Recently a film director told me one way he rates movies. If he forgets what he has just seen by the time he hits the parking lot afterwards, the movie didn’t mean much.
“Survivor,” a new thriller starring Milla Jovovich, Pierce Brosnan, Dylan McDermott and Angela Bassett, is so generic you actually forget it while you’re in the theatre, still watching the movie.
Jovovich is Kate Abbott, an American State Department investigator stationed at the embassy in London. When she uncovers a terrorist plot involving “the world’s most wanted hitman” (Brosnan), a revenge hungry scientist (Roger Rees) and corrupt government figures she finds herself on the run. Dodging bullets and bombs she must figure out who she can trust and who is trying to frame her for a succession of deadly events.
“Survivor” is competent in the most damning of ways. It’s well shot—in focus even!—with passable performances from a crew of old pros and an mix of genre conventions blended together to form an international olio of intrigue. Capable and a bit lazy. “Survivor” is so basic in its approach it almost redefines what a b-movie can be. The only thing missing is a cameo from Dolph Lundgren.
From McDermott’s steely-jawed heroic speeches—“We’re doing this because we believe in an old fashioned idea of country!”—to the clock ticking down to doomsday to super evil bad guys with mysterious accents to airport anxiety and cheeseball dialogue—“The longer she lives, he more people die!”—“Survivor” plays like a greatest hits of every Roger Corman movie ever made.
“The November Man,” a new spy thriller starring Pierce Brosnan, has some James Bondian elements. There’s Olga Kurylenko, who was the Bond girl in “Quantum of Solace,” loads of intrigue and exotic locations. What makes this character different from Brosnan’s Bond are the gadgets. There aren’t any. The only gadgets he has here are two fists and a gun.
Brosnan plays Peter Devereaux, a violent CIA agent nick named the November Man, because once he passes through, nothing lives. He’s given up his lethal ways, and now enjoys a quiet retirement in Switzerland. When the proverbial one last job— extracting his former wife out of a sticky situation in Belgrade—goes wrong, he gets embroiled in a case that sees him protecting a witness Alice Fournier (Kurylenko) who could bring down the next president of Russia and dodging bullets from his former CIA protégé David Mason (Luke Bracey).
Based on Bill Granger’s novel “There are No Spies” from the bestselling November Man book series, the movie begins as a taut thriller but soon turns from perfectly functional espionage story to a messy tale of personal grudges and unresolved daddy issues.
The story splinters off in several directions, making perhaps one too many u-turns along the way, but ultimately succeeds because Brosnan brings the Bond. Sure, it’s more the violent Daniel Craig style 007, but it’s great fun to see the actor back in action man mode.
He punches, shoots and kicks his way through the movie, even when the story threatens to overpower him.
Director Roger Donaldson (“The Bank Job,” “No Way Out”) stages several exciting chase scenes and builds tension and even develops some subtext about the consequences of leading a violent life—“You can be a human or a killer of humans, but you can’t be both.”—but veers off into melodrama every now and again. By the time a bad guy says (NO SPOILERS HERE), “You just doomed us to another decade of conflict,” you could be forgiven for thinking “The November Man” was a cold war thriller parody.
As it is the movie is a somewhat generic thriller buoyed by Brosnan’s badass Bondness.
Given director Roman Polanski’s recent legal troubles it’s hard not to infer some deeper meaning into the plight of “The Ghost Writer’s” ex-Prime Minister (Pierce Brosnan) accused of war crimes. In a moment of art imitating life Adam Lang’s lawyer says, “I strongly advise you not to travel to any country with extradition policies.” If Polanski had listened to that advice he might not have had to finish editing this movie from a jail in Switzerland.
