movie gourmet

Skyfall: updating the Bond franchise

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Daniel Craig returns as Her Majesty’s Action Hero, James Bond in Skyfall, an updating of the Bond franchise.   The core of the franchise is still the Bond character – impossibly suave, sexy and insurmountable.  Daniel Craig pulls it off as only Sean Connery could.  Craig’s 007 is more shopworn this time, with a drinking problem and a battled scarred (albeit Adonis-like) body.  But Craig’s Bond can still jump inside a moving train and then reach inside his jacket sleeve to adjust his cuff.

This episode’s Bond supervillain is played by an especially menacing Javier Bardem plus peroxide.   When filmmakers change Bardem’s hairstyle, something just happens to make him extra creepy.

It’s tough to impress an audience these days with cool gizmos, when we have guys sitting in Nevada watching SUVs in Afghanistan on satellite transmission and then  blowing them up by remote control.  So in Skyfall, Bond goes retro and brings back the Aston Martin with the ejector seat and the machine gun headlights.

Skyfall also sets up the changing of the guard for franchise, retiring Judi Dench and adding Ralph Fiennes, Ben Whishaw and Naomie Harris.  Naomie Harris is an especially welcome addition – beautiful, engaging and able to pull off an action scene.

But the real reason to watch Skyfall is for the action.  It’s tough to top the first sequence, which features a motorcycle chase on the rooftops of Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar turning into a fight on top of a moving train.  Skyfall is one of the better pure action flicks this year.

DVD of the Week: Dark Horse

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In this engaging indie dramedy by writer-director Todd Solondz (Welcome to the Dollhouse, Happiness), an epic underachiever falls in love with a heavily medicated depressive.

This guy has not moved out from his boyhood room in his parent’s house. He gets a paycheck from his dad’s company although the office assistant does his work while he spends his day bidding for collectible toys on eBay. He drives a bright yellow Hummer that blares the sappiest pop music. Yet he feels completely entitled, is surly to his enabling parents and bellows like a wounded water buffalo when his genius remains unrecognized.

This guy is remarkably unsympathetic. Still, Solondz ‘s clear-eyed and unsparing portrait is not mean-spirited and, eventually, becomes even empathetic. In particular, Solondz makes able use of dream/fantasy segments to explore the yearnings of the characters.

Jordan Gelber is excellent as the hapless blowhard protagonist. The cast (Selma Blair as the girlfriend, Christopher Walken and Mia Farrow as the parents) is quite good, too, especially Donna Murphy as the office assistant and Aasif Mandvi as the girlfriend’s ex.

I saw this at a screening with Todd Solondz, and he said that Dark Horse is a reaction to the Apatowesque man-child movies. In those films, the underachieving slackers are endearing goofs. Here, the underachieving slacker is realistically unattractive, but has a realistic vulnerability and fundamental humanity. Solondz says that the protagonist, at last, finds life in death.

Dark Horse has the trademark Solondz quirkiness, but without the trademark perversion. As with most Solondz films, I’m still thinking about it several days later.

Note: In Dark Horse, Walken and Farrow appear to be watching Seinfeld. Instead of paying the fee to license a snippet of the real Seinfeld, Solondz got Jason Alexander, Estelle Harris and Jerry Stiller to read Solondz-written faux Seinfeld dialogue.

Movies to See Right Now

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Denzel Washington in FLIGHT

Now that we’re deep into autumn, there are plenty of great movie choices.  The Must See is still Argo, Ben Affleck’s brilliant thriller based on a true story from the Iran Hostage Crisis.  The Sessions is an uncommonly evocative, funny and thoughtful film about sex leading to unexpected emotional intimacy.  Denzel Washington stars in Flight, a thriller about the miraculous crash landing of an airliner and the even more dangerous battle against alcoholism.

The Paperboy is a deliciously pulpy crime drama, enhanced by a trashy Nicole Kidman and a canny Macy Gray. I also liked the thinking person’s sci-fi movie, Looper.  Perks of Being a Wallflower is an authentic coming of age story.

Chasing Mavericks is a predictable and heartwarming true story that is just OK for most movie-goers , but is a Must See if you’re into surfing and/or have an interest in the Santa Cruz and San Mateo coast.

Cloud Atlas delivers six fast paced stories set across six centuries with lots of movie stars playing multiple roles; it’s fun to watch, but it’s not as good a film as the ones listed above. The dark crime comedy Seven Psychopaths is well-acted by a very deep team of my favorite actors and is embedded with belly laughs, but, as a whole, it’s just not that satisfying.

Paul Williams Still Alive, an affecting documentary about the songwriter, omnipresent in the 70s, but not now, is available on Video On Demand. The poignant French geezer comedy All Together is also available on Video On Demand.

I haven’t yet seen the James Bond movie Skyfall or the indie comedy A Late Quartet, which open this weekend. You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD pick this week is the inventive romantic comedy Ruby Sparks.

