Teaser for Gareth Edwards' Godzilla

Well, damn. Longtime readers (ha!) will know that I have something of an affinity for Godzilla movies, and the teaser trailer for Gareth Edwards' franchise reboot has made its way online. It's included below so give it a watch. My six word take on it is this: I am torn, but mostly excited.

On the one hand it just fucking nails the tone. The J Robert Oppenheimer voice-over with his famous "I am become death, destroyer of worlds" is absolutely perfect for more reasons than I can say in just this sentence, and really sells me on the idea that Edwards understands and respects the source material. It also points towards this movie at least doing something new with the whole "all giant monsters are a metaphor for 9/11 always" thing that's so pervasive these days, but that's another post for another day (or did I write it already?). I'll even buy the slightly-cheesy way they worked Gozilla's cry into the Oppenheimer speech, because they're using the iconic sound and it really works well.

On the other hand, that is not a man in suit.

I wasn't the biggest fan of Edwards' Monsters, but with a bigger budget we can at least be sure that this movie will nail the on-the-ground experience of the obligatory human characters. Judging from how dark they look to be going, it seems appropriate that they're focusing on the larger-than-life, beyond-imagination and control aspect of Godzilla. Really fits with the Oppenheimer quote, and actually makes me excited to see how human beings react to this incredible monster unleashed upon them.

Ok, I take it back, I'm almost entirely excited. Fuck! Godzilla man! #pleasedontfuckthisup

Edit: Now with a working video link.

The Fast and the Furious Franchise

This movie should not be as awesome as it is

Last week I found myself with some free time on my hands and so I decided to check out the Fast and the Furious movies. That might seem kinda random but I've been hearing good things about the most recent entries in the franchise since the last one, Fast Five, came out in 2011. On top of that, the hype leading up to Fast and Furious 6 (or whatever it's called) has reached critical mass, and so I gave in to the good word and watched each of the five existing films over the course of a few days.

The movies are gloriously stupid. The original The Fast and the Furious is a poor-imitation of Point Break, but what it lacks in creativity it makes up for with flashy car culture. Paul Walker's very existence might be a testament to how underappreciated Keanu Reeves really is, but Vin Diesel at least brings a sense of authenticity to the film. You just can't help but love a guy whose earnest personality shines through as much as Diesel's does, whatever he may lack in acting talent. The movie's fetishization of fast cars isn't really my thing but it's at least well executed, as are the (often anime-inspired) car races/chases. None of them really wowed me but that's partially because the film's real focus is the character dynamics -- admittedly an odd choice given the cast, but somehow it works.

The franchise takes a bit of a wrong turn with its first sequel, 2 Fast 2 Furious. It's easily the worst of the bunch, as it loses Diesel and focuses on the much less likeable Walker, and tries to make up for the net loss in charisma with Tyrese Gibson, Eva Mendes, and Cole Hauser. Spoiler warning: that attempt fails. Gibson is an awkward mess of one-liners, Mendes' role and performance could easily have been fulfilled just as well by a cardboard cutout, and Hauser seems like he's only in the movie because he lost a bet. The cast is a void of personality and they're given very little to work with. I actually felt sorry for Gibson when he had to utter the despicable phrase, "It's a ho-asis in here," with the script foolishly over-compensating for the film's deficiencies by laying on the machismo so thick it's self-defeating, not to mention sexist. What's worse, the movie even fails to deliver compelling driving sequences. In trying to up-the-ante from the (relatively) grounded races in the original, 2 Fast 2 Furious relies too heavily on special effects sequences in which simulated motion blur and trails of light convey tension through the illusion of velocity. The movie lacks interesting characters to drive the plot forward and fails to live up to its car-festishization heritage by making the classic too-much-SFX mistake in an attempt to top its predecessor. The entire thing feels perfunctory and aimless, and ends up being entirely pointless. The only bit of 2 Fast 2 Furious worth remembering comes right at the end, when Walker jumps a car onto a moving boat and Gibson almost breaks the fourth wall by pointing out that "This is some real Dukes of Hazzard shit!" It's the only time the movie really seems to get how stupid it is, which is precisely the strength of some later entries in the series.

Next up is The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, a significant departure that singlehandedly resuscitated an otherwise dead franchise. It's easy to see why this gem saved the series given that it embraces the things that made the original Fast and the Furious great (compelling character dynamics, ostentatious car culture, and great driving action that's heavily inspired by anime) while avoiding all the pitfalls that ruined 2 Fast 2 Furious (over-focus on special effects, too much reliance on the previous films, and Paul Walker). Really, the status of this movie as a Fast and the Furious movie is something of a misnomer, as (until the final epilogue moment) the only tie between Tokyo Drift and its namesake is the focus on car racing culture. The movie stands on its own with an entirely new cast of characters playing out the classic fish-out-of-water story archetype. It's a movie that effectively tells a familiar tale, has a good time in doing so, and love for fast, flashy cars. In fact, Tokyo Drift actually features the best car scenes of the entire franchise by far, as the reorientation to Japan comes with a new and inherently more cinematic racing style: drifting. The driving sequences are less about raw speed and more about tight turns, isolated moments of tension that are much easier to frame in a camera shot, and this allows the film to revel in actual footage of talented car racing and stunts as opposed to hyper-stylized special effects sequences. It's a welcome change that makes the movie a worthwhile celebration of car racing. Also, the guest star appearance of Sonny Chiba late in the film is a great move that helps contextualize and raise the stakes for the very competent cast of otherwise unknown actors (I'm pretending Bow Wow is just another actor because it's easier to appreciate his role if you ignore his star "power").

