Daniel Craig – People Talking

Movie Review – ‘No Time to Die’ – Craig’s Last Waltz

Directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga
Written by Neal Purvis & Robert Wade, Cary Joji Fukunaga (screenplay and story), Phoebe Waller-Bridge (screenplay), based on characters created by Ian Fleming
Cast: Daniel Craig, Léa Seydoux, Rami Malek, Lashana Lynch, Ralph Fiennes, Ben Whishaw, Naomie Harris, Rory Kinnear, Jeffrey Wright, Billy Magnussen, Christoph Waltz, David Dencik, Ana de Armas, Dali Benssalah, Lisa-Dorah Sonnet, Coline Defaud, Mathilde Bourbin, Hugh Dennis, Priyanga Burford, Brigitte Millar
Soundtrack: Hans Zimmer

16 years ago today, Daniel Craig was announced as the sixth actor to play James Bond in EON Productions’ long-running franchise.

There was controversy.

He had blonde hair! He had blue eyes! He wore a life-jacket on a boat!

(As if Roger Moore was tall, dark, and handsome?)

Personally, I wasn’t bothered. Much like Batman Begins following Batman & Robin, after Die Another Day, I was ready for anything new, but I’ve talked about that at length already.

More to the present (and to borrow a joke from Mike Stoklasa): it’s been so long since the last Bond film, it’s almost time for my pon farr!

To be fair, it wasn’t quite the 2313 days between Licence to Kill and Goldeneye, but is the 2163 days between SPECTRE and No Time to Die that far off?

Not really, but what’s important is that the movie is here at last, which means Daniel Craig can finally start to get on with his life (and I don’t mean that disparagingly).

Unlike the previous go around, I didn’t do much to get myself hyped up for this installment, because there’s no way any Bond movie could be worse following SPECTRE (though I would recommend a re-watch before seeing the new one, or at least a read through the plot on Wikipedia).

The reaction so far seems somewhat divided, which makes sense, but like so many things these days, the minority is far noisier than the majority of people who have been reasonably satisfied with the product.

But enough about all that.

To me, No Time to Die feels like the first time in the Craig era where everyone involved (including Hans Zimmer!) said, “Hey, let’s go out and make a James Bond movie; because that’s what we do, right?”

Not that I haven’t liked what they’ve done overall to this point, and not that they haven’t previously pulled inspiration from the original source (Casino Royale especially) and past films, but, in many ways, No Time to Die feels like a movie made by somebody who’s a fan the way I’m a fan. Someone who’s seen every movie more than once and can find something they like in each one (or almost, in my case).

In fact, it’s fitting that the MacGuffin of this movie revolves around DNA, because this feels like the only film in the franchise thus far that truly pulls something from every iteration of Bond: Connery, Lazenby, Moore, Dalton, Brosnan, Craig himself, and, yes, Ian Fleming’s novels. On top of that, it does an admirable job of picking up the tatters of some poor serialization in the previous entry and finding a thread to carry forward into this film.

And, of course, it’s a farewell to Daniel Craig in the role.

Of all the Bond actors who have had at least four cracks at the character, Craig certainly gets the strongest exit of any of them; which isn’t exactly difficult given that the competition is Diamonds Are Forever, A View to A Kill (which I do enjoy), and Die Another Day, but the point still stands.

Exactly how much of this we can lay at the feet of writer/director Cary Fukunaga, I can’t say for certain, but I wouldn’t be upset if he came back for another one down the line.

If I have one particular criticism of No Time to Die, it’s that there’s some dodgy CGI sprinkled in that I can’t help thinking would have been better handled in the Brosnan era. And I don’t mean that they would have done it 100% in-camera, I just think more effort would have gone into perhaps shooting things in miniature and compositing in other elements.

And yes, the movie felt a bit long the first time I saw it, but upon seeing it a second time, it really didn’t bother be at all.

In the end, I’m hedging myself on a rating a little bit, but perhaps the best compliment I can give is that having seen the movie twice, I do feel a desire to see it at least a third time, and that doesn’t come around too often.

And if you can see it in IMAX, all the better.

Rating: ★★★★☆

Movie Review – ‘Knives Out’ – Delivered On-Time

Written and Directed by Rian Johnson
Cast: Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon, Don Johnson, Toni Collette, LaKeith Stanfield, Christopher Plummer, Katherine Langford, Jaeden Martell, Riki Lindhome, Edi Patterson, Frank Oz, K Callan, Noah Segan, M. Emmet Walsh, Marlene Forte
Soundtrack: Nathan Johnson

It wasn’t that long ago (you know, like two years) that my relationship with Rian Johnson (as a movie fan) was rather uncomplicated. I thought he was a fine writer/director who had vision; someone who made quality, interesting films.