Chasing Mavericks: awesome waves, OK movie

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Chasing Mavericks is the true story of Santa Cruz teen surfing prodigy Jay Moriarty being mentored by a veteran surfer so he can challenge Mavericks, the mythic surf spot near Half Moon Bay, California.  Moriarty was a kid left with just one unreliable parent who developed his passion with the help of a surrogate father, himself a damaged soul.  It’s a good story and heartwarming, if predictable – but exceptional in two respects.

First, the scenes of Mavericks are awe-inspiring.  Michael Apted took over when director Curtis Hanson became ill.  Whichever one of them shot the scenes at Mavericks deserves significant recognition.  As anyone has taken an amateur snapshot of the Grand Canyon knows, it’s tough to convey colossal scale in a photograph without a person or familiar object for comparison.  In Chasing Mavericks, we do see the surfers, tiny against the 30 foot faces of the waves.  But we also see the massive swells alone, erasing the coastline as they rise – and it is an unforgettable experience.  My one criticism of the surfing scenes is that almost every shot is less than 4 seconds, which doesn’t allow for full appreciation of long rides.

Second, the movie was shot on location at Mavericks and at many Santa Cruz locations, including Lighthouse Point, Steamer Lane and Seacliff.  The depiction of the locale and the local surfing culture will especially resonate with anyone familiar with the area.

Surfing is a sport that has inspired superb documentaries (Riding Giants, Step into Liquid, and the Endless Summer films) and generally putrid life action fictional films (Blue Crush and the Beach Party drek).  For all of its limitations, Chasing Mavericks may be the best ever non-documentary surfing feature.

Chasing Mavericks is just OK for most movie-goers , but if you’re into surfing and/or have an interest in the Santa Cruz and San Mateo coast, it’s a Must See.

Coming up on TV: Sergio Leone and the man with no name

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FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE

On the single blissful evening of November 9, Turner Classic Movies will be broadcasting the three great Sergio Leone spaghetti Westerns A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. All star Clint Eastwood and feature wonderfully idiosyncratic scores by Ennio Morricone.

Eastwood’s character in the trilogy is referred to in film literature as “the man with no name”. But actually, the character is named Joe, Monco and Blondie in the three movies, respectively.

Here’s Morricone’s theme for A Fistful of Dollars.

Flight: a battle against gravity, then another against alcoholism

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Denzel Washington stars in this top rate thriller about an airline pilot who becomes a hero after saving his passengers in a miraculous crash landing, but then falls into legal jeopardy when alcohol is found in his blood.  The plane crash is thrilling, but the high stakes suspense in the final 90 minutes is about whether he can get his drinking under control.

What makes Flight singular is that the hero can take control of a crisis at 35,000 feet and rise to superhuman performance, but is completely out of control when he spots a mini bottle of Ketel One.

And what a hero Denzel Washington makes!  The guy is among our very best actors, and here, his edginess and bluster mask the pilot’s achingly vulnerable loneliness and self-loathing.  And the charisma and confidence in Denzel’s screen presence makes him totally credible as an action hero.

Director Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future) delivers a plane crash scene for the ages, and he does an excellent job of keeping up the suspense.  Flight is pedal-to-the-metal intensity until the final ten minutes, when the ending didn’t quite work for me.  For me, only the ending keeps Flight from being a Must See and one of the year’s best.

The English actress Kelly Reilly is really, really good as a trashy southern heroin addict whose life intersects with the pilot’s, and who must make the same choice between recovery and demise.  John Goodman is hilarious as a gonzo enabler right out of Hunter S. Thompson.  The rest of the cast shines, too, especially Don Cheadle, Bruce Greenwood and Tamara Tunie.

DVD of the Week: Ruby Sparks

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The inventive Ruby Sparks is about romance and it’s very, very funny, but it transcends the genre of romantic comedy.  A shy writer who has produced a great novel at an early age is now drifting,  his writing is blocked and he has isolated himself into a lonely existence.  He imagines his perfect love object, and he can suddenly write in torrents about her until…she becomes real.  Yes, suddenly he has a real life girlfriend of his own design.

This is everyone’s fantasy of a perfect partner – but what are the limits of a partner that you have designed yourself?  Because he can tweak her behavior by rewriting it, this brings up the adage “Be careful what you ask for”.  When he is threatened by her independence, he changes her personality on the page and she becomes unattractively clinging and needy.  Can his realized fantasy make him happy?

Paul Dano is outstanding as the writer and screenwriter Zoe Kazan (granddaughter of Elia Kazan) dazzles as his creation.   (Off screen, Kazan and Dano are a couple.)  Chris Messina is dead on perfect as the writer’s brother, and the film benefits from an especially strong cast:  Annette Bening, Antonio Banderas, Steve Coogan, Aasif Mandvi and Elliot Gould.  Ruby Sparks is ably directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, the co-directors of another exceptional indie comedy, Little Miss Sunshine.

The biggest star in Ruby Sparks is Zoe Kazan’s ingenious screenplay.  It’s funny without being silly, profound without being pretentious, bright without being precious.  Every moment is authentic.  It’s clear that Kazan is a major talent as a screenwriter.

