Léa Seydoux – 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: ★★★★☆

Twofer Movie Review: ‘The Lobster’ and ‘High-Rise’ – Independents’ Day

Not everything that gets talked about here is action schlock. Some of it is more artsy.

The Lobster

Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos
Written by Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthymis Filippou
Cast: Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, Jessica Barden, Olivia Colman, Ashley Jensen, Ariane Labed, Angeliki Papoulia, John C. Reilly, Léa Seydoux, Michael Smiley, Ben Whishaw, Roger Ashton-Griffiths, Ewen MacIntosh

I do my best not to spoil things here, and that’s particularly true of a movie like The Lobster, because so much of the enjoyment comes from discovering how its world operates as the story progresses. There are no title cards at the beginning like Red Dawn to explain how we got here, you just figure it out on the fly.

What I can tell you, because it’s in the trailer, is that The Lobster is the story of a man who goes to a special resort to find a mate, and if he’s unsuccessful in that he will be turned into an animal he has previously chosen. In the case of our protagonist, he has chosen to be a lobster should it come to that.

I will also tell you that the world of The Lobster is one of rigidity and harsh consequences, and it is this area in particular where the movie so deftly commentates on our own society in terms of the nature of relationships.

Tonally, the movie is a dark comedy, and a rather funny one at that. Colin Farrell turns in a delightfully awkward performance, John C. Reilly is his naturally humorous self, and Rachel Weisz delivers some absolutely absurd voice-overs completely straight, which is hilarious.

It’s a bit of a long, strange trip, and it may not end the way you like, but it’s one worth taking. Check out The Lobster if you’re up for something off the beaten path.

Rating: ★★★½ (out of five)

High-Rise

Directed by Ben Wheatley
Written by Amy Jump, based on the novel by J.G. Ballard
Cast: Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons, Sienna Miller, Luke Evans, Elisabeth Moss, James Purefoy, Keeley Hawes, Reece Shearsmith, Enzo Cilenti, Sara Dee (voice)
Soundtrack: Clint Mansell

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” – Oscar Wilde

No doubt, High-Rise aspires to be great, but it’s no Brazil. Heck, it’s not even Snowpiercer.

Based on the novel by J.G. Ballard (which was, perhaps correctly, considered “unfilmable” for nearly four decades), High-Rise is chock-full of British classism, Seventies excess, and tons of actual garbage. Not having read the source material, I can’t tell you if the adaptation is too faithful, not faithful enough, or somewhere in between, but it does feel like it’s in a no-man’s-land of sort.

It’s hard to pin down exactly what High-Rise is missing, but it’s not thought-provoking enough, shocking enough, funny enough, or horrifying enough to make the impact it desires. At a certain point it becomes a bit meandering, but the core story is so simple that you never really lose track of who’s doing what and why. Perhaps it’s the fact that we’re not given anyone to truly invest in that makes High-Rise so muddled.

However, one thing I’ll give a lot of credit for is the production design. Rather than taking place in an uber-futuristic dystopia, High-Rise is set in a dystopian vision of the 1970s, which means lots and lots of period cars, costumes, hair, and carpeting. in addition to more fantastical elements like an 18th century costume party.

If you’re a hardcore fan of Ben Whealey’s films or J.G. Ballard’s books, then you’ll probably see it anyway, but, save for that, High-Rise is probably not worth your time.

Rating: ★★½ (out of five)

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.

Classic Movie Review – ‘Inglourious Basterds’ – “…this just might be my masterpiece.”

Original Release Date: August 21, 2009
Written and Directed by Quentin Tarantino
Cast: Brad Pitt, Mélanie Laurent, Christoph Waltz, Eli Roth, Michael Fassbender, Diane Kruger, Daniel Brühl, Til Schweiger, B.J. Novak, Sylvester Groth, Julie Dreyfus, Richard Sammel, Samm Levine, Paul Rust, Christian Berkel, Léa Seydoux, Ludger Pistor, Rainer Bock, Mike Myers (Cameo), Rod Taylor (Cameo), Harvey Keitel (Voice Cameo), Samuel L. Jackson (Narrator)

It occurred to me the other day that Quentin Tarantino is a very lucky man.

I don’t mean to say that he’s lucky because of where he’s gotten to; I’m saying that because of where he’s gotten to, he’s lucky.

What do I mean?

Well, as far as I can tell, as a writer and director, Quentin Tarantino:
a. is generally loved by critics
b. is generally loved by audiences
c. generally makes financially successful movies (maybe not blockbusters, but certainly no albatrosses either)
d. is generally considered to be a serious artist
and,
e. makes the movies he wants to make.

