The Golden Compass, starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, is the latest trilogy-in-the-making to grace theatres. Based on a series of books called His Dark Materials by British author and atheist Philip Pullman the film comes to audiences riding a wave of controversy.
Although The Golden Compass won the Carnegie Medal for children’s literature and by public vote, (by readers from North America, Europe, Asia and Australia), the title of “best children’s book of the past 70 years,” several schools have banned the book (including some in Canada) because of a perceived anti-religion bias. I haven’t read the books, but based on the movie the plot appears to be nothing more than a simple adventure story in which good battles evil.
Set in a world that seems to have been ripped from the deepest recesses of Jules Verne’s imagination, The Golden Compass takes place in an alternate reality England in which giant zeppelins ferry people from place to place and everyone has an ever-present “daemon,” an animal spirit, like a witch’s familiar, that reflects the power, significance, and personality of its human. This imaginative world is beautifully rendered in the film—there can’t be one second of the movie that has not been retouched by CGI—and is a treat for the eyes.
As for the story, it centers on Lyra (Dakota Blue Richards), a wild child orphan living with her adventurer-scientist uncle Lord Asriel, (Daniel Craig) at Jordan College. While she is out causing trouble with her pals, he has discovered a link between golden cosmic dust in the Arctic Circle and other mystical parallel worlds. The existence of other worlds goes counter to the teachings of the Orwellian ruling class, known as the Magisterium, who want his expedition to the north stopped one way or another. At this time Lyra is given the last remaining Alethiometer, or Golden Compass, a device that can enable her “to see what others wish to hide.”
Just as Lyra’s BFF Roger disappears, the icily mysterious Mrs. Coulter (Nicole Kidman) visits the school. She whisks Lyra off to a magnificent mansion with the promise of taking her to the northland to meet her uncle. When it becomes clear that Mrs. Coulter may not be as kind as she initially appeared, Lyra sneaks away, and begins the search for her friend and uncle with the help of some unlikely allies including an armor-wearing polar bear king (voiced by Ian McKellen), a dirigible flying cowboy (Sam Elliott) and airborne witches.
The final battle scene is intense, although a little more kid-friendly than anything in Lord of the Rings, pitting the forces of good—Lyra and her friends—against evil—everyone else. It’s a satisfying conclusion to the story if only the movie had stopped there.
Instead the action continues after the battle with a scene in which the willful Lyra describes how she’ll “set things right.” She goes on to remind us of several plot threads we may have forgotten about after the spectacle of the battle.
Trouble is she doesn’t plan on doing any of this stuff until the next movie. She sets up the sequel as the picture fades to black. I understand that New Line intends to spin this into a trio of films, but the way it stands this one doesn’t feel like it ends, so much as it just trails off without feeling finished. It feels like a cheat to fool people into paying to see the next movie to find out story info that should have been in this one. It’s an old trick, but it left a bad taste in my mouth.
Filmmakers with an eye toward creating an on going cycle of movies should refer back to Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films, which were so finely crafted they can stand on their own individually or work as a connected series.
Before the cliffhanger ending deflated my mood I had a good time at The Golden Compass. The special effects are plentiful and well executed and mesh well with the live action.
First timer Dakota Blue Richards has the Artful Dodger act down pat, although I wonder where she picked up an accent that sounds like cockney crossed with James Cagney gangster slang seeing that the only home she’s ever known is the posh Jordan College where everyone else speaks as though channeling Queen Victoria.
Nicole Kidman appears to be one Botox shot away from total facial paralysis, but she plays a villain—she’s mean to kids and even slaps a monkey!—even more terrifying than her namesake, American political chatterbox Ann Coulter. She, like Daniel Craig, doesn’t have much screen time, but makes the most of her appearances.
Yes, The Golden Compass has its moments; it’s just too bad that the film’s final moments are such a let down.
The Invasion is the rather pointless reworking of The Body Snatchers, a classic 1955 sci fi novel that has already been filmed three times. The first version was a thinly disguised allegory for the spread of communism in the United States. The second, dating from 1978 stars Donald Sutherland and is a real creepfest. No less an authority than The New Yorker’s Pauline Kael, said “it may be the best film of its kind ever made.” A 1993 version was notable for its psychological realism and social criticism. The new rendering, not content to just streamline the wordy Invasion of the Body Snatchers title to simply The Invasion, also takes some liberties with the original story in an attempt to update the movie.