Within Lang there are echoes of Tony Blair. He’s a popular, if controversial ex-Prime Minister—“He wasn’t a politician,” says the ghost writer, “he was a craze.”—with a ten million dollar book deal and a dead co-writer. The late journalist was found washed up on shore near Lang’s remote Cape Cod beach house under very mysterious circumstances. Pitch hitting for the late writer is Ewan McGregor’s character—he doesn’t have a name in the film—a professional ghost writer whose biggest hit was a biography of a magician called “He Came, He Sawed, He Conquered.” His job is to turn “incoherent rambling into a book.” Soon, however, his job is complicated when Lang is accused of war crimes by a former colleague. Untangling facts that may (or may not) place his own life in danger he turns from writer-for-hire to investigative journalist.
There is so much to like in “The Ghost Writer” that the few lapses in credulity are easy to forgive. I mean, are we really to believe that a massive conspiracy could be figured out using google? What’s next? Sherlock Holmes using Ask Jeeves? Apart from that bit of silliness Polanski has crafted a film that can comfortably sit beside “Three Days of the Condor” and “The Parallax View” for political intrigue.
The pacing is deliberate, not slow, but deliberate. Clues are doled out carefully, keeping red herrings to a minimum and allowing suspense to build with each new nugget of information. Tension and paranoia build with every scene. This is the man who made “Repulsion” and “Rosemary’s Baby,” so he knows how to make the mundane sinister. Ringing phones and loud raps on doors create an ominous atmosphere where danger is around every corner.
Add to that some interesting work to show the futility of the writer’s job. Watch in the background, the director places a gardener endlessly sweeping up dead leaves from the compound’s many patios, only to have them blow out of his wheel barrel every time he makes any progress. It’s a clever metaphor for the writer’s Sisyphean search for the truth. As he gets in over his head, trying to unravel years of twisted political strategy, I wanted to paraphrase Polanski’s most famous movie, “Chinatown.” “Forget it, writer. It’s politics.”
McGregor, who has played a writer twice before in “Moulin Rouge,” later in “The Men Who Stare at Goats,” is convincing but really shines when he is working opposite Pierce Brosnan. I’m willing to overlook Brosnan’s recent turn as a half man / half horse in “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” when he can be this good. He looks like a politician, like he was made for photo ops in front of private jets, waving to his constituents, but it is in the cat-and-mouse dialogue between Lang and the writer that he does his best work.
“The Ghost Writer” is Polanski’s first film in five years, and for those willing to judge the art, not the artist, it is as satisfying a thriller as we’ll see this year.
Imagine if James Bong burst into song while pummeling the bad guys; or if Sophie’s Choice was a musical. Picture that and you’ll get how surreal it is to see Pierce Brosnan and fourteen time Oscar nominee (and two time winner) Meryl Streep prancing about a Greek Island singing the songs of 70s pop group ABBA.
Mama Mia! (their exclamation mark, not mine), the big screen adaptation of the wildly popular Broadway musical—apparently 30,000 people worldwide take in the stage show every single day—is a strange spectacle so unrelentingly sunny in its outlook viewers should take some heavy duty SPF 85 to the theater to prevent sunstroke.
In the film Donna (Streep) is a free spirited owner of a rundown B&B on the Greek Mediterranean on the alleged site of Aphrodite’s fountain of love. Twenty years previous she had summer romances with a trio of men—businessman Sam Carmichael (Pierce Brosnan), the uptight Harry Bright (Colin Firth) and slacker Bill (Stellan Skarsgard)—one of whom is the father of her daughter Sophie (Amanda Seyfried).
After Sophie reads her Mom’s tell-all diary she realizes she has three possible fathers and becomes obsessed with finding the right man to walk her down the aisle at her upcoming wedding to Sky (Dominic Cooper). Unbeknownst to her mother, she forges invitations in Donna’s name to all three men. When the three arrive on the island, unaware of each other or Sophie’s existence, they spend the next twenty-four hours rekindling old romances, starting new ones and randomly bursting into song. Of course, Sophie’s choice is to decide which of these men is her real dad.
