“Any questions?”

Knight’s in Black Battin’.

A young Batman, in his second year of fighting crime, feels futility mounting in his quest to rid Gotham of corruption. When he is enlisted to help Lieutenant Jim Gordon against a terrorist known as The Riddler who is killing politicians, he begins to question how high up the corruption goes, and is confronted with his own dead father’s morally ambiguous ties to the very sociopaths he pursues.

THE BATMAN is a nitrous fueled noir detective thriller, brimming with fear and darkness and hubris and heroism, sweeping across gutshock action and granular detective work with equal verve. The Batman not yet a legend, more a vicious rumor – emphasis on vicious; the police tolerating him as an eccentric vigilante, useful to their Lieutenant for his off-the-book skills. Batman keeps a journal titled “Year Two” – a nod to the legendary 1987 Frank Miller origin story Batman: Year One (yet this movie has little to do with Year One and nothing to do with the 1987 Mike Barr/Todd McFarlane comic, Batman: Year Two).

An epic character study and crime drama, with such sweep and nuance, it seems almost a crime to just focus on: THE BATMAN Top 5 Bottom 5.

B4 – THE DUMBO FOLLOWERS: NO MORE LEADERS
THE BATMAN has captured real world cultism at its worst. So why is this in the Bottom 5? Because it exists in the real world, and this film is coloring too close to the dumbo donald diarrhea of rightwing nutjobs. When the Riddler gun-nut cultist mimics Batman, “I’m Vengeance!” there’s a terrifying message here – at first, it seems like that trope of Hero and Villain being two sides of the same coin, but it’s actually mimicking our reality, of those who are on the wrong side of history wholeheartedly believing they are right, because they follow a demagogue who tells them they are. Criminals calling themselves “lawful,” anti-choicers calling themselves “pro-choice” and xenophobes calling themselves “patriots.” Because their cult leader has made it passe to misrepresent yourself with lies. Only difference between dumbo and Riddler, is that Riddler was doing a noble thing regarded as a crime – ridding the world of lying politicians; whereas dumbo donald IS the crime.

B3 –  THE PENGUIN: NO MORE ACTORS
Now, understand this: Colin Farrell puts his heart and soul into the goombah character of Oz, aka The Penguin, under layers of doughy-guy makeup. He’s the muscle for the city’s crime boss, Carmine Falcone (played with effortless slime by John Turturro). It’s also excellent how they’ve made Oz the owner of a nightclub patronized by politicians as slimy as the crime boss – showing the relationship between the underworld and the people supposedly keeping us safe from it – hand-in-glove. But uh, why is Farrell made up to look like that? This is not Gary Oldman made up to look like a famous figure – this is a skinny, good-looking actor made to look doughy. But in a revisionist movie like this, there is no “standard” look for the Penguin – he could have looked like Colin Farrell. So the question becomes: if they wanted someone to look like that, why didn’t they get an actor who looked like that? Are there no more fucken actors?

B2 – ANDY SERKIS: NO ALFRED
Let’s get this straight: Andy Serkis is the master of mocap – can make you weep for a computer blip of his character; is therefore one of the premier actors of our generation. But he’s no Alfred. Also: Are there no more fucken actors?

B1 – CATWOMAN: NO NEED THE HERO
The worst thing about THE BATMAN: I’m frankly sick of seeing Catwoman turned into a hero. They did it with Halle Berry, they did it with Anne Hathaway and now they’re doing it here with Zoe Kravitz as Selina Kyle, a cat burglar who is never called Catwoman. She is given a suitably tragic backstory as to why she’s committing robberies, but how is her avocation any different to the street thug who robs a liquor store, also with a suitably tragic backstory? Matter of fact, the street thug would have to rob 1000 liquor stores and old woman’s purses to make what Selina makes on one haul. So who’s the bigger criminal? Oh, that’s right. She’s hot.

Reminds me of those female schoolteachers who statutorily rape underage boys and are given a pass. The feminine double standard is alive and well in these times of Woman Empowerment, gender fluidity and #MeToo. Yet women will never complain about the culture giving a female criminal a pass; will never correct you if you regard a criminal woman as too cute to incarcerate; will turn a blind eye when Hollywood coddles a female felon into a hero; will never whine “toxic femininity” when SHE kicks the asses of people who are trying to stop her stealing from them.

And the lore of Batman being attracted to Catwoman works best only when Catwoman is a criminal. That’s the whole point of why that romance was engineered in the first place. Batman has to sift his way through his emotions – is he drawn to her musk because she’s a woman or because she’s a criminal? It’s no big thang if Batman is attracted to another hero vigilante – who cares?! – the dynamic only becomes dangerous and interesting if it’s a forbidden romance. Instead, we’re left with this bland hero-on-hero cosplay.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Jeffrey Wright is Gordon, Batman’s ally on the force – another remarkable, controlled performance from one of the greatest character actors; Paul Dano brings a new look to an old nutter as The Riddler, in a bondage headmask and goggles. There’s a scene heavily evocative of John Doe from SEVEN, where Gordon narrates Riddler’s diaries, scrawled in tiny deliberate hand.

And now… the Top 5 things about THE BATMAN…

T5 – THE BATMOBILE: MUSCLE
Not yet the angular batular rampager it would come to be, the Batmobile here is just a musclecar – tech lite, yet a sleek weaponized projectile. It turns one of the dumbest tropes in car chases into the most inspiring explosive moment the Batmobile has ever had in cinema. You know the gag: either a fleeing car or a chasing car will drive up one of those car-transport semi-trailers that conveniently has its ramp flush to the ground and is conveniently empty of cars, to leap traffic and get in front of the chase. Corny. Stupid. Unrealistic—and the Batmobile thunders up the ramp giving chase to Penguin’s car and, amidst explosions, comes flying through fire on the other side, to CRASH into the fleeing Penguin… with a view from inside Pengiun’s rolling car, coming to a stop upside down… as we see the halted Batmobile in the distance, from Penguin’s perspective – UPSIDE DOWN, silhouetted by flames – as the Batman exits, choral slow motion, menacing score by Michael Giacchino, as he walks toward us, black figure in rain and cape and fire and fear. If Vengeance had a car, it could only be this.

T4 – THE BATMAN: VENGEANCE
Fear is a tool. A gang of thugs pauses in their attack on a citizen, as they hear approaching boots, like the impact tremors of a tyrannosaur, with all the terror associated with that flesh-eater. The first entrance of the Batman is from a pitch-black alley – I have not seen a movie weighted with this much dark lighting since THE GODFATHER – and he steps to the first thug and with lightning strokes BEATS him down before answering the age-old question, “The hell are YOU s’posed ta be?”

“I’m vengeance!”

I think we ALL lost our shit when we saw that trailer.

T3 – THOMAS WAYNE: POLITICIAN
I think Kevin Smith said “We all know the story of Batman’s parents better than we know our own.” But now there’s a wrinkle in our memory of Thomas Wayne… In the grand tradition of Nolan re-writing the MAN OF STEEL’s purpose on Earth with a new terraforming spin, writer Peter Craig and writer-director Matt Reeves have re-written Thomas Wayne’s legacy; they’ve dug into the calcified goody-two-shoes image and burdened this POLITICIAN – because that’s what a prince of the city truly is – with a morally ambiguous rise to power. Incurring the wrath of many, thus making his murder not such an arbitrary event, as portrayed all these decades. I mean, this was the most powerful man in Gotham – he had no enemies?!

T2 – THE ARC: SALVATION
Upon realizing the dumbo Riddler cultists reappropriated his slogan – “I’m Vengeance” – Batman is driven to go further than simple punchaboo: “Vengeance won’t change the past – I have to become more…”  From vengeance… to salvation, as he realizes that though he was powerless to save Gotham from Riddler’s explosives – like a Superman or a Flash – he could still be an agent of good, and we see his role subtly change when the flood victims follow his red flare through the waters. A light in the darkness. It is messianic. It is the other side of hero-dom: not only enacting vengeance, but caring for those for whom the vengeance is enacted. He puts a woman on a stretcher – and she doesn’t want to let go of his arm. From an icon of terror, to a trusted savior; like a Superman, she just wanted this god of hope near.

Some viewers complain about this third act as pointless filler; these would be the same people who don’t understand why Rooster Cogburn makes that last deliverance ride in TRUE GRIT, after the baddie is killed – because it shows the true measure of the hero’s worth, not just killing the bad, but saving the innocent. And Giacchino’s score will make you weep.