Then, The Last Jedi happened, and, well, let’s just say that was hard for me to reconcile as both a fan of Johnson’s previous work and classic Star Wars.

As painful as that may have been, however, I always believed, nay, knew, that whatever Rian Johnson’s next movie was would be a good one (and I expect a similar rebound effort from Sam Mendes after the SPECTRE debacle).

Despite some trailer fatigue going in (I think Lionsgate was just excited to have a legitimately good general audience movie for the first time in a while), I have to say, Knives Out delivers as a modern take on the classic murder mystery genre.

Similar to Parasite, I wouldn’t say the story is totally mind-blowing, but it does go in ways I didn’t expect, which is satisfying unto itself.

The ensemble cast of top-flight actors is a joy to behold, and in particular it’s wonderful to see Christopher Plummer still having fun at the age of 89 (and still able to play a slightly younger man, I might add).

It’s also interesting that while Knives Out isn’t a Thanksgiving story (like Blood Rage), the family dynamics certainly seem appropriate to the holiday (may your own Thanksgivings never be as stressful).

Also, I have to give credit to the production for actually shooting a Massachusetts-set movie in Massachusetts, and not somewhere down south or, Heaven forbid, California. As someone who’s spent a fair share of time up there, it’s nice to see that authenticity.

Really though, whether you’re an average movie-goer, or someone like me who’s seen every episode of Agatha Christie’s Poirot (or A&E’s classic, A Nero Wolfe Mystery), Knives Out is a quality piece of entertainment for almost any audience.

So, when you get tired of seeing your family this holiday season, go sneak away and see this one. You won’t regret it.

Rating: ★★★★☆

P.S.
Rian, I know you’re still bitter, I probably would be to, but not all of us who didn’t love The Last Jedi are childish alt-right trolls, okay?

Movie Review – ‘Logan Lucky’ – All The Fun of The Fair

Directed by Steven Soderbergh
Written by Rebecca Blunt
Cast: Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, Seth MacFarlane, Riley Keough, Katie Holmes, Katherine Waterston, Dwight Yoakam, Sebastian Stan, Brian Gleeson, Jack Quaid, Hilary Swank, Daniel Craig, David Denman, Jim O’Heir, Macon Blair, Farrah Mackenzie, Rebecca Koon, Charles Halford, Jon Eyez, William Mark McCullough
Soundtrack: David Holmes

Boy oh boy is it good to have Steven Soderbergh back.

Not that he’d left us entirely, but he hasn’t done a theatrical feature since 2013’s Side Effects (which is GREAT, by the way; I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before), and I don’t really have time for television (what with all the movies I see), so, as far as I was concerned, he was out of sight. Logan Lucky is not only a welcome cinematic return for him, but, at the tail end of one of the best movie summers I can ever remember, it’s at least a contender for Top Movie of the Season.

Soderbergh’s obviously no stranger to the ol’ heist movie, nor is he a stranger to films with a comedic tone, but Logan Lucky is a special blend of the two that is so enjoyable and light-hearted (without being total fluff) that I would have happily spent more time in my seat just to hang out with the characters a little longer.

This is not to say it’s a perfect film. The most glaring weakness is Seth MacFarlane. I think I understand what his character is supposed to be, but it’s rather muddled, and his fake British accent is simply not good enough for a live-action movie (might work for a cartoon, but not here); unless, of course, it was supposed to be fake, but I never got any indication of that. In a similar vein, I felt like we should have gotten a little more from Sebastian Stan’s character. I don’t really have an issue with his performance, per se, and perhaps at some point there was a longer cut of the movie where he was featured more, but ultimately he just feels wasted.

But hey, why focus on the bad when there’s so much good?

First and foremost, Channing Tatum as Jimmy Logan is utterly charming. You can’t help but root for him. For an actor I didn’t really have an opinion on until the past few years, he has come on strong with roles in Foxcatcher, The Hateful Eight, and Hail, Cesar!, and this film is no exception (I think I might actually be looking forward to Gambit at this point).

On top of that, you’ve got a bunch of fantastic supporting performances, namely from Adam Driver and Riley Keough as the fellow Logan siblings, not to mention the James Bond-sized elephant in the room: Daniel Craig.

Prior to Logan Lucky, I don’t think I’d ever seen a Daniel Craig role that wasn’t dark and brooding in some way, so his performance here is a downright revelation (not to mention his reciprocal accent is head and shoulders above MacFarlane’s). He’s an absolute scene-stealer.

Also, they don’t get a whole lot of screen time, but Katherine Waterston and Dwight Yoakum do very well with what little they’re given (insert seasoning/food metaphor here).

Quite simply, Logan Lucky is some slick Country-fried fun with likable characters and a classic heist plot in an interesting location. It might not always be perfectly paced, but it made me laugh quite a bit (which is the end goal of any comedy), and at times it was even a little heartwarming.