The fourth entry in the series, Fast & Furious, is a fun if forgettable return to the franchise's roots. Paul Walker and Vin Diesel are back, as are most of the original cast, and once again there's a plot about going undercover to bring down a criminal enterprise. It's all serviceable but definitely not compelling in its own right, and seems more transparently than it should like an excuse to get Walker and Diesel back into fast cars. There's just not a lot of reason for the viewer to care beyond the presence of those two actors, as Fast & Furious intentionally makes it difficult to relate to their motivations: there's a weak shell game with the villain late in the film that eliminates the possibility of a proper antagonist; more crucially, Michelle Rodriguez's death provides Diesel's motivation but the event occurs off camera at some undefined point after the opening set-piece, and so we're asked to understand his actions simply based on information told to us and a relationship established in a different movie. It's a bit of a mess, but Fast & Furious at least builds on the previous entries to deliver compelling driving sequences. Keeping in mind the strengths of Tokyo Drift, the driving in Fast & Furious is more about practical than special effects, and it makes up for a less cinematic racing style with more stunts and crashes. It's a somewhat effective strategy, but in attempting to remain grounded in reality the movie suffers from "cars driving in a straight line" syndrome.

Finally, there's Fast Five. Hot damn. This movie transforms the franchise into a strange and incredible cross between Ocean's Eleven, The Bourne Identity, and The Fugitive. There's even a little Clear and Present Danger thrown in at one point. All the while the movie retains the Fast and Furious franchise's telltale focus on driving action, and wisely remains grounded in practical-based effects work -- but those scenes are now centred on utterly insane, high-concept set-pieces that are occasionally accented with digital effects work. Director Justin Lin manages to avoid all of the problems with the earlier movies and take their best elements and crank em up to 11. In the first twenty minutes we're given two insane action sequences (including crashing a truck into a moving train!) and two great antagonists: Joaquin de Almeida is always a fantastic villain, and Dwayne Johnson serves as a great source of tension and counterpoint to Vin Diesel. From there the cast of earlier Fast films are reassembled into a crack team for the ultimate heist. It's an absurd but fun plot that does the trick, conveniently setting up the most ludicrous driving sequence in the franchise to-date. All the while the film takes loving, fourth-wall-breaking pot-shots at itself, with Walker and Diesel carelessly winning an obligatory street race off-camera (because as if they could possibly lose at this point) and Johnson instructing his men not to "ever, ever" let the protagonists get into cars. The best is definitely when Sung Kang's Han acknowledges the franchise's irreverent approach to chronology, saying they'll get to Tokyo "eventually" as a nod to the fact that (spoiler alert) he dies in Tokyo Drift, the last entry in the Fast and the Furious timeline. The whole thing is silly, fun, and gracefully executed, making Fast Five a much better movie than I ever expected.

Given how much I obviously enjoyed Fast Five, I'll be curious to see where the franchise goes with Fast and Furious 6. Apparently they're bringing characters back from the dead now, which they've sort of done before with Han albeit not in-cannon. On top of that the villain seems to be a stand in for Heath Ledger's Joker, stating in the trailer that "the code [Diesel et al] live by makes [them] predictable," which is almost word for word what the Joker told Batman in the iconic interrogation scene in The Dark Knight. I'll be curious to see how that move plays out, as Skyfall pulled off the same thing and that movie took itself way more seriously than I expect Fast and Furious 6 will. If nothing else, this next entry in the Fast and Furious franchise will provide one more opportunity to bring the cast together for more silliness and car-based mayhem.

Skip to 1:26 for the villain's Joker-esque line about the heroes' "code"

I really didn't expect to end up liking the Fast and Furious movies. I figured they'd be stupid and a waste of time, and in fairness I was right to a certain extent. 2 Fast 2 Furious is a frankly terrible movie, Fast & Furious is difficult to care about despite enjoying other entries in the series, and I'd rather watch Point Break than the original The Fast and the Furious any day. But that said, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift is a great movie, full stop, and Fast Five is way more self-aware and fun than it has any business being. If Justin Lin can bring the kind of inspiration he's brought to the franchise two out of three times with Fast and Furious 6 then we could all be in for a real treat in a couple of weeks. A real stupid, loud, explosive, and flashy treat.

So I guess the Fast and the Furious franchise gets the elusive/über-pretentious "Max Rambles Stamp of Approval." Who'd have seen that one coming?

