REVIEW: Skyfall

Skyfall (2012): Dir. Sam Mendes. Written by: Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and John Logan. Based on the character created by Ian Fleming. Starring: Daniel Craig, Judi Dench, Javier Bardem, Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris, Bérénice Lim Marlohe, Albert Finney and Ben Whishaw. Rated PG-13 (Guns and girls). Running time: 143 minutes.

3 stars (out of four)

James Bond was having a bit of an identity crisis. Where does the suave secret agent fit into the movie landscape of 2012? And do we even need him anymore? If Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible movies have a firm grip on over-the-top, cartoonish action, and the Bourne franchise continues to hold the mantle of gritty realism, what can 007 offer that his American competitors cannot?

2006’s Casino Royale, the first film to feature Daniel Craig in the role, reinvented Bond as a stoic hero. Mr. Craig’s rugged face and understated performance gave the character a noir edge that nicely offset Bond’s more charming side. For my taste, 2008’s Quantum of Solace took the character too far in that direction – too brooding, too moody – and risked encroaching on the well-worn territory of other franchise reboots that adopted a darker tone, namely Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight movies.

Skyfall, Mr. Craig’s third Bond movie and the twenty-third overall in the series, strives for balance. There are moments of sheer ridiculousness (as when a construction excavator is driven while atop a speeding train), plenty of breakneck chases and a few brutal fistfights. Daniel Craig is as intensely focused as ever but there are hints of a smile hiding behind the rim of his martini glass. And as for my question posed above, Skyfall answers that too.

Elegance is the special ingredient that makes Bond distinct from his peers and keeps the series a worthwhile entertainment. Skyfall is a classy action picture, evenly paced and in no great rush (though at 143 minutes, it is too long). Director Sam Mendes soaks in the film’s international locales and shoots them in rich, frequently gorgeous wide shots. The movie hops from the rainy streets of London to the neon-streaked skyscrapers of Shanghai and ends at a stately abandoned manor in the Scottish countryside.

Mr. Mendes also indulges himself at the right times. The big explosion that punctuates the film’s climax has to be one of the biggest, and certainly one of the most thorough and satisfying, movie explosions in recent years. And in the opening scene he spends what would surely be the whole budget of other movies on a chase that begins on foot, blasts through a Turkish marketplace with cars and motorcycles, and ends on the aforementioned train.

So, yes, this is a good Bond film. I would probably rank Casino Royale a little higher, but I’m hardly a Bond scholar, so take that for what it’s worth. I’ll admit there were a few moments when the movie lost me and I had no clue what was happening or why but I was never bored.

How could I be with Javier Bardem strutting around as Raoul Silva, the blond-haired, flamboyant villain of the film? Mr. Bardem, clearly enjoying himself, delivers his monologues with no shortage of flair. His laugh is a sinister little laugh but he means to do great harm to Bond’s employer, MI6. A disgruntled former agent, Silva has major beef with M (Judi Dench), the agency’s head, and will not be satisfied until she is dead.

Meanwhile, MI6 faces scrutiny from government bureaucrats who question the spy agency’s ability to function effectively after a list of undercover agents is stolen and leaked to the public. Leading the investigation is a government higher-up played with subtle menace by Ralph Fiennes.

It is up to James Bond to protect M and preserve the agency’s future. Naturally, while saving the day, he also finds time to tangle with a lovely named Sévérine (Bérénice Lim Marlohe) as well as fellow field agent Eve (Naomie Harris). The always great Albert Finney makes an appearance late in the film too as a wily, old groundskeeper.

Skyfall is marked by a back-to-basics approach that works well. When a brainy kid shows up as Q (Ben Whishaw), MI6’s technology developer, he gives Bond a sleek and simple gun and nothing else. “Exploding pens and the like,” he says. “We don’t do that anymore.” There are probably a few too many winks and nudges like this in the film, as though the filmmakers were trying to defend the franchise’s relevance with coy in-jokes, but I appreciate the movie’s straightforwardness.

Even the theme song by Adele, the first actually decent Bond theme in years if not decades, has the feel of a series reinvigorated. Skyfall is not another revamp of the franchise but rather an affirmation of its continued quality. There is still a place for Bond at the movies and he didn’t even need to change up his style to prove it.