T1 – ROBERT PATTINSON: THE BATMAN
Ladies and Gentlemen: Robert Pattinson… The Batman. After all the speculation and whining, coming to us from TWILIGHT (blech!) and THE LIGHTHOUSE (whoa!) and TENET (uh, wha–?), Pattinson slays this role, pulling one of the most stolid, violent, and tortured performances ever for both Bruce Wayne and Batman. After being accused of being physically unfit for the role, to buffing up and doing many of his own stunts, Pattinson morphs into that state where we feel that no other actor has done justice to this world-scrutinized role as much as him at this cinematic moment.

And the filmmakers have done him proud in accoutrement. His cowl is cutaway with more face-space than previous Batmans, almost like a leer; his eyes seem to glow in the dark (there is much focus on Batman’s eyes here, because we discover he wears contact lens recording devices that allow him to review the night’s travails). And when he removes the cowl, that “black mascara” that we see behind every hero’s hood is smudged (like a modern Joker! Also keeping that connection to Kristen Stewart in TWILIGHT, who wore enough mascara to embarrass a prostitute). When it comes to masks, Marvel have totally lost the plot with their helmets and masks that magic on and off people’s heads, but here, DC gets it right, with the Batman’s street-cred, real-life cowl! To add to the real-life utility, his chest symbol is a knife-edged tool!

His combat style is efficient and vicious; bulletproof armor, arrows on his gauntlets, tasers in his gloves! A cape with a collar! As he wades into gunfire, muzzle flashes lighting up his face in the black, like jagged freeze frames, we ask ourselves: How could we doubt? How could we doubt?!

The Batman’s growing legend is played perfectly in this movie. When the Bat-signal scars across the rainclouds, some run, some scoff, some cower, but all wonder: Is the new apparition on the streets of Gotham real? Or a mythic harbinger of doom? Robert Pattinson done good – from a fruity vampire bat to one of the Top Three Batmen of all time. With a bullet– uh, batarang.

B5 – Maybe some of you noticed that I didn’t have a B5. Here it is: In the final frames, Riddler in his cell speaks to another Arkham inmate, a cackling character, a real joker… He’s played by Barry Keoghan – but that ain’t right, Movie Maniacs! I think it’s time for THIS Batman to meet… THIS Joker!

Y’know, I could be wrong… but you know I’m right!

END

First Bond To Die.

Daniel Craig’s last ever Bond. Is it too gauche to say he goes out… with a BANG?

NO TIME TO DIE is a handsome robust conclusion to the Daniel Craig Bond adventure, something the Bond franchise has never done for its other leading spies. After wrapping SPECTRE (2015), with Daniel’s admission that he would rather eat glass than make another Bond, it seems fortunate that producers at EON Productions (Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli) could coax one last entry out of him, to close the final chapter respectfully. Although it seems Daniel was just in a mood during that particular interview, as his respect for the icon he stewarded for the last 15 years is apparent in this story that almost mirrors his real life reticence.

Bond (Craig) is enlisted by the CIA’s Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright) to kidnap a biologist named Obruchev from Spectre, whose DNA-based weapon can wipe out whole swathes of humanity. Bond’s own spy agency MI6, works against him to kidnap Obruchev for themselves, employing a newly-minted 007 – a black woman, no less (Lashan Lynch, knocking down two woke birds with one stone). And playing against them all, a mumbling stranger (Rami Malek) with the phonetically saucy name of Lyutsifer Safin.

James Bond: spy about town.

NO TIME TO DIE mirrors Craig’s real life in that he wanted out of Bond – and in the movie, Bond is off the grid with his lady-love from SPECTRE, Madeleine (Léa Seydoux – another first for the Bond series: a continuing love affair across movies); then Craig signed up for another Bond, but the real world pandemic shut him out – while in the movie, Bond wants back in to MI6 but his cantankerous boss M (Ralph Fiennes) shuts him out; in the real world, speculation soars on Craig’s replacement – and in the movie, Bond has been replaced by another double-oh!

This last point has the internet abuzz that EON Productions is setting up Lynch as a “female Bond” – but stop that fretting, misogynistic mother’s-basement incels. Yes, casting Lynch stinks of the new reverse-sexism of “girling up” traditionally male movie roles (GHOSTBUSTERS, THOR, OCEAN’S ELEVEN), but it becomes apparent that Lynch is not here for the long haul; she is merely a device to illustrate “Bond losing everything” – even his spy identity – so that his hero’s journey will be all the more epic.

Yet it still stinks of pushing the envelope when it is hinted that Q is gay. The “Q” used to stand for Quartermaster; now it seems to stand for Queer… If you writers (director Cary Joji Fukunaga, with co-writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade) want to create a new gay character – go nuts! – but why fuck with 60-year-old canon for the sake of appeasing tweeting Karens? Why not shoot the whole shebang and make the next Bond a non-binary quadriplegic bi-racial muslim midget? Oh, I see one of the writers is Phoebe Waller-Bridge – no doubt the one responsible for all the woman-whining in the script (my summation based solely on her portrayal of that feminist droid on SOLO. So sue me).

The cold open is 23 minutes long (that’s the length of a First Act!), finding Bond on the ancient cobbled streets of Italy (exactly where Michael Corleone went to hide out). Bond languidly promises Madeleine, “We have all the time in the world”– Uh-oh, the last time Bond heard that Louie Armstrong song (ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE, 1969), his wife was brutally murdered. This time, it’s the other way ‘round…

While both try to move on from their pasts, they find that people from their pasts don’t share the same zen. (Again like Michael: “Just when I thought I was out – they pull me back IN!”) Assassins force Bond onto a bike (the stunt up the staircase and over the courtyard wall is Steve McQueen in GREAT ESCAPE – times 10!), and then into his tricked-out Aston Martin – with the guns and smoke and spiky little mines – but the upshot of all the machine-gunning and musclecar-drifting is that Bond now doubts whether Madeleine betrayed him or not. And the scene of him putting her on a train saying, “You’ll never see me again!” is heart-wrenching!

We fade into opening titles, with Billie Eilish whispering the song No Time To Die (with no silhouetted naked women — damn you, Phoebe Waller-Bridge!).

5 YEARS LATER

The Obruchev plot kicks in. It always amazes me that in any movie where the smart scientist is being pursued, his formula/invention/weapon only resides in HIS brain. Guys, ever heard of flash-drives, trusted colleagues, or even the damn Cloud? Like my I.T. guy keeps telling me: MAKE A COPY OF YOUR WORK. Smart like squirrels.

As with all Bond adventures, it’s big and bold and European, first teaming Bond with a stunning slit-skirted MI6 agent, Paloma (Ana de Armas – last seen with Craig in KNIVES OUT 2019). In Craig’s first (CASINO ROYALE, 2006), when asked by the bartender, “Shaken or stirred?” his retort, “Do I look like I give a damn?!” was to buck convention – but now, in this final entry, to keep the legacy rose-colored, his drink order for Paloma and himself: “Two vodka-martinis – shaken, not stirred.”

Besides making thirteen-year-old boys wonder how Paloma’s jumblies don’t fall out of that lowcut-no-back-thigh-slit dress, her short cameo as an action heroine shows us how woman empowerment should be done – her every move sensual, from dragging Bond into a closet to suit him up, to inserting his ear bud; from giggling about being a naif on the job to kicking ass and wielding an automatic machine gun. There’s nothing more attractive than a powerful woman who keeps her mouth shut about being a powerful woman.

It’s great to see Ben Whishaw as Q again (if only Desmond Llewelyn had this much meaty screentime! Although getting the old-school curmudgeon to acquiesce to man-love would’ve been a harder proposition), and find ourselves wondering which of Craig’s crew will remain across screen Bonds. And it is very sad to see Jeffrey Wright take his final bow as Felix (the longest-recurring Felix – 5 movies – with David Hedison far behind with only 2 appearances).

Bond reconciles with Madeleine, and discovers her strange connection with Blofeld…

I’m really disappointed in Christoph Waltz’s portrayal of Blofeld across the Craig Bond series. If ever any filmmaker was going to recapture Waltz’s stone-cold menace from INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, then surely casting him as one of film history’s greatest villains should have done the trick. Alas, what little menace he mustered in 2015’s SPECTRE (his first appearance as Bond’s nemesis, Blofeld) has been leached from this entry, as he mustache-twirls for five minutes while in cuffs, and is then dispatched quite offhandedly.

Blofeld’s oomph-Bond-Gimmick was his scar over his eye, Donald Pleasance sporting it for maximum mad scientist effect in YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE (1967). Here, they’ve Hollywood-ized the scar, making it an inauthentic non-eye, clearly the result of greenscreen prosthetics, and losing all menace entirely. Barbara Broccoli – you had Christoph Waltz! And you blew it!

