SPECTRE

(Sam Mendes, 2015)

Is it working in the theatre for so long that has made Sam Mendes suspicious of good-old-fashioned entertainment? Is it the pursuit of art? For in both of his Bond films, each of which is easily among the best-looking (in truth they are probably the two most beautiful films in the series) and best-crafted in the history of the franchise, he hasn't been satisfied simply to make A Bond film. No. He had to go and make THE Bond film. Twice. He had to make his films significant, with a lasting effect upon the Bond mythos. But part of the point of Bond is that nothing really has a lasting effect.
James Bond Will Return...and it will always be that way, whatever way the end of Spectre will have you thinking.
At least Mendes makes up for it by getting so many of the details so right. Spectre falls apart in the third act (which is a bit of a perfunctory mess) but for almost two hours of its (hugely overlong) two and a half hour running time it offers thrills, romance, gags and lots of in-jokes and references to keep Bond fans more than happy.
The plot pleasingly ties up all three of Daniel Craig's previous 007 outings and links them through the villain in this entry - Christoph Waltz as Franz Oberhauser (who has a new name, revealed in the last half-hour), a face from Bond's past and head of SPECTRE, a criminal organisation bound on controlling the information of all the worlds leading intelligence agencies or something else just as vague. Bond goes rogue in pursuit of this organisation, prompting an excellent pre-credit sequence on the streets, rooftops and in the skies of Mexico City. This scene contains a lengthy and stunning single shot, following Bond through the streets, into a lift, then a hotel room and out onto rooftops, which is, cinematically, one of the greatest moments in the 24-film franchise.
It also leads Bond to Rome and Monica Bellucci, surely born to play a Bond girl and lending class to a nothing part, then onto Austria, Tangiers and a meeting with the Proust-monickered Madeleine Swann (Leá Seydoux). Along the way he encounters Mr. Hinx (Dave Bautista), engages in a terrific fist-fight on a train (referencing at least three prior Bond moments, most obviously From Russia With Love), a car chase through Rome and some aeroplane destruction in the Alps before finally coming properly face-to-face with Waltz's bad guy at a secret HQ in the Sahara.
The sheer volume of references and allusions to Bond history (Waltz's character has a cat and earns an eye-scar, Mr. Hinx unavoidably compares with OddJob from Goldfinger) gives the whole thing a karaoke quality, but again, Mendes seems to understand that if you do the little things right, then not much else matters with Bond.
So: the action scenes are generally terrific, the highlight being that brutal train fight. Craig has chemistry with both his leading ladies, making his attachment to Madeleine at least somewhat believable (not that believability is relevant in Bond films, which by this point seem to float along on a sort of dream logic). Waltz is terrific as the Big Bad, utterly humourless, yet childishly taunting Bond about all that he has taken from him, while a near-mute Bautista is more menacing than any villain in the other Craig Bonds. Every scene between Bond and Q (Ben Whishaw, brilliant) is excellent - funny and fond, injecting a little British sitcom comedy into things, while his moments with Moneypenny (Naomi Harris) are almost as good. These more domestic characters are given something to do by the secondary villain; Andrew Scott as Denbigh (Bond chastens him "C"), whose designs on all the worlds information make him very much a post-Snowden villain. The locations are beautiful and speed by, and the whole thing goes by so fast it never bores over that long running time.
As for Craig - he utterly owns the role of Bond by now. His Bond is cold but soulful, incredibly efficient (he avoids a fight here by pointing at a guard and saying, "Stay") but handy with the odd cruel quip.
It is James Bond done well, and what more can you ask of a James Bond film?

SKYFALL

(Sam Mendes, 2012)

Skyfall is the classiest film in the history of the long and occasionally glorious Bond franchise. Avoiding the usual genre journeymen who have directed more or less every other official instalment in the adventures of 007, the producers have this time opted to hire Sam Mendes as director. And while Mendes is far from an auteur - he is, in a way, a sort of tasteful hack, with extremely good taste in collaborators - his presence does guarantee a certain pedigree. His films all play like high-quality, big-budget middlebrow entertainments, which is quite a rarity in dumbed-down, lowest common denominator modern studio film-making. He has in turn hired Roger Deakins as his cinematographer, ensuring that this Bond film is visually sumptuous, filled with breathtaking compositions, colours and camera glides, and textured in a way that makes it feel unlike any of the films that preceded it. There are still an awful lot of helicopter establishing shots of cityscapes - some of the visual conventions of the series are unshakeable, it seems - but Deakins finds some incredibly rich and evocative imagery in the exotic locations spread through the film. Mendes' name also attracts the sort of cast rarely seen in the Bond world, and so Skyfall features Ralph Fiennes, Albert Finney, Ben Whishaw and Naomie Harris in some new takes on iconic characters. Whishaw in particular is excellent as the boyish new Q, darkly witty and smug about his own intelligence to just the right extent, while Harris and Daniel Craig concoct a genuine chemistry in their scenes together.