- Steve Avigliano, 11/12/12

REVIEW: The Adventures of Tintin

The Adventures of Tintin (2011): Dir. Steven Spielberg. Written by: Steven Moffat and Edgar Wright & Joe Cornish, based on the comics by Hergé. Starring: Jamie Bell, Andy Serkis, Daniel Craig, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. Rated PG (Swashbuckling and a boozing sea captain). Running time: 107 minutes.

2 stars (out of four)

Steven Spielberg built his career on turning his boyhood fantasies into Hollywood blockbusters. When you watch the most imaginative of his big-budget adventures – Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park, Minority Report – you get the sense that a young Spielberg might have made the same movie had he had the technical skills and financing at his disposal the adult Spielberg does. The same is true of his buddy, George Lucas. At some gut level just they knew the stories in their heads, full of dashing heroes and journeys to exotic worlds, would make fine crowd-pleasers.

So the pairing of Mr. Spielberg and Peter Jackson, that Kiwi who had the crazy idea he could turn The Lord of the Rings into a trilogy of hit movies, makes sense. They share a mutual love of the French comic book series, The Adventures of Tintin, and set out to recreate on the big screen the rich, vibrant world they had already known for years. Mr. Spielberg would direct the first and, should it be a hit, Mr. Jackson would helm the second installment.

The Adventures of Tintin, which was filmed with motion-capture animation and released in 3D, seems to have all the right ingredients – a boy and his dog discover a clue to a mystery and embark on a globetrotting trek to solve it – but the movie fails to capture the magic that seems so effortless in other Spielberg films.

The boy is Tintin (Jamie Bell) and the clue is a cryptic piece of parchment concealed inside a model ship he bought secondhand from a street vendor. He might have known the purchase would spark trouble after a man named Ivan Sakharine (Daniel Craig) tries to buy the ship off Tintin. Sakharine needs only to utter a few words in Mr. Craig’s ominous, British drawl for us to know he’s the Bad Guy and Tintin wisely keeps the ship for himself, sensing an opportunity for adventure.

And how right he is! Before he knows it, Sakharine kidnaps him and he is onboard a real ship where he meets a drunken sea captain, Haddock (Andy Serkis). Haddock and Sakharine have a longstanding feud that is apparently news to Haddock; their ancestors were rival pirates and Sakharine’s relative cursed Haddock’s after the latter robbed him of his gold. Or something.

The plot details in these sorts of movies are more-or-less irrelevant as long the story takes our heroes from Land A to Land B and back again, which The Adventures of Tintin does. As it turns out, the parchment features as series of cryptic symbols along the bottom that can only be understood when read with two other notes, also hidden inside model ships. So we begin in Europe, where the first two ships are, then hop over to Morocco where the third is. The intervening trip involves travel by boat, plane and motorcycle and there is no shortage of dazzling animated action sequences.

So where does Tintin go wrong? To be honest, I’m at a bit of a loss to say but let’s start with the animation, which, on a surface level, is stunning. How an animator is able to recreate the look of a rainy street or the sun glistening off ocean waves in such a way that looks somehow better than the real thing, I’ll never know. The movie also looks great in 3D; the animation is crisp and sharp, and the added effect of the 3D is seamless.

But the inhabitants of this digital world have an odd quality about them. Because the actual physical performances of actors are being used through motion-capture, the characters of Tintin move like real people. Yet they remain cartoonish; they have big heads, exaggerated features and curvy, rubbery bodies. The strangeness of this look is especially noticeable in the film’s comedy, which is mostly broad and slapstick. The antics of a pair of bumbling coppers (Simon Pegg and Nick Frost) are limited by the use of real actors. They appear to be cartoon characters but because their bodies have none of the elasticity of say, Wild E. Coyote when he steps off a cliff, their movements appear curiously stiff.

This creepy middle ground between animated people and the real thing kept the movie at a distance for me. A scene such as a motorcycle chase through a Moroccan town, shown in one long take, is breathtaking but also not as exciting as it should be. There is too much of a sense that these are pixels being cleverly manipulated to look like buildings, boats and boy who ducks and dives between them. The movie is visually impressive but only superficially so.

The failings of The Adventures of Tintin are not so great as to shake my faith in Mr. Spielberg’s talent, but the movie does make me realize how much I take for granted the action movies of his that do work. My inner child is always eager to escape into a movie and who knows, maybe Tintin’s next adventure will allow him to do so.