And, with a PG-13 rating, it’s good for date nights and family nights alike (as long as your kids are old enough to appreciate it).

Rating: ★★★★½ (out of five)

P.S.
No stinger scene, but the credits are pretty short (relatively speaking), and there’s a funny disclaimer at the end.

Movie Review – ‘SPECTRE’ – Tell Me Something I Don’t Know

Directed by Sam Mendes
Written by John Logan and Neal Purvis & Robert Wade (story and screenplay), Jez Butterworth (screenplay)
Cast: Daniel Craig, Christoph Waltz, Léa Seydoux, Ben Whishaw, Naomie Harris, David Bautista, Monica Bellucci, Ralph Fiennes, Simon Lenagan
Soundtrack: Thomas Newman

As I said in my review of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., it’s been a great year for espionage-action films. We’ve had the aforementioned U.N.C.L.E., we’ve had another wonderful installment of Mission: Impossible, and we started off the year in grand fashion with Kingsman.

But, let’s be real here. SPECTRE was always slated to be the crown jewel for 2015.

Expectations have been sky high, and rightfully so. You’ve got the same critically-acclaimed director from Skyfall (Sam Mendes is the first consecutive Bond director since John Glen in the 1980s), the same writing team from Skyfall (Logan, Purvis & Wade, plus Jez Butterworth, who co-wrote the screenplay for Edge of Tomorrow), a cinematographer and an editor who know how to handle big, beautiful movies (Hoyte Van Hoytema and Lee Smith shot and edited Interstellar, respectively), plus, you’ve got the key cast back (Craig, Whishaw, Harris, and Fiennes), and you’ve got Christoph Waltz, who played one of the top two villains of the previous decade (much like Javier Bardem), as the bad guy in this movie.

AND, if that all wasn’t enough, this is the first official (that is, Eon-produced) 007 movie to use the SPECTRE organization since Diamonds Are Forever in 1971.

So, what happened? Does SPECTRE deliver? Or is it crushed under the weight of so much expectation?

Well, as a Bond movie fan who’s seen every single last film (you can read my documentation on the subject here, here, and here), I have to say, the result is a bit muddled, like a dirty martini.

To be sure, there are many wonderful moments in SPECTRE, but the movie as a whole is a bit long and a bit overly serious, making for an experience I find troublingly hard to recommend outright.

Not only that, but I found the story frustratingly predicable, and I don’t know if it’s because I’m such a James Bond fan, or if the movie just generally telegraphs its punches to anyone watching, or perhaps a little of both, but when a movie like this doesn’t have anything to surprise you with, it dulls the experience considerably.

The main strength of SPECTRE is, without question, the visuals. There are many beautiful establishing shots of both cities and natural landscapes, there are some wonderful-looking explosions, and we know who’s punching who in each action scene. The pre-credits sequence also features some great cinematography, with some nice long shots that track all around.

Performance-wise, love him or hate him, Daniel Craig is still doing his 007 thing, and Christoph Waltz, as we know, is a wonderful villain. I can’t say I was truly impressed by anyone else though, but I venture to guess that has as much to do with the script as anything else.

If it wasn’t obvious already, the story and screenplay are the biggest weaknesses of this good-looking (though not as beautiful as Skyfall) film. There’s not too much I can say without getting into spoiler territory, but let’s just say some elements compare to Star Trek: Into Darkness, and I don’t mean that as a compliment. That’s not to say there aren’t some brilliantly quotable lines, but you have to wade through so much other stuff to get to them that I began to question if it was worth it. Frankly, for a movie as long as SPECTRE is, and given that it does tie in the three previous Craig films, I didn’t get as much closure about certain things as I would have hoped from an overall story perspective, and that’s disappointing.

Also, I didn’t like how many of the characters were handled, as if the writers felt compelled to give them something to do even though it’s unprecedented for them to be doing anything of the kind. If you see the movie, you’ll know exactly what I mean.

As I’ve said before, James Bond movies are meant to be solid entertainment, and if they veer too much away from that core, either too campy or too serious, things start to break down. If I was going to compare SPECTRE to another film in the franchise, it would have to be The World is Not Enough: nice to look at, but leaves me feeling a bit empty inside. Perhaps I’ve been conditioned by the other spy action movies of this year to expect that such films should be fun experiences, but I stand by my statement nonetheless.

And, you know what else? I didn’t like the main titles sequence at all, either visually or the song.

The ultimate question is, of course, is SPECTRE worth it? I’d say yes, but don’t feel self-conscious about seeing it at a discount price. And, given how long it both is and feels, make sure you put a premium on comfort.

Rating: ★★★☆☆

P.S.
I’m sure some people will comment that Monica Bellucci is too old, but she’s still fine by me.