Belated Media: Hollywood Horror & Societal Scares

I'm up-to-my-eyes in deadlines right now and thus without enough time to really post anything of substance, but in one of my post-work veg-out sessions I've come across a fantastic video that I just have to share with you all. It's from Belated Media, who I've posted about before, and covers how horror movies discuss societal concerns through...

Wait! Wait! Don't go!

Seriously, even if you're not a fan -- hell, especially if you're not a fan -- of horror movies, I urge you to check out this video. It answers the "I don't get what people see in those movies" question brilliant, with the absolute least amount of gore necessary and precisely zero actual scares. Seriously, there are none of the things you (think you) don't like about horror movies in this video. It covers everything from the original War of the Worlds to the Saw movies, with stops along the way for Night of the Living Dead, Halloween, Scream, and others. It's an incredible canvassing of the genre that should not be missed, either by horror fans (though admittedly there's not much new here for you) or people who just don't get what all the fuss is about (yet).

Without further ado, check it out. After all, what better way to procrastinate than to learn something cool? *I'm looking at you fellow students in exams*

Zero Dark Thirty

My first thought coming out of Zero Dark Thirty was “Kathryn Bigelow is not a subtle filmmaker.” The film ends with a close-up of star Jessica Chastain, just moments after successfully completing her decade-long hunt for Osama bin Laden (spoilers?). In this final shot she breaks down in tears as a nameless military pilot asks her “Where do you want to go?”

The last line felt like a proverbial hammer, tactlessly beating the film’s message into me so that I didn’t miss the point. “Clearly this movie is undermining the hunt for bin Laden,” I thought, “and with this final bit of dialogue it literally begs the question ‘Was the victory worth it?’” In finding the dreaded terrorist the American characters lowered themselves to disturbing moral lows, and with this final line Bigelow was asking the audience, “What now? What does one do with the victory that cost them so much?”      

However, in talking to other viewers and reading reviews (like that of the infamously contrarian Armond White) I realized how politically motivated my reading was. Far from the biting critique I saw the film to be, I heard voices extolling the film’s detailed account of all the effort involved in the search for bin Laden. Intelligent people argued with me about whether the hunt was necessary, and explained all the good done in the world by the example made of bin Laden. Clearly I had missed something if people with eyes could get that kind of message out of Zero Dark Thirty, and so I struggled to find my stance on the film.

Zero Dark Thirty opens with a harrowing presentation of the September 11 attacks, as 9-1-1 call recordings are played over a black screen. The audience is not shown a single moment of the historic day, but we’re allowed to listen to it and remember the horror and confusion. It’s an effective, clever, and respectful way to convey the emotion and memory of 9/11, and it starts the movie off on a high note.

However, other depictions of attacks later in the film begin to problematize the opening’s artfulness. Although 9/11 was beyond portrayal, Zero Dark Thirty has no problem showing us a shooting in Saudi Arabia, or the bombing of a Marriot in Islamabad from 2008. There’s also a depiction of the London bus bombing from 2005, though the actual explosion is respectfully cheaply hidden behind a bush at the last moment.

The contrast between the depictions of 9/11 and every other instance of terrorism in Zero Dark Thirty is palpable and troubling. Further, the film’s journalistic approach to history makes the artful opening scene seem increasingly out of place as the movie proceeds. Why the special treatment for 9/11? What makes that attack stand out among the rest? Is it a difference of importance or scope? Do the victims of that attack feel pain more acutely than those of the others? Is the movie saying that 9/11 is more important because it happened to America(ns)?

While it might be easy to write off Zero Dark Thirty with a politicized answering of these kinds of questions (indeed, I almost did), to do so would sell it short. There’s no overtly pro-American agenda at work here, as any attempt to insert one would be undercut by elements like the depiction of American soldiers shooting down parents in front of their children. So why the difference in treatment between 9/11 and other attacks?

This question is (perhaps frustratingly but also brilliantly) best answered with another question: whose perspective is the film portraying? The answer is Americans, but not for the reasons you might think. Zero Dark Thirty is not a celebratory film, but nevertheless it tells its story from a distinctly American perspective.

This point is underscored by the film’s use of its protagonist and narrative focal point, Chastain’s enigmatic “Maya.” Although it remains unclear whether she represents an amalgam of real CIA agents or one specific person, by all accounts her character is given an intentionally vague background so as to protect the identities of the people who brought down bin Laden. However, the film takes advantage of this necessary lack of characterization by using Maya’s indistinctiveness as a narrative conceit. All protective purposes aside, Maya’s lack of definition is expertly used as a signal of both Zero Dark Thirty’s audience and its subject: Maya is specifically characterized to represent any — and thereby all — Americans as the hunters of Osama bin Laden and those who suffer its tolls upon them.

