LIFE OF PI

Watching Ang Lee's new film Life of Pi, I kept wishing over and over again that I had read the book. Half of that wish could be attributed to personal guilt, Yann Martel's much acclaimed novel has long sat on my shelf waiting for me to get around to it. The other half has to do with the perception that it's just one of those unfulfillable stories.

But Lee gives it his all, and does a mostly excellent job, telling the story of Pi (newcomer Suraj Sharma), a zookeepers son with a somewhat porous sense of faith. He's born Hindu, but eventually incorporates Catholic, Islamic and Jewish aspects into his own personal religion.

One day Pi's father decides to sell the zoo and move the family and the animals to Canada. But the ship encounters a heavy storm and sinks. Pi ends up alone on a lifeboat with several animal refugees including a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan and a bengal tiger named Richard Parker.

Most of the animals are dispatched quickly, leaving just Pi and Parker in the boat. The idea that Pi could manage to find any sort of bond with Parker is potentially the stories least believable element, but Lee handles it expertly by never forgetting that Parker is a wild animal. Pi is constantly fighting the elements, starvation, dehydration and the tiger. Furthermore Pi knows that the only thing keeping Parker from turning on him is his ability to feed the beast. It's a very complex, carefully built relationship.

Lee's filming of the story is absolutely dazzling. The sinking ship is easily one of the best action set peaces you'll see this year. Many of the digital editing tricks Lee experimented with in Hulk return here, we get transitions were one scene is composited over the next, shifting aspect ratios, animated book illustrations, you name it. But were those gimmicks grew tiresome in Hulk, here they are always invigorating and Lee has learned to keep these tricks at the service of the story. (it also looks fantastic in 3D). The film also uses some of the best CGI ever rendered to bring Richard Parker and the other animals to life.

The thing that doesn't work is the framing device were the author, a clear stand-in for the books author, seeks out the adult Pi (Irrfan Khan) to tell his story, which is advertized as "a story to make you believe in God." The movie is a powerful adventure story, but it's not that powerful. I guess it doesn't help that I already believe in God, but the film's final moments, which are the ones designed to affirm or re-affirm spirituality which probably played as much bigger revelations in the book, just don't work as well as they should. As visual and cinematic as Lee makes his adaptation, it's just something that feels more suited to the page because spiritual experiences work better when induced my a more internalized medium. Still, that Lee took on this film at all is commendable. The idea that only 90% of it works, hardly seems like a detriment when the resulting film is as rich and ambitious as this.

Grade: A-

THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY

The best thing I can say about Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, part one of a promised 3-part adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings prelude novel The Hobbit, is that it has much of the technical brilliance of it's predecessors. The sweeping vista's of New Zealand are as jaw-dropping as we remember, Howard Shore's score is one of his best in years, and the performances are mostly excellent. However it's lacking in one critical respect—editing.

The titular hobbit, Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), is a completely average hobbit, he likes tea, food and sitting around. One day he meets a wizard named Gandalf (Ian McKellen) who insists on inviting 13 dwarves, lead by Thorin (Richard Armitage), to Bilbo's house. After an endless dinner party Gandalf asks Bilbo to come along with them to a far away land to kill the dragon that took the dwarves homeland.

Bilbo is not the type to go on adventures, but he goes anyway. Apart from some allusion to recklessness in his family tree, his decision to go is never satisfactorily explained. If I recall, the book glossed over this issue with its brisk pace. The film on the other hand, never stops wondering, in a vain attempt to squeeze some complexity (not to mention extra running time) out of this children's story.

A typical exchange goes something like this:
Bilbo: Why am I here Gandalf?
Thorin: Why is he here Gandalf?
Gandalf winks knowingly
Bilbo and Thorin: That doesn't tell us anything!!!

In another attempt to add complexity, Jackson adds some material from the appendices of Lord of the Rings. Some of this material explains where Gandalf goes on his frequent disappearances. Too much features Sylvester McCoy as an insufferable, hippy-dippy, tree hugging wizard named Radagast who is one of the least important characters in Tolkien's mythos. Yet Jackson has beefed up his part so that instead of Gandalf, it's Radagast and his sled of super fast rabbits who stumble onto signs that Rings villain Sauron may be about to return. If you're wondering what any of that has to do with Bilbo, the dwarves and their quest to kill the dragon, the answer is nothing. Nothing at all. But we get so much of it that an audience member could almost be forgiven for forgetting about the main plot.