Trouble is, the story didn’t need updating. The idea that people are being replaced by homicidal, emotionless clones grown from plant-like pods is pretty cool, and would still be as eerie on the big screen in 2007 as it was when the original scared audiences in 1956. In the new version two Washington DC doctors struggle to find a cure for a rapidly spreading alien virus. This virus, transmitted by bodily fluids, saps the host body of all emotion.
Once the virus has spread the world over very strange things start to happen. Sucked dry of emotion nations put aside old rivalries and warring countries declare peace, there is little crime and even Kim Jong Ill disarms. It’s kind of like Ritalin for the masses.
Now, here the metaphors get a little murky. Is this supposed to be a statement on the new super viruses we keep hearing about? Or is it a comment on how we allow are emotions to cloud our thinking? Or is it just a bad movie.
I’ll go with the latter.
There may have been a good movie in here somewhere but it’s buried underneath a cavalcade of poorly conceived set pieces, meaningless flash forwards and random and poorly executed action sequences which seem to have been added to try and trick the summer action crowd into shelling out their hard earned dollars to see this turkey.
Considering the talent involved The Invasion should have been a much better film. Nicole Kidman she really has to stop starring in remakes. I thought Bewitched and The Stepford Wives were her resume low points until The Invasion came along. Where’s the Nicole Kidman who was so interesting and watchable in The Hours and Birth? Here’s hoping she’s growing out her remake phase and in future will only choose projects that are commensurate with her considerable talent.
Daniel Craig—that’s Bond, James Bond to you, although this movie was made before he was cast as 007—fairs better than Kidman, but only because he isn’t given much to do. Ditto the great Jeffrey Wright who is wasted here in a small supporting role.
Director Oliver Hirschbiegel isn’t entirely to blame for this mess. His original cut of the film was deemed unacceptable by the movie Gods and the Wachowskis Brothers—of Matrix fame—were brought in to salvage the movie. The result is a stew of a movie that feels slapped together.
The Invasion is a terrible movie, not worthy of the talent involved and certainly not worthy of your time and money.
In the first five minutes of Quantum of Solace, the twenty-second official James Bond picture and the second to star Daniel Craig in the iconic role, hundreds of bullets are fired, a building is destroyed, a truck totaled and several cars trashed and one blown up in spectacular fashion. By the time the opening credits roll the body count is already in the double digits and any thoughts that first-time Bond director, Mark Monster’s Ball Forster would make a ponderous, slow-moving movie are erased.
The story of Quantum of Solace combines elements of the Jason Bourne movies, Chinatown and, of course Ian Fleming’s novels to create one compelling, but slightly confusing plot line. As we meet Bond (Craig) he is grief stricken from the death of his girlfriend Vesper Lynd. His quest for revenge in her death leads him to Dominic Greene (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly’s Mathieu Amalric), CEO of Greene Planet, an environmental company that is actually a front for much more nefarious activities (think John Huston’s character in Chinatown only on a massive scale). Bond’s single-minded search brings him into conflict with his biggest ally—M (Judi Dench)—and brings him an unlikely partner (Olga Kurylenko).
Forster does his best to keep the action moving along at a feverish pace. At 106 minutes this is the shortest ever Bond picture and it flies by in a flash of fists and fast edits. There are Bourne style battle scenes—brutal, up-close-and-personal fist fights—wild chases and huge explosions, nothing exactly new for the Bond franchise, but here is where the film is earning its harshest criticism.
Forster sets up the action scenes nicely, and in several cases pulls off some exciting, breathless work, but too often his sense of screen geography gets away from him and the actors get lost amid the shaky, hand held camera work and frenetic fight choreography. Several times I wondered who was punching who and there is an extended plane chase that is a bit too sloppy to be truly exciting. The sheer spectacle of it all will entertain the eye well enough, but the action doesn’t have the high octane bite it could have had.
Forster is much more at home with the more personal elements of the movie. He keeps the tension in the dangerous character triangle between Bond, his boss M and the villain Dominic as taut as a bowstring. This tension gives us the most conflicted Bond ever.
Torn between his lust for revenge and his duty Bond goes rogue and is more dangerous than ever. Craig, when he’s not performing stunts of daring do—he was injured several times while making the film—is cold, emotionless, a killer who will stop at nothing until his bloodlust is satisfied. This is a much more serious Bond than your father’s 007.
