THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG

At the end of the day, I'm not sure Peter Jackson understands how to adapt The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien's brisk children's book to which Lord of the Rings was a sequel. Jackson seems to feel that because both books are from the same author and are set in the same universe that they can simply be snapped together with some help from the Rings appendices. But the fact remains that The Hobbit is a fundamentally different work meant for a completely different audience and it's just not an epic, no matter how much Jackson wants it to be. So here we have the second in a trilogy of films based on a 120 page book. The first film visibly strained under the weight of serving both as an adaptation and a prequel to an existing, but dispirit franchise. The second film, The Desolation of Smaug, kinda gives up on the book and settles for just being the best Rings prequel it can be, which is for the best, even if as it continues to feel like the film is being upstaged by franchise obligations.

The film picks up with Hobbit pseudo-protagonist Bilbo (Martin Freeman), exiled dwarf king Thorin (Richard Armitage) and his extended entourage as they race to reclaim their homeland from a usurping dragon.  The echoes from the Rings films start to pile up, particularly with Thorin, whom the film carefully paints as our new Aragorn, introduced here at the same inn where we first meet Aragorn in the previous film. The scene stresses that he too is a roguish heir to a lost kingdom who only needs the courage to take charge of his larger destiny. But whereas Aragorn was noble because he never wanted power, it feels like Thorin and co are, at least in part, in it for the money. Indeed there's an assertion that Thorin has a relationship to the Arkenstone (a McGuffin needed for part 3) that Jackson hopes we'll find analogous to and as compelling as the one between Frodo and The Ring. Further mining the Rings films is material from the books appendices designed to give the main quest more urgency by suggesting that the dwarves must defeat Smaug quickly because Sauron is gaining power and might try and recruit him.

The resulting film feels more like a chase movie with ticking clocks and the kind of easily surmountable impossible obstacles we expect in a proper adventure: dark forests, ancient riddles, Ray Harryhousen spiders, politically ambivalent elves, orcs, goblins, shifty rogues and they even manage to squeeze in the titular dragon. On a superficial level, the action is all well directed, and as long as he sticks to action, Jackson has a great skill in extrapolation. He looks at small scenes in the book, like the one where Bilbo helps the dwarves escape from some elves by hiding them in barrels being sent down river and asks with boyish abandon: "what if there was a lock blocking their way and the elves caught them rasing the gate but then orcs attack everyone and it turns into a great three-way chase down river and one guy gets catapulted into the air, lands and rolls over a bunch or orcs in his barrel," and so on and so forth.

These extended scenes are fun without ever feeling as vital as they should, but as soon as he shifts to narrative, the film starts to dull. For instance, that barrel scene is a lot of fun, particularly with the addition of Rings favorite Legolas (Orlando Bloom) and his sidekick Girl Legolas (Evangeline Lilly) opening up a can of whoop-ass on wave after wave of faceless goons, but when they stick around to have a pointless love triangle with one of the dwarves that's all forbidden and junk, it starts to feel just a tad calculated.

If you're wondering where all these additions leave Bilbo and Smaug, the two title characters of the film, the answer is nowhere, the two seem strangely diminished here. Bilbo exists primarily to get the dwarves out of trouble while Gandalf (Ian McKellen) is off doing stuff (with thankfully little assistance from Radagast). As much fun as it is to watch Martin Freeman do stuff, this is sort of preferable to his treatment in the last film, which labored endlessly over his potential importance. That said, it's hardly ideal for him to just blend in with the group of 13, mostly undeveloped, dwarves.

Then there's the eventual encounter with Smaug. All the build up with Sauron kind of turns Smaug into a second-teir villain. Important not for his own villainy so much as his potential usefulness as a future henchman of the real bad guy who belongs to a different trilogy. Furthermore, while Smaug is played with gleeful menace by Benedict Cumberbatch and is given a magnificent entrance, he comes in at a point where the film desperately needs to start thinking about its cliffhanger but instead reaches greedily for just one more action sequence that every audience member knows wont resolve anything, alter the narrative or our perceptions of the characters. It's just another example of what this series needs less of: padding.

It's sad that Jackson feels so adrift. His Lord of the Rings trilogy should have been the beginning of a bold, new chapter of his career as a more manic successor to David Lean, but instead of finding big stories to tell, he seems to think he can take smaller stories and stretch them to epic lengths, first came his gargantuan King Kong remake, now this. He want's length, but he doesn't understand that length requires density. If he wants to continue in this direction, there are other great sci-fi/fantasy books to adapt and fantastic historical epics he could be doing (Napoleon, Musashi Miyamoto), or he could going back to his horror roots or do something completely new. Instead he's stuck in a rut of faux-epics, trying to stuff his past triumphs into ill-fitting forms.

Grade: B-

12 YEARS A SLAVE

Over the years, English director Steve McQueen has been exploring how people deal with imprisonment. His previous film, Shame, showed a man imprisoned by his own body, alternately embracing and rejecting his own impulses as they destroy him. His first film, Hunger, showed an emaciated Michael Fassbender as an IRA prisoner becoming questionably delusional fighting his imperialist wardens with an impractical, perhaps suicidal hunger strike. Unlike in Hunger the protagonist of his latest film, 12 Years A Slave, can't strike out no matter how much he wants to, and instead faces a slow and systematic damnation via his own sense of pragmatism.