For a director to achieve such lofty status for a fleeting moment, let alone maintain it for over two decades, is a stunning accomplishment. I mean, think about how many writer/directors who have had huge breakout hits in the past 25 years and who are now relegated to the garbage heap (The Wachowskis; M. Night Shyamalan; Bryan Singer, etc). And yet, time after time, ol’ QT keeps churning out impeccable films.

That’s not to say he isn’t human. In fact, you could argue that previous to the release of Inglourious Basterds he was in the biggest slump of his career, at least since he’d hit it big with Reservoir Dogs. You see, after the turn of the new millennium, Tarantino was basically untouchable: Kill Bill had put him on top of the world; he was a special guest director for Sin City, which gave him some of that all-important “comic book cred”; and, apparently, he made, like, the best episode ever of CSI or something (I’ve never seen it, but I believe it).

Then along came a little passion project called Grindhouse, where he and Robert Rodriguez got together to make their own personal double feature, each of them directing one.

Now, look, I don’t know Quentin Tarantino personally, so I don’t know if he took it hard or anything when Grindhouse didn’t do that well, but I do know that in the eyes of the movie-going public his reputation took somewhat of a hit. For one thing, his Death Proof was totally outshined by Rodriguez’s Planet Terror, because Planet Terror on the whole is a more entertaining watch, not to mention actually closer to the “grindhouse” theme they were going for (although, as an aside, the best modern “grindhouse” film has got to be Black Dynamite, but I digress).

Death Proof isn’t a bad movie; in fact it’s pretty good. The dialogue scenes are classic Tarantino, and the action scenes are quite impressive. The real problem is that it might be “too good” (or, rather, too polished) for what it was trying to be. And really, I think the whole Grindhouse project may have been a few years ahead of it’s time, but that’s speculative on my part.

ANYWAY, all of this brings us to Inglourious Basterds (aka Quentin Tarantino’s comeback special).

So, because I have a history degree, whenever the subject of this particular movie comes up, people often ask me what I think. In fact, I’ve had at least one person INSIST to me that I should hate it because of its “historical inaccuracy.”

The truth is, the fact that Inglourious Basterds is “historically inaccurate” is irrelevant, because it was never trying to be factual in the first place. Historical fiction (heck, even historical fantasy) doesn’t have to be perfect. It just needs to get certain details right, and, as far as I can tell, all of the costumes, weapons, and other equipment are all period authentic; and that’s what matters.

I mean, do people rag on Kelly’s Heroes because it’s not historically accurate? Who cares? It’s entertainment.

(Now, listen. If you’re going to base something on actual events, like Band of Brothers, or set a fictional story within actual events, like Saving Private Ryan, then the standard is definitely higher; but movies like Inglourious Basterds, Kelly’s Heroes, and The Dirty Dozen are different animals.)

So, what makes Inglourious Basterds Tarantino’s possible masterpiece?

Well, pretty much all the same elements that make most other Tarantino movies his possible masterpiece.

Before going to the special screening of Inglourious Basterds that I attended this past week, I went back and re-watched all of his big movies up to that point, and something I noticed about Reservoir Dogs became a recurring theme: most Quentin Tarantino films feature dialogue that’s so well-written, they could each be adapted as stage plays with little difficulty. Sure, a few scenes here and there you’d have to work around, or excise entirely, but the audience would get the point nonetheless.

There’s no doubt that Inglourious Basterds was marketed as something akin to Kill Bill, and there’s definitely some shocking violence along those lines, but on the whole it’s much closer to Tarantino’s earlier work: an out-of-order story told in maybe ten or so actual scenes, most of which consist of gripping dialogue. The real twist with Basterds is that so much of it is subtitled, but therein lies the genius of the writer/director.

Now, I don’t want to give all the credit here to Tarantino, because the performances are pretty much impeccable across the board. I mean, this is the movie that put both Michael Fassbender and Christoph Watlz on the map (and thank God for that). The only real downer for me is Brad Pitt’s accent; it’s just a little too grating for my taste. That, and B.J. Novak is kind of a strange casting choice (although not totally without logic). And maybe Eli Roth could have done a little better. But, really, beyond that, I don’t have much negative to say about this movie, because it’s awesome.

In fact, in terms of individually gripping scenes that I could watch over and over again, I’d put Inglourious Basterds on par with No Country For Old Men. Maybe Tarantino and the Coen Brothers should team up someday…

So, the question is, is Inglourious Basterds Tarantino’s definitive masterpiece?

I think the answer is: there is no answer.

I could argue just as easily for Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, and Kill Bill, not to mention Django Unchained. I guess it really just comes down to your personal tastes. And that’s one more reason why Quentin Tarantino is a very lucky man.

Rating: ★★★★½

P.S. If you loved Wolfenstein 3D, you have no good excuse for not loving Inglourious Basterds as well.