The funny lines and puns of the Moore and Brosnan years have pretty much evaporated, replaced by much darker humor. When M asks Bond about the whereabouts of Mr. Slate, an informant he has just dispatched, he says with no hint of a smile, “Slate was a dead end.” Later M tries to end his killing spree with, “If you could avoid killing every possible lead that would be much appreciated.”
Quantum of Solace is a tough movie, the good guys do bad things and the bad guys do even worse things, and in the end the morality of right and wrong is left twisting in the wind.
The Irish mafia isn’t given nearly as much screen time as their Sicilian cousins. For every Miller’s Crossing there are three Godfathers; a Sopranos for every Grifters. Road to Perdition sees Tom Hanks as Michael Sullivan, personal “Angel of Death” for Irish mob-boss John Rooney (Paul Newman). Sullivan, an orphan, had been raised as Rooney’s son, and carved a nice Norman Rockwellian life for himself, his wife and two kids. Each morning he has breakfast with his family in their lovely country home, before heading off to work to intimidate and kill Rooney’s enemies. Unbeknownst to Sullivan, his oldest son (Tyler Hoechlin) tags along on one of these missions, and sees exactly what his father does for a living. In a misguided effort to silence the boy Rooney’s son kills Sullivan’s wife and youngest boy. Revenge and the safety of his surviving son motivate Sullivan to hit the road. Road to Perdition is beautifully rendered look at 1930s depression era America. Director Sam Mendes has stayed true to the story’s graphic novel roots, and dishes up a spectacular looking film, one so finely detailed you can almost smell the gunpowder and smouldering cigarettes. Hanks is surprisingly effective as the strong silent hit man. His Sullivan is complicated, the actor subverts his natural likeability to present a man who is at once loyal and caring, but will put a bullet through your skull without a second thought. It’s a layered, subtle performance that moves away from the heroic characters that Hanks usually favours. Look for the supporting cast at awards time. Jude Law as a sadistic killer-for-hire shines, but it is Paul Newman that shows the rest of the cast how it should be done. His Rooney is a great cap to a distinguished career. I only have to wonder why an actress of Jennifer Jason Leigh’s calibre would take on the thankless and nondescript role of Sullivan’s wife. Is there really that little work in Hollywood for women that actresses of her experience must take whatever scraps are offered?
Just when it seems like everything that could possibly be written about James Bond and the 23 official movies chronicling his super spy exploits, along comes “Skyfall,” a movie that pays homage to the past, while redefining the future of the franchise.
After a mission in Turkey goes awry, James Bond (Craig) is presumed lost. His boss and mentor M (Judy Dench), declares him deceased, but when a terrorist hacker leads a deadly cyber attack on MI6 headquarters 007 returns to his post, tired, haggard and injured but eager to get back into the spy business.
Retrained—ie: various shots of Craig doing push and chin ups plus a word association game where Bond associates “murder” with “employment”—Bond is sent back into the field to track down the villain behind the attack. His investigation leads him to Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem), a psychotic criminal mastermind in the best Ian Fleming tradition. Except that Silva isn’t interested in a ransom of “one mee-lee-on dollars” or aiding Soviet missile development. No, he wants something more personal and deadly—revenge.
The movie’s tone is established in the opening moments of “Skyfall’s” stylized opening sequence. It’s a psychedelic montage in traditional Bond style, set to a new Adele song that evokes the Bond themes of old—before they started hiring Duran Duran and a-ha to warble the opening numbers—but despite the nod to the history of the series, it feels fresh. A blend of old and new, it shapes the understanding of Bond as an old dog in new times, who, by the end of the film will literally and figuratively blow up the past to ensure the future.
It is the most thematically mature Bond movie yet—even the action sequences are a comment on old versus new, pitting Bond’s street smarts and savvy against Silva’s high-tech machines of destruction. A new Q (Ben Whishaw) spends more time behind a computer keyboard than devising gadgets.
Of course, most of us don’t go to Bond movies looking for subtext. We want a Bond girl, a fight scene or three, at last one cool gadget and a cackling villain.
“Skyfall” delivers on most of that. Bérénice Marlohe and Naomie Harris split Bond girl duties, while Craig battles bad guys, feeding one to a hungry reptile. As for gadgets, director Sam Mendes seems to understand that less is more. “Exploding pens?,” Q says at one point. “We don’t really go in for that anymore.”