The film is based on the memoir of the same name by Solomon Northup, a free black man who was drugged and kidnapped from his family before being sold into slavery in 1841. This sort of thing was fairly regular. Under the Fugitive Slave Act it was legal for bounty hunters to pursue runaway slaves into free states but many times it was easier just to grab any black man, say he was a runaway, and sell him for easy money. In this sense, Northup's story isn't that special, except for the fact that he happened to escape and be literate enough to tell his story well, and this film is all the better for recognizing how ordinary all these events were. Northup was well educated and made a nice living as a carpenter and violinist. The film seems to recreate this accurately, though it might overplay the contrast between his free life and slave life by suggesting that Northup, played in the film by  Chitwetel Ejiofor (Children of Men), didn't face any racial adversity as a free black man in Saratoga before being drugged by strangers.

When Northup wakes, he is told that he's now a runaway named Platt and is beaten within an inch of his life when he tries to assert his true identity. Early in his journey he finds himself on a ship paddling down the Mississippi, (the incessant thudding paddles suggest at the machinery of slavery as an industry). He knows that when the ship reaches its destination, he will be sold and he’s presented with the option to violently fight and face certain death or keep his head down and survive. He’s determined to do neither, but in the heat of the moment he knows that he must appear to accept his new life while searching for a way to escape.

We see that decision to be pragmatic slowly crush his spirit. After being sold to his first master, William Ford (Benedict Cumberbatch), he dares not reveal his identity but he looks to flash his intelligence so to be noticed. Ford probably senses that Northup isn't a runaway but is happy to have a useful slave. Any hope of being freed by Ford dies when he gifts Solomon a violin to "make the years pass more joyously." Furthermore Solomon's show of engineering skill earns him the ire of an overseer played by Paul Dano, who strings him up for hours from a tree just low enough that he might survive if he stands on his tip toes and doesn't slip in the mud. After a while his fellow slaves start to go about their business in the background. They don't speak up because there's no one to speak to, and because they would be punished for it. It's this pragmatism that literally keeps his life in danger in this scene that Northup must attempt in order to survive, one that McQueen and screenwriter John Ridley present as the central evil of slavery: the ability to force a person to accept his own suffering and ignore suffering in other people.

Things get worse when he's sold to Edwin Epps (Fassbender) who gives none of the limited regard Salomon might have enjoyed with Ford. Epps is a monster who frequently tortures his slaves under the guise of scripture when they fail to meet their quota and delights in frequently raping Patsy (newcomer Lupita Nyong'o), a female slave he professes to love but occasionally has whipped to keep his jealous wife happy. Patsy goes along with this at first because she hopes it will mean better treatment as a House Slave, and then because she has no choice. More and more Solomon must play himself down to survive, leading to a harrowing moment where, for very complex reasons he is forced to torture a fellow slave.

There's a lot of cruelty and McQueen plays it in his signature, matter of fact tone. But instead of removing us from it, the approach makes everything all the more horrifying.  Under both owners we constantly hear slaves being tortured either just out of frame or in the frame but just out of focus. He uses the images to emulate the blinders Northup and his fellow slaves must wear to survive. By showing just how casual an attitude slaves and owners have to the human suffering caused by the institution, it becomes a film of almost surrealistic horrors. Take the scene where Solomon is sold: We're in a posh, middle class home, Paul Giamatti and his perspective buyers dressed in the finest of fashion as the slaves stand around mostly in the nude, staring blankly, desplaying their teeth and muscles on demand, while Solomon is forced to play violin concertos to make it all feel more normal.

The performances are all excellent, all the principals throwing themselves into their parts with method like abandon without ever overwhelming the film, Fassbender and Nyong'o are particularly good and Ejiofor's performance avoids the Oscarbait traps of appearing overly noble.  This is a man who knows how vulnerable he is and that he's losing his soul day by day. Every attempt at defiance or escape he makes puts him in more and more danger. The fact that he does eventually manage it is so miraculous that it'll feel like Deus Ex Machina to some and in a way it is. Most people who entered slavery, either by birth or kidnapping, never escaped and the odds say that he should have died in bondage. But the reunion with his family feels hollow. We know that his only way out was, ultimately, to ignore the cries of others, knowing that to speak out could spell the end of his own tentative freedom. The real Solomon Northup spent the rest of his life working on the underground railroad, so it can't be said that pragmatism broke him, but in McQueen's film, it certainly compromises him.

Grade: A-

THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER

It's odd that so many films are aimed at teenagers, but almost none are actually about them. This wasn't always the case. In the 80's there were the films of John Hugues and Cameron Crowe, but they faded away. Outside of Superbad and Mean Girls, my generation didn't have a large cannon of our own, so we clung to those 80's hits that had been so popular with our older siblings and younger parents. We all loved Breakfast Club in highschool, but I preferred Fast Times. I'm probably too old to claim The Perks of Being A Wallflower as part of my generation (though the book was published in the late 90's and takes place in '91), but I'm so glad the people just under me will have it to call their own.

The film follows Charlie (Logan Lerman), a freshman who's having trouble making friends and is on medication to help him deal with the emotional fallout of a series of personal tragedies suffered over the years. Eventually he's taken in by a pair of seniors: Patrick and Samantha (Ezra Miller and Emma Watson respectively). They too have issues. Patrick is openly gay but is in a difficult relationship with a closeted jock. Sam struggles with grades and the unearned "reputation" she got in Freshman year. Charlie worships them both, and it's easy to see why. They frequent midnight scereenings of Rocky Horror and have excellent taste in music, mostly post-punk and glam-rock.

Between all the Dr. Frank N Furter and David Bowie, it doesn't take long for Charlie to develop feelings for Sam, leading to all sorts of difficult complications. In the wrong hands Sam could have been an unfortunate collection of Manic Pixie tropes, but Watson's smart performance avoids most of the traps. Yes she has her quirks, but she's also very down to earth. A real person who makes some fairly typical and relatable mistakes. Ezra Miller is also excellent as Patrick, who's allowed to be actually gay vs. being forced to play "movie gay." It's really outrageous how rarely movies portray gay people without resorting to camp caricature.