If that weren't irritating enough, the film goes to great length to extend material that should have been told more efficiently. Compare the film's seemingly endless prologue to the one in Fellowship of The Ring which took less time to set up a lot more. I imagine some hardcore fans will enjoy all the book centric details Jackson has squeezed in here, but the thing that made Jackson's earlier film's work was his ability to balance the nuance of Tolkien's prose while still making efficient, accessible films. Those older films were long, but even Jackson's truly epic extended cuts justified their running times with a sense of momentum and rich, compelling characters.

If Jackson wanted to make this film longer, why didn't he do it by developing the characters more deeply. We have a company of 13 characters in this film and at the end of it I know almost nothing about them. Apart from maybe Thorin, the dwarves are completely interchangeable, distinguishable almost exclusively by beard style. Let's also not start with Gandalf who in this film alternates between incompetence and walking deus ex machina.

Some of these problems are there in the source material, but they're just exacerbated and underlined by this film's epic 169 minute running time. I was frequently reminded of the running gag from Monty Python and the Holy Grail were the film would frequently cut to a large crowd or God yelling at the film to "Get on with it!"

That's not to say it's a total wash. Some of the light comedy is effective, and once the Dwarves leave Rivendel, the momentum really picks up with a rip-roaring action sequence where the company is kidnapped by Goblins. The elaborate razzle-dazzle of it all almost makes all the set up worth it. It's so good that I caught myself thinking that maybe Jackson knew what he was doing after all, and settled in for a good time, but then the movie ended. Maybe the next two films will be better. Maybe Jackson will remember how to tell stories economically and deliver something that will make all this set up worth it, but this film is 169 minutes and covers only the first 120 pages of it's source material and that is unforgivable. The fact that it only feels 40 minutes too long is a strange but dubious victory.

Grade: C+

Note: The film was shot in a new process called HFR. Basically it means that the film was shot at twice the usual frame rate. This theoretically creates more natural motion and improves the quality and clarity of the image, particularly in 3D. A lot of people have disliked it, it's an odd effect. Until my eyes adjusted it seemed almost as if the film was on fast forward. But once I became accustomed, I really dug it, particularly in the night scenes (a notorious problem spot with 3D). When HFR works, the image looks almost disconcertingly real, as if you're watching history's most expensive play. What's more, the frame rate is easy on the eyes. After 2 1/2 hours of constant, intense 3D, I had no eye-strain whatsoever. It's not for everyone, many people just can't stand the look. If you plan on seeing the film in 3D, I'd give it a shot. Otherwise just stick with traditional 2D.

WRECK-IT RALPH

Wreck-It Ralph, Disney's latest animated feature, might be the best videogame movie ever made. The film takes place inside the various games at an arcade. After the arcade closes down for the night the game characters are free to visit each other. The film features many cameo's from famous game characters like Pac-Man and Sonic, but the film follows the much putt upon Ralph (John C. Reilly).

Ralph is the "villain" of a popular Donkey Kong-esque arcade game in he which smashes up an apartment building, only to be thwarted by the games hero Fix-It Felix Jr. (30 Rock's Jack McBrayer). They've been doing this dozens of times a day for the past 30 years. At the end of every day Felix retires to a digital penthouse with a few more achievement medals and Ralph is forced to sleep in a nearby dump, a second class citizen everywhere he goes. One day Ralph decides he's not gonna take it anymore and abandons his game (this is called game-jumping) to find acceptance by winning a medal of his own.

At times, the film feels like a spiritual sequel to Toy Story with a healthy infusion of Tron. Indeed Toy Story director John Lasseter is a producer here. But there's enough personality for Ralph to stand on it's own. Part of that has to do with the work of writer/director Rich Moore. Moore, an animation veteran, has directed some of the better Simpsons episodes and the lions share of Futurama and injects a lot of that sensibility. For instance, part of Ralph's journey takes him to a gritty first person shooter, were he meets Calhoun (Jane Lynch), a brooding space marine who was "programed with the most traumatic back story imaginable."

Eventually Ralph's trek brings him to brightly a colored kid's racing game where the bulk of the film takes place. Here he meets Vanellope (Sarah Silverman), a spunky underdog, who's also mistreated by her fellow game characters, particularly by the games overlord King Candy (Alan Tudyk).

That world is amazingly designed. Vanellope's racing game is constructed entirely of perfectly rendered candy and pastries. Willy Wonka wishes his factory looked this delicious. But it's the variety of the different game's we see that help bring the film's world to life. The doesn't create one gorgeous world, it creates 3 or 4. My favorite was Ralph's game and all the little touches that go into selling it as a retro game. Like how the secondary characters all have choppy 16-bit style animations or how things always break in to pixel friendly shapes.