Craig, who looks like a battered old kettle with big ears, owns the role of Bond by this stage, and his confidence in the part carries much of the film. The plot disables Bond in the pre-credit sequence ( a fantastic pursuit through Istanbul which might just be the films single standout action scene) and, much as predecessors Connery and Brosnan both endured in different films, questions his potency and efficiency for the majority of the first act.

Craig is at his best here - not coincidentally, the portion of the film where he is asked to do the most acting - with a convincingly hollow, haunted quality to his work. The script reassures him and us repeatedly that age is not necessarily a bad thing - nostalgia is a big part of the DNA of the modern Bond film, and this film positively wallows in it, with characters stressing that they like to do things the "old-fashioned way" and that "the old ways are the best ways", while the climax strips away all gadgetry and computer hacking to make it a battle between hunter and hunted in a very 19th Century, near-elemental landscape.

But the film itself really goes up a gear with the introduction of its villain, arguably the best in the franchises history. Victor Silva is an ex-agent with a grudge against M (Judi Dench) and a genius for hacking, and Javier Bardem makes him charismatic, hilarious and terrifying. Mendes aids that with a brilliant introduction, Silva exiting an elevator at the far end of a huge hall and walking towards a bound Bond while he tells a story about an infestation of rats, all in one shot. Their exchange thereafter is electrifying; sexually ambivalent and ironic, with Silva zeroing in on Bond's perceived frailties and identifying them as both mistreated by "Mommy".

The plot is simple - someone has stolen a hard drive containing the identities of all of MI6's undercover agents, and is threatening to reveal them week by week. At the same time they attack the heart of the Agency, blowing up the London Headquarters and hacking the computer networks. Bond, thought dead after that opening Istanbul operation, returns and is sent to find the source of the attack. The plot then takes him through Shanghai and Macau - and Silva's eerie headquarters on a deserted Island-City - before returning to Britain for its last act in London and the Scottish Highlands, where something of Band's past is revealed.

The writing is a strange mix of clunky lines and witty dialogue, but the acting and technical credits make it a consistent pleasure to watch.  It is the Bond film as a high-class heritage drama, ticking off boxes with class, beauty and humour throughout. But that status as a drama - not surprising from a director like Mendes - does suggest its possible flaw: it is relatively light on action.

What there is is beautifully handled - a fist-fight in silhouette against the Shanghai skyline is particularly memorable, and the usual jaw-dropping stunt work abounds - but after the credits, the first hour or so concentrates on the dramatic aspects, at the possible expense of the genre side. The climax corrects this, and the emotional kick delivered in the last act justifies Mendes' careful attention to characterisation and dramatic conflict in the early stages.

There is plenty here aimed straight at Bond fans, references to various scenes, moments and characters from across the series' history - one or two truly groan-inducing - but generally they are nicely worked into the material, and they only serve to make the overall product more satisfying. Skyfall operates then as a tremendously well-crafted, crowd-pleasing Bond film, indeed, one of the best in the series' history, which ends by pointing a new way forward for these films.

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO

(David Fincher, 2011)

An object lesson in what a strong director can bring to questionable source material.
Stieg Larsson's mega-bestseller and the literary phenomenon it sparked - the rest of the Millennium trilogy - were posthumously published, which may well account for the repetitive sloppiness of much of the writing. The Swedish adaptation from 2009, directed by Niels Arden Oplev, plays like a tv movie, stylistically mundane, dramatically plodding, enlivened only by Noomi Rapace's performance as Lisbeth Salander.
Salander is the key to the success of the books. A truly iconic lead character, excitingly modern (a bisexual goth-punk hacker-biker) yet with an uncomplicated moral worldview and the aggressive personality required to take on the evils which cross her path, any filmmaker who gets her right has a good chance of making a watchable film. Well, watchable isn't enough for Fincher. Currently operating at something like peak level, in that few other directors on earth so consistently excel on a scene-by-scene basis, he (alongside screenwriter Steve Zaillian) elevates and inflates this parlor detective story into a dark, classy thriller, full of incidental pleasures.
They also get Salander right. Much of that is down to strong work from Rooney Mara, who makes her a little more vulnerable than she is in the books or in Oplev and Rapace's version. Only a little vulnerable, however. Her righteous vengeance upon her rapist case worker and final heist are infused here with an almost mischievous sense of fun. She enjoys getting her own back, it seems, and is unapologetic about her looks or difficult personality. The slight, slow thaw we see in her here is down to her relationship with her research partner, and she communicates much behind Salander's consistent poker face.
Daniel Craig is solid as Larsson's glamourised self-portrait, Mikael Blomkvist, coasting along on his now-unquestionable leading man qualities, and displaying a good ability to let us see him figuring things out. The rest of the cast - mainly a solid roster of experienced British thespians - are effortlessly convincing, with the (somewhat jarringly) single Scandinavian Stellan Skarsgaard as good as ever.
The real star here, of course, is Fincher. Evoking the chilly Swedish winter with an enviable, thrillingly textured feel for place and mood, he makes his film unfailingly beautiful without it ever seeming ostentatious or without any effect upon his storytelling. The soundtrack by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross helps a lot, a series of atmospheric pieces, hammering percusision, and queasy synth effects combining nicely with Fincher and Director of Photography Jeff Cronenweth's sublimely lit and composed frames.
It may be a largely dazzling experience, then, but there are flaws here. The running time is grotesquely extended for such a disposable thriller, the almost exploitative nastiness present in passages seems damagingly at odds with the theme of "Men Who Hate Women" (the Swedish title of the novel), and there is the unmistakeable whiff of Murder She Wrote or even Scooby-Doo in tired scenarios like the killer explaining his own motivations and methods to his intended victim (and, obviously the audience).
Worst of all, Fincher is such a great talent, a project like this feels like a waste of him. Hopefully he'll do something riskier and more interesting next time..

THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN: THE SECRET OF THE UNICORN

(Steven Spielberg, 2011)

For all that Spielberg and Peter Jackson's spectacular and expensive adaptation of Herge's popular creation has it's many pleasures, it never quite feels right. It never quite feels like Tintin. It feels as if they sought to make a Tintin film, were denied the rights by Herge's estate, and instead made a blatant knock-off in which everything is extremely similar, but nothing is really how it should be. Given that they weren't denied the rights and that most of the details of Tintin's distinctive fictional world are here recreated with painstaking detail and love, that's something of a major worry.
Part of the problem is the animation. Using the near photo-realistic motion capture and cgi technology beloved of Robert Zemeckis allows for massive invention and precision in so many of the visual particulars that it's easy to see why it appeals to filmmakers. But it also means that the "uncanny valley" is a problem throughout, one only complicated by the decision to render many of the characters - Captain Haddock, most obviously - in a sort of realist-caricature style. It also has its drawbacks in the areas which seem initially like Pluses. Athmosphere seems like something that can be painted into the corners of a scene, augmented by accenting the detail of the objects in a room, sharpening the colours of a palette, softening the lighting, allowing shadows to run longer. But it's more complex than that. The scenes of exotic North Africa and the middle East in the Indiana Jones movies are effortlessly, pungently atmospheric in a way simiiar scenes in this film are not. The Indiana Jones films were made on location, in ancient towns and baking deserts. Here, most everything feels hermetically sealed, without any grit or soul. The same problem afflicts the many, often brilliantly conceived, thrillingly "shot" action sequences. The level of detail and inventiveness is truly incredible, but that somehow only emphasises our distance from such patently made material, and is indeed even a distraction.
The screenplay, by the dazzling trio of Edgar Wright, Joe Cornish and Steven Moffat, is solid, working a traditional Tintin mystery and a Spielbergan set-piece roller coaster into the same film and making it work, and seamlessly for the most part, though there are a few clunky lines scattered throughout. The cast is impressive, everybody nailing the spirit and personality of hs character. And there are some nice visual gags and slapstick here, together with many beautiful images. But the whole thing, which is breathlessly paced most of the way, ends in a horrendous anti-climax, followed by the inevitable threat of a sequel. And while it may work to some degree with its target audience of 10 year old boys, as Spielberg adventure films go, this is strictly second rank.

COWBOYS & ALIENS

(Jon Favreau, 2011)

This would be a far better experience if you went in blind, unaware of the premise or even of the title, which does sum up the content in three words in a blunt manner which made some audiences who saw the trailer laugh out loud. For it begins as a Western, and the first fifteen to twenty minutes are like a handsome, well-cast, classically shot, slightly overfamiliar modern take on that great old genre, laying out a cast of genre archetypes and their relationships with moderate style and some soildly old-fashioned storytelling.
Then, some spaceships show up and this is suddenly a mash-up of Western and sci-fi.
The sci-fi content is minimal and rudimentary; there is a big spaceship full of aliens, they fly little spaceships and kidnap humans, they look like frogs with muscular, hulking bodies, and they have blasters which render the six-shooters and rifles the men carry largely ineffective.
The narrative takes the form of a pursuit - a group of men seeking to rescue their abducted loved ones - and that allows for a quick tour of some other Western cliches as they encounter a group of bandits and a tribe of Indians on their journey, together with one nicely Herzogian surreal image, that of a massive Mississippi wheel barge lying upside down on the desert floor.
It's all a little overlong, but the pacing and style feels appropriately leisurely for the Western side of this story, and if the final battle is slightly over egged and predictable in its every dramatic beat, Favreau gratifyingly maintains the classical approach throughout, never descending to the manic cutting and chaotic continuity of so much modern blockbuster cinema.
His cast are never really stretched by the material. Daniel Craig does his blunt instrument tough guy thing - and does it well - while Harrison Ford gives yet another rendition of the grumpy old man persona he has fallen into over the last decade or so. The others, a grizzled ensemble including Sam Rockwell, Keith Carradine and Clancy Brown, are good value in the smaller parts.
There is a slightly pedestrian quality to Cowboys & Aliens which means it doesn linger long in the mind. But it is handsome, occasionally thrilling and always watchable, which is more than could have been expected from any film with such a title.