Lerman also does fine in the lead, even if he's sometimes let down by director Stephen Chbosky (who also wrote the script based on his own book) who unloads the mystery of Charlie's emotional issues a little too slowly. Also, as much as the film gets it, there's still a tiny bit too much fantasy here. But more often than not it all works, and it all gels together in one of the best endings I've seen all year.

Perks didn't get that wide a release, but a film as heartfelt as this is probably destined for cult status. Pacing issues aside, it may very well earn a place in the cannon of great Teen Movies.

Grade: A-

LINCOLN

There is exactly one battle sequence of consequence in Steven Spielberg's Civil War drama Lincoln, and it comes right at the beginning. The short, ugly scene features soldiers fighting in the rain, waist deep in mud, using rifles, bayonets, and bare knuckles. The battle is somewhat futile because, as the film reminds us, by the fall of 1864 the Civil War was basically over, but the battles went on regardless.

Today we generally accept that the end of the Civil War would naturally involve the end of slavery but, as the film documents, it wasn't always certain. President Lincoln (Daniel Day-Lewis) want's to pass a constitutional amendment outlawing slavery but faces an uphill slog. His own party isn't enthusiastic about it, and the opposing Democrats are dead set against it. But Lincoln knows that without the amendment all those endless battles would mean nothing.

On paper, the prospect of a two and half hour period film about the complications of passing legislation sounds dull as paste, but it's those colossally high stakes and the lengths that is Lincoln willing to go to that help make the film compelling. In order to get any Democratic support, he must essentially start handing out bribes. If that weren't enough of a potential scandal, Lincoln knows that if the South surrenders before the vote, it will guarantee the amendments failure and so he must find a way to delay the end of the war.

Spielberg delivers all these complex plot points with the help of a very sharp script by Tony Kushner (who won the Pulitzer for Angels in America), partially based on Doris Kearns Goodwin's book Team of Rivals, which delivers line after line of crackling dialogue. Many of the best lines are spoken by Tommy Lee Jones as Republican firebrand Thaddeus Stevens who has some of the best flippant putdowns this side of The Social Network.

Ironically if there's anyone who gets a pass it's Lincoln himself. Day-Lewis is as amazing as we expect him to be, but the film keeps the character at a distance. Apart from a passionate argument with his wife (Sally Field who's every bit as good as Day-Lewis) and a series of affable, home-spun ramblings, there's precious little insight into Lincoln the person. It's strange that showing us his thought-process and the anxiety consuming him doesn't translate into a more complete portrait of the man. This would be less of a problem if the film weren't called Lincoln. This is a film more about the moment that defined his legacy than it is about the man himself.

On the one hand, Spielberg's reluctance to deconstruct Lincoln too much is understandable, the man is the closest thing America has to a bona fide Christ figure. But there is something that just doesn't gel about watching the man talk about all the moral compromises he's had to make, order bribes, suspend habeas corpus, etc, and then slowly put on that famous hat and walk into a beam of light as John Williams's score swells. It's not that the film causes one to lose respect for the man, on the contrary, it's obvious how righteous his goals are, it's just that the film's iconography is simper than the its depiction of the man.

To call Lincoln a bio-pic is a bit disingenuous as it denotes a greater level of introspection then we get here. But what Spielberg has given us instead is equally valuable – an accurate, historical procedural documenting one of the most important moments in American history. It may try too hard for those Oscar moments at times, but on the whole the craftsmanship is strong and delivers a very entertaining film about what could have been a very dry subject.

Grade: B+

BONDATHON: OCTOPUSSY

For a moment it didn’t look like Roger Moore would return. He reportedly didn’t like the violence of For Your Eyes Only and was negotiating his contracts film by film at this point. So Bond mastermind “Cubby” Broccoli was all set to recast the part with American actor James Brolin. This plan would have marked a huge change in the Bond series, but when it was announced that Sean Connery would be starring in a rival James Bond film Never Say Never Again, it was decided that it would be a bad time to introduce a new Bond to the official franchise and Moore was convinced to sign up again for Octopussy.

In East Berlin, there is a fancy dinner party at the residence of the British ambassador. The party will be interrupted by a clown crashing through the Ambassador’s glass doors. He falls dead, a fabergé egg clutched in his hand. This is a mystery too ridiculous for other detectives/super-spies. This looks like a job for Bond, James Bond. It turns out that the clown was Bond’s coworker 009, and while the egg is a fake, it’s drastically important to someone and it’s Bond’s job to find out who’s responsible, and why they’d make such a big deal over a fake egg.

There's lots of inns and outs in this one. Eventually Bond meets a smuggler named Octopussy (Maud Adams) and her all female army. There are all sorts of red herrings and a rogue Soviet general who wants to invade Europe, it's actually a lot more plot than we usually get in a Bond film, certainly more than For Your Eyes Only. The script by novelist George MacDonald Fraser feels like a proper International thriller with twists and title cards telling you where you are and everything. It's not John Le Carre, but it's nice to see them try.

Action scenes aren't bad. There are some nice gimmicks such as a mini-airplane, and the terrifyingly hilarious buzz-saw yo-yo. The standout set pieces include a car chase through the streets of Udaipur, India and a train sequence, both feel almost like direct responses to scenes in Raiders of the Lost Ark but without the smooth freneticism of Spielberg. According to lore, Spielberg lobbied for years to direct a Bond film only to be turned down every time for in-house people. Spielberg moved on to beat the franchise at its own pulpy game with Raiders, it moved the genre forward, while the Bond films still look and feel like they could have been made in 1969. The competing Bond film from that year, Never Say Never Again (reviewed more thoroughly here),  isn't the best Bond film, but at least it feels modern. Never also had Sean Connery who brought with him the energy and iconography of the best of Bond.