What do we know of Maya? That she's smart, relentless, and increasingly dedicated to the cause; that she has nothing in her life besides her job, no social life or family to speak of; that she lost something in 9/11 attacks; that she may or may not feel that she’s been spiritually chosen for her purpose. All of these qualities make her simultaneously anonymous and analogous to huge swathes of Americans. Perhaps most tellingly, we learn late in the movie that she was chosen for her job right out of high school and has, in her own words, never done anything else. Maya’s entire existence (barring her formative years) is contained within Zero Dark Thirty: we see everything she’s ever done, and so in a very real sense she is the hunt for Osama bin Laden, or at least America’s experience of it. Through her, the movie is both aimed at and about America and its hunt for bin Laden.

With this direction in mind, consider Zero Dark Thirty’s matter-of-fact portrayal of the decade-long manhunt. This approach is a far cry from “Mission Accomplished”-type political announcements and dancing-in-the-streets-in-font-of-the-White-House reverie that the history has inspired in the past. Rather this is a film that depicts the bare facts almost entirely without comment. It forces its audience to watch Americans waterboard, beat, confine, and kill in the course of that country's search a single old man.

Finally, in an incredible climactic sequence, Zero Dark Thirty presents a moment-by-moment account of the raid on bin Laden’s compound. The scene is one of the only times in the entire film when Maya is not the central focus, as the raid instead plays out from the perspective of the Navy Seals team that carried it out. Although the depiction remains journalistically faithful to the facts, it’s notable that at no point does the perspective shift to that of the residents of the compound, for whom the event must have seemed more horrific than action-oriented. This inflection is yet one more nod to the fact that Zero Dark Thirty presents history to the audience from an American perspective, and stays true to that sense of the facts at all times.

The closing shot of Maya crying against the hanging question, “Where do you want to go?” forces the audience to consider what they feel about everything they’ve just seen. The film presents its story as it was lived and perceived by America, and asks the audience as witness: was it worth it? Where does one go now/from here?

How you answer that question will be informed by your politics, and indeed my initial response to the film was dominated by mine. I still think that the notion that bin Laden’s assassination was a significant victory for America demonstrates an adolescent ignorance that verges on offensively arrogant, but then that statement is political rather than critical of Zero Dark Thirty. A contrary perspective could equally make the same assertion about my take on the film, and that is precisely its brilliance: Zero Dark Thirty uses a largely (but, again, notably not completely) journalistic approach to America's hunt for Osama bin Laden to craft a narrative that demands critical reflection on politics and history but doesn’t provide any answers. The way the question is posed might be a little clumsy, but the range of possible answers necessitates its asking. It’s quintessentially the opposite of the Spielberg-ian, beat-you-over-the-head-with-meaning approach to filmmaking that I initially perceived.

Kathryn Bigelow is not an overly subtle filmmaker, but perhaps she’s just subtle enough. Brave enough to have a voice (because make no mistake: an uncelebratory American take on the killing of bin Laden this soon after the fact is a distinct voice) but subtle enough to leave room for others. The film is a nuanced portrayal of history that accords to a distinct perception of it without asserting that perspective as the end of the conversation. It in fact specifically calls for debate as to whether that depiction is justified on its face, not to mention once other perspectives are considered. In that sense, Zero Dark Thirty is a true product of its time: a film that evidences contemporary political debate without purporting to the benefit of hindsight.

Has the true meaning of the ending to The Thing been revealed?

A post went up on io9 today about a reddit user who may have revealed the meaning of the ending of John Carpenter's classic The Thing. If you haven't seen the movie then you should probably reevaluate your choices in life, or at least stop reading now because I'm going to be spoiling its awesome ending. Seriously though, you haven't seen The Thing? Come on, you can do better than that.

If you're still reading then I'm assuming you've seen The Thing and recall how at the end Kurt Russell and Keith David are left sipping whiskey and contemplating their assured demise, but it's unclear whether both of them are still human or not. The film ends on a totally awesome and characteristically ambiguous note with the audience left wondering, "Was one of them the thing at the end?" It's the perfect ending for a perfect movie (you can expect a post on this at some point), and one that has resonated with viewers since the film was released in 1982.

UNTIL NOW (maybe) [probably not]

reddit user kleinbl00 posted a comment on a discussion of The Thing describing a conversation with a friend of his about the movie. His friend claims to have worked for and talked to John Carpenter about The Thing, and well... Just check this out:

A friend of mine, back when he was an assistant, spent a great deal of time with John Carpenter doing interviews and the like for video games and comic projects. I was discussing my conversation with Larry Turman with this friend and he said 

"You know, I asked John Carpenter about The Thing." 

"Oh yeah? What did he say?" I asked. 

"He said he never understood where all the confusion came from. The last frame of The Thing is Kurt Russel and Keith David staring each other down, harshly backlit. It's completely, glaringly obvious that Kurt Russel is breathing and Keith David is not." 

I looked at my friend for a minute, soaking it in. Straight from the horse's mouth. 

"That's a pretty subtle cue to expect the audience to absorb having seen severed heads grow spider legs and run around," I said. 

