchise, all glitz and product shots, little character. Craig's Bond is the tough guy who wears his tux like armor, comfortable in the 007 role but rather new to the money and locations. While I am curious whether a cliche, younger actor would be chosen, I would prefer Craig stay.

If only two movies ago, we have the new 007 chasing the money and finding a shadowy organization that the world intelligence agencies are barely aware of, I was somewhat surprised to see a presentation of the resurrected Bond as getting old and out of touch.  If the first two were tightly woven, one story leading into the other, we can only assume there have been a number of unseen years between two and three.  Bond has become the seasoned veteran, the jaded hitman who is only too happy to fade into alcohol and brown in the sun, after his death. But it is his bond (forgive that) with the also aging M (who, since The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, I finally see as getting old) that returns him to London, to MI6 and eventually... home, where he struggles against obsolescence.

But redemption is in tow.  Skyfall is a story about washing out the old establishment and embracing the new.  As viewers, we are still accepting Craig as the new but Dench was around pre-Craig and MI6 itself has left the Cold War behind and is seeking new enemies, new villains.  We saw the greatest threat to Intelligence rise in the real world, as a "hacker" who revealed our governments' secrets through Wikileaks.  And the "OMG look what he can do with a computer" fear is dragged along into this movie as a click that can blow stuff up a continent away and nobody, nothing staying hidden ever again.  But circumstances prove they need the old methods, the veteran agent, to defeat the "new" enemy.  In the end we see MI6 embrace its heritage as Bond visits the new offices which mirror the first office a Bond (Sean Connery in Dr. No) ever walked into.  Old is new and whether new is old, is yet to be determined.

Bonus Paragraph: I take exception in introducing a character named Moneypenny.  Moneypenny the role was already filled by Vesper in the first movie, as revealed by the short dialogue:

Vesper Lynd: [introducing herself to Bond] I'm the money.
James Bond: Every penny of it.

Kent's view.

Beyond the Black Rainbow

2010, Panos Cosmatos

'80's fetishists take note, here's the ultimate in retro-styled boutique filmmaking, a film so in tune with a very specific type of genre storytelling it actually feels authentic.  Director Panos Cosmatos has said of his film that he wanted to recreate what horror films were like in his mind as a child after only seeing the box covers at the video store.  I know exactly what he's talking about.  I remember seeing the cover to the laserdisc of Iceman and still have a vivid impression of what that film was based on that one glimpse of a picture, and yet I've never seen it or even read up on it since.  The mind of the young will roam wildly to places adults would never think to go outside of a fever dream or hallucinogenic trip.

Beyond the Black Rainbow begins in 1983 with a videocassette, a square-boxed introduction to a fictional research institute that completely nails the ethereal sensibilities of the time, droning synthetics, pixelated sterile video effects, random images of nature, metered and low-speaking talking heads.  The intent on the part of the in-context maker is to seem progressive (nonsense terminology emblazened across the screen in primitive digital scrawl), but the filmmaker's goal is obvious.  That stuff is creepy as hell.  Though 8mm and vintage reel-to-reel handheld filmmaking has long been adopted by the modern mainstream as providing a sense of familiar warmth, the VHS or Beta age has now become a staple of science fiction and horror, because of tracking issues and fidelity loss associated with magnetic tape.  The glitches and the textural aspects to tape, both in visual and audio aesthetic seem to be the perfect starting point for establishing "creepy" or "ominous" and have been used to expert effect by shows such as Fringe and Lost.

Beyond the tape, Cosmatos presents a sterile, 80's "futuristic" environment, a concrete and plexiglass facility that's sparsely decorated, highlighted with only flat colors painted with hi-gloss finishes.  It's seemingly inhabited by only a handful beings:  A teenaged "patient", Elena;  her doctor, Barry Nyle; the nurse, Margot; the institute's barely lucid, aged founder Dr. Mercurio Aboria, and the curious non-human entities, the Sentionauts (their exact purpose I'm not entirely clear).  The film labors over Dr. Nyle's meetings with Elena.  He's after something from her, but what it is we're not too sure.  Margot, meanwhile has stumbled across a note book that looks like a disturbed and deviant field guide of sorts.  Dr. Aboria is either senile or purposefully kept in a state of dementia by Dr. Nile, while at home, Dr. Nile and his wife are utterly disconnected.