While we're on the subject of iconography, someone really needs to sit the Bond producers down and have a long talk with them about dress-up. Since Spy Who Loved Me, the Bonds have included a moment where 007 dresses up as other cinematic icons. Scenes like this these can be terrible, can make for some decent chuckles, but they also devalue the character. If an icon has to dress up as another icon, then he’s not really an icon. Every time we see Bond in a Clint Eastwood poncho or, as in this film, swinging from vines doing a Tarzan yell, it’s just saying that Bond isn’t a powerful enough icon to carry a film like this.

James Bond is supposed to be the ultimate fantasy symbol. He has the clothes we will never afford, takes the cars we will never drive to the places we will never go to meet the girls we will never have a shot with. Yet in the Roger Moore era, all those elements have been diluted to the point that late in Octopussy, we have James Bond literally dressing up as a clown.

Ladies!!!

Not only is he dressed as a clown, he's dressed as a clown while disarming an atomic warhead. This is, sadly, not the low point of the series (That is still Man With The Golden Gun), but it does signify that the producers care more about their little throw away jokes than character or tone. Bond doesn't need to be super serious, whimsy is fine. But I need to believe, on some level, that this character exists in a plausible world, otherwise the fantasy breaks down and the iconography breaks down.

Grade: C+

Enjoy these other Bondathon entries:

Dr. No

From Russia With Love

Goldfinger

Thunderball / Never Say Never Again

You Only Live Twice
On Her Majesty's Secret Service 
Diamonds Are Forever
Live and Let Die
The Man With The Golden Gun 
The Spy Who Loved Me 
Moonraker
For Your Eyes Only
Octopussy  
A View To A Kill
The Living Daylights
Licence To Kill
Goldeneye
Tomorrow Never Dies
The World is Not Enough
Die Another Day
Casino Royale
Quantum of Solace
Skyfall

 

BONDATHON: FOR YOUR EYES ONLY

When people complain that mainstream films are dull and all the same, For Your Eyes Only is the type of film they’re talking about. As it stands, Eyes is a perfectly ordinary product of the entertainment industrial complex. 

The plot is another one of those Blah Blah things were Bond (Roger Moore) has to find a missing whatchamacallit that's very, very important to England before the Soviets get their hands on it. Along the way Bond travels to the prerequisite exotic locations and meets the required amount of women and gets in about twice as many action scenes than usual.

This over reliance on action isn't surprising. Director John Glen had previously headed up second units on several previous Bonds, as such he was responsible for shooting several of the franchises more breathtaking moments, including that ski jump in The Spy Who Loved Me. With this film he doesn't focus much on plot, or drama, rather he plays to his action strength to mixed results.

Now action is one of the hardest genre’s to do. Part of it has to do with the fact that action scenes aren’t very relateble. We all know what it feels like to be in love, but few of us will ever be in fist fights or car chases. Yet these are exactly the experiences these films try to relate. There are, broadly speaking, two ways to portray action: Chaos and Control. Both kinds of scenes are prevalent here.

In a chaotic action scene, things happen and that’s that. Who, how and why aren’t strictly speaking important in the face of pure spectacle. Take the 8 minute ski-chase. It occurs for no other reason than that there’s usually a chase at that point of the running time. It’s a go-for-broke scene is more interested in being a cross-section of Winter Olympic events than anything else and goes on for so long that one really forgets how it started and why. There is no clarity and everything is vague and undefined. This scene is an extreme, but it’s also fairly typical of many of the action scenes in the films first half. Scenes that are overfrequent, overlong and underwhelming. 

Strangely enough, Eyes seems to get its act together in the second half. Action scenes become more ordered and controlled. A controlled action scene is built on clear goals and clear action. One such scene finds Bond struggling to scale a mountain before a henchman pulls out the rope anchors. The conception is as simple as possible: “Do this before that happens,” and the scene works because of this simplicity.

Also, despite some of the usual silliness, Eyes is a much darker film than many of the previous Moore era Bonds. Violence is more prevalent and more direct. The film's most memorable scene involves Bond kicking a car and its occupant off a cliff. The impact of the scene is ruined by one of those puns that were sly and fun in Dr. No but have long since become a tiresome irritant, but that should not detract from the fact that for one brief, shining moment Roger Moore looks like a badass.

 

Eyes is a huge improvement over Moonraker but it’s still just an okay Bond film. There are some great moments but on the whole it’s merely adequate. Anyone catching the second half of this on TV will probably like it better than if they saw the whole thing, but you can just as easily skip this one.

Grade: B-

Enjoy these other Bondathon entries:

Dr. No

From Russia With Love

Goldfinger

Thunderball / Never Say Never Again

You Only Live Twice
On Her Majesty's Secret Service 
Diamonds Are Forever
Live and Let Die
The Man With The Golden Gun 
The Spy Who Loved Me 

Moonraker
For Your Eyes Only
Octopussy
A View To A Kill 
The Living Daylights
Licence to Kill
Goldeneye
Tomorrow Never Dies 
The World Is Not Enough  
Die Another Day 
Casino Royale 
Quantum of Solace

LAWLESS

In the late 20's and early 30's the mountains of Franklin County, Virginia where so rife with bootleggers that at night the fires from the stills lit up the mountains like fireflies. This is the setting for John Hillcoat's new film Lawless. It centers on the area’s most infamous moonshiners, the three Bondurant brothers.