"That's the genius of The Thing," my friend said, and we moved on to other subjects.

Holy. Freaking. Hannah.

Admittedly it's totally a "friend of a friend of mine"-type unsubstantiated anecdote that could be totally fabricated, but even then it'd still be a really cool take. It just makes me want to go back and watch The Thing again and do a frame-by-frame when I get to the final scene. It's also way too cool a story for me not to have shared here.

(reddit via io9)

Where's My Django Unchained Review? AKA My Django Unchained Review

I have failed you, dear reader. It's been weeks since Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained came out and yet there's been nary a word from MaxRambles about it. Tarantino's last flick, Inglourious Basterds, stands as one of my favourite movies of all time, and I previously said that Django was one of my most anticipated films of the year, so what gives? Where's the bloody review?

Believe me, it's not for lack of trying that I've failed to write a review. I've seen Django twice since it came out, and on no less than three occasions I've started to write a review of it for this blog. Hell, I even re-watched Wild Wild West to try to give myself a comparative angle (pro-tip: don't re-watch Wild Wild West, it's far worse than you remember and not in a fun way). But each time I end up second-guessing myself and ultimately unsatisfied with what come out.

The truth is that the reason I can't seem to write a Wild Wild West Django Unchained review is that I just didn't care enough about the movie to have much worth saying about it. I didn't like it anywhere near as much as Inglourious Basterds, nor did I find Django comparably intelligent and nuanced, but I didn't hate the movie either. The title of my review was going to be "Django Unchained: More Kill Bill Volume 1 than Inglourious Basterds 2," and to be honest that kind of says it all. The movie had style and was entertaining and interesting, but beyond that I just didn't feel there was much there. Certainly Django had Tarantino's characteristic layering of film history and references, but on its own that's not enough to elevate the movie from good to great. My expectations undoubtedly had a lot to do with that perception, but regardless I just didn't think Django had as much going for it as I hoped it would/Tarantino is capable of.

To quickly give credit where credit is due, Django was quite well executed. The performances were all quite effective, particularly those of Leonardo DiCaprio and Christoph Waltz (whose callbacks to his role in Basterds stand as my favourite part of Django). The soundtrack was entertaining, and John Legend's "Who Did That to You" has permanently entered my iTunes collection (listen to it on the YouTube embed above). I also found the movie a lot funnier than I had expected, and most of it worked quite well (though not all *glares at the overly long lynch mob masks discussion*).

But execution can only do so much in the face of a poor script, and while I haven't read the actual script I can say that the written words behind what ultimately ended up of film were severely lacking. More than any of Tarantino's other films, Django suffered from scenes that went on too long, pointless tangents, and (most surprisingly) boring dialogue. The film is almost completely barren of Tarantino's hallmark flare for writing, and with a few exceptions all of the speeches were terse and uninteresting. Those that did rise above the rest were almost exclusively performed by DiCaprio and Waltz, and there's a part of me that attributes it more to their acting abilities than the writing.

I have other problems with the movie but I'm getting dangerously close to the problem I mentioned above with my previous attempts at writing a Django review. I think I've made my point that I both enjoyed it and didn't find it particularly memorable or noteworthy, and hence don't care enough to write about it beyond this post. The only other thing I'll say is that the passing of Sally Menke was felt quite strongly, and that might be the root of all Django's problems. What we saw onscreen was a mess, both in terms of the pieces that were chosen and how they were fit together, and Django worked in spite of this only because Tarantino is just that talented. I certainly hope he finds whatever his co-operation with Menke used to give him, because I for one would love to see him rise to the level of Inglourious Basterds once again. Maybe Django Unchained could have done so, but what the movie ultimately became falls well short of the high-water mark.

So that's generally my take, sound off below and let me know what you thought of it/that you think I'm crazy.

Reality Check: The Darker Sides of Skyfall

Spoiler Warning: This post contains significant spoilers for Skyfall. Please do yourself a favour and see the movie before you read any further to avoid being spoiled.

It's been a little while since my glowing review of Skyfall and I've had a bit more time to ruminate on the film. I stand by my claims that it's among the best Bond movies ever made as well as one of the best films of 2012. In fact I'd go so far as to say it's the most beautifully shot film of 2012 and worthy of praise on "Best Cinematography" lists for years to come. Roger Deakins truly outdid himself with Skyfall and movie lovers would do well to see it strictly for the camera work in the third act, with the rest of the legitimately awesome aspects of the film serving as mere silver-lining.

However, all that said, I do want to add to my review by recognizing some of Skyfall's flaws. None of these were issues that escaped me when I wrote my review, but in trying to avoid spoilers I necessarily had to eschew delving into many of them. Also I wanted that piece to convey my overall sense of satisfaction with the film, and nitpicking it to death wouldn't have helped me do so. Finally, the most damning critique I'm going to level against Skyfall was something that simply took some gestation time to really come together. It began with a sense of unease as the final scene of the film played out, and has evolved to a serious concern that exists at odds with my overall affection for the film.