Though the story is more cohesive than any entries from Sean or Roger, the plot is diluted when the movie mishandles its actual major villain – Malek’s Lyutsifer Safin – who is the engine behind the Obruchev plot, but doesn’t appear until well into the second act, expositing his retcon connections with Madeleine, with his face on Quarter Deformity. (No cute star goes Full Deformity. Though his burned face is meant to inspire the same body-horror as Blofeld’s scar, they’re not gonna risk that bankable cutie-pie mug with any real ickiness.)

Like every great morally ambiguous villain, Safin wants to save humanity by ending it (my kinda guy!), “We tell each other lies about the fight for free will, but… we want to be told how to live – and then die when we are not looking. People want oblivion. And a few of us are born to build it for them.” He tells Bond that they are not so different: “We both eradicate people to make the world a better place.” Ah yes, again with the Demon est Deus inversus – the Devil is God upside down – the hero and villain are two sides of the same damaged coin… Hence, his name – Safin believes he is opening the world’s eyes to evolve (Lucifer = “light-bringer”).

In the film’s final showdown, Safin does what every Bond Villain should have done for the past 60 years – shoot Bond point blank… but then, instead of a kill-shot, Safin does what every Bond Villain has done for the past 60 years – start talking.

– – – – – SPOILERS – – – – –

 A poetic ending, a live-by-the-sword parable. Though we never want our hero to die, I must admit, if Bond had to go, this is a most satisfying way – while saving the world, while sacrificing himself for the greater good, while wishing his loved ones “all the time in the world”…

We discover – as Bond does – a daughter of Madeleine’s. Mathilde. Striking blue hawk eyes. Is she or isn’t she… a Bond Girl? Whomever she is – SUCH A CUTIE! You thought Lexi Rabe was cute with her “Love you 3000” to Iron Man; you thought Abby Ryder Forston was cute playing with Ant Man, well Lisa-Dorah Sonnet is Cuteness x 007!

At one point, Mathilde realizes she’s lost her bunny doll, her “Dou Dou” – and in running to escape the facility before it blows, Bond finds it and tucks it into his belt. We are conditioned to those saccharine endings, where Dou Dou might pop up from behind a table, to Mathilde’s delight, with Bond following it, to Madeleine’s delight… but Dou Dou stays tucked in Bond’s belt as he stolidly watches the nukes explode in a row towards him.

And Louie Armstrong sings us out. Except for Monty Norman’s James Bond Theme, this is the only song ever used in more than one James Bond film – We Have All The Time In The World. Suddenly taking on much more heartbreak, to what would seem the final Bond. (James Bond has never died in a film before.) But there is a bittersweet sigh of relief when we are assured this is only Daniel Craig’s final chapter, as the final titles sling that old refrain, white type on black background:

JAMES BOND WILL RETURN

END

Starving for ideas: Catching Cold.

In THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE, the two models who survived the Hunger Games last year are forced by the Capitol to go on a Tour through the 12 Districts to rub it in everyone’s faces. And our faces too. Then they just repeat the last movie. And rub that in our faces too.

In this first sequel to THE HUNGER GAMES (book series by Suzanne Collins), Jennifer Lawrence returns as Katniss Everdeen, grumpy archer, and Josh Hutcherson reprises his role as Peeta, her ventriloquial dummy (the guy is like Pinocchio, in that his facial expression never changes). Liam Hemsworth completes this vapid non-sex triangle as Katniss’s boyfriend Gale, because in this insipid, unimaginative, pre-teen bankable-franchise environment, the more you resemble TWILIGHT, the more dolls you can sell.

Donald Sutherland is still President of Panem (which is just a future version of America, or a present-day version of Downtown Los Angeles), threatening to kill Katniss’s family if she doesn’t publicly quash the “hope” that she inspired by winning the Games. And there is a new Gamemaker to replace Wes Bentley’s Beard, the great Philip Seymour Hoffman with a name dreamed up by an elf: Plutarch Heavensbee.

The Holy Tour To Quash Hope, instead of quelling the Hope Riots, only exacerbates them. It’s like Ferguson, Missouri out there. So the Capitol schemes up a new twist to drag Katniss back into the Hunger Games to maybe get her killed – a Quarter Quell Hunger Games, where only winners from previous Games compete (kinda like JEOPARDY’s Tournament of Champions, only better, because none of them have to phrase their answer in the form of a question – stupid distracting rule!). Oh, plot device, thou predictable totalitarian mistress!

In honor of the same movie being replayed from the halfway point to the end, the same cast return: Woody Harrelson as The Homeless Guy, Elizabeth Banks as The Joker, Lenny Kravitz as The Hippie, and Stanley Tucci as The Village Idiot. Against the wishes of the pale boyfriend, Katniss now has to smooch that Boy Vagina in public again and smile big with those cheeks that I need to pinch pinch pinch!

New contestants/teen models, featuring alliances with my bride-to-be Jena Malone (SUCKER PUNCH) as Johanna the Axe-Wielding Slut, and Sam Claflin (PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES) as Finnick’s Bare Chest. Also: the sedate introspectiveness of Jeffrey Wright (SOURCE CODE), and the drooling kookiness of Amanda Plummer (GIRLFRIEND 2011).

Oh yeah, the irrelevant “catching fire” reference is probably to describe the growing uprising – but maybe it’s simply Katniss’s dress that creates a fire special effect and sends Tucci into a tizzy. I’m guessing the author intended the former and the tweenfans think the latter.

They’ve rewritten the motivations of Katniss, just to create a love-triangle and set little girlies hearts aflutter with her indecision on whose teen meat to cherish. Remember when dull Peeta had a crush on her – and she responded by masturbating his wounds and tonguing him in the cave? And remember how Gale watched all this on widescreen with a lump in his throat instead of his pants? Well, in this movie, Katniss tells Gale that her affair with Peeta “was all an act.” Okaaaay… then halfway through their tour, Peeta whines about being Just Friends and she tells him she can’t live without him.

Don’t TWILIGHT me, bro!

Or how about the night Katniss wakes screaming from a nightmare, Peeta rushes into her room, and she asks him not to leave: “Will you sleep with me?” So Peeta, oh emasculated ladyboy Peeta, clambers in with all his clothes on– Must’ve been written by a woman! Even though they just snuggled, you do realize his erection never went down that night, right? It was a steel bar with its own zip code. Unless you’re an in-denial female, of course…

Katniss tells Finnick’s Bare Chest, “I’m an open book. Everybody seems to know my secrets before I know them myself.” Uh, yeah, Jen, about those nudes online…

Gale gets tied to the Whipping Post – any excuse to get his shirt off to impress Katniss.

If it weren’t for the striking performance of Jennifer Lawrence, CATCHING FIRE would hardly blip as a relevant movie.

There’s a grim indictment of our class-struggling society written into the fabric of THE HUNGER GAMES, but it’s framed within this tiresome faux-competition that doesn’t need to exist in a totalitarian government. You see, the Capitol (embodied by smarmy President Sutherland), is so powerful they needn’t fret about the best method of disposing of Katniss and dispelling her anarchic influence. Why is the President even bothering to re-write foolish rules into the Games to try to kill her? Hey, Bond Villain, Just – Kill – Her. If you really think she’ll become a martyr, then run some doctored footage of her killing a few kids or something. Have you seen THE RUNNING MAN? The Capitol is all-powerful, to the point where it can make an excellent actor-director like Stanley Tucci look like a gibbering idiot in a golden wig, and they can’t dispose of one low-class wench? I mean, you’re a totalitarian government – do something totalitarian!

Instead, President whines to Heavensbee like a bitch waiting for a call from her boo. Waah, how do I destroy her? Waah, she’s giving everyone hope because she defied me! Waah, I have innumerable armed guards willing to kill anyone who raises their hands and whistles but I can’t kill Katniss because – merchandising! Waaah!

Heavensbee has also been digesting too many Bond movies, as all his plots drag out Katniss’s demise by “letting her live” so that, uh, so that, uh… Well, we have two options: do we believe the President is falling for Heavensbee’s outrageously procrastinating plans because the President is stupid, or because the writers (Simon Beaufoy and Michael Arndt) think we are stupid enough to believe the President could be that stupid? (Of course, we discover Heavensbee has his own agenda, so maybe it could be construed that he charms the President into heeding him? …Nah, the writers think we’re stupid.)