- Steve Avigliano, 01/02/12

REVIEW: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011): Dir. David Fincher. Written by: Steven Zaillian. Based on the novel by Stieg Larsson. Starring: Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara, Christopher Plummer, Stellan Skarsgård, Steven Berkoff, Robin Wright, Yorick van Wageningen and Joely Richardson. Rated R (Language, sex and graphic violence including rape). Running time: 158 minutes.

3 ½ stars (out of four)

David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the second film adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s best-selling novel following the 2009 European box office hit, is a lean, brutal thriller both highly stylized and remarkably economical.

After a brief prologue the film kicks off with a blistering cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (who also scored the film) and featuring a wailing Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs on vocals. The movie builds off this initial burst of energy and proceeds to rocket down its dark, twisted path at a breakneck speed.

I should admit I had a strong familiarity with the plot prior to seeing the film, having only just recently watched the earlier Swedish version directed by Niels Arden Oplev. Considering the popularity of the source material, I imagine many others will have an even more intimate knowledge of this labyrinthine mystery than I. Still, I was surprised to find how involving the film was in spite of this, thanks in no small part to Mr. Fincher’s impeccable craftsmanship and Steven Zaillian’s lean, efficient script.

Information is doled out quickly and in the fewest words possible (and there is quite a lot of information to take in) but though the film is briskly paced, it is never hurried. I imagine Mr. Fincher and his editors, Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall, pared every scene down to its absolute essentials, which says something about the wealth of strong material here because the movie clocks in at 158 minutes.

Our navigator through this icy, depraved Sweden is Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig), a journalist for Millennium magazine who has been convicted of libeling a wealthy businessman, Hans-Erik Wennerström (Ulf Friberg). Blomkvist’s evidence, which accused Wennerström of financial and moral corruption, turned out to have been falsified, leading Blomkvist to believe he was the fall guy in an elaborate set-up. The damages from the lawsuit cost him his life savings and the controversy forces him to take a temporary leave of absence from the magazine, of which he is also a co-owner.

Amidst the fallout of the lawsuit, Blomkvist receives an invitation to meet with Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer), an aging businessman who lives on the island, Hedestad. Henrik wants to hire Blomkvist to investigate the disappearance of his niece, Harriet (Moa Garpendal), who he believes was murdered by a member of the Vanger family, all of whom live on the island, nearly forty years ago.

Blomkvist is understandably apprehensive but the price is right and once he begins his investigation it is clear he thrives on this sort of thing. Daniel Craig’s Blomkvist is a hard-edged and determined reporter and Mr. Fincher highlights the obsessive nature of investigative journalism. This makes The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo something of a spiritual successor to Zodiac, Mr. Fincher’s 2007 film about reporters and police who sought the identity of the infamous Zodiac Killer for years.

No less obsessive is Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara), a computer hacker hired first by Henrik Vanger to do a background check on Blomkvist, then by Blomkvist to assist in his investigation for Henrik. Salander is an enigmatic figure; there is reference to a history of violence in her childhood and she proves herself more than capable of violence in the present but mostly her anger simmers under a stolid and beautiful face of Ms. Mara.

Because of her past, Salander is a ward of the state and must answer to a legal guardian in charge of her finances. The latest of these guardians is a despicable man (Yorick Van Wageningen) whose readiness to abuse his influence over her reveals unspeakable levels of depravity. (Some spoilers from here to the end of the paragraph.) The rape scenes are difficult to watch and Mr. Fincher does little to make them more palatable. He is careful though not to push the material into gratuitous exploitation, which is admirable since the story uses these scenes less to confront the seriousness of rape than to set the decidedly dark tone of Steig Larsson’s wicked world.

Even when the images onscreen are tough to watch, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is gorgeous to look at. Over his past few films, Mr. Fincher has perfected an impressive visual style and technical mastery. Shooting digitally allows him unparalleled control over every shot. Notice how his use of color saturation can cast a gloom over even the sunniest day or how striking and clear a scene taking place in near total darkness looks.

Mr. Fincher has a close team of people he works with, which results in an exceptionally focused film. New additions to that team are Mr. Reznor and Mr. Ross whose score for Mr. Fincher’s previous effort, The Social Network, won them an Oscar last year. Their music is versatile to Mr. Fincher’s needs; chugging guitars and synthesizers drive the action forward while Blomkvist and Salander investigate the case, and ambient noise ratchets up the tension in ways a traditional musical score could not have.

I have a few minor grievances regarding some of Mr. Fincher’s stylistic choices but I appreciate that he is a director willing to take risks. (In particular, the ironic use of a pop song in one of the film’s climactic scenes feels out of step with the rest of the film’s style.) I also take issue with the development of Blomkvist and Salander’s relationship but perhaps this is a point more for Mr. Larsson than Mr. Fincher.