Directed by Phyllida Lloyd, who helmed the original stage show, Mama Mia! is a light and frothy confection that feels like a mix of High School Musical and Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 circa 1976. The silly story is buoyed by chart toppers by ABBA like I Have a Dream, Money, Money, Money and the title track but is let down by the director who fails to take advantage of the film’s beautiful island location with it’s crystal blue water, palm trees and clear skies. Instead she chooses to shoot the movie as though she was mounting a stage show. Maybe a better director—maybe, Julie Taymor’s Mama Mia!—could have opened this up some and made it more visually exciting.
That’s a picky little point though when there is so much else going on. Despite its idyllic vacation setting this is a movie that doesn’t know how to relax. If Meryl Streep isn’t dancing, she’s singing, if she isn’t singing she doing physical comedy. Ditto for the rest of the cast. As they say, if everyday was Christmas you wouldn’t appreciate it as much and the same is true at the movies when every second of a film is jammed with stimulus.
The unyielding pace mars the first hour of the film, cramming in too many songs, too many pratfalls and too much exposition. What probably works very well on stage with real actors loses some of its oomph when translated to the screen, although the abandon of the film’s Dancing Queen number is infectious and was probably a showstopper on the boards as it is in the movie.
It pays off, though, in the last half hour when, despite myself, I began to tap my foot to the songs and give in to the film’s cheery charms. The songs bring back a nostalgia for a simpler time when pop music was more fun than it is today—there isn’t a hint of gansta rap or emo in Mama Mia!—and the audience I saw it with were clapping and singing along with each musical number.
Mama Mia! starts off fluffy as Cool Whip on Jello, but develops a wistful feel in the last thirty minutes as the relationship between Sophie and her mother and three dads deepens. This is largely due to the performance of Meryl Streep.
Anyone who only regards Streep as a capital “S” serious actress may have to revise their opinion after seeing her play air guitar, sing to a fish or do a bang-on Celine Dion impression in The Winner Takes it All.
A project like Mama Mia! is on the opposite end of the spectrum from the films that made her famous, and even though this is likely part of her Robert De Niro Retirement Plan—she seems to have reached the juncture in her career where she leaves the interesting roles behind and takes only high ticket jobs—she commits completely and hands in a vibrant, energetic performance that is the emotional core of the movie.
I wish I could say the same thing about Pierce Brosnan. He’s fine in the film until he opens his mouth to sing. His vocal performance on S.O.S. is the kind of singing that people generally do when they think no one is listening and puts to rest the myth that all Irish people can sing.
Mama Mia! is a crowd pleasing confection that, for better or worse, will have you humming Dancing Queen as you exit the theater.
The characters in The Matador are more interesting than the story itself. Pierce Brosnan plays Julian Noble a jaded hit man, or “facilitator of fatalities” who meets Danny, a family man with a struggling business, played by Greg Kinnear, in a hotel bar. They become an odd couple—Julian needs a confidant while Danny needs distraction from his professional and personal losing streak.
The real revelation here is Brosnan’s performance as Julian, the hit man who develops confidence problems. We have seen Brosnan as the slickly comic private eye Remington Steele on television, the sophisticated James Bond and even as the suave jewel thief in The Thomas Crown Affair but until now we have never seen him in Beatle boots and a Speedo traipsing across a hotel lobby. His Julian is a manic creation—amoral, rude and unlike Bond, the character that has defined his career for the last decade, unshaven. With this one performance Brosnan has entered a new phase in his career, effortlessly leaving the urbane Bond behind.
To really know the ocean, says narrator Pierce Brosnan, you have to see it, taste it and live it to feel its power. “Oceans,” the spectacular new Disney nature film doesn’t literally let you feel or taste the sea, but its beautiful and intimate photography will get you as close as possible to experiencing the ocean without actually getting wet.
Released just in time for Earth Day, “Oceans” is the evolution of “The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau.” Technological advances allow “Winged Migration” co-directors Jacques Cluzaud and French star Jacques Perrin to go deeper and stay longer to capture a vivid portrait of life in the sea. Not strictly a documentary—some scenes are staged—it is more a travelogue of the earth’s oceans and their citizens.