The leader is Forrest (Tom Hardy), a hulking man who, in Goodfallas parlance, doesn't have to move for anybody. Jason Clarke plays Howard, the muscle of the group. When Forrest says "sick 'em," Howard sicks 'em. Sometimes he does it when he hasn't been told. I guess stump whiskey does that to a man. The youngest is the put upon lookout, Jack (Shia LeBeouf). Over the years, a legend has grown up around the three boys, particularly Forrest, that they are invincible.

Of course, the problem with being invincible is that people are going to want to test that. In comes a special deputy named Charlie Rakes (Guy Pierce). Rakes is an odd man with his shaved eyebrows and a 3 inch gap in his hair part. His goal isn’t to stop the bootleggers but rather to extort a toll from them. The Bondurant’s refuse and face an all out war with Rakes and his small army of cops and hired thugs.

This all plays out predictably right down to the “look how well we’re doing” montage of the Brothers solidifying their rural empire. Still, Hillcoat and screenwriter Nick Cave (he also provides the soundtrack) create a striking sense of immediacy here. This isn’t some generic, homogenized vision of the late 20’s, this feels like the real thing. The roosters fighting in the yard, the fog rolling in over the giant willow trees, and the Bell brand jars the Bondurant brothers use to store their White Lightning whiskey are all little details that help the film live and breathe.

The ensemble do a mostly commendable job. Hardy’s mono-syabic performance is menacing and weirdly warm at the same time. Jessica Chastain does some nice work with her underwritten character, and Guy Pearce’s is a very cartoonish villain, but holds back just enough to keep from going off the rails. Shia LeBeouf on the other hand is just okay; he’s made leaps in his acting ability, but not bounds. It looks as if we're going to be stuck with LeBeouf as a leading man for a while, but he's yet to demonstrate that he's earned that privilege.

The absolute best thing about the film is the exquisite soundtrack put together by Cave and Warren Ellis. The two rockers have provided moody instrumentals for several of Hillcoats other movies but here the pair have put together a house band, The Bootleggers, and have created one of the best roots soundtracks since O Brother Where Art Thou. The band, with the help of guest stars like Ralph Stanley and Emmylou Harris, cover a wide array of songs by Link Wray, John Lee Hooker and even The Velvet Underground, while throwing in a few originals too. It’s a slam-bang soundtrack that oozes personality form every note.

Lawless is a solid crime film held back by it’s own formula and a mediocre lead performance. However the verisimilitude with which the period, not to mention the violence, is portrayed coupled with a fantastic soundtrack help balance out the flaws. At the very least you should pick up the album.

Grade: B

Here's a sample of The Bootleggers cover of Link Wray's "Fire and Brimstone"

BONDATHON: MOONRAKER

Things where going so well. The Spy Who Loved Me was a fun, relatively smart James Bond adventure that reaffirms everything that makes the franchise great and even manages to make Roger Moore bearable. This is one of the few times that more of the same would have been wonderful, but alas the movie-gods have given us Moonraker.

The plot will be familiar to anyone who's seen more than one of these before: an experimental space shuttle known as “Moonraker” is stolen while on route to England and Bond (Roger Moore) is sent to investigate. He starts by looking into the company that built the shuttle, run by eccentric industrialist Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale). Drax immediately tries to kill Bond via ethnic henchman and fails. As is customary, Bond meets two women, one with an obscene name who is the love interest, and an insignificant girl who will be killed to show how evil the villain is. This doesn't matter to Bond, who travels the world playing with absurd gadgets before blasting into space for a final confrontation with Drax.

It doesn't take very long for Moonraker to start being bad. Pinpointing the exact moment would be difficult because it's never exactly 'good' to begin with. Instead, the film alternates between boilerplate and off the wall 'what the fuck' moments. This is most evident in the film's Venice section where Bond get's involved in the lamest action sequence of his life. This involves an assassin who operates from a coffin and a boat chase where Bond's gondola climbs out of the water and turns into a hovercraft. If that wasn't ridiculous enough, there are not one, but two reaction shots of local animals being absolutely amazed by this, including a double taking pidgin!

The second silliest thing ever to appear in a Bond film...

 ...followed swiftly by the silliest thing ever to appear in a Bond film

A long standing criticism of the Moore-era Bonds is that they got a little gadget crazy, and this is the film where it happens. In addition to that ridiculous gondola, we also have poison pens, a watch that shoots darts, a flamethrower perfume bottle and a second boat that turns into a hang-glider. There's plenty more, but you get the idea. As if the overabundant gadgets weren't enough, we are also treated to random fighting monks, weird monologues about orchids and Bond dressing up like Clint Eastwood in Brazil and did I mention the fact that 007 goes into space? I understand how popular Star Wars was in the late 70's, but was it really necessary for Bond to explore the final frontier?

I really don't know who this film was for. Sometimes it's aimed at young children, but on the other hand it still has enough sex to make Hugh Hefner proud not to mention some horrific death scenes involving nerve gas and vicious guard dogs. The last film, The Spy Who Loved Me, was a fun, coherent Bond film. By contrast, Moonraker feels like it was written by a committee of people trying to shoe-horn in every idea they had regardless of whether or not it gels or makes sense for the character.

It's not a total loss, there are two very good action scenes. One involves skydiving and the other is a suspenseful fight atop to cable cars suspended high over Rio, both scenes feature excellent stunt work and can be enjoyed on their own merits.

Also Jaws (Richard Kiel), the great henchman from the previous film, returns. While his reuse here amount's to little more than bad fan service (in an inexplicable twist, he gets a love interest to soften his image), his re-introduction is nice. Drax's primary henchman has been killed and needs to be replaced. Drax calls what can only be described as Henchmen 'R' Us. The idea that there is a henchmen-villain matching agency is one of the few jokes that actually works in this film. Also, seeing Jaws trying to go through an airport metal detector with his steel teeth isn't bad either. I don't know, maybe the comedy angle could have worked if the filmmakers had better jokes and committed to it more.

