Skyfall (2012)

 "You were expecting an exploding pen?"

And so here we reach unexplored territory for me- until yesterday, I hadn't seen any James Bond films since Quantum of Solace because... well, you know. But this, the very next film, is an absolutely superb return to form, and I'm not only talking about the brilliant theme song.

One of the things you tend to notice at the start of a film, before you get "used" to it, is the artiness of the direction, the composition of the shots, the camera angles, that sort of thing. And yes, Sam Mendes shoots this film very creatively. And yet at no point does he forget that he's shooting an action film. The set pieces, the action sequences, they're particularly magnificent in this film and that's down to Mendes.

The script is superb too, though. This is a Bond who's getting older, past his peak, but determined to keep going. We have a new Q, more of a computer whiz than a purveyor of gadgets- nice idea, but let's see how long that lasts. This is M's swansong, of course, with Judi Dench doing a bloody good death scene and Ralph Fiennes taking over as the new M to whose name, shockingly, we are actually made privy.

Oh yes, and there's Eve. I like the reveal about her at the end... and it's a new spin on the character to have her be a former field agent. Even the villain has motives that are closer to home. Indeed, while this is in some ways a typical Bond film on the surface, with big action sequences in Istanbul and Shanghai, it's fundamentally more about character, with the climax being a siege in Bond's rather posh childhood home. And yet, still, it never forgets that it's an action film.

This is the best Bond film in a very long time.

The Importance of Being Earnest (2002)

 "Thirty-five is a very attractive age. London society is full of women of the very highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years."

Oscar Wilde is awesome. I've read everything he ever published at one time or another. And, of all his plays, The Importance of Being Earnest is the most fun, just edging out An Ideal Husband. So I should enjoy this film, right?

Well... obviously the script is faultless, as it's Wilde with only minor, functional changes. And the cast is broadly excellent- especially Reese Witherspoon, Colin Firth and Rupert Everett. There are some creative visual touches behind the basic dialogue and scenes- Cecily's fantasies, the revelation that Aunt Augusta was a chorus girl before meeting Lord Bracknell, and that Jack, at the end, is telling a bit ofa porky about being called Ernest. I can see why these were done.

But... well, there's a rather brilliant 1952 film of this play, one that looms over this version like an intimidating mountain. It's quite plausible that I'd have enjoyed this version more if I hadn't seen and enjoyed its magnificent predecessor. We'll never know. But... it just isn't as good, and isn't really different enough or quirky enough to make upfor that.

Plus, although I can understand the desire to expand the settings and locations and to try and make this film not look like a static,filmed stage play... that's what the play is. It's people standing in rooms talking. Pretending otherwise doesn't work.

And finally... a production of The Importance of Being Earnest always stands or falls on its Lady Bracknell. And Edith Evan's languidly witty version of the character is quite definitive. Judi Dench is very good here, but her inevitably sterner interpretation simply cannot compare with her truly great predecessor.

Still, taking this film on its own terms, there are things to like here. it's good to see a more modern cast speaking these lines. But, if it's not too late, I'd recommend watching this first and the 1952 version second.

Quantum of Solace (2008)

 "Bond, if you could avoid killing every possible lead, it would be appreciated."

Finally I've caught up in my Bond marathon. I saw this film at the cinema in 2008, but I haven't seen anything since. All things Bond from this point forward are new territory for me. 

As for this one, though... it surprised me. Oh, I'm not saying it's one of the better Bond films because it certainly isn't. It deserves praise for it's non-excessive run time, but it has flaws. The many action set pieces are entertaining but don't come remotely close to equalling those of Casino Royale. Olga Kurylenko impresses as Camille, a character with depth who earns Bond's respect, while Gemma Arterton is also good as Strawberry Fields(!) who, as tradition dictates, falls for Bond, but ends up dying with a touch of the grand guignol. And yet...

The villain, the plot, the scheme- to engineer a coup in Bolivia and profit from control of the nation's water- lacks a certain excitement. Bond is cut loose from MI6 and on the run, albeit with M's role being ambiguous.. but how many times have we seen this? Compared to its predecessor, this film ends up seeming lacklustre by comparison.

And yet...none of that makes it a bad film, just a flawed one. And, on this second viewing,hot on the heels of seeing Casino Royale, I can see what they may have been trying to do. Yes, Daniel Craig's Bond lacks the flippant charm of his predecessors, but the character has depth. The fim sees him working through his feelings about Vesper, finally forgiving her (and himself), as urged by Matheson's dying words, and we end with him finally getting revenge.

And, across both films together, a shadowy organisation is set up- no spoilers, please, but perhaps SPECTRE?

