SPECTRE: Blow Feld

Spectre, the 24th entry in this 53-year-old franchise, is upon us. This review is the culmination of a week spent with Daniel Craig and his rugged take on Britain's most famous spy.

Other Reviews in this Series.

Director: Sam Mendes
Writers: John Logan, Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, Jez Butterworth
Cast: Daniel Craig, Christoph Waltz, Lea Seydoux, Ralph Fiennes, Monica Bellucci, Ben Whishaw, Naomie Harris, Dave Bautista, Andrew Scott, Rory Kinnear
Runtime: 148 mins.
2015

Spectre continues the trend of every Craig Bond film to somehow fumble or dishonor the genre-topping example set by Casino Royale. To be sure, Casino is a tough act to follow, but if any of the next three films had picked a unique identity and stuck to it, they would have fared better. Instead they feel like pale, wrongheaded imitations. Skyfall trailblazes better than the other two because it attempts to salvage Bond's psychological complexity from Casino; Spectre may come out the worst in this regard, because rather than stealing psychological or tonal cues from its predecessors, it merely siphons plot detail after plot detail into its own shambles of a story.

At its best Spectre is a film of moments. The film opens with a stunning continuous shot that follows James Bond and his quarry through a massive Day of the Dead celebration in Mexico City. The camerawork, choreography, and aesthetic are all thrilling, and the subsequent helicopter fight isn't too bad either. Moment.

James Bond and Dave Bautista's charismatically silent henchman character Mr. Hinx rumble in the confined quarters of a train. This is the only time the film packs a punch. Bautista's massive wrestling physique smashes Bond through walls and furniture in a stunning display of brutality. Moment.

James Bond has an unexpected, hilarious, and exceedingly likable conversation with a small animal. Moment.

It's when these moments are strung together into something resembling a narrative that it all falls apart. The connective tissue is forced and awkward. The pacing is glacial. All to eventually disappoint us with a plot that is trying so hard to be something exciting that it ends up being nothing at all. As long as the movie delayed that plot from kicking in (and it spends a considerable amount of time doing so), I was having a good enough time. But when Bond finally faces off with the villain, the movie reveals its idiocy and just sort of plods through to the end.

AMISTAD: Save the Slaves

Every other day leading up to the release of his new movie Bridge of Spies, we will be dissecting a film in Steven Spielberg's oeuvre. I've picked ten movies spanning the length of Spielberg's career, five of which I have seen and five of which I haven't. Amistad is Spielberg's attempt to deliver a meaningful film about slavery that isn't packed with stereotypes and fetishism.

Other Reviews in this Series: Duel, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1941, Empire of the Sun, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Catch Me If You Can, War of the Worlds, Munich, Lincoln

Other Spielberg Reviews: Jaws, Jurassic Park, The Lost World, Bridge of Spies

(If you haven't already, check out my new archive in the corner ---->)

Director: Steven Spielberg
Writer: David Franzoni
Cast: Djimon Hounsou, Matthew McConaughey, Morgan Freeman, Anthony Hopkins, Stellan Skarsgard, Pete Postlethwaite, Nigel Hawthorne, David Paymer, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Anna Paquin
Runtime: 155 mins
1997

In the year 1839, a group of captured African slaves broke free from captivity, revolted, and killed most of the crew of a Spanish slaving ship called the Amistad. They were ultimately captured by the American navy and brought to America for trial. Contrary to what you might think, the trial had less to do with the brutal murder of the crew and more to do with the ownership of the African men--the surviving slavers, the Queen of Spain, and the American ideal of freedom all made claims. This case ultimately made it to the Supreme Court, where the slaves were defended in grand fashion by former president John Quincy Adams. This is the story of Spielberg's Amistad.

Yet Amistad feels like it is more than just one story. It feels like two movies nesting within each other. One is anchored in the perspective of the slaves, and kicks off the movie with one of the most harrowing opening sequences I've ever seen: the revolt. Spielberg pulls no punches; the violence is wretched and brutal, the slaves bloodthirsty, the captors merciless. The camerawork is an orchestra of disorienting close-ups, lit hectically by lightning and lanternlight, punctuated with desperation. Then it is over, and we follow the journey of these Africans whose language and customs we do not understand, but whose plight is already all too familiar to us. The camera swings up and reveals the breathtaking stars, the captives' only guide home.

The other movie is anchored in the perspective of white members of the political and legal behemoth that is the United States' judicial system. This perspective supersedes the other, taking up most of the runtime. It is more visually and structurally typical, with dialogue-driven courtroom scenes and earnest pleas for help and justice. This movie is less artful but just as competent as the other.

The true identity of Amistad isn't either of these movies, but the thing that exists where these two movies clash. As this recent Birth.Movies.Death essay articulates, Spielberg and co. are clearly aware of the pitfalls that movies about slavery are liable to fall into: the Noble Savage, the White Savior, Brutality Fetish, etc. These are tropes are not only lazy and played out, but they undermine the very purpose of the movies that contain them. If you want to show how bad slavery is, why are you whitewashing the black protagonist? If you want to show that people of color deserve equality and independence, why can they accomplish nothing without the help of the generous white man? Does it give you pleasure to linger so on the pain of minorities?

EX MACHINA: Artificial Insemination

Director: Alex Garland
Writer: Alex Garland
Cast: Domhnall Gleeson, Oscar Isaac, Alicia Vikander
Runtime: 108 mins.
2015

It's hard to know what to call Ex Machina. Sci-fi, of course, that goes without saying. It's about a young programmer named Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) who wins a mysterious contest that lets him spend a week with his reclusive boss Nathan (Oscar Isaac), only to discover that the purpose of his visit is to test Nathan's brilliant AI creation Ava (Alicia Vikander), to see whether she passes Nathan's version of the Turing Test. That's prime sci-fi material. But beyond that? Beyond that it gets messy.

Sometimes Ex Machina feels like a drama, a philosophical film of ideas. Sometimes it feels like a romance. Sometimes a coming of age story. Sometimes suspense, or even horror. The film's toe-dipping in all these different genres tends to correspond with revelation of information--how much we understand about the situation, plot, and characters at any given moment. I just said the movie "gets messy," but perhaps I should have chosen a different phrase, because Ex Machina is a masterclass of tight narrative and tonal control. It doesn't feel like a romance sometimes and horror other times because the storytelling is slapdash or undisciplined. The dipping in and out of genres is part of writer/director Alex Garland's master plan to jerk us around until we're forced to realize nasty things about ourselves and our assumptions that we should have already known. Ex Machina is an exercise in empathy that troubles us to our core.

FRANK: Something Perishable

Director: Lenny Abrahamson
Writers: Jon Ronson, Peter Straughan
Cast: Michael Fassbender, Domhnall Gleeson, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Scoot McNairy, Francois Civil, Carla Azar
Runtime: 95 mins.
2014

You think you know Frank. Just as our protagonist makes the mistake of believe he understands Frank's potential, Frank's desires, and worst of all Frank himself, you begin watching this film with a sense of superiority--or at least a sense of superior perspective. As the film opens on a young man desperately seeking inspiration but only coming up with a few facile snippets of pop fancy, you understand exactly where this must be going. This story is a Kunstlerroman--the development to maturity of an artist--with zany indie trappings. When our protagonist Jon (Domnhall Gleeson) joins a strange band called the Soronprfbs that jars him out of his sense of normalcy, you predict that this band will be the key to unlocking his nascent potential.

You've made a mistake. You couldn't be more wrong.