It may not fit the traditional definition of documentary but it certainly is cinematic. With a minimum of narration—the weakest part of the film—they present a dazzling array of images from a spectacular ballet of dolphins, diving birds and a school of sardines to a spider crab showdown that looks like an underwater version of Michael Jackson’s “Bad” video. And there’s drama too. A scene with sea turtle hatchlings and a flock of hungry frigate birds wouldn’t be out of place in a Hitchcock film, but it’s bloodless. There’s nothing here that will upset the little ones.
It is a representation of life at its most basic. Sometimes it’s as brutal as a Tarantino revenge drama—a mantis shrimp pulls an arm off a crab and eats it in front of him. But often it’s eye-poppingly beautiful with close-ups of creatures that look like they sprung from the depths of H. R. Giger ‘s imagination—there are as many strange beasts here as in almost any sci fi movie—and impressive wide shots of cascading schools of fish and dolphins leaping in and out of the water.
It’ll entertain the eye, but it probably won’t engage the brain in the same way. There isn’t much in the sense of educational information—for instance, we’re told that the humpback whale is majestic and that penguins aren’t very good “figure skaters” and not much more—but it should spark kid’s interest in the ocean and will certainly fire their imaginations. If nothing else it’ll make adults crave sashimi.
The inevitable eco message about humans polluting the sea is effectively illustrated by a shot of a sea lion frolicking with a rusted shopping cart, but like the educational component of the film it’s more a starting point for conversation with the kids over fish sticks after the movie than a complete lesson in conservation.
Much of the pleasure of “Oceans” is derived from seeing it on the big screen. The scale of the screen pales compared to the size of the ocean, but it is as up-close-and-personal as most of us will ever get to these strange and often wonderful creatures.
Here’s where it all began to fall apart. In 1964’s Goldfinger Sean Connery (the original and uber Bond) zoomed around Fort Knox in a tricked-out Aston-Martin. This car could do it all – it had an ejection seat and other deadly gimmicks – and it became part of 007’s folklore. Perhaps too much. It’s been a long time since the heady days of Swingin’ London when Bond was a rough and tumble action hero who used his wiles to outsmart villains. In the last 38 years the gadgets – beginning with the car – have slowly taken over the franchise. Interchangeable Bonds – from George Lazenby to Roger Moore to Timothy Dalton to the latest incarnation Pierce Brosnan – have become merely the keepers of the doodads. The actor playing Bond doesn’t matter so much as the cool weapons he uses. And so it goes for Die Another Day, probably the most critic proof movie to be released this year. Brosnan is this year’s Bond model, an effective enough master spy, and while he maybe getting a little longer in the tooth, with the help of lots of CG he can still drive an invisible car with panache. He’s no more or less effective than those who have gone before him, and that’s the point. The films, which have now become huge cash cows, aren’t about Dalton or Pierce or whoever (I think Clive Owen would make a good Bond), they’re about spectacle and hubris, with a few corny jokes thrown in to break up the action sequences. The James Bond series has been spoofed so often and so well – Our Man Flint and Austin Powers to name just a couple – that now, 40 years since Dr. No hit the screens that it is hard not to see Die Another Day as a parody. Humor has always been a part of the Bond movies, particularly during the Moore years, but when Brosnan and co-star Halle Berry exchange randy pillow talk it’s not much of a stretch to imagine Austin Powers delivering the same lines. Die Another Day isn’t good and it isn’t bad, it’s just more of the same. The names and faces may change, but the formula remains largely unaltered since Goldfinger. In the latest installment Bond’s boss M tells him, “While you were away, the world changed.” The world might have changed, but Bond hasn’t, he remains the cinema’s most enduring character, and that’s just the way the audience seems to like it.
Sarah Jessica Parker is best known as Carrie Bradshaw, the sharp-tongued figurehead of Sex and the City, the long-running ode to post feminism and stylish clothes. But before Mr. Big and the Louboutins she was a movie star with some classics– like Footloose–and some stinkers–like Dudley Do-Right –to her credit.