All of this may well be going somewhere. If so, this film may be more quietly impressive than it appears on first glance.

Casino Royale (2006)

 "That last hand nearly killed me..."

I'm doing lots of different film marathons where I blog each film in order, in some cases veeeeery slowly, something I'm actually quite proud of. Because my blogging of the Bond films is gleefully slow, at a snail's pace, having started in 2015. Yet it proceeds inexorably on. 

Casino Royale, though... yes, it'a little too long and bloated, as blockbuster films from the present century inevitably are, but objectively it's very good indeed. I enjoiyed it. I'll be honest, though: while there's much to admire I found it dragged at times on this viewing, but perhaps for reasons which are not entirely the film's fault.

Daniel Craig is superlatively good as a more nuanced Bond, one with much more interiority, but still absolutely the Bond we know. And, of course, he gets a real character arc here, more so than since On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

Importantly, though- and the word is much overused, but it's literally so here, although the continuing presence of Judi Dench as M does make one wonder. Bond begins the film earning his promotion to 00 status, in delightfully artily shot scenes. The Bond theme is not heard until the end. Bond has yet to think of a name for his dry martini, shaken, not stirred.... (crikey, spirits are complicated. I stick to real ale and wine) and,of course, there's the last line of the film.

Yet much of the film is a very well done tromance between Bond and Vesper, starting out sparring and eventually falling in love with her, resigning and proposing to spend her life with her. Of course, we know what happened to Trace well back then:Vresper's death is no shock. But the manner and circumstances of her death are truly heartbreaking. No wonder Bond, I assume, will harden his heart and be wary of attachments from now on.

There's lots of action, loads of set pieces, and all with a more realistic tone, devoid of the slight excess of gadgets we've seen in the recent past... although, that scene...? Ouch.

So yes, the film is a little overlong, but very, very good. And yet, so much screen time is devoted to playing poker and... well, this is just me, but I find gambling so very boring. Not that I'm in any way puritanical... it's just dull.

I accept, though, that this is just a matter of taste. Overall, this is a highly effective and affecting relaunch.

Die Another Day (2002)

 "What are you? CIA?

"NSA..."

I was spoilt for choice for quotes. This may not be the best Bond film ever, but it's one of the very best for double entendres.

Yes, I know, it's reputation isn't great. And yes, it's flawed. I sisliked it back in 2002. And yet, on today's second viewing... is it really that bad?

Yes, we have the invisible car and really quite out there sci-fi elements. But I wasn't as bothered about that this time for some reason. And yes, the plot doesn't quite make sense. And it's a bit harsh for Bond to be in the doghouse for supposedly cracking under torture!!!

But I was entertained. Even the universally panned theme song... well, the production is truly horrible, and it's a waste of Madonna to use her in a song like this, but if you look past the horrible autotune and production issues, the song itself is fundamentally good.

Yet we have a good villain, however preposterous his backstory. Halle Berry is... well, adequate as a Bond girl, and gets a nice little scene involving a laser beam that's a nice little homage to Goldfinger. There are some nice locations in Cuba, although by the time we get to Iceland there's far too much CGI. That becomes a problem during the car chase action sequences, too.

And it's all very, very early 2000s, all waterboarding torture and conflict diamonds and smoking at work.

But fundamentally, this film is far from terrible. Perhaps the bad reception was because of everyone now having seen Austin Powers, meaning the format needed to become more serious to survive, and this film is gloriously silly?

The World Is Not Enough (1999)

 "There's no point in living of you can't feel alive."

This is the finest Brosnan Bond film so far. I was unimpressed with GoldenEye; Tomorrow Never Dies was better; this is a superb film that channels the best of Bond.

It's all very late '90s, of course. Q is about to retire, and his replacement, the fittingly amusing R, played by a sprighly John Cleese, a mrere sixty years old, describes the latest Bond supercar as having "six cupholders". Amongst the globetrotting to Bilbao, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Istanbul is a superb set piece boat chase through London, including the Millennium Dome. And, of course, Miss Moneyponey says of a cigar that "I know exactly where to put that."

There's only one decade where that line makes sense.Still, let us note tht Bill Clinton was an abusive wanker, and Kenneth Starr was the same by proxy. May they both suffer lifelong impotence.

There's an innocence to this world pf post Cold War, End of History hubris, where there are no significant hostile countries and where threats of tyranny or nuclear armageddon, that feels charmingly dated. Yet the whole dynamic of Bomd and Elektra offers a surprisingly thoughtful take on sex and to wthe extent it can involve deceiving and using people.  