Beyond the visual razzal dazzle, the film has some nice twists (I really liked how the film handles the consequences of mixing games) and closes with an impressively complex action sequence, but despite all the cleverness on display, the film just cant shake an overwhelming feeling of familiarity. Also, I'm not sure how I feel about the film's ultimately conformist message. It's a very good videogame movie, I hope it spawns a franchise, but it's not a quite top-tier children's film.

The film is preceded by a wonderful little short film called Paperman, a silent rom-com about a man and woman who find love via paper airplanes. In addition to being a delightful piece of whimsy, the film is important on a technical level. It's rendered using new software that captures the look of traditional 2D artwork. The illusion is so convincing that you can often see individual brush strokes. It's a great example of how the traditional feel can live on in an industry dominated by new school methods.

Grades:
Paperman: A
Wreck-It Ralph: B+

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: SKYFALL

In a strange way Goldfinger ruined James Bond. That 3rd entry in the series is a great film unto itself, but it also codified a rigid formula that the series has been slavish to ever since, rendering many of the subsequent films dull and repetitive. It seems that the best Bond's since then, paricularly Danial Craig's debut Casino Royale, have worked by getting away from the formula. But now comes Skyfall, a film that feels like the best of both worlds. Conscious of the present, respectful of the past, the film treats the format not as a crutch or something to be avoided, but as a springboard to tell a more resonant, ambitious story than the franchise has ever attempted, let alone pulled off.

At the center of the film is a question of loyalty. Why be loyal to a country that isn't loyal to you? This is brought up in the film's opening action sequence, where Bond and his partner Eve (Naomie Harris) pursue a high value target through Istanbul. At the end of the chase, Bond finds himself being used as a human shield. M (Judi Dench) makes a tough choice and orders Eve to take them both down. But it goes wrong. The target gets away and it appears that Bond is dead.

The consequences of that failed op become painfully public. The target is working for a man named Silva (Javier Bardem), a cyber-terrorist with a personal vendetta against M that leads him to blow up MI6 and reveal the identity of foreign agents. M survives the attack, but now faces public hearings as to her ability to protect the country.

So what of Bond? Obviously he isn't dead, but he's reluctant to return. He's not sure if he can trust M or if the service has anything left to offer him. When he does come back, it's clear that not all of him has survived. He still looks great in his Tom Ford suits, but he's more haggard. Bullet fragments in his shoulder make it hard for him to shoot straight and years of alcoholism have taken their toll on 007 (yes, this film acknowledges that Bond is a functioning alcoholic). It's clear that Bond isn't ready for the field when he goes after Silva. It's a safe bet that he'll survive, but it's possible that there will be even less of him left by the end.

That's not to say that the film is all gloom, doom and meditations. As unorthodox as the film feels, it's still a Bond movie. There are chases through exotic lands, ridiculous stunts, casinos with deadly Komodo dragons and a series of pretty women for Bond to seduce. Then there is the villain. It's hard to discuss Silva without spoiling things (this is the rare Bond film that can be spoiled), but he's one of the most entertaining Bond villains we've ever had. Bardem's smart performance reminds us of the "evil laugh" baddies from 60's Bond without ever falling too far into camp or seeming derivative.

All of this is directed with great skill by Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Road to Perdition). Mendes isn't the first prestigious director to be given the keys to the franchise, but its never paid off quite like this. The Oscar winner pulls nuanced performances out of everyone. Bond and M have never felt more like real people, and Ben Whinshaw is great as a much younger, slightly Doctor Who-ish version of Q.

Mendes also shows off his skill as an image-maker. He and legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins (Fargo, No Country For Old Men) have created not only one of the prettiest films of the year, but one of the best looking films ever to be shot digitally. There are probably huge plot holes that I didn't see because I was just staring at the amazing visuals and production design. Of particular beauty, are the film's neon bathed Shanghai sequence and the final showdown with Silva on the foggy moors of Scotland.

That ending is very interesting. Throughout the film, there is this constant balancing act between old and new, both with the plot and with the characters. So not only is there this playfulness with the formula, but we get Bond and Co. dealing with how the world has changed. With the ending, the old vs. new balance turns decidedly retro as Mendes has Bond seemingly retreating into the past for a Straw Dogs like sequence that might as well take place in 1962.

