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?

THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL

(Wes Anderson, 2014)

With every film, no matter where or when they're set, Wes Anderson only gets more...Wes Anderson.
The Grand Budapest Hotel is a fantasia of old Europe, set in the fictional Central European country of Zubrowka in the early 20th Century. Only that story is a story within a story within a story, of course. That story is told in flashback by the elderly owner of the titular hotel, Mr Mustafa (F Murray Abraham) to a writer (Jude Law) in the 1980s, when the establishment is fading and somewhat chintzy. The key character in this tale is Gustave (Ralph Fiennes), the hotel's celebrated, eccentric concierge during its glory years. He sleeps with a series of wealthy elderly women guests, guaranteeing their continued custom, and the death of one Madame D (Tilda Swinton) kicks off the plot.
She leaves Gustave a priceless painting, her son (Adrian Brody) objects, and with his lapdog (Willem Dafoe) up to no good, Gustave is imprisoned for the murder of the old lady. This leaves his lobby boy protege Zero (Tony Revolori), Mr Mustafa's younger self to help with his escape, while he tries to keep the immense hotel running and enjoy his new relationship with lovely baker Agatha (Saoirse Ronan).
This allows a rambling, often hilarious story which includes prison break elements, chases, love scenes, gunfights, and loads of character comedy.
As usual with Anderson, the visuals here are impeccable; beautiful, exceptionally detailed, fabulously composed and textured. The whole thing looks like it was shot inside a faberge egg, such is its lushness and depth of colour. Anderson plays with aspect ratios depending on time period, and Alexadre Desplaat's score buoys the whole thing enjoyably along.
It is perhaps Anderson's funniest film. Fiennes is hilarious as the camp, knowingly suave Gustave, but Anderson is unafraid of giving him jokes based upon this plummy-voiced symbol of civilisation swearing suddenly, and there are some brilliant sight gags alongside the usual deadpan drollery. The likes of Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum and Bill Murray take small roles, giving the film a rich, layered feeling.
It even resonates in a way not always true of Anderson's work. The ending is melancholic but fitting.
If that ending and resonance doesn't linger long afterwards, other elements do: that beautiful palette, some of the performances, and that unique Anderson tone.

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.

CEMETERY JUNCTION

(Ricky Gervais & Stephen Merchant, 2010)

A glossily warm coming-of-age comedy-drama set in a 1973 New Town suburb of Reading and therefore, presumably semi-autobiographical to some extent, Cemetery Junction never quite works.
The premise is classically familiar; three friends, stuck in dead end jobs, plan to escape, to travel, to live exciting lives elsewhere. They are near generic, stereotypical character types: the handsome, funny dreamer, the brawling bad boy from a broken home, and the oddball comic relief. Over the course of the simple narrative, each learns a lesson and grows as a person. It's that kind of film, deliberate, derivative of many better films, and possessing an almost painted-by-numbers quality in it's determination to hit each one of the expected narrative and emotional beats of the smalltown Bildungsroman.
Thats not to say it's without its pleasures; as one would expect of the creators of the sublime UK version of The Office and Extras on tv, there are some spiky character moments here, some finely observed instances of social tension, a few acutely textured scenes which feel true and real. While the three boys can be funny together in a laddish way, the best comic moments are provided by Gervais himself as the factory-worker father of one, casually racist, xenophobic and ignorant, squabbling with his mother over his own success while sermonising to his son from the dinner table. Ralph Fiennes is effortlessly fine as a quietly loathsome working class boy made good, Emily Watson does an awful lot with very little in perhaps five short scenes, and there are a few big laughs.
But the dissonances created by the style and approach are a massive distraction. Gervais has claimed that Bruce Springsteen's "Thunder Road" was the single greatest influence on the film, and that sense of a mythic American angle on memory, youth and backwater lives fits oddly against the time and place depicted. Britain in the 70s was a troubled, grim place, and cinema generally portrays it as such. But here there is a warm glow of nostalgia, and despite the few gags mocking the assumptions and attitudes of the time, this is an unequivocally fond portrayal of the era.
It all ends with a mad dash to catch a train, a will-they-won't-they resolved, and great use of Led Zeppelins "The Rain Song".
Indeed, the brilliant soundtrack of 70s hits is perhaps the best aspect of the whole film; more movies should use "Crazy Horses" by the Osmonds.