I'm going to start with my more mundane criticisms of Skyfall, as I feel there are a lot of problems with the movie that don't really detract from what it's trying to do. For one thing the third act -- which I have repeatedly praised -- feels more than a little out of place. It completely disrupts the flow of the movie and more or less shelves a good proportion of the plot, never to be heard from again. What happened with the chaos Javier Bardem had unleashed on western covert operatives, and specifically the British government? Are we to believe that his plan included letting MI6 capture all of his actual computer records/servers such that he had no additional copies of the list of undercover agent identities? All of that is secondary to Skyfall's focus on thematic structure, but the fact that the film left those holes open speaks ill of its script. It feels like the movie expects us to forgive it for this, either because it's a James Bond movie or because the third act so effectively forefronts the themes as plot, and while all that's true it still feels like the whole thing could have been tightened up a bit.

Specifically focusing on the third act, it more than just disrupts the plot, rather it's a whole other freakin' movie. Where everything before they head to Scotland is distinctly Bond, the sequence at Skyfall feels like the bastard child of Home Alone and the last scene in Unforgiven played in reverse. It's just plain weird to try to watch James Bond make lightbulb-bombs and load shotgun shells into the floorboards, but that doesn't mean it isn't awesome all the while. I absolutely loved the whole sequence; one friend put it perfectly when they said "This is what happens when you let Sam Mendes make a Bond movie," and it's true that everything in Scotland feel like something straight out of Road to Perdition. It's awesome but it felt distinctly out of place in the context of everything that precedes it. Obviously I wasn't bothered, but I think it's a legitimate concern to wish they had tightened up the script to feel more cohesive and consistent. Again this is an issue with Skyfall's script as opposed to its execution, and I feel like the way the whole movie played out on screen more than made up for such deficiencies.

On the other side of that spectrum we have Albert Finney's character, who stands out like a sore thumb in terms of Skyfall's execution. If that old scotsman wasn't meant to be played by Sean Connery then I have no business writing film criticism. Even during my first viewing I could just feel that the character was a stand-in for Connery as the physical embodiment of the old Bond, and that idea is frankly awesome. If the casting had worked out it would have made the whole Skyfall sequence feel so perfect and thematically in tune, although I think they did a damn good job of it despite the obvious lack of the original James Bond. Part of me did wish they'd found a way to handle it better though, at the very least to make up for the casting failure. I never, never want to see Roger Moore again (on film or otherwise) but even he could have made the character work better. As it was Finney was totally competent but uncomfortably out of place in a role that he was clearly not meant to play.

Moving away from criticisms of the third act, I've heard a lot of comparisons between Skyfall and the Dark Knight. I can see why people would compare the two as the plot similarities are undeniable. Bardem's villain also has extremely similar objectives, and on a superficial level he even has a twisted Joker-smile of sorts. In fact I was almost taken out of the movie when I realized that the big twist in Bardem's plan was exactly the same as Joker's in The Dark Knight. It's a testament to Skyfall's overall quality that this aping of The Dark Knight's plot didn't completely derail the movie; between Bardem's cool creepiness, the third act standoff, all the Bond franchise flourishes, as well as Deakins' aforementioned superb cinematography, Skyfall manages to carve out its own identity and even surpasses The Dark Knight in certain ways. Both are great movies, but the similarities are hard to ignore and do take away from Skyfall a bit.

*Sigh* And now it's time to get to my real problem with Skyfall, the big misogynist elephant in the corner that has slowly been sapping my enthusiasm about the latest Bond movie. I felt it in the theatre as I watched Bond walk through the leather door and up to the desk of a male M, the first time I'd seen such a sight in a new Bond movie. At the time I just shrugged it off, but upon further reflection and after a number of discussions with friends I feel it's impossible to ignore the sense that Skyfall feels like a major step backwards in terms of its sexual politics, even for a Bond movie. But lets work through that statement by inspecting each of the three main female characters in the movie: Sévérine, Eve, and Judi Dench's M.

First off, lets address the seriously problematic character of Sévérine. You probably know her better as "that hot asian chick Bond bangs," since she's barely given anything resembling a character before being carelessly executed without even a moment of reflection. In fact, shy of her physical characteristics, the closest thing we get to a characterization of her is that she's afraid and a (possibly former) sex slave. I don't know if the filmmakers threw in that last reference to make us sympathize with her or to hint at their ultimate treatment of the character, but pretty much her only roles in the film are to movie the plot forward and get naked. It can't be stressed enough that Bond's ultra-creepy sneak-up-on-her-in-the-shower-for-surprise-sex move is not acceptable, and is hopefully among the traditional vestiges of the past that are thematically shrugged-off over the course of Skyfall. The problem is that there's nothing to justify such a reading within the film, and in fact it seems like the opposite is true. Bond's "return-to-form" moment comes after Bardem executes Sévérine, a move which poises her as an object.tool of his evolution/development at the script level. There is a potential argument that Bond couldn't express remorse while under fire, and that in fact his transformation back into a competent agent comes as a result of Sévérine's death impacting him severely and thereby telegraphing his need to "be Bond" again. However I don't think there's much justification for this in Skyfall, and on the contrary it does seem like the movie uses her as a traditional Bond girl/narrative device/sex slave. So that sucks, to start with.