Willow Shields as Katniss’s sister, Prim, gets her moment to shine in a beefed up role, playing staid nurse while her family crumbles around her. Still, Lawrence blazes brighter than anyone else in the conviction stakes, closely followed by the insouciant bum stylings of Harrelson. Seymour Hoffman is also without fault – like Gary Oldman, brings his A-game to even the schmaltziest turd-burgers. Everyone else is phoning it in, or probably just skyping it with those awesome gubmint cameras that can see every frickin thing from every frickin angle.

I still don’t get how the game controllers can see Everything from Whatever Angle They Bloody Well Want. We get no foreshadowing or knowledge of cameras in the forest, hidden or otherwise, no satellites, not even a simple bullshit explanation, like the complete Games dome being outfitted with cameras in every shingle. We can accept there are hidden cameras in a totalitarian government’s death trap – but how do these cameras focus on so many angles? Heavensbee asks for a closeup and not only do the controllers push in on the scene, they flip to four different angles, two of which can only be achieved by a Steadicam positioned directly underneath the lead actor’s ballsac! How much do you want me to suspend my disbelief, assholes?! Also, these controllers can never seem to keep their control room doors closed; more than once, Katniss walks by a door ajar and peeks in on something illicit before they look back and see her, then slam the door in her face. (You mean “physically looking back at the door” is their failsafe mechanism for ensuring no one is discovering their secrets? So they have cameras that can see through a person’s scrotum but no automatic door closers?) And where does she keep getting all those arrows? She empties her quiver on the baboons – the next scene, it’s full again! What the–? These lazy filmmaking methods friction my irritation so much that I can’t empathize with the film’s relevant messages.

Director Francis Lawrence chose the lazy route because – TWILIGHT. Even in this respect, he breaks from convention by making the woman the most powerful of the love triangle, rather than the annoying waif. The story also raises the very current issue of a boy-girl romance overshadowing – or at least, distracting from – life-death issues; broadcast a love story, no matter how corny, and people will forget they are being enslaved. It’s happening RIGHT NOW. (TMZ exists alongside Ferguson MO.) All great stuff. Then something stupid happens again – like meeting the “Career” Gamers – and all brave ideas are washed away. It’s not as if these “Careers” volunteer every year – they’ve been as unethically forced into their fates as Katniss and Puta; why are they called “Career Gamers” and why are they painted as baddies? And why don’t they have any body hair?

Pointless. That much smooth naked skin, I feel like I’m watching internet porn… Hmm, here’s a nice picture of Katniss…

END

Run, D-cups, run!

Tight Skirt, Alien Cell, Big Bra.

Kudos to Nicole Kidman’s plastic surgeon! What a job on her already perfect head! We are more than happy to pile derision on the stars and surgeons who botch their head jobs, but no one commends those stars and surgeons who produce dynamite results.

In THE INVASION, yet another remake of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, Nicole Kidman is psychiatrist Carol Bennell – and my God! She looks 23! She must be pushing at least 70 by now! Our hats off to Dr. Plastic Fantastic! And to the designer bra that keeps her an upright D when we know she’s only pushing Bs. Or has Dr. Fantastic dipped his scalpel in that chest cavity as well? Consequently, being the star of a thriller where she is required to constantly run from danger, devolves into an exercise in prurience, as the male of the species tumescently gawks at that sweater one size too small for her straining D-bra and secretariat skirt tight enough to notice No Visible Pantyline on that whipcord body. No, it’s not distracting from the story at all. Why is she running? Who cares? As long as you keep wearing those tight clothes, honey! Let’s see, who directed this? Oliver Hirschbiegel – oh, it’s a guy. Surprise, surprise! Why would a guy make Nicole Kidman run around in tight clothes for 90% of the film? Beats me.

From Jack Finney’s original novel The Body Snatchers, screenwriter David Kajganich has modernized the threat to not just “alien spores” but alien DNA cells brought to Earth by a crash-landed Shuttle, attaching to our DNA and absorbing our personalities, making the human race homogenized, emotionless catatonics. The one quest of those who have been overtaken by the alien DNA is to seek out those who haven’t been, and infect them by spitting on them or loogying in their iced tea.

”…and I’d like to thank my plastic surgeon,
and my Photoshoppist, and…”

Daniel Craig is Nicole’s love interest, and I don’t know why the filmmakers chose to emasculate him into a Just Friend; it serves no purpose keeping him blue-balled. Jeremy Northam is the ex-husband, Jackson Bond is the immune son. Veronica Cartwright, who moaned her way through the 1978 INVASION, moans her way through this one. Jeffrey Wright is magnificent as a scientist who discovers the purpose of the alien cells and the cure; so natural, so underplaying, why isn’t this guy a bigger star, at the least, noted for his incredible supporting performances?

If MIGHTY JOE YOUNG was the KING KONG remake-with-a-happy-ending, then THE INVASION does the same thing for INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS. Whereas the 1978 version ended on a terrifying note for the human race, THE INVASION, after the perfunctory chase scenes and plot twists, peters out to a Disneyfied ending that even allows Daniel Craig out of the Friend Zone.

How can I be expected to wrap my emotions around the supposed tension of this tale when all I can think about is, ironically, snatching Nicole Kidman’s body?

END

Et Tu, Gosling?

Campaigns turn our politicians into lunatics.
— Tina Brown, “The Daily Beast.”

THE IDES OF MARCH opens with campaign manager Steve Meyers (Ryan Gosling) at a podium, spotlit, declaring, “I’m not a Christian, I’m not an atheist. What I believe in is the Constitution of the United States of America.” He is reciting from prepared notes for his boss, the Governor, doing a line check* before a debate. As every movie should try to encapsulate its theme in its first few lines – if not its first line – these lines would prove to be wretched irony coming from this character.

Meyers starts as a staunch idealist, campaigning for Governor Morris (George Clooney, oozing charm like it was his to patent), in a race for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States, against another Democrat who wouldn’t know charm if George Clooney bit him on the ass with those perfect teeth. At first, Meyers is seduced purely by the game of politics (and the man-charm of Morris); then he is seduced by an intern, by the opposing campaign manager, and eventually by the prospect of the White House. Under the pressures of Beltway duplicity his cognitive dissonance as an idealist is soon shrugged off, to reveal his true agenda, identical to all the swine that sup at Washington’s filth-ridden watering hole – to retain their jobs and elevate their status no matter the lives destroyed in the process.

In Washington, there is really no ideology further than the retention of your job.

This intense drama involving unethical relationships, disloyalty, duplicity, deceit, unfaithfulness, hypocrisy and extortion is thankfully NOT set in Republican World. Why is this a good thing? Because in Republican World, these things are taken for granted now; not even satire anymore to portray Republicans as godless hypocritical swine. The rational world just knows that they are – and that’s that. However, setting this tale (written by Beau Willimon as the play Farragut North) in the Democratic arena shows us that the Democrats are not the antiseptic angels they make themselves out to be in the media, leaving the irrational, contrarian Republicans nothing to rail against. The Repubs can’t possibly call the Dems holier-than-thou now, as this movie shows us the backstage backstabbery that goes into the onstage meaningless platitudes. We see behind the fake smiles and boilerplate promises to the pants around the ankles. And the Dems look every bit as ugly as the Repubs from this bumcrack angle…

But there’s nothing ugly about the top of the bill. Abreast of the two movie stars (Gosling and Clooney) are the two Actors’ Actors – Paul Giamatti and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Hoffman is Gosling’s boss, Paul Zara, and Giamatti is Tom Duffy, campaign manager for the opposition.

Talent, Cred, Looks – who gets what?

Movie opens with hot young intern Evan Rachel Wood bringing coffee. She seduces the Big Man On Campus, Meyers, who tells her in no uncertain terms that their fling should remain secret. Situation gets very complicated very fast. Not only is she the Democratic National Chairman’s daughter, she has slept with married Governor Morris. Just once, but enough to get her pregnant and needing an abortion. Way to throw a damp towel over a hot, forbidden, secret relationship. After supping at the idealist Kool-Aid, Meyers soon feels the vulture of cynicism pecking at his shoulder. And the wounds can only get deeper.

Earlier, Time Journalist Ida Horowitz (Marisa Tomei) hammers reality into Meyers, who almost naively proclaims his man has to win “for the good of the country.” She lays out exactly what’s at stake if he doesn’t win – nothing. “Or what? The world’s gonna fall apart? It won’t matter one bit to the everyday lives of the everyday fuckers who get up and work and eat and sleep and go back to work again. If your boy wins, you get a job in the White House. If he loses, you’re back in a consulting firm on K Street. That’s it….”