All this, and we have some splendid set pieces, a supern Bond villain in Robert Carlyle, a nice bit of misdirection where we think Elektra is the Bond girl but she turns out to be the big baddie, and one of the best theme tunes ever. This is, quetly, one of the very best Bonds.

A Study in Terror (1965)

 "Mr Holmes is usually right..."

This is quite the obvious concept- Sherlock Holmes does Jack the Ripper- and one which, I suppose, succeeds or fails on the realisation.

There is, of course, something uneasy about the use of Jack the Ripper- of the brutal and sexualised murder of women- as entertainment, particularly in a film where men (and one woman, presented as the one "whore" not driven to the work by poverty). The male gaze, the Bechdel test, the sheer unthinking misogyny of it all- it can't go unacknowledged, much as we accept that such reactions were not common currency in 1965.

That said, though, this is a frustrating film. The script is, I think, first class- a superbly constructed whodunit, albeit cheating just a little with the final reveal of the killer not being earned, despite the neat cleverness of the other complex yet clear threads; good characterisation; a great deal of wit; lots of Sherlockian allusions in the script with frequent uses of Conan Doyle's dialogue. It's also a nice touch that the character of Dr Murray is a likely nod either to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself- a charitable man- or his mentor Dr Bell, or both.

And yet this excellent script is quite poorly realised. John Neville and Donald Houston are a pedestrian, superficial Holmes and Watson, failing to play their parts as actual characters rather than cyphers, wasting the nuanced lines they are given. The direction may be interesting in places- we get a rather odd shot of the final murder from the Ripper's POV, a disturbing riff on the male gaze- but the costuming (all the prostitutes wear symbolic red!) and sets are a little disappointing.

It's a shame that we end up with a film that's merely quite good; the script is better than that.

A Midsummer Night's Dream (1968)

"Lord, what fools these mortals be..."

I never knew before tonight's random looking through Amazon Prime that this odd little Peter Hall film existed- associated with the RSC although unconnected with the many screen Shakespeare plays made a decade later.

As a production it's... odd. There is much use of location and visuals, yet this is very much in the style (and with the necessary attitude to realism) of a stag play- I suspect the budget would not allow otherwise. The make-up for the fairies, in particular, I can imagine working well on stage, but their look falls very flat here.

The fun of this production, though, is not in the visuals; it's in seeing this splendid cast of unfeasible young actors (Helen Mirren is in her early twenties here, and none of the leads are over thirty- five) perform one of Shakespeare's plays with which I'm most familiar. And Ians Holm and Richardson, in particular, are truly sublime as Puck and Oberon respectively. Most striking though is a young, sensual Judi Dench as she frolics erotically with Paul Rogers' Bottom... and yes, I know: that's quite a sentence.

Even a flawed production of Shakespeare such as this can showcase some individual performances worth seeing, and this is the case here. And I must admit that this particular version of Pyramus and Thisbe is the funniest I've seen. On the whole, then, a mixed bag- but it was always going to be a joy to see this play with this cast.

Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)

"You always were a cunning linguist, James."

I know, it's been a while since GoldenEye. But it took a while before I could face another Bond after that, and it was with all due trepidation that I sat down to watch this. It's a relief to say, then, that Brosnan is better, if still hardly my favourite Bond, and that this is a good if not great Bond film- it says a little in the middle, perhaps, and the whole thing is an extremely formulaic Bond-by-numbers but done well enough, and I think that's what's required at this stage. This is only the second film after a large gap, and there's a need to re-establish all the many tropes.

So we get a notable return to tradition after GoldenEye's sometime iconoclasm, with a notably less spiky relationship between Bond and Judy Dench's M. But we get a decent pre-titles- the Russians are goodies; it must be the '90s- and a mildly disappointing theme tune from Sheryl Crow, and off we go.

This film's Bond villain is the media mogul Eliot Carver, played with splendidly scenery-chewing relish by Jonathan Pryce as he arranges conflict between the UK and China purely to make money. He gets lots of zeitgeisty speeches about the power of the media that date the film enormously; it won't be long until the Internet starts to topple the likes of him off their perches. And I notice that Bond has his first mobile phone, although from the dependably sarky and now octogenarian Q, who has been there since From Russia with Love.

We get a splendid cast as usual, even with the likes of Jason Watkins, Julian Rhind-Tutt, Gerard Butler and Hugh Bonneville with small parts as naval officers. This is hardly one of the greats, but Bond is back on track.

Richard III (Dominic Cooke, 2016)

"So wise so young, they say, do never live long..."