As for the villain, Javier Bardem, who doesn’t show up for over an hour, makes a quiet but spectacular entrance, with a speech worthy of the best Bond villain. With wild blonde hair, and an uncharacteristically (for a baddie at least) understated demeanor he oozes Oedipal menace. He is a Bond bad guy for a new generation, and his presence is one of the great pleasures of the movie.
The connection between Bond and M lies at the heart of the film. For the first time their relationship is explored, revealing a deeper connection than has been hinted at in the past. Dench’s performance adds dimension to a relationship that has been taken for granted in previous entries.
A near perfect blend of old and new, “Skyfall” is a heady mix of action and intellect that will leave you shaken and stirred.
Defiance is the story of three brothers who fought back. It’s the little known history of a community of Warsaw Ghetto refugees who survived in the Belarusian forests despite the constant threat of the Nazis. Based on the true story of the Bielski partisans, Defiance stars Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber and Jamie Bell as the three Jewish brothers who escaped the Nazis in Poland and fought to rescue 1200 Jews.
Defiance is two-thirds of a good movie. It’s hard to fault the idea of shedding some light on the brave men and women who fought back against the Nazis, but I think that simply because the movie tells an important story doesn’t necessarily mean it is good storytelling. Director Ed Zwick has most of the elements of a good story—compelling true premise, well known actors, dramatic conflict—but he puts it all together with all the spark of a wet match.
He’s done better in the past with similar material. Glory, the untold story of the US Civil War’s first all-black volunteer company was a masterful blend of historical fact and entertainment. Defiance, on the other hand, tries too hard to create unnecessary story elements. The basic premise of three brothers saving large groups of people is compelling enough, why muddy it up with superfluous romantic tangents? The peripheral plotlines add nothing to the overall movie, in fact, often they distract from the main focus. Add to that some clunky dialogue and the film’s 137 minute running time seems much longer.
Also, Zwick doesn’t take the time to show us how the brothers managed to build a giant village in the forest and yet go undetected by the Nazis. We are told several times that the woods are vast and dangerous, but they always seem to be near a roadway or farm, close to civilization. Surely someone would have spotted the smoke from their camp fires. Perhaps more time spent on showing us how isolated the refugees were and less time spent on romance would have given this movie more of a ring of authenticity.
When the movie sticks to the basic elements of the story—freedom, faith, protection against persecution—it works. When Craig says, “Every day of freedom is an act of faith, and if we should die, at least we die like human beings,” he gets to the meat of the story, only to be sidelined later by a rambling script.
Craig brings the same kind of physicality to the role of Tuvia as he dose to the James Bond movies, but here he is overshadowed by Schreiber who is ferocious as brother Zus. He’s a powerful presence on screen and almost out-Bonds James Bond.
Defiance is a remarkable story of courage, unfortunately, unremarkably told.
Shortly into my conversation with Irish filmmaker Jim Sheridan I begin to understand what his daughter Kristen meant when she said her father “exists up in the clouds. In order to communicate with him, you have to go up into the clouds yourself.”
When I mention the quote to the Dream House director he laughs and tries to explain.
“I think that’s probably true in relation to the way I approach actors and story. I know directors like Tim Burton or David Fincher, they’re very structured visually. Then there’s the approach that says, ‘It’s emotional over here.’
But emotions are invisible and it’s hard to catch the invisible. Trying to catch the invisible is very interesting because it’s just something that happens in front of you rather than something that has happened, as Hitchcock said, and then I’m only shooting it.”
A scheduled 10 minute interview stretches into 35 minutes as the three-time Oscar nominee chats amiably about the movies he thinks will eventually become classics — “the poetic ones that don’t make as much sense” — on artistic vision — “it’s a product of interior emotion” — the meaning of the Kubrick film 2001 — “it’s a baptism!” — and, of course, his new movie.
In Dream House real life newlyweds Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz are Will and Libby, a happily married couple who leave New York City for a simpler life in New England. Of course, this is a thriller, so their hopes for a happy life are dashed when they discover their new home was the site of a grisly murder.
“It’s a genre piece,” he says.
“It’s a psychological thriller with horror overtones and detective story overtones, but essentially, deep down it’s a love story. It’s in the vein of A Beautiful Mind and Shutter Island. We’ve made the kind of movie with thriller and horror elements, but women will like it.”
Sheridan may exist in the clouds, but he is realistic about the state of the movie business. The kind of character dramas that made him famous are harder to get made these days.