Reading the novel only makes this film a greater disappointment. They don't have anything to do with each other and this time, it's for the worse. Moonraker the film is the most ridiculous film of the series (until Die Another Day at least) whereas the book is one of the most down to earth of Ian Fleming's cannon. In the novel, Drax is actually an interesting character having reinvented himself from nothing after losing his memory in the war. After becoming the wealthiest man in England he builds his country a nuclear ICBM, dubbed "Moonraker", to protect Britain from her enemies. But his sincerity called into heavy doubt by a game of cards with Bond. It may not be the most cinematic of Flemming's novels, but it is one of the best and following it closer would have certainly given the film some solid footing.

Moonraker isn't the worst of the Bond films, but it may be the most infamous and not without reason. In an attempt to be broader and more appealing to a mass audience it abandons everything that makes the franchise worthwhile. It becomes a flight from logic and sanity, entering an almost dream like realm. Unfortunately it's not a dream I really want to have.

Grade: C-

Moonraker is currently streaming on Netflix Instant.

Enjoy these other Bondathon entries:

Dr. No

From Russia With Love

Goldfinger

Thunderball / Never Say Never Again

You Only Live Twice
On Her Majesty's Secret Service 
Diamonds Are Forever
Live and Let Die
The Man With The Golden Gun 
The Spy Who Loved Me 

Moonraker

For Your Eyes Only
Octopussy
A View To A Kill 
The Living Daylights 
Licence to Kill
Goldeneye 
Tomorrow Never Dies 
Skyfall


The World Is Not Enough
Die Another Day
Casino Royale
Quantum of Solace

BONDATHON: THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN

Live and Let Die wasn’t the best Bond but for better or worse it established Roger Moore as the newer, more ironic face of the franchise and secured it’s future. So successful was Live at the box office that producers decided to make The Man With The Golden Gun immediately so that it would be ready the following year. This rapid production style suited the franchise well in the beginning when all screenwriter Richard Maibaum had to do was make minor alterations to the books to turn them into scripts. But by this point in the franchise, screen stories where being largely constructed from scratch ignoring most everything but the books titles. This approach can work, especially with some of the sub-par books, but this time it results in a film that feels like a frustrating first draft with just enough good things in it to make its total failure all the more infuriating.

Here’s the stuff that could have been good – Bond (Roger Moore) being marked for death by the world's greatest assassin, Scaramanga (Christopher Lee). There is little doubt that Scaramanga will succeed unless Bond finds him first. The idea of giving Bond a Moriarty type nemesis is a smart one, and Lee, with his mad eyes and controlled demeanor is the perfect choice for the part. Why, he's able to sell even the silliest aspects of the character, such as his insistence on golden bullets and his Lady From Shanghai death maze.

Less promising is every other single element in this film. There's an atrocious title track by Lulu with laughable lyrics like: "His eye may be on you or me. Who will he bang? We shall see. Oh yeah!" Oh yeah indeed. Even Scaramanga’s uniqueness as a villain is brought down by an out of place subplot where he takes over a solar power company (tying into the ’73 energy crisis) so he can have a more conventional superlaser factory for Bond to blow up during the climax. Bond isn’t particularly good either. The film treats him blandly, even denying him a thrilling entrance, he just walks through a door and says 'howdy.' Watching him maneuver through Hong Kong is dull at best, irritating at worst. Director Guy Hamilton tries desperately to inject personality by bringing back J.W. Pepper (Clifton James), the hillbilly cop from Live and Let Die as Bonds sidekick, in one of the most forced introductions in cinema history. Pepper's presence is grating, he's the Jar Jar Binks of the Bond films. But the final sign that the series has fully descended into broad camp doesn’t come from Pepper, but the slide whistle that Hamilton uses to underscore the films most climactic and dangerous stunt.

 

Perhaps even more annoying is Bond girl Mary Goodnight (Britt Ekland). Goodnight is the dumbest, most incompetent Bond girl in what has sadly become a long line of dumb, incompetent Bond girls. When I started this series I pointed to Hitchcock's North by Northwest as a model for the Bond films. But after watching 9 of these things, I'm starting to understand how ahead of its time Northwest was. Oh, how great it would be to see a woman in a Bond film like the Eva Marie Saint character, but I’ll settle for someone who’s anything more than a sexually subservient plot contrivance. In one scene Bond gives Goodnight the McGuffin and all she has to do is walk out the building with it. Instead she hangs around Scaramanga’s car and gets herself pushed into the trunk, meaning that the whole third act of the film is predicated on her being a moron.

This was Guy Hamilton's final Bond film. His first was Goldfinger, a film that remains a high benchmark of the series. It's a shame that his last Bond is little more than a wasted villain, a terrible title song and a particularly thin example of the formula Hamilton helped establish. I doubt any Bond film will be worse. Skip this one, and while you’re at it, skip the book that Fleming may or may not have completed before his death, its even more tedious than the film, and that’s saying something.

Grade: D

The Man With The Golden Gun is currently streaming on Netflix Instant.

Previous Bondathon entries:

Dr. No

From Russia With Love

Goldfinger

Thunderball / Never Say Never Again

You Only Live Twice
On Her Majesty's Secret Service 
Diamonds Are Forever
Live and Let Die
The Man With The Golden Gun
The Spy Who Loved Me
Moonraker
For Your Eyes Only
Octopussy
A View To A Kill 
The Living Daylights 
Licence to Kill
Goldeneye 
Tomorrow Never Dies 
The World Is Not Enough  
Die Another Day 
Casino Royale 
Quantum of Solace
Skyfall

 

BONDATHON: LIVE AND LET DIE

They had tried this before, this recasting of Bond. George Lazenby filled out the tux in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the most ambitious and unusual film in the series. But Lazenby didn’t work. Not because he was a bad actor, but because he was forced to imitate Connery, in look and manner. It didn’t work. The answer to how you replace an iconic actor is that you don’t try to replace him at all. For an audience to accept a new Bond, he would have to be different enough from Connery to be able to grow into an icon in his own right. As a result Roger Moore was cast for 1973’s Live and Let Die, the most trashy and cartoonish entry in the series yet.