Later, Morris will speculate that Meyers might “end up in a nice little consulting firm off Farragut North…”

Meanwhile, Tom Duffy, in plain sight, maneuvers Meyers into an ambush, calling him in for a secret meeting to try to coerce him away from Morris’s campaign. Meyers declines the job offer, but his boss, Paul Zara, finds out about the meeting. And Meyers is sacked. When he goes crawling back to Duffy for the job, Duffy kicks him out, explaining his strategy: “As soon as you sat down in my chair, I knew that I’d won. If you come work for me, you’re not working for Morris; if he fires you, you’re still not working for him. Either way I win.” As devilish as any Republican tactician, which Duffy knows full well, telling Meyers that it’s about time Dems got down in the dirt and did what Republicans have been doing so well for so long.

Chris Matthews makes a cameo, in what is becoming almost a second job for him – appearing in political movies. The magnificent Rachel Maddow also makes an eyeblink cameo. Charlie Rose gets a nice chunk of screentime. Producer credits include Leo DiCaprio and Grant Heslov – he and Clooney seem to be real pals, working on numerous projects together.

Uh-oh. Dead intern. You don’t wanna be in the midst of THAT scandal…

I wonder: Do Republicans like George Clooney? He downplays to his heart’s content, being the B-character and (excellent) director, letting the limelight fall on Gosling, Hoffman, Wood and Giamatti, yet his Governor character gets in some good cracks about the Republican clown show, about not giving the rich extra tax breaks, and pointedly remarks about derogatory spin on socialism and “redistribution of wealth.” IDES is the 2012 election season on film. As in GAME CHANGE, we do get a teeny tiny tahny insight into political machinations beyond the ken of journalists: what the campaign can offer one senator to gain the support of his delegates, thereby discerning whether they will win or lose certain states. After the bribes, it’s down to mathematics. It’s refreshing to see their offstage demeanors, no mincing of words, liberally sprinkled with expletives, wholly removed from their homogenized onstage personas.

The message of this movie is simple: Bad Guys Always Win. The blackest of heart, the most duplicitous, the most ambitious against all odds and against any integrity will always win. Because those platitudes about loyalty that Hoffman declares, those empty banalities about the goodness of America that Morris articulates, are all flushed away in the endgame. Meyers confronts Morris over his indiscretion with the intern, blackmailing Morris into re-hiring him as campaign manager.

“You can lie, you can take the country to war – but you can’t fuck the interns!” Is that in the Constitution? I think so. That’s why Clinton was impeached for fucking one person in the mouth and W still roams free for fucking three hundred million in the ass.

But here’s the irony in this twisted game of betrayal: with the threat to betray Morris over his wrongdoing, Meyers extorts his way back into the campaign manager position – but as campaign manager, it is his job to make Morris win, so in essence, he’s making a promise not to betray Morris after this first time. He’s trying to make two wrongs make a right!

Last quiet shot of Meyers, head bowed, is held indefinitely as he is readied for a TV interview – then he looks into camera; a shot as enigmatic as the best final face-shots from THE GRADUATE, MANHATTAN, CAST AWAY, et al.

While a new hot little intern brings coffee…

END

Riding the Lightning Across the (Parallel) Universe.

DONNIE DARKO brings his penchant for skipping across parallel universes to the twisted love-child of INCEPTION and GROUNDHOG DAY.

Director Duncan Jones (Bowie’s progeny and the wunderkind behind MOON, his film debut) proves that the disturbing resonance and edge-of-seat storytelling finesse he brought to that old-fashioned new tale was not a fluke. SOURCE CODE is yet another exploration of an isolated man trying to interpret his destiny, while forces around him conspire to end it.

We ride the lightning from minute one: Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) wakes in a traveling train to find he is in another person’s body. The cute girl sitting with him, Christina (Michelle Monaghan), knows him but he doesn’t know her. He checks his wallet–his name is Sean Fentress. And his reflection in the bathroom mirror is not his face. Eight minutes later, a bomb obliterates the train…

Stevens wakes in some kind of chamber that is slowly deteriorating. First thing he sees is an angel… Vera Farmiga as Goodwin, on a monitor in front of him. (Sigh, the glorious Vera Farmiga; it occurs to me I know what person’s body *I’d* like to wake up in… Those eyes, those lips, that uniform! I could stare at her for hours without saying a word. I think they call that True Love. Are you listening, Vera?!) Ahem, onward….

Poffy’s source code

Plot is revealed to the audience – and Stevens – piecemeal, as he is transported back time and again into Fentress’s body to locate the bomb and bomber; we live through his eyes and befuddlement. In the real world, the bomb destroyed the Chicago-bound train, killing scores, and the bomber has promised another bomb in the city. In this alternate reality, military pilot Stevens (whose last memories were flying a chopper in Afghanistan) is here trying to subvert that future. But where is here?A shadowy, twitchy supervisor, Rutledge (Jeffrey Wright), makes clear to Stevens (and to us Michael J. Fox fans): “This is not time travel. This is time re-assignment.” Working on the age-old concept of the human brain remaining alive a few minutes after death, a device called the Source Code uses those last imprints of reality to engineer an alternate reality. According to Rutledge, “a program that enables you to cross over into another man’s identity in the last eight minutes of his life.” Highly implausible, but the bullet train pacing keeps us from asking one question too many.

Such as: What could possibly be the utility of transporting into another person’s body for the last eight minutes of their life? I mean, transporting into the last eight minutes of most people’s lives would land you in a sickbed somewhere with a machine that goes ping. For eight whole paingod minutes. Oh joy.

But SOURCE CODE somehow finds a purpose for the Last-Eight-Minutes Machine by using it for the one thing that fearful, boastful, whining, hypocritical Americans can’t stop thinking about: finding terrorists. But what can anyone really do in eight minutes? I dunno: give me eight minutes with Vera Farmiga and let’s find out. I digress…

While Stevens hunts for the bomb and bomber, he also tries to uncover the mystery of how he is inhabiting another person’s body. What happened to his own body? Where is the real Colter Stevens? And that, loopy time-loop lupines, is the disturbing part…

Farmiga’s Goodwin comes off as glib in the trailers, but hers is the anchor performance upon which this beargarden draws sustenance. Her bond with Stevens is infinitely more poignant than the facile relationship he shares with Christina, and she will risk her career to grant him one final, decent wish. She is empathy and pathos, a font of begrudging information and cautious flirtation; she is the rock upon which Stevens crouches, her strength that he draws on when forced to leap ever again into the void; her quiet promise, “everything will be okay” that enables his displaced brainwaves to reconstitute and try for success every time he gets blown and ends up in a dark room with her. (And it occurs to me that I would love to get blown and end up in a dark room with Vera Farmiga. Oh, do stop that…)

I guess Hindus would call SOURCE CODE Real Life: a guy dies and is resurrected time and again until he does something worthwhile to be able to rise to another level. In eight minutes. Now that’s religious pressure. (Cool thing is: Stevens spends exactly eight minutes real time in the alternate reality whenever he goes back.)

Listen for a phone-in cameo by Scott Bakula (well-versed in QUANTUM LEAPs) as Stevens’s father.

Why are some critics lambasting SOURCE CODE for being unoriginal (it’s a TV plot we’ve seen before on QUANTUM LEAP, THE OUTER LIMITS, STAR TREK, et al), while Jennifer Aniston is still being allowed by the Motion Picture Association of America to release the same dull thud girl-meets-boy movie year after year?

Written by Ben Ripley with no thought to any actual science or physics, the “Source Code” of SOURCE CODE is actually a McGuffin–we don’t need it explained to acknowledge the movie as a temple-throbbing, upside-down rocket ride; it’s running down a panther in boot-cut jeans; it’s cutiepie and sexyboy in a kinetic race against ticking clocks piled on bigger ticking clocks. That’s how inexplicable this movie is. And yet, so predictable you can set your DeLorean flux capacitor by it. But, like MOON, in the hands of Duncan Jones, SOURCE CODE becomes another true science fiction thriller, where we don’t care too much about age-old devices of corporate bad guys and slim, virginal love interests because we’re enjoying ourselves too much.

END

Quorum of Stinkus.

Stunt, stunt, stunt, crash. Stunt, stunt, stunt, crash. Explosion.

QUANTUM OF SOLACE, directed by Marc Foster like a speed freak, and edited by Matt Chesse and Richard Pearson like a chicken fight in a monkey house, makes THE BOURNE IDENTITY look like MY DINNER WITH ANDRE.