Movies to See Right Now

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John Hawkes in THE SESSIONS

The best bet is still Argo, Ben Affleck’s brilliant thriller based on a true story from the Iran Hostage Crisis. It’s unquestionably the best Hollywood movie of the year so far.

But there are some other excellent choices. The Sessions is an uncommonly evocative, funny and thoughtful film about sex leading to unexpected emotional intimacy. The Paperboy is a deliciously pulpy crime drama, enhanced by a trashy Nicole Kidman and a canny Macy Gray.  I also liked the thinking person’s sci fi movie, Looper.  Perks of Being a Wallflower is an authentic coming of age story. I also recommend the indie alcoholism drama Smashed.

Cloud Atlas delivers six fast paced stories set across six centuries with lots of movie stars playing multiple roles; it’s fun to watch, but it’s not as good a film as the ones listed above.

Paul Williams Still Alive, an affecting documentary about the songwriter, omnipresent in the 70s, but not now, is available on Video On Demand.  The poignant French geezer comedy All Together is also available on Video On Demand.  History buffs will appreciate Ethel, the documentary on Ethel Kennedy by her daughter Rory Kennedy, still playing on HBO.

The dark crime comedy Seven Psychopaths is well-acted by a very deep team of my favorite actors and is embedded with belly laughs, but, as a whole, it’s just not that satisfying.  The Master is a visual and acting masterpiece, but the story fizzles out.  You can skip HBO’s dreary The Girl.

I haven’t yet seen the Denzel Washington blockbuster thriller Flight, which opens this weekend.  You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD pick this week is Elena, a superbly crafted film that vividly peeks into a dark, very dark contemporary Russia.   Elena makes my list of Best Movies of 2012 – So Far.

Cloud Atlas: more may not be better, but more is fun

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The filmmakers of Cloud Atlas clearly believe that more is better.  They give us not one, not two – but six stories spanning six centuries. They give us lots of movie stars: Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess, Susan Sarandon, Hugh Grant and more.  The actors each play multiple roles, with Hanks, Berry, Weaving and Sturgess playing at least six each – sometimes playing characters of different genders and different races.  There are costume dramas on the high seas of the 1840s and in 1930s England, plus two sci-fi settings – one recalling the high-tech, high-speed Tron and also a post-apocalyptic tribal future.   There are even two references to the sci-fi cult classic Soylent Green.  Cloud Atlas even had three directors.

Whew.

The six story lines are threaded together so we follow them until all six climax in the final hectic thirty minutes.  The six stories are each a series of cliff hangers.  As a character in one story falls into peril, the screenplay jumps to another thread, and on and on.

As it manically jumps from story to story, Cloud Atlas touches upon some Big Themes (good and evil, kindness and control, freedom, reincarnation), and we get the brush strokes of a New Agey theology (as if the world needs another theology).  This is where Cloud Atlas gets fuzzy.   Fortunately, the movie is so rapidly paced, that it never gets pretentious as we jump from story to story.

Is Cloud Atlas fun to watch?  Yes, there’s just too much fast-paced action going on, too much eye candy and too many engaging actors for Cloud Atlas to fail the fun test.  Is Cloud Atlas a great movie?  No, there just isn’t enough coherent substance in there to hook us emotionally.  Is it a Must See?  No.  Would I see it again?  No, but I’m glad I saw it once.

A World Without Women: an amusingly awkward but vulnerable guy

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A WORLD WITHOUT WOMEN

In the French film A World Without Women (Un monde sans femmes), Vincent Macaigne plays a lovable loser who manages holiday rentals in a northern French beach town.  He is amiable and good-hearted, but lonely and painfully socially inept.  A good timing single mom brings her college age daughter for a week on the beach and teases him out of his protective shell and into a position of maximum vulnerability.

Macaigne’s characterization is outstanding.  We really care for him and don’t want him to get hurt.  But Macaigne brilliantly employs little touches to illustrate his character’s utter lack of savoir-faire.  For example, at one point he and the mom are leaning shoulder to shoulder against a fence.  She has her arms crossed, and she’s leading him on.  He grasps her her nearest hand with his nearest hand.  But since he’s now holding her left hand with his left, he has pinned her left arm awkwardly across her body like a pretzel, which drains all of the sexual spark out of the situation.  And he can’t put his arm around her because he’s already using that arm to hold her hand.  It’s such a simple action, yet so meaningful.

Laure Calamy is also very good as the fortyish gal who dresses too young and flirts with every available man, leaving male carnage in her wake.

Writer-director Guillaume Brac shows a real command of characters and dialogue in this film.  I’m looking forward to his first feature.  A World Without Women is only 56 minutes long, and plays with Brac’s 24 minute Stranded, which also stars Macaigne as essentially the same character  The two films played together in Paris to surprising popularity.  Fortunately, Brac decided not to bloat the two screenplays into two bad 90-minute features.  Good for him.

I saw both Stranded and A World Without Women at the San Francisco Film Society’s French Cinema Now series.  A World Without Women is not available now on any platform (DVD, Stream, VOD) that I can find, but when it is, I’ll make it a Stream of the Week.  This trailer is in French without subtitles.