The big problem with the last entry, apart from a visibly bored Connery, was the lack of a clear villain or threat worthy of James Bond. Live and Let Die does better in this regard. Several British agents have been killed and MI-6 feels that it might be connected to Dr. Kananga (Yaphet Kotto), the prime minister to a small Caribbean Island. Bond heads to New York where he sees the United Nations before heading to Harlem and meeting a bunch of Blaxploitation stereotypes and Kananga’s woman/virginal Tarot card reader Solitare (Donna Summers). Later in his travels, he is joined by Rosie (Gloria Hendly), cinema’s most incompetent CIA agent ever (she doesn’t even know how to take off a gun’s safety catch). Rosie screams and has nervous fits while Bond seduces Solitare and uncovers Kananga’s plans to monopolize the world’s heroin supply.

Roger Moore is, whatever you think of him, a very firm contrast to Connery.  While Connery came off as rough and a working class secret agent, Moore comes off as slick and privileged. They both represented old imperialism, but Roger Moore does it much more stereotypically. He’s an Englishman first, James Bond second. A concerted effort was made to differentiate him from Connery, he doesn't drink martinis and as a presence, he’s a softer, goofier Bond. The shift towards broader comedy can't be blamed solely on Moore, the trend had started in earnest with Diamonds Are Forever (remember that elephant gambling scene?) and could arguably be traced back further, but Moore’s facility with the jokes helps put the trend into overdrive and is indicative of many franchises that grow sillier as time goes on (Superman, the first Batman series). Moore's 007 doesn't miss one opportunity to crack a joke or make a pun. Nothing in this film can be taken seriously even for a second.

This extends to the action scenes which are really, truly bizarre. In one scene Bond hops across the back of several alligators to safety. There's also a 12 minute boat chase that focuses not on Bond or his pursuers, but on a hillbilly cop (Clifton James). The cop, who we've never met before in the film, spends most of the chase pursuing, but never quite catching up to, the boat chase. Oh, and one character is dispatched by being inflated like a balloon. Yes, you read that right.

These ridiculous gimmicks are not fantastic, but are ultimately for the best because they soften the movie’s pulpier elements, which are really racist. The books, and to a lesser extent the films, have always been very pro-imperialist and Live and Let Die is one of the most naked examples of this. Kananga is the prime minister from San Monique, a fictional country standing in for any number of Caribbean colonies that the British used to own (particularly Jamaica), and so the entire plot could be seen as 'Bond keeping the old colony in line.' But the problem isn’t that the film has ethnic villains, it’s that it has so many of them. It’s possible that the producers had seen Shaft and decided they wanted to exploit that audience but didn’t understand that Blaxploitation was about empowering the community by letting black audiences see themselves as anti-establishment heroes, not as thugs to be defeated by Whitey. As a result, the film ends up perfectly reflecting the worst fears of the white establishment by showing a world where seemingly the entire black population of the Northern Hemisphere are in on the evil scheme. There are times where the film almost feels like James Bond vs. Black People.

In this scene Kananga hires half of New Orleans to kill one man.

Somewhat mitigating the choice of exclusively black villains is Kananga himself. He’s probably the smartest, most fully realized villain in the series so far. For the first time in eight films I was nodding my head while the villain explained his evil plan and thinking, “Yes, that could actually work. Bravo sir!” Now he does not have the wherewithal to actually kill Bond when he has the chance (this is a Bond film after all), but still, a plausible plan is a rarity for these films. He also has an interesting relationship with Solitaire. The Bond series has made it a tradition of having Bond seducing the villain’s woman as a symbol of his masculinity surpassing that of all other men. But she isn’t like the other women in that she is a virgin. Kananga keeps her virginity intact because it is the source of her psychic powers. The link between virginity and magical power is a standard mythological trope but its inclusion in a series built on the frankness of the sexual revolution is interesting to say the least. It also shifts the light in which we see the characters. Whatever Kananga’s anterior motives are, he does try and protect Solitaire’s virtue. Also, Bond’s seduction of Solitaire is a bit troubling because Bond always has ulterior motives when seducing women and also he explicitly tricks her into the deed by playing on her superstitions. Despite his reputation, Bond isn’t a very classy guy.

"I'm just using you to get to someone else. Wait, why are you crying woman?"

So what’s good about the film? Well, the song by Paul McCartney and Wings is magnificent. As is the opening title sequence which is easily Maurice Binder’s best since Dr. No, while has a lot of the standard Bond credit tropes, but he also gives us this flaming skull image which is one of the strongest in the Bond series.

Despite all the misguided racial politics which, let’s face it are in a lot of these films, Live and Let Die is kind of enjoyable. The camp aspects of the film may not be according to Hoyle Bond, but they work. This isn't a good film, but at least it's never boring and that's more than I can say for Diamonds are Forever.