And so the BBC's Hollow Crown series comes to an end with Benedict Cumberbatch excelling as our antihero in Richard III. Much emphasis is placed on the direct continuation of the Henry VI plays; we begin with a "Previously" montage and the cast is the same, adding a certain richness; Sophie Okonedo in particular has been magnificent as Margaret from Henry VI's young bride to the embittered young woman we see here. But the stand-out performance is obviously Cumberbatch, from the very beginning.

This, unlike the previous two instalments, is based on a play I know well, so I will not be treading over the same ground here as I did in uni essays many years ago. Suffice to say that this play, though still an early one, is deliciously addictive tale of the pursuit of power, and its central billion is one of the greatest in all drama. But it feels very different seen in sequence, with Richard and many other characters familiar from earlier plays.

Visually, this is a claustrophobic production of the play, with Richard often seen in a dark room with a chessboard (symbolism much?), and even the climactic battle scenes shot closely and claustrophobically, giving us a vivid impression of the fear, violence and chaos. There's a lot of visual storytelling here, helping with the abridging of the play.

This, and the whole second series of The Hollow Crown, has been a triumph. Now, if only they'd filmed Cumberbatch's Hamlet...

 

GoldenEye (1995)

"I think you're a sexist, misogynist dinosaur, a relic of the Cold War."

I saw and enjoyed this film at the pictures back when I was an 18 year old student at Liverpool University, briefly: I ended up dropping out and getting my degree later. I must admit, though, that disappointed as I am on a second viewing I can't entirely blame this film.

So why did GoldenEye disappoint this time round? Well, to a large degree it's Pierce Brosnan. He really is shockingly rubbish, just phoning in his performance and displaying no charisma whatsoever, something which is not the case with his non-James Bond career.

But it's more than that: it's the script. It feels as though, after a six year gap, they've forgotten how to do James Bond. Only Desmond Llewelyn connects this to any previous film, and really does suddenly look so shockingly old. And the attempts to make ironic references to Bond's inevitable sexism- his combative relationship with the new female M and the new Moneypenny's flirtatious mention of "sexual harassment"- just aren't as clever as the film thinks they are.

Where are the glamorous locations? Yes, it's the '90s, and Russia is fleetingly friendly if also incredibly corrupt, but Siberia is no place to set a Bond film, and brief scenes in St Petersburg and Cuba don't make up for that. Xenia Onatopp is a genuinely brilliant and very Bond character- a female assassin who kills her victims by squeezing them with her legs and a delightfully Freudian nightmare for men- but there's not much else here that's brilliant.

It's hard not to compare this with the Austin Powers films- and unfavourably- given the conscious contrast between the social mores of the '60s and '90s, respectively. And you can tell it's the '90s when bond starts the film with a bungee jump. But this is a slow, ponderous film that takes ages to get going and just lacks oomph. Not their finest hour. In fact, I'm so underwhelmed that I'm going to press pause on watching the Bond films for a bit.

Oh, and we have the bizarre absence of the proper Bond theme tune at the very start. Legal reasons?

Henry V (1989)

"I'm afeared there are few die well that die in battle, for how can they charitably dispose of anything when blood is their argument?"

This is the second screen adaptation of this play that I've seen and blogged after The Hollow Crown, albeit one made twenty-three years earlier, and the differences are stark from the opening scene, where Derek Jacobi's chorus awakens us by lighting a match. This introduces two themes: this production's constant okay with light and it's claustrophobic feeling, indoors and on small sets as much as possible and with the location scenes shot so as not to look expansive. Hal finds the crown as uneasy as did his father is the clear message, and his guilt over being an usurper's son, paralleled by his anxiety over the war being just (because sending people to their deaths and their bereaved dependants into penury because of who should be King is totally just, right?) is reflected in the visuals.

Kenneth Branagh is a suitably angsty Henry. Yes, the speeches are present and correct, but this is not a jingoistic Henry V but an anxious one.

The rest of the cast excellent too, including a surprisingly unshouty Brian Blessed, whose message to Charles VI reeks of a menace he hasn't exuded since he was Augustus in I, Clavdivs. And, on top of those mentioned in the tags, we didn't have room for Derek Jacobi, Robbie Coltrane as a splendid Falstaff in scenes nicked from the Henry IV's, Robert Stephens, Paul Scofield, Harold Innocent and a very young Christian Bale. I particularly enjoyed Ian Holm's Fluellen, discoursing on Pompey the Great- for Shakespeare, all Welshmen are in some way his old classics teacher!

This is a superbly visual production, superlatively acted and directed. The emphasis on sparse lighting, points of light in the darkness and claustrophobia gives us an individual version of the play from Kenneth Branagh that is highly effective. A fine film.