In many ways Skyfall feels like the film the franchise has been working towards for the last 50 years, a natural evolution that learns from past pitfalls. Proof that in the right hands, this formula can be used artistically. Like Goldfinger before it, Skyfall feels like a definitive dissertation on what it means to be Bond, James Bond. Obviously this won't be the last Bond, but I'd be perfectly fine if it were. It strikes a high and somber note that seems perfectly appropriate for a farewell. At any rate, I don't see them topping this anytime soon.

Grade: A

If I get enough requests I might put together a best/worst list for people looking to dive into the franchise, but barring that, this marks the end of the Bondathon. Thanks to all the viewers out there who made the series such a rousing success. I'll be doing more series like this in the relatively near future. Until then, I'll be working to bring you theatrical reviews of the years remaining Oscar bait, and major redesign of the site (no more bland beige!). If you like, you can find us on Facebook and feel free to check out 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: QUANTUM OF SOLACE

Casino Royale was the best thing to happen to the franchise in years. It had a more nuanced story that took itself seriously and immediately established Daniel Craig as one of the best Bonds in the franchise's now 50 year history. But the problem with making a more sophisticated Bond is that we now expect the sequel to continue in the same vein, but the franchise hasn't managed two good ones in a row since Johnson was in the White House.

That sad trend continues with Quantum of Solace. The film is a direct sequel (a franchise first), and starts up five minutes after Royale with Bond (Craig) searching for revenge on the people who killed Vesper, who turn out to be part of a mysterious criminal organization called Quantum (which explains half the title I guess) who are engineering a coup in Bolivia. I want to pretend that there's more to this film, but there isn't.

There's a girl (Olga Kurylenko) and some half-hearted attempts to show Bond working through his grief, but it's pretty thin gruel. The arc with Bond and Vesper was pretty well covered in the last film, and as a result there isn't much room for Bond to grow here, which wouldn't be a problem if Casino didn't just get done saying that this is now a franchise where people have arcs. So all that's left is to watch Bond rampage through exotic location after exotic location, killing potential leads left and right and annoying M (Judi Dench). The only interesting character is Bond's CIA counterpart Felix Lieter (Jeffery Wright), who has to find a way to covertly help Bond when he realizes that the CIA is in bed with Quantum. The filmmakers aren't entirely to blame, the screenwriting process was interrupted by the 07-08 Writers Strike and it seems that they were forced to shoot a first draft.

But the weak script does not excuse the action sequences, all of which have have been filmed in Confuse-O-Vision, that trendy process where the editor cuts quickly between shots of the camera shaking, turning everything into an abstract, indistinct blur. When used well, this technique can create tension, giving the audience a visceral you-are-there feeling. Here it just gets tiring. It's strange that the set pieces feel like bad copies of Jason Bourne films as the Bond producers poached some of their talent to shoot the action sequences.

It's a shame, because whenever the camera stops shaking it's quite a pretty film. It's wonderfully photographed by Roberto Schaefer to look like an enormously expensive perfume ad. A lot of this is due to stylized title cards and amazing sets by production designer Dennis Grassner who gorgeously  updates the Ken Adams look. The best set is the Andean Grand Hotel, a completely black & white hotel that looks like it was designed by CoCo Chanel. I also liked some of director Marc Foster's visual flourishes, such as the shot in the prologue where we first see the car shooting at Bond reflected in the door of his Aston Martin.

With the film being so striking, I really want to call this film a triumph of style over substance, but unfortunately editing counts as part of the style. Despite some good sets and a kick ass title song by Jack White and Alicia Keys, this is a dull, muddled film, that barely gets the audience from point A to B. It's reassuring to know that for Skyfall, the producers have kept the production designer and fired the editor.

Grade: C

If you liked this review you can check us out on Facebook and 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: CASINO ROYALE

It's easy to forget that Die Another Day did very well financially. So well that corporate logic would dictate that the next installment should be exactly the same and come out as fast as possible. But public perception of the film cooled very quickly. Add to this the general darkening of action cinema post 9/11, and The Bourne Identity completely reinvigorating the espionage genre it was clear that a change was necessary. Producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson would need a new, darker, more relevant Bond if the franchise was going to survive.

That new direction ultimately came from a very old source, the very first James Bond novel Casino Royale. The book had been adapted twice before (once as a TV movie, and once as a spoof), but never faithfully, and never as part of the official franchise. The timing was perfect, as this most recent adaptation landed near the start of the reboot craze that swept mainstream cinema and TV in the mid-2000's.

As a reboot, Casino likes to play a bit with series conventions. The film doesn't start with Maurice Binders's famous gun barrel or an outrageous stunt sequence. Instead we are introduced to Daniel Craig's James Bond in a stark, brutal black & white sequence where he earns his Double O status by killing a traitorous section chief and his contact. The construction of the scene with Bond waiting in the dark for his target mirrors a similar scene in Dr. No where Bond ambushes and guns down an unarmed assassin.