This weekend she’s back on the big screen for the first time in a non-Sex and the City movie since the 2009 flop Did You Hear about the Morgans? In I Don’t Know How She Does It she plays a version of Carrie all grown up with kids and a job in the financial sector. It’s a far cry from her first big movie, Footloose.
She played Rusty, a role Parker called the “best friend of the pretty girl.” The movie and its fancy footwork earned her a Best Young Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture Musical, Comedy, Adventure or Drama nomination at the Sixth Annual Youth in Film Awards.
A few forgettable films followed like Firstborn—described as a “heavy-handed suburban sitcom”—Girls Just Want to Have Fun—called “a total wannabe in the realm of 80s teen flicks”—and Flight of the Navigator, which features the voice of Pee Wee Herman as a robot.
It wasn’t until she teamed with Steve Martin in L.A. Story that things started looking up. In this surreal look at life and love in Los Angeles Parker plays SanDeE*, a ditzy blonde who aspires to be a spokesmodel. “Um, it’s just a model who speaks,” she explains. “You know, and she points at things like merchandise, you know, like a car or washer and dryer. Sometimes it’s something really small, you know, like, like a book or fine art print.”
The movie broke her out of the teen movie mode and displayed her deft comic timing which was put to great use in Honeymoon in Vegas opposite Nic Cage. A few flops later she appeared in the critically acclaimed Ed Wood with Johnny Depp. Playing the much put-upon girlfriend of the world’s worst director, she calls the actors and crew of his film Bride of the Monster “the usual cast of misfits and dope addicts.”
Her most spectacular pre-Sex and the City role, however, is in Mars Attacks. In it she plays a flighty talk show host, who literally becomes a talking head when she is beheaded by aliens.
Pierce Brosnan has never been nominated for an Oscar. He has a couple Golden Globe nods to his credit and an MTV Movie Best Fight Award statuette on his shelf, but so far the heavy gold has evaded him.
Perhaps because of his dapper good looks he doesn’t get spoken about in the same breath as Colin Firth or Morgan Freeman. Perhaps a resume dotted with films like Dante’s Peak knocks him down a peg or two in the Academy’s opinion.
Or maybe it’s his predilection for doing shamelessly populist fare like Mama Mia and this weekend’s Remember Me (co-starring as Robert Pattison’s father) that keeps him from being taken as seriously as say, George Clooney, another genetically blessed actor, who, like Brosnan, got his big break on television.
He could have been nominated for his work in The Matador, a little seen, but critically lauded film from 2005. In it, Brosnan plays Julian Noble, a jaded hit man, or “facilitator of fatalities” who finds a confidant in a struggling businessman, played by Greg Kinnear.
Brosnan’s performance as Julian, the hit man who develops confidence problems, is a revelation. We have seen Brosnan as the slickly comic private eye Remington Steele on television, the sophisticated James Bond and even as the suave jewel thief in The Thomas Crown Affair, but until now we have never seen him in Beatle boots and a Speedo traipsing across a hotel lobby.
His Julian is a manic creation — amoral, rude and unlike Bond, the character that has defined his career for the last decade, unshaven.
With this one performance Brosnan entered a new phase in his career, effortlessly leaving the urbane Bond behind.
Maybe next year he’ll finally get the recognition he deserves when the Academy gets a load of his work in The Ghost Writer. As ex-prime minister Adam Lang he embodies the role, like he was born for photo ops in front of private jets, waving to his constituents.
It’s good work that effectively erased the image of him as a half man / half horse in the recent film Percy Jackson and the Olympians.
Despite the odd misstep, he is an interesting actor who deserves more respect than he gets.
If the movie gods can allow Mon’ique to go from co-starring in Beerfest to winning a Best Supporting Actress Oscar, surely they can ignore Brosnan’s silly beard in an ill-conceived Robinson Crusoe remake, or the non-thrilling thriller Live Wire and finally give him his due.