Now lets consider Naomie Harris' "Eve," AKA Moneypenny. I love Harris in everything she does, and I both saw the Moneypenny reveal coming a mile away and loved the fact that they chose such a competent actor for the role. But that said, the mind reels at the sexual political implications of her turn from field agent to secretary. As Eve she initially seemed like a wonderful breath of a fresh air, a female agent at Bond's level who's totally fucking awesome to boot. But then her character is systematically undermined as an incompetent weakling over the course of the film, well-intentioned but better off as eye-candy behind a desk. The film went out of its way to make a callback to Casino Royale with the "don't touch your ear" show of incompetence, and the only purpose of this in Skyfall is to demonstrate how bad Eve is at being a field agent compared to Bond. On top of that there's the whole "she accidentally shoots England's best secret agent" thing. Clearly the filmmakers did not want us to have a lot of faith in her competence, for the exact purpose of making it seem rationale and acceptable that she doesn't want to be a field agent anymore. Of course that makes "common" sense, some people (i.e. women) just aren't suited for it, right James? I suppose all of this could be seen as conjecture, a feminist-oriented over reading of a Bond film to try to find a sexist undertone that isn't really there. Only they follow up that development with the reveal that she's taking a desk job as M's secretary. For fucking real? They literally chain her to a traditional gender role in a movie that's explicitly about updating the past to make it suited for and relevant in the present day. As I said, the mind reels at the implications, and it's a serious knock against the movie that it re-institutes the traditional gender dynamics that the Bond franchise has long been (rightly) critiqued for.

And that's without even beginning to touch upon the whole M thing.

I'll start by saying that Judi Dench is in characteristically badass form in Skyfall. There's nothing wrong with her or her character in any way that I've noticed/care to consider, and my only regret it that she's exited the franchise. Partly that's because I'm going to miss her as she's an absolute pleasure to watch onscreen, but it's also because I'm not totally comfortable with going back to a male M. As I mentioned in my initial review, Goldeneye was my introduction to the Bond franchise and so my knowledge of earlier Bond films/tropes has come via films that have always seemed (to me) like relics of the past. This includes the positively rampant misogyny of earlier Bond films, and part and parcel with that trend was the institutional structure of MI6 with Moneypenny as the sole female and secretary for Bernard Lee's male M [Aside: implicit in this entire argument is the fact that I don't believe for a second the contemporary Bond films have completely shed their misogynist roots. Also, I would love to see a Bond film that passed the Bechdel test, and if I've somehow missed that one already exists please let me know].

Skyfall presents the first time I've seen a male M in a new movie, and from that perspective the sight of Bond walking through the leather door into Ralph Fiennes' office felt like a step back into the literal and figurative past. I was (and continued to be) extremely conflicted about it: on the one hand I ate up the way the franchise's classic elements were re-instituted in Skyfall's final scene, bringing back the classic Bond in a viscerally satisfying way; on the other hand it felt like those elements brought back the old, unpleasant gender dynamic implications they always had. I'm not sure if this was more a result of how the movie brought back Moneypenny and a male M as much as it might be inherent in those concepts, but either way the end of Skyfall felt both like a return to form and a regression to problematic politics. I'll be curious to see how future Bond movies handle the reintroduced elements, as I could easily see Moneypenny being used less as a mere secretary and more as a sort of body guard, but that doesn't take away from the reduction of her role to one distinctively less than Bond and M as the more important men of MI6. As compared to Judi Dench's positively badass introduction in Goldeneye, which felt every bit like a defiant rejection of what had come before (particularly the "your predecessor kept some Cognac" exchange), Skyfall feels like reestablishment of the old guard. Finnes character and performance don't themselves do anything to add to this, but the cumulative impact of him replacing Dench after she's killed off, in addition to how Skyfall puts Moneypenny in the corner behind the desk, makes the film seem like a major step backwards in how the franchise treats women. It's even more surprising that Skyfall does this so potently given that it's a Bond movie, a designation that on its face seems synonymous with patriarchal gender hierarchies on film.

In updating the franchise for the modern day, Skyfall somehow manages to make it seem more out of place than ever in terms of its sexual politics. That's a notably unfortunate achievement that shouldn't be ignored in the face of how successful Skyfall nevertheless is as a film.

Anyway, that's my two cents on the problems with the film. I maintain that it's an incredible movie that stands among the best of 2012, and more than that one of the most beautiful movies I've ever seen. Period. I just wish it had done all that while maintaining a tighter script and (more fundamentally) without appearing to reinstitute the traditional gender dynamics that the Bond series seemed to have grown beyond (or at least partially ameliorated) during what we can unfortunately now refer to in the past tense as "the Dench years." Hopefully the next one will be able to at least match Skyfall and also gain back some ground on the progressive gender portrayal spectrum. All we know for sure is that "James Bond will return."