Grade: B-

Previous Bondathon entries:

Dr. No

From Russia With Love

Goldfinger

Thunderball / Never Say Never Again

You Only Live Twice
On Her Majesty's Secret Service 
Diamonds Are Forever
Live and Let Die
The Man With The Golden Gun 
The Spy Who Loved Me
Moonraker
For Your Eyes Only
Octopussy 
A View To A Kill 
The Living Daylights
Licence to Kill
Goldeneye
Tomorrow Never Dies 
The World Is Not Enough  
Die Another Day 
Casino Royale 
Quantum of Solace
Skyfall

 

BONDATHON: DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER

How do you solve problem like James Bond? The producers did the best they could without Connery. They re-cast 007, hoping that it was the role, not the actor that made the series the monumental success that it was. Unfortunately the box office receipts did not bear that out. On Her Majesty's Secret Service wasn’t a flop by any means, it was one of the top grossing film’s of 1969, but it still earned far less than its predecessor and received very mixed reviews, many hostile towards new Bond, George Lazenby.

Knowing Lazenby was not a viable option and that Connery wasn’t interested in returning, producing partners Saltzman and Broccoli set about the unenviable task of re-casting James Bond yet again. Some felt that it was time to make Bond appeal to younger audiences by casting an American as Bond. Such a thing would be unthinkable today, but back in 1970, Saltzman and Broccoli where insistent on it. The pair even talked to Batman star Adam West before signing John Gavin (Psycho) to don the tux. That is until the studio insisted Connery return for the next installment. Despite his initial trepidation, he agreed on the condition he be paid a record breaking salary (which he donated to charity). It was firmly understood that Sean would only be returning for one film, and so a more permanent recasting of Bond was put off for another film and Connery returned to serve as a sort of band-aid for a franchise in need.

If On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was the ballsiest Bond yet (ending with the death of 007’s bride), Diamond’s are Forever is the safest. Considering the ending of that film, one would expect Diamonds to be something of a revenge film. Indeed the prologue shows Bond savagely hunting down and killing Blofeld (Charles Gray). Not knowing what to do with the rest of the film, M (Bernard lee) sends Bond off on the trail of African diamond smugglers. He attaches himself to smuggler Tiffany Case (Jill St. John). In a neat twist Bond kills Tiffinay’s real contact and switches wallets with him, leading her uttering best line of the movie: “You just killed James Bond!” It should be noted that Bond’s only form of I.D. seams to be his membership card to the Playboy Club.

This screen cap should constitute a spoiler as it's the best part of the film.

They grab some diamonds and head off to Vegas, which in this film is a circus dreamscape where elephants gamble and Bond rides around in a moon buggy for some reason. Eventually the supper-spy unravels some convoluted business involving a kidnapped Howard Huges surrogate (played by sausage magnate Jimmy Dean), Blofeld (not really dead) and his diamond powered laser satellite (no, really). Director Guy Hamilton tried to bring surreal touches to Bond when he made Goldfinger but these same instincts run amuck here and reek of desperation. It’s just amazing how thin this film feels. Nothing really feels connected to anything else. Bond wonders around being Bond. Women are slept with, thugs are punched, cars are driven. The films two Bond girls aren’t particularly memorable and come off a bit shrill. Connery is good half the time and visibly bored the rest of it.

But Connery could be giving the best performance of his life and it wouldn't matter in the face of the film's real problem, which is that there's no main villain till over an hour into the film. A genre film lives and dies by its villain. Even the worst Bond film’s so far have had a clear villain or threat right from the get-go. After saving the world six times, some loosely assembled diamond smuggling story isn’t enough to keep the story going until Blofeld shows up. but by then the movie is already dead. It doesn't help that Charles Gray looks and acts nothing like the Blofeld we've seen in any of the other films and his SPECTRE organization couldn't be mentioned because of rights issues. The film doesn't know what to do with him. I'll ask again, why wasn't this film all about killing Blofeld from start to finish? The producers insistence to make Diamonds as if Secret Service never happened kills the film because Bond has no real motivation. A modern franchise would try to play on the links between the films and creates a sense of continuity and resonance. Instead we're stuck in this land of sudo-reboots.

The closest we get to villains for most of the film are two assassins, Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd (Bruce Glover and Putter Smith, respectively). Despite not being very menacing, they are the film’s most successful element. Up till now the series has had several homosexual characters. Their homosexuality was never overly explicit (censorship issues) and they where always villains. Wint & Kidd aren’t particularly different. They fall very squarely into the ugly 'gay killer' trope and their presence should date the film terribly, but the fact of the matter is that they are an adorable couple. You get the feeling they’ve been together for years but never left the puppy dog stage of infatuation. They finish each others sentences and murders. Props to the actors (particularly Putter Smith) for taking their roles just seriously enough to imbue them with affection. At any rate, as hammy as they are, they are the only characters in the film that feel alive in any way.

As for fidelity to the source material, a lot of the broad strokes are there, certain scenes and character names are the same and they do all go to Las Vegas, but that's about it. Diamonds was the third Fleming novel, written before Bond had graduated to saving the world. It's a mediocre detective novel, and a film version makes no sense at this point in the series which explains why so much was changed. Diamonds Are Forever the book and the film are not essential entries in their respective series, but the novel fairs a bit better if for no other reason than a great closing paragraph equating diamonds with death, something indestructible, unconquerable and eternal. 

Grade: C-


Diamonds Are Forever is currently streaming on Netflix Instant.

Previous Bondathon entries:

Dr. No

From Russia With Love

Goldfinger

Thunderball / Never Say Never Again

You Only Live Twice
On Her Majesty's Secret Service 
Diamonds Are Forever
Live and Let Die
The Man With The Golden Gun 
The Spy Who Loved Me
Moonraker
For Your Eyes Only
Octopussy
A View To A Kill 
The Living Daylights 
Licence to Kill
Goldeneye 
Tomorrow Never Dies 
The World Is Not Enough  
Die Another Day 
Casino Royale 
Quantum of Solace
Skyfall