These gripes are little more than nitpicking, however, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is an exceptional modern film noir that arguably bests the previous (and very good) Swedish adaptation. The Sweden of Stieg Larsson’s story is not a terribly enticing vacation spot but for two-and-a-half hours David Fincher makes it a pretty thrilling place to be.

- Steve Avigliano, 12/29/11

REVIEW: Cowboys & Aliens

Cowboys & Aliens (2011): Dir. Jon Favreau. Written by: Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, Damon Lindelof, Mark Fergus, and Hawk Ostby. Story by: Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby, and Steve Oedekerk. Based on the graphic novel Cowboys & Aliens by: Scott Mitchell Rosenberg. Starring: Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Olivia Wilde, Sam Rockwell, Paul Dano, Clancy Brown, Keith Carradine and Raoul Trujillo. Rated PG-13 (Western & sci-fi action and violence). Running time: 118 minutes.

2 stars (out of four)

In Cowboys & Aliens, the latest from director Jon Favreau, the cowboys are dusty and the aliens are slimy. Anyone expecting anything else has walked into the wrong theater. The film delivers everything promised in its title (the ampersand stands in for “rescuing citizens who have been abducted by”) in a genre mash-up that, unless you are familiar with the graphic novel on which it is based, is admittedly original.

The premise is ingeniously simple. Why do movie aliens always attack Earth in the present day? Surely their spaceships and weaponry have been advanced for centuries so why not invade our terrestrial world in say, the late 1800s, before the Second Industrial Revolution begins depleting our celestially sought after natural resources?

This playful anachronism allows for some nice moments. When a metallic wristband suddenly starts beeping on Daniel Craig’s wrist, watch Paul Dano’s baffled reaction to the, um, alien sound.

Unfortunately, the majority of Cowboys & Aliens is not as noteworthy as its perfectly silly title. The film opens on a man with no name (Daniel Craig) waking in the middle of the New Mexican desert. He has a name, presumably, but he has forgotten that piece of information as well as how the aforementioned wristband got clamped onto his arm. He stumbles into a nearby town and meets a host of Western archetypes: the hotheaded son (Paul Dano) of a wealthy cattle driver (Harrison Ford), a sheepish bartender (Sam Rockwell), preacher (Clancy Brown), sheriff (Keith Carradine) and a mysterious beauty (Olivia Wilde).

A few of these people recognize Craig’s rugged face from a wanted poster sketch, which lands him in the town jail though he cannot recall his crime. Soon enough, however, bright lights descend from the night sky offering him a chance at redemption (not to mention an opportunity to use that thing on his wrist). The town gets pretty thoroughly blown up and about half its small population snatched up and whisked away by the spaceships. The next day, the cowboys embark on a mission led by Craig and Ford to save their fellow citizens.

The movie is considerably heavier on cowboys than it is aliens, even finding room for an Apache tribe led by their chief, Black Knife (Raoul Trujillo), to help the cowboys. This might lead some to think of the aliens as an allegorical replacement for Native Americans, making the film a sort of “Cowboys and Indian Symbols,” but that would be pushing a lot of unwanted subtext on the film. Cowboys & Aliens is more straightforward than that and I appreciate that the film is modest enough to not try and be anything more than the title suggests.

On the other hand, it’s a shame that with a premise as clever as this, the movie isn’t a little better. Cowboys & Aliens lacks the wit and humor of Jon Favreau’s Iron Man films, which is odd since the subject matter here might have lent itself to self-aware kidding even more. Harrison Ford, a master at cashing in on a paycheck while having some fun too, does his best to make up for the film’s mostly sober tone. You can just barely catch a little glimmer in his eye that shows he knows when he’s saying a bad line and when he’s saying a good and cheesy one. Playing a rough and gruff curmudgeon, he is responsible for the film’s few laughs.

At about two hours, the movie is too long considering it offers only the bare minimum in the way of plot. There are a number of well put together action scenes and the movie doesn’t really do anything wrong but I kept expecting something more. Some extra twist or turn, perhaps. But nothing like that ever comes and the movie is content to trot along with modest ambitions for the entirety of its running time. There are many worse ways to spend two hours but I don’t expect children to be playing “Cowboys and Aliens” anytime soon.

- Steve Avigliano, 7/12/11