Skyfall: Goldeneye Redux

I'm going to start this review off by dating myself in saying that my first experience of the James Bond franchise was Martin Campbell's 1995 classic Goldeneye. As the first Bond film after the fall of the USSR, Goldeneye was explicitly about whether or not the Cold War era icon could exist in a post-Soviet world. It was a brilliantly layered piece of meta-cinema that enamoured me with both the Bond franchise and film generally. It's no surprise then that I so thoroughly enjoyed Skyfall, as in many ways it's as near a remake of Goldeneye as we're likely to see on screen.

Skyfall is once again a meta-narrative about James Bond's continued relevance in the modern world. Just as Campbell's Goldeneye did in 1995, Skyfall reiterates that Bond may be an old hand but he's definitely not ready to be retired. Curiously, the 2006 reboot of the Bond franchise, Casino Royale, was also a movie that reasserted the franchise's ability to entertain after The Bourne Identity shook up the spy genre in 2002. That makes (count em) three Bond movies in the last two decades that are broadly about the concept of whether or not James Bond is still a fertile source of storytelling. I'd also go so far as to say that the three films in question are not only the best the franchise has had to offer since the fall of the Berlin wall, but moreover among the best Bond movies ever made. Maybe it says something about the Bond franchise that its best contemporary work is repeatedly its continued assertion of its own relevance. But whatever the answer to that question, it does nothing to detract from the quality of Skyfall.

Whereas Goldeneye examined whether or not Bond could exist after the Cold War (answer: yes) and Casino Royale asked whether Bond could keep up with Jason Bourne (answer: also yes), Skyfall explores whether or not Bond today is -- or can be -- the same old Bond he's always been. 50 years on and the spy who loved me is getting a bit introspective, go figure. In any case, the answer is most definitively yes, as Skyfall explicitly asserts that 007 has still got it, is still needed, and is more like his old self than ever. In some ways this movie bring the franchise full circle since the Casino Royale reboot, and while I could explain or substantiate that claim to do so would be spoiling much of the fun that Skyfall has in store. The film is littered with both commentary on and vestiges of Bond's old fashioned ways, and that's a huge part of its meta-cinematic appeal. The best description I've heard of Skyfall was Drew McWeeny saying it's a fitting tribute to where the franchise has come from, and also a sign of where and how it will move forward. It's cryptic, it's accurate, and fans should see the movie to understand what it means.

If I have one complaint of Skyfall it's that it frankly wasn't very clever. For a film so littered with meta-cinematic references, nods to a rich franchise history, and a villain that explicitly calls for intelligence over brutish violence, Skyfall is fairly predictable and by the book. Maybe that's because of its role as the series' 50th anniversary and semi-reboot (although it'd be more accurate to call it a re-grounding), but I never found myself surprised by the movie. It's very traditional in how its three acts function and are clearly delineated, and just about every standout object or quip has an obvious Chekhovian callback in store. The result is that nothing in Skyfall is surprising, but likewise nothing feels unnatural or forced. Predictable though it may be, the film is expertly crafted in terms of its tight script and effective (and appropriately cheeky) handling of 50 years worth of franchise lore. Given what it's trying to do I suppose it makes sense that Skyfall doesn't so much try to reinvent the wheel as much as reintroduce and refine it. Shocking twists or not, the movie is extremely effective in what it sets out to do, and though you'll see the end setup coming a mile away you'll enjoy the journey there all the same.

It also can't be said strongly enough that Skyfall is a stunningly beautiful film. I saw it on a regular sized screen and as I write this sentence I'm kicking myself for not making the effort to see it in IMAX. Shot in digital by Roger Deakins, Skyfall is the obvious choice for the Best Cinematography Oscar. I was constantly reminded of Conrad L. Hall's legendary work on Road to Perdition, and the obvious takeaway is that director Sam Mendes has both an incredible aesthetic sensibility and a great working relationship with his directors of photography. Numerous shots straight up took my breath away -- particularly those in the third act -- and they stand out as strong arguments in favour of digital film as a medium. I've never seen a traditionally shot film capture shadows, fog, and refracted light the way they are in Skyfall, and in that sense it's a defiant statement about the unique potentials of modern filmmaking. The superb cinematography reflects the film's themes and narrative exploration of contemporary refinements on traditional concepts, and the interplay and coherency of these various aspects of Skyfall are what make it among the best Bond films ever made.

Just as Goldeneye did after the Cold War ended, Skyfall reinvigorates the classic Bond formula and shows that 50 years on the old dog still has a few tricks up his sleeve. The film is a reverent ode to franchise canon that makes the whole shtick feel as fresh and relevant as it ever has. Beyond that though, Skyfall is a fun, exciting, breathtakingly beautiful movie that stands out as one of the best films of 2012. Don’t miss it, and if at all possible make sure to see it in IMAX.