Cucumber, Poffy the Cucumber

As I watched the opening car chase grind metal, and the subsequent foot chase beat streets through an Italian town during a horse race, one question kept surfacing: Did I accidentally walk into TRANSPORTER 3?

QUANTUM OF SOLACE exists only for its next popcorn chase sequence only to show off its next stunt, with editing that will maim your optic nerves. Your eyes will start hurting long before you realize there’s nothing onscreen worth watching.

Daniel Craig, still chiseled like a Grecian statue, still super-cool and super-cruel, is listed as playing Ian Fleming’s superspy character, James Bond.

But is it still Bond? Having recently re-acquainted myself with two of Pierce Brosnan’s outings (GOLDENEYE and TOMORROW NEVER DIES), I see that Brosnan (a perfect Bond, I might add) never colored so far outside the lines of the character that he became not just unrecognizable, but indistinguishable from the morass of other taut-buttocked man-toys glutting the action hero landscape. That’s the tragedy here – Craig could be Jason Statham or Clive Owen or Jet Li; the Bond franchise might have been resurrected/reimagined in CASINO ROYALE, but there is not enough “essence of Bond” left by venturing so far outside the box in QUANTUM.

There is still the suaveness, sure, but the infamous Bond gadgets? Not a trace, except maybe the soaring height of computer technology displayed by the whole MI6 organization. Aston Martin? Only a banged up version in the opening car chase. Flamboyant villain? Well, he’s indeterminately Euro with designs on absolute power. Ironic banter? Nope. Quips? Nope. Sex with leading lady? Nope – instead, a glorified extra. Even the catchphrase, “Bond. James Bond” is absent. And the laughable Bond death-traps where – like the 1960s Batman – he is left to die in some contraption with a countdown that allows him just enough time to find an improbable escape with no one watching? Bond actually turns the table on this one, leaving the villain in the desert with only a can of motor oil to sustain him.

Written by the talented Paul Haggis, the Evil Plot in this Bond film is congruent with today’s morally muddy politics, where a shady “green” entrepreneur, Gordon Greene (Mathieu Amalric), deals hand-in-glove with the CIA and the British government, who both admit, “if we didn’t do business with villains we wouldn’t be doing business at all.” Of course, Greene’s ultimate aim is power over others – in this case, monopolizing the water supply in Bolivia, using “environmentalism” as a cover.

For those not paying attention, there are the eye-straining fight scenes and chase scenes to keep you amused: car chase, boat chase, plane chase, moped chase, foot chase across rooftops (where’ve I seen that before? Oh yeh – the last Bond film!), wholesale destruction following in the wake of Bond and his pursuers.

Meanwhile, that wrinkled old man in charge of MI6, Judi Dench, goes swishing about doubting Bond’s loyalties because he is mooning over a chick who got murdered in the last film. So Bond goes rogue long enough to plonk a newbie bimbo by the name of Strawberry Fields (Gemma Arterton), then finds her dead like the chick in GOLDFINGER, covered in oil instead of gold. (Black gold?, heh heh–Waitaminute! Even if you were dipped in crude oil like a shrimp cocktail, wouldn’t it just slide off? How does it cake her body like black syrup?)

And the leading lady – nay, Bond Girl – Olga Kurylenko, doesn’t even schtup Bond! Isn’t that the POINT of being a Bond Girl?! Detached to the point of boring, Kurylenko’s ice queen character is ironic, playing some kind of double-agent with a burn scar on her back that I couldn’t stop looking at, tooling about a searing desertscape, trapped in a hotel fire – yet generating not one iota of heat. Let’s face it: Bond’s universe is no place for a woman too independent. Our primal instincts felt the old magic when dippy Fields bantered with Bond, but that misogynistic fun was not to last. Excuse the pun, but – 18 million cracks, my arse!

Why does everyone moan about the title? Does anyone know what quantum means outside of physicists and Scott Bakula? A quantum is an “amount,” a discrete “packet” of something, especially used in physics to denote the smallest physical quantity that can exist independently. (From imdb: According to Henry Chancellor in his book James Bond – The Man and His World, “Quantum of Solace” relates to the necessary iota of emotion that is needed between lovers.)

Now tenuously link this with Bond seeking revenge for his last bébé and the villainous organization named Quantum. Thank the junkets we don’t have to view the film for this info, which takes us from Haiti, to Italy, Bolivia, Austria, London, Russia, and leaves us north of Eye-Strain.

QUANTUM opens with the good ole sexploitation gimmick of sand dunes as naked women, Alicia Keys and Jack White singing, Another Way to Die; closes with the gun barrel motif and classic Bond theme music.

Just like the last film, Bond’s healing abilities are like Wolverine: every little face cut – healed by the next scene. In CASINO ROYALE, he plonked Vesper Lynn mere days after his mandacious torture – can the franchise heal itself as quickly as Wolverine Bond’s ballsac?

END

Hi. We’re the Ku Bush Klan. And we’re gonna FUCK EVERYONE!

Putting the W in WMD.

First came RAIN MAN. Then FORREST GUMP. Now, in a long line of congenital idiots, comes W.

But wait, Bushies! Do not dismiss this movie as leftie revisionist conspiracy. Director Oliver Stone‘s W. is a fair and balanced representation of America’s 43rd president, George Walker Bush. Insert joke: “which means it shows him as the imbecile he is.”

No, W. is too fair. Not because the movie portrays George W Bush (affectionately known as “W,” redneckingly pronounced, “Dubya”) as intelligent, lucid or principled – on the contrary, he’s portrayed as the enabled, amoral, irreconcilably ignorant rich brat he’s always been; it is “too fair” because it clobbers us with one small aspect of W’s psyche – his relationship with “Poppy” (father, George Herbert Walker Bush), the 41st president – instead of examining the adverse affects that W’s obsessing over his father’s approbation brought down on planet Earth.

Oliver Stone (writer/director of 1991’s JFK and 1995’s NIXON) seems to miss all potential target audiences: Bushies will hate W. for the irrational reason that anything remotely disparaging toward their sheltered idiot-child “should” be hated, and the other 75% of America will find no red meat to indict the doofus C-student they so stupidly elected twice.

Movie opens after 9/11, in the Oval Egg, with the Bush cabinet creating a vivid catchphrase for the group of countries ideologically opposed to America, settling on Axis of Evil, the president flippantly throwing Iran, Iraq and North Korea into the pot – even though none of those countries acted in concert against the U.S., unlike the WWII Axis countries.

This should reveal something to America: there IS no Axis of Evil; merely a concoction of a few dappled minds (including, but not limited to, the fear-swillers: David Frum, Michael Gerson, Dick Cheney, W) who portrayed merely religious contingents as whole countries.

Hate those dangerous Arab WMD’s…

The primary players in this Greek tragedy are introduced, with varying success: Josh Brolin is the eponymous W, channeling the spirit of doofus admirably (with the light at the right angle, the resemblance is scary); Bruce McGill makes a reasonable George Tenet (CIA); Toby Jones is a slimmer version of walking rectum, Karl Rove; Jeffrey Wright leans hard on his General Colin Powell; Richard Dreyfuss cannot possibly plumb the depths of the slime-pit Dick Cheney crawled from, but tries hard (it is common knowledge Cheney runs the Ku Bush Klan, but movie marginalizes his involvement); Dennis Boutsikaris is not frog-faced enough to play Wolfowitz; I always thought Barbara Bush was a 1920 storeroom mannequin in disrepair – apparently not, as Ellen Burstyn gives her voice here; Scott Glenn is way too noble to be the ludicrous Donald Rumsfeld; Ioan Gruffudd brings the British accent (and a sensible sweater) for his Prime Minister Tony Blair; and Thandie Newton does Condoleeza Rice like a caricature audition for Saturday Night Live.

Movie follows three segments of W.’s life (a pre-pol in college in 1966, pre-pres, and post-9/11), skipping back and forth as often as W skipped out of day jobs; at one point, W simply walks off an oil-rig mid-shift – a directionless, privileged quitter, with not a shred of responsibility. Bush Snr (James Cromwell as Poppy) pulls strings to get W out of jail, land him summer jobs, slide him into Harvard, yet W keeps disappointing with his vacuous and impulsive irresponsibility. It would be the same traits he would bring to the stolen presidency in the dark winter of 2000, along with his “gut” decision-making (rather than informed leadership), to earn him the lowest favorability rating of any president in America’s history. Imagine how disappointed his father is NOW…

The performances are uneven – Brolin, Wright, Cromwell, Dreyfuss pulling the weight of all the others who seem miscast – but Stone’s direction is stellar. Written by Stanley Weiser, these characters exist in a vacuum; a disconnect between backstage and the world stage.