“One day, I don’t know what day it was, maybe a Thursday, about a year ago, everybody decided you couldn’t make a drama anymore,” he says. “I think there was a surfeit of independent movies when there was a surfeit of money,” he says. “In Ireland we built too many houses, in America we made too many movies.”
“Cowboys & Aliens,” the latest movie from “Iron Man” director Jon Favreau, is the kind of sci-fi film John Ford might have made, or maybe the kind of story H.G. Wells would have told if he wrote a western. There’s great scenery shots, lots of galloping horses, chiselled jaws, majestic vistas and yes, giant mysterious aliens.
Based on a 2006 graphic novel of the same name “Cowboys & Aliens” is set in the Old West in 1873. Daniel Craig plays a classic western character — Jake Lonergan, a stranger in town — with a twist. Waking up in the desert, he’s a stranger to everyone, including himself — his memory has been wiped clean. Odder still, a mysterious metal bracelet around his wrist. In the nearby town of Absolution, New Mexico he begins to find some clues as to his past courtesy of Colonel Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford), the settlement’s most prominent citizen. Their inevitable showdown is sidelined by what may be a cowboy movie first — an alien invasion. Soon the stranger starts to regain his memory and his wrist jewellery reveals its real purpose.
You should know going in that the ratio of cowboys to aliens is about 10 to 1. If I had to categorize this movie I’d call it a western sci fi rather than a sci fi western. It’s splitting hairs I know, but the onus here is on the horse opera. And Favreau and cast pull it off. Until giant spaceships swoop in, pulling awestruck citizens into their metal bosoms, the movie plays as a credible western.
Even when the alien craft first appears, the reactions of the town folk feel real. They’re obviously stunned, and decide that these creatures must be what demons look like. It’s an old testament via the old west explanation for something they don’t understand and it works well. So does Daniel Craig and an increasingly craggily faced Harrison Ford. Craig brings an interesting edge to the stereotypical stranger role and Ford gives the movie some old school heroics.
“Cowboys and Aliens” gets a little flabby in the middle — unlike its buff leading man — and takes a bit too long to get to the extraterrestrials, but has
enough Wowee moments to fill a ten gallon hat.
The much anticipated rebooting of the James Bond franchise is finally in theatres after months of controversy. The unceremonious canning of Pierce Brosnan, who had played the role for the better part of a decade, and the hiring of Daniel Craig, a blonde largely unknown actor, generated hate amongst Bond die-hards. Websites like craignotbond.com—and others with names I can’t repeat here—sprung up all over the net and it seemed like the barrage of bad pre-release publicity might sink the new movie before it even opened in theatres. The Craig-bashing is likely to cease, not only because it is unwarranted, but also because after seeing the movie nay-sayers may fear for their safety.
Craig is an inspired choice to reinvent Bond for a new generation. He’s a good actor—check out his turns in Enduring Love and The Mother—and he’s good looking, but in a more dangerous way than Brosnan or Roger Moore, the slickest of the Bonds. Craig has the looks of a leading man, but is lean and mean, and seems like he could punch you in the mouth and not think too much of it. Not since Sean Connery has a Bond been so volatile.
Craig takes the formerly bloated Bond franchise in a new direction. Gone are the high tech gadgets, the lasers and the pens that contain nuclear bombs. This Bond, built like a muscular British bulldog dispatched bad guys the old-fashioned way—with his hands. In one scene when he is asked how one of his victims died he replies with a wink, “Not well.”
The story, based on the first Bond novel by Ian Flemming, is typical Bond. A series of missions in far-flung corners of the world leads Bond to a high-stakes poker game hosted by an international banker who launders money for terrorists. Bond’s goal is to bankrupt the banker at the poker table so the Secret Service can use financial leverage to get the banker to turn on his terrorist contacts. Along the way there are beautiful girls, exotic locations, a great bad guy who cries blood tears and lots of over-the-top action.
Casino Royale isn’t your father’s Bond. It may, however, be a little closer to your grandfather’s. Sean Connery officially hung up his Bond tuxedo in 1971 (we won’t count Never Say Never Again, the 1983 non-starter) and since then the franchise has drifted, becoming a cartoony, pun spewing vision of the Cold War spy. Craig (with the help of a script by {Paul Haggis) brings the franchise back to its roots. His Bond is a vicious anti-hero who happens to be on the side of right. He is at once the most contemporary of heroes and one of the most old-fashioned. He’s savvy enough to understand the intricacies of the international espionage but primitive enough to use force when necessary.