This reference to 60's era Bond isn't accidental, the film works to evoke the 50's and 60's while still remaining modern. This ethos is exemplified by Danial Kleinman's credit sequence. The sequence was inspired by the card suit images that adorned the novels 1st edition cover and features fighting Saul Bass-esque silhouettes that would all look very 60's if the animation wasn't so clearly computer aided. The theme song itself by Chris Cornell and composer David Arnold is an updated version of the instrumental theme from On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

After the credits we meet Bond (now officially 007), slowly uncovering a banking plot. There is a man named Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelson) who serves as a banker for dictators and international terrorists. Bond foils one of his side plots leaving Chiffre's cash supply dangerously low. In order to keep his clients from murdering him he sets up a massive, high stakes poker game at the titular casino in Montenegro. M (Judi Dench) orders Bond to infiltrate the game and make sure Le Chiffre loses. To help out, Bond is joined by a skeptical accountant Vesper Lynd (Eva Green).

I'm not much of a card shark so the films poker scenes are all Greek to me, but there is a local agent named Mathis (Giancarlo Giannini) who exists to explain such things to us. But even then, the poker would probably get really tiresome if it weren't peppered with violent attempts on Bond's life and intrigue as to whether Bond is a sufficiently skilled gambler to defeat Le Chiffre. Also the Casino sequence is a fairly brief. Just as we think the film is over, there is a pretty massive shift and the film re-centers on Bond and Vesper's relationship as they float about Venice leading to the most effective tragic moment in the entire series.

By 2006, the public was still getting used to the idea of the reboot, and while the buzzword has gotten a bit tiresome in the intervening years, it still holds power for skilful filmmakers. Its fun to see Bond get his Double O number, acquire his first Aston Martin DB5, drink his first martini, etc. It was fun for me in '06 when it was my first Bond film, and it's fun in '12 after marathoning the entire series. In lesser hands all of these moments would play as distracting fan service, but director Martin Campbell earns the vast majority of them.

It helps that we've never seen a James Bond quite like Daniel Craig. The other actors were playing fantasies, Craig play's a person, more specifically he play's the Bond of the novels. The Bond of the novels is ultimately a very fragile man and Craig latches on to that aspect. From the fragility comes the paranoia and the coldness and the suave front. "The armor" as Vesper calls it. Timothy Dalton got close in the 80's, but Craig is the man who finally brings Fleming's Bond to the screen. 

The film really puts this more fragile Bond through the ringer. The action in this film would be good on it's own (every scene is excellently constructed and executed), but is heightened by the knowledge that Bond might not be able to hold it together. If the last few films felt overly cartoonish, this one goes the other way. Bond is a violent man in a violent world and the film doesn't apologize for it. In the 2000's action films seemed to become more and more sanitized. The ability to digitally darken blood to a less visceral brown seems to have made the PG-13 rating more restrictive, it's refreshing to see Royale going the other way with it. It's a bit shocking that the film's famous torture sequence snuck past the MPAA in any form considering it's conception.

If we've never met a Bond like Craig, we've certainly never seen a Bond girl quite like Vesper Lynd. We've seen similar ones, there's a tragic angle that mirrors On Her Majesty's Secret Service, but the difference here is that the film treats Vesper like a real person. Bond and Vesper don't fall in love via convenient musical montages, but by actually talking to each other and developing a relationship that we can believe and invest in. It also helps that Eva Green is a hell of an actress who pull off even the cheesiest lines of dialogue.

The film is pretty true to the novel. There are plenty of superficial changes to update it (terrorists instead of Soviets, poker instead of baccarat). The first hour of the film is new material to compensate for the relative shortness of the novel (my audio version clocked in at 2 hours shorter than most of the books). Still, the film gets so much right from the book, I wonder if there's any reason to read the novel at all. Sure it contains copious amounts of information about gambling, but it also features more 50's sexism than you can shake a stick at. In the book, Bond doesn't much care for Vesper. Even after he falls in love with her, she's just a silly child to him. It doesn't help that book-Vesper is given to wild unexplained mood swings that give the impression that Fleming just doesn't know shit about women. The film is much better than the book, while we're at it, it's much better than the majority of the other Bond films. If you've never seen a Bond movie, this is definitely the place to start. I don't want to say that it's the best of the series as Skyfall has been getting such excellent advance notices, but its certainly close.

Grade: A

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