It's apparent that Elena has some sort of psychic ability, but it is kept tempered by a geometric crystal kept deep in the facility.  Dr. Nile will adjust the "volume" on the crystal to control Elena, but her powers seem to be evolving beyond the crystal's complete control.  Of course, all of this makes it sound like it's a delicious set-up to some sort of Carrie-like freak-out or Hanna-like action set-piece, but it's not.  Cosmatos' film moves at an extremely deliberate pace from the onset, reliant as much on the sound design and the atmospheric, plodding synth score from Black Mountain's Jeremy Schmidt as it does any sense of story or character.

I was constantly peeling off influences on this film as I watched it.  Early Michael Mann like Thief and Manhunter (as resonant as they were in Nicolas Winding-Refn's Drive), and Cronenberg's Videodrome, moreover his 70's Montreal horror (this is a Vancouver-based one), somehow innately Canadian yet transcending any stereotypes.  Mann's The Keep's smoky, monochromatic aesthetic and its Tangerine Dream score stick out the most, but perhaps that's because The Keep feels like a smoky, monochromatic dream I had back in the late 90's the one and only time I saw it.  Additionally the film recalls the soundtracks of John Carpenter, the grotty feel to his 70's and 80's work, as well as the cold cleanliness of Kubrick's genre work, like 2001, The Shining and the dementia of A Clockwork Orange or Roger Avery's Killing Zoe (or the far less known Frankenstein riff, Mr. Stitch).  I couldn't help but feel the same unerring sense of equally heightened intensity and detachment as Gaspar Noe's Enter The Void, which in many ways feels like a sister film.  They're both mood-based head trips that require you to succumb or freak out.

Cosmatos' film is so purposeful, fulfilling so closely his intent.  It's a challenge to view for sure, since it's not a logical film.  There's no story or clearly defined reason for it, and it's overlong by at least 15 minutes (a paring back of long establishing shots could accomplish this without sacrificing much or any of the story, though it may hasten the mood), so it's definitely not going to appeal to everyone, or most.  But I was awed by Cosmatos' conviction to style and his attention to the filmmaking details.  Whenever I felt my attention waning, something visually would draw me back.  It's an incredibly strong debut picture, with a very clear vision and sense of self. 

"I think sometimes a film can’t even be seen for what it really is during the era that it’s made. So, a lot of these films have become an interesting works of art just by aging."

[Panos Cosmatos quote link]

Bad Movie: Werewolf: The Beast Among Us

2012, Louis Morneau -- download

Aaargh, I don't know why I like them, I just do.  You know, those bad straight-to-DVD (for as long as the term has a lifespan) genre movies produced purely for the world multi-market distribution system. Someone, somewhere is willing to pump money into a movie (but only so much money) knowing they will make it back via the various avenues where people don't always full consider what they are getting themselves into, such as the inflight movie or hotel chain pay-for-view.  And of course, there is the genre cable station who doesn't like to spend much on movies.  Much to the chagrin of movie snobs everywhere the flick have been made for as long as there was a "straight to ..." market and will continue.

My usual fare is the Disaster or Science Gone Wrong flick. Throw a meteor at the earth, crack the core in two or develop a weather tracking system that actually freezes New York under a glacier and I am tempted.  Considering the blockbuster versions of these movies are usually not very well made, how much worse can the mockbuster (sub-genre of what I am talking about) be ?  Much much worse is the answer. I am less tolerant of other genres, such as slasher horror or even swords & sorcery (look! a movie starring LARPers!) but every so often something about the plot (?!?) attracts me.

This one?  It was the idea of a motley crue of werewolf hunters that brought me in.  The grizzled leader in the duster & wide-brimmed hat, the steampunk woman with a flame thrower, the guy pretending to be Dracula and that guy and that other guy !  Ensemble casts are the in-thing now.  They are the skilled hunters of the supernatural but unfortunately, we never actually see their skill as they fail to capture or kill the beast.  Seriously, we don't even get a preamble where we are presented with their accomplishments.  Unless you count the drunken tale of how his horse ended up with only two legs.

Apparently, this movie was originally slotted to be a follow-up to the Benicio del Toro The Wolfman, where Universal was rebooting its classic monster stable.  This really cannot be seen as a followup or even mockbuster of anything, unless you count Van Helsing, because the heros both wear floppy hats and leather dusters.  It's just a boring, low budget vehicle for a European (shot in Bavaria!) practical effects school (how gross can you make the corpses?) with bad acting, swiss cheese script and terrible pacing.  And that's all I can recall even though it was only a week ago.