Richard Dreyfuss remarked on THE VIEW: “It leaves out how terrified people were of their own president.”

The film won’t have historical legs because the issues that defined the W presidency are given short shrift or glaringly omitted. Authorizing torture is mentioned once, over breakfast – there is no Abu Ghraib, no Guantanamo, no John Yoo; that scene (like other allusions and brief intimations), is more an inside wink to audiences well-versed in that travesty of justice, who will nod their heads and say to themselves: “Ah! Look at the mess he got into with that one!” There is no contention over the 2000 or 2004 elections, no dirty Swift Boating campaign, no massage gaffes at the G8 Summit – we just don’t see these events.

As for the lie of WMD in Iraq (this is not contention any more – it’s in all the literature), Frank Rich, Vincent Bugliosi, Bob Woodward and countless others have researched and concluded that W knew he was lying when selling the “mushroom cloud” to America as justification to invade. Whereas this lie should be a defining moment in any George W. Bush character study (What kind of a man would do this?), we get the barest rationalization that W is going after Saddam to finish what his father started. “My dream is to see peace break out in the Middle East! …UN resolution or not – we’re going to war!” Again, the real reasons are not slammed up against the real outcomes of this ignoble, ignorant, unlawful decision.

W’s life seems free of consequences, when we all know that isn’t true, and – worse – the consequences affecting planet Earth are ignored.

Bush had asked the two men [Rumsfeld and Bremer] point-blank who was in charge of finding the WMD… Bremer indicated it was Rumsfeld’s responsibility. Rumsfeld said Bremer was in charge. [Bush] wanted someone in charge… Since the CIA had insisted Iraq had WMD, the agency could go find the weapons. So finally, two and a half months into the war, the administration was going to give some focus to the hunt.
— “State Of Denial,” Bob Woodward.

Powell protests over America’s ideology going astray over a few terrorists, “We blew it before 9/11, because people weren’t doing their jobs right,” attacking Iraq is “not New World Order – that’s World Gone Mad.” (Powell’s character is prescient screenwriting from Weiser, as this movie was completed before the actual Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama in 2008). Cheney clarifies the admin’s position: It’s about energy resources. And – “there is NO exit strategy.”

As sinister as Cheney’s “no exit strategy” sounds, there is no mention of the chilling callousness of having no “infrastructure” strategy. Forget “empire-building” – what these meatheads called their grandiose intrusive blunder – even running water and electricity in war zones was out of the Bushies’ purview. Further, no mention is made of W running on the ticket of “no empire-building” then immediately using the excuse of 9/11 to go empire-building (which was in reality a euphemism for “energy-controlling”).

A movie about the world’s biggest meathead – with so little meat.

Not even an accurate biopic, W. is an insular, one-dimensional fairytale of a cowboy moron’s rise to power, from an alcoholic tail-chaser to the bumbling, born-again dumbest president of the United States. Like W, the movie talks a lot but says nothing.

Key events in W’s life are condensed, making the movie one big montage: W’s alcoholism, subsequent conversion to born again soberness, early political life; his wife (Elizabeth Banks – way too sexy to play W’s man-boy Laura); his decision not to be out-christianed or out-Texaned on the campaign trail; coached by Karl Rove…

And here we shake our heads in outrage again: when Rove coaches W, a picture is presented of a Rain Man cramming for an exam, not someone educating himself, studying documents and assessing intelligent solutions to national issues; we never see W reading – a salient point. Rove would coach W to counter attacks from the hostile press or public, not through knowledge, but memorization. Exactly like the 2008 Repub VP nominee, Sarah Palin. Sure, Dems and Repubs all work this way, but with this particular pol, his duplicity and ignorance became so transparently obvious through his public actions and responses. Still, Brolin never quite grasps W’s condescension. (The real W explains political strategy to the press as if speaking to five-year-olds because that’s how political processes are explained to HIM.)

Rove coins the public catchcry of W “being someone they’d like to have a beer with” – but didn’t W stop drinking long before he ran? Which made even that phrase just another lie…

W’s embarrassing and laughable malapropisms and dysfunctional grammar are slotted in offhandedly – not disparagingly – almost as comic relief. Movie shies away from WHY he is such an abysmal communicator – his low intelligence, hence, zero credentials to run a “nookuler” superpower. Grandest irony is that he married a librarian! (Holding stark, opposing political views to W, we can only presume Laura is a weak, unprincipled gold-digger for marrying him.)

Stone emulates Marty Scorcese in juxtaposing disturbing visuals over jovial soundtrack (Adventures of Robin Hood under W’s cavalier decision to run for politics, Yellow Rose of Texas under war scenes, The Battle Hymn of the Republic scoring the Mission Accomplished moment), yet this ain’t no laughing matter. When Rumsfeld says of Afghanistan “It’s not a war – it’s an exercise”; when W quotes St. Augustine to rationalize “Just” War; when W as Texas governor never pardoned anyone on Death Row, presiding over 152 executions (the highest number in modern history); when the Real World consequences of the Middle East conflict have displaced/ destroyed/ debilitated over 2 million people, it becomes too serious to satire, only proving what a soulless, murderous hypocrite this supposed “christian” is.

In the movie, W gives up pie as “sacrifice for the war” (we don’t see the 2004 public dinner where he tastelessly jokes about his inability to find WMD – bet the dead soldiers’ families were laffing their asses off); film doesn’t show him “giving up golf” because he “shouldn’t be enjoying himself while young men and women are dying” (then filmed on a golf course after making this statement); film doesn’t show W’s statement about bin Laden “dead or alive” (six months later: “I don’t know where he is… I just don’t spend that much time on him”)…

W is half a movie, like PASSION OF THE CHRIST or STAR WARS EPISODE III, where the film-makers took it for granted the world knew the story, so did not bother to develop it cogently. The movie poses questions and pretends no answers – when even a precocious cucumber like me, only mildly interested in politics, KNOWS the real-world answers. Mention is made of Carter installing solar panels on the Shite House roof (before “green” was an admirable fad), yet no talk of Reagan immediately ripping down the panels when he took office (That’s Our Republican Hypocrite!); W’s cabinet issues a media blackout on soldier caskets returning from war – but we don’t see press secretary Tony Snow lying “There is no media blackout”; W is told Saddam didn’t have WMD but pretended to – but the movie posits wrong reasons for Saddam’s pretense. (The real reason is simple: with a dangerous neighbor like Iran, Iraq didn’t want to publicly announce it was defenseless, so Saddam had to cooperate with the U.S., letting inspectors swarm his military facilities, while snickering over his shoulder to Iran as if he was duping the U.S. The U.S., as usual, too blunt-headed to discern this subtlety.)

The last question posed to W at a press conference, “What were your mistakes?” culls the Obligatory Hollywood Introspective Moment from Brolin, rather than the weak-chested, blank-eyed, weasel-sniveling backpedaling and stuttering that the real life W met that question with. Maybe Stone is trying to be ironic or subtle, because his film is LOADED with W’s mistakes, but because they are mentioned so fleetingly with no follow-through, the audience can’t see them as mistakes.

But that “mistake” scene highlights the film’s overall “mistake”: casting Josh Brolin. Y’see, Brolin is cool. Always will be. And he’s playing a guy who is just an intrinsic fuckin’ douchebag. And Brolin just can’t quite make it to that deep a level of douchebaggery… No one is that good an actor.

Movie ends abruptly during a dream sequence where W is waiting for a fly ball that is not coming down, and we see in Brolin’s eyes the most prominent unanswered question of the W era: “Where do we go from here?” Either that, or “What the hell am I doing here?” Or “How the hell did I get here?” Most likely, “I wonder if I’ll have time for a bike ride before breakfast tomorrow?”

With W’s lame duckidency limping to a shameful, disgraced end, we can only be thankful that the real Axis of Evil – George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove – will soon be disbanded.

END

The biggest-selling poster of Daniel Craig as James Bond.
Vibrator sold separately.

Old Spy, New World, Tight Arse.

International espionage will never be the same. It is now certifiably MAN-HOT.

new bond: craig, daniel craig

Last seen in London baking a LAYER CAKE (2004) and again in MUNICH (2005) ineptly gunning for terrorists, hawk-eye intense Daniel Craig is now the once and future James Bond.

“Re-imagining” has become a dirty word, but writers Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and Paul Haggis, and director Martin Campbell (who also directed Pierce Brosnan’s first Bond GOLDENEYE, 1995) have re-invented re-imagining. Originally made into a film in 1967 (from the first Ian Fleming novel and first James Bond novel, published 1953) as a spy spoof starring David Niven, Peter Sellers and Woody Allen, CASINO ROYALE has now been re-wrought to portray The Rise of Bond, while simultaneously introducing the 38-year-old Craig as the New Bond.

We are being sold that CASINO ROYALE supposedly predates Bond’s first adventure DR. NO (1962), as we meet Bond in a well-structured opening sequence, prior to being assigned his license to kill, which requires two kills for “double-oh” status. (Well, it’s a double “zero” really, isn’t it? And how do you, in fact, make two kills “legally” if you NEED two kills to GET a “License to Kill”? Seems even superspies suffer the same job-experience conundrums.)

Two – ahem – “illegal but legitimate” kills later, the famed 007 status resting squarely on his v-shaped torso, when Bond sits at a plasma laptop computer, we realize there is something shaken not stirred with this concept of “The First Bond.”

In what should be termed the STAR WARS Syndrome, technology in CASINO ROYALE far surpasses anything that Q could conjure up in the supposedly “succeeding” storylines. If the inclusion of cell phones and Photoshop are not enough to skew your suspension, a character refers to 9-11! Well, for sure this ain’t Sean Connery.

Banking on our love of Bond-age, the producers do not deviate from this anomalous concept, and we eventually settle into “it’s just a movie” mode and enjoy this grand experience on its merits.

Double-Oh Cucumber

Daniel Craig may now be the “first” Bond, but he is burdened with the legacy and baggage of all who came before him (or, uh – “after” him). To traditionalists, this terse maverick with the stylish running style, muffin-fresh pecs and “perfectly-formed arse” may not be the best Bond, but he is arguably near the top.

The opening chase and capture sequence sets the bar high, as Bond and his quarry (real-life British “free runner” Sebastien Foucan) defy the laws of physics and do the Cirque du Soleil over cranes and girders like gibbons. When Bond purposefully strides into the runner’s HQ and pummels everyone creatively, then blows up the runner himself – we acquiesce this ain’t Roger Moore.

There is nothing fey about this Bond. Disdainful, cruelly vicious, his savage blue eyes expressionless as he kills without quips – this ain’t Pierce Brosnan either.

While M (Judi Dench) questions Bond’s worth as a double-oh agent, Bond uncovers a chilling villain who weeps blood, Le Chiffre (Danish film star Mads Mikkelsen), and the film gets all European, as Bond challenges Le Chiffre to a card sharking at the Casino Royale in Montenegro.

Bond arrives with fellow agent Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) in tow, playing a high roller named Arlington Beech (oh, after 21 films he’s learned not to go blabbing his moniker around town like a burbling parrot?!), and dubbing Vesper with a suitably idiotic Bond Girl name, Stephanie Broadchest.

The great Jeffrey Wright is Felix Leiter, Bond’s remora; the 8^th actor to play the role, and given just as much nothing to do as all the other non-great actors who have followed Bond around like flat-headed fish under sharks.

Aiding Bond in Europe is French Secret Service agent Rene Mathis (Giancarlo Giannini), a minor character on the fringes of Bond canon.

Speaking of bondage – here comes the ball torture. (You wincing gentlemen readers read that right.) All supposedly tough movies lose my business when they tie a guy to a chair readying him for torture – with his undies on. Modesty? Geneva Convention? Afraid they might go gay? But this scene raised my respect for CASINO ROYALE when Le Chiffre proves himself to be a Bond Villain with a difference, who doesn’t just let Bond slide with an impotent lady-whine of “Why don’t you die?!” Le Chiffre ties Bond to a chair with the bottom cut out of it – naked. And we know that something heavy duty is coming, that will involve me throwing up in my pudding – the sadist Le Chiffre… and a heavy swinging rope knotted at one end… That’s a big Double Oh! – shortened to “D’oh!” Joins the pantheon of torture scenes (the teeth-wrenching in MARATHON MAN, the fingernail-pulling in SYRIANA) which make you feel like Malcolm McDowell with his eyelids peeled open in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. Bond quips through sac-crushing breaths, “the whole world will know that you died scratching my balls!” And we finally realize that it ain’t George Lazenby or Timothy Dalton either…

The third act is nauseating for another reason: Bond falls for Vesper in a big bad lovey-dovey kinda way, and becomes insufferable, “Whatever armor I have left has been stripped away – I’m yours.” True Love? Or vomit? Yet when Vesper sweetly seduces him with “You can have me any way you want,” our first thought is Le Chiffre’s summation of Bond’s testicular ordeal, “If you do not yield soon enough – there will be little left to identify you as a man.” What kind of Wolverine recuperative abilities does this guy possess? Is she going to pull down his pants and find a mangled mess? Or will his perfectly-formed arse distract her enough not to notice the frontal?

Seems CASINO ROYALE is trying to squeeze in everything here to play “re-boot” for a new generation: Bond acquiring his license to kill (we’ve always met Bond fully formed, license in hand), Bond settling on one woman (like he did in SPY WHO LOVED ME, MAJESTY and NEVER AGAIN), Bond’s bromance with Felix (7 other Bond movies), Bond being paired with a female MI6 agent (GOLDEN GUN), Bond Girl having stupidly sexual-innuendo name (any given Bond movie), Bond losing his love (MAJESTY)… all that’s missing is the blubber of Joe Don Baker.

CASINO ROYALE contains one of the hottest sex scenes of any Bond movie – without anyone getting naked: after Vesper is traumatized by seeing Bond dispatch two killers, he sits with her in a running shower, fully clothed, consoling, as she lets her professional guard down for the first time, instinctively snuggling into his shoulder. Down, boy!

The one redeeming factor in Bond giving his heart away is that we realize one sure thing: the woman must die. To give Bond the motivation to become the hard bastard he becomes in his upcoming adventures.

Many fans have toyed with the concept of James Bond being a code name given to various agents over the years – ironically making “James Bond” an alias! – which explains the different men playing the role… It’s not a bad idea, which was courted in the 1967 CASINO ROYALE. Although that theory should be put to rest with the scene of Roger Moore (in FOR YOUR EYES ONLY) laying flowers at the grave of his dead wife, who married George Lazenby (in MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE) – meaning the producers were trying to create continuity with the Bond character. Now though, all bets are off, as our minds are twisted into an alternate reality where Bond only comes into being after the internet. No more exploding pens.

Although that theory would explain the concept of the secret agent who simply tells everyone his “real” name – which Craig invokes like a stinger in the very last frames, while carrying a big modern automatic penis– I mean weapon: “Bond, James Bond.”

Are those Villains paying any attention at all? Or have they always been distracted by something else?

It all turns on that perfectly-formed arse.

END

Part real. Part fable. All Night.

In his book, On Directing Film, David Mamet says of movies, “it’s all make-believe. The question is, how good is the make-believe going to be?” M. Night Shyamalan‘s LADY IN THE WATER is truly what it sells itself as – a bedtime story; make-believe of the highest order, taken with a generous pinch of sandman salt and a mountainous suspension of disbelief.

Artfully woven, beautifully shot and accidentally involving, this movie solidifies writer-director-actor Shyamalan as a tale-telling talent akin to Stephen King, a director rivaling the eye of Spielberg – and an actor only slightly better than Keanu Reeves.

Yet, redemption. Regarding his thespianic dabblings, I’ve got two words for Night’s naysayers: Darth Vader. Though he is far from usurping the thrones of Oldman or Ford, Night need only display two emotions onscreen to put him miles above the Christensens and Cruises – and he pulls off his emotionally-draining role in LADY quite commendably.

Up against Paul Giamatti, he has to. As Night is the new breed of fantasist, turning Hollywood’s formulaic swill in on itself, so too is Giamatti – like Jack Black, through sheer talent – redefining the new breed of leading man. In LADY, Giamatti mines that put-upon Everyman character we know so well, yet taps into acting territory reserved for the De Niros, Hoffmans and Day-Lewises. Playing a lonely, stuttering caretaker – and making it look as painful as it must really be (a stutterer and a caretaker) – he turns in a gutsy performance that makes all his awards for SIDEWAYS and CINDERELLA MAN sit that much more securely on his shelf.

Poffy in the water

Giamatti is Cleveland Heep, caretaker of an apartment complex called The Cove, which has raised the condition of Nothing Ever Happening to an art form. Into this lusterless community, up through the swimming pool, comes Story (Bryce Dallas Howard, daughter of director Ron), one of an ancient race of Sea People, called a narf (which translates as “great legs, but a face like Richie Cunningham”), whom Cleveland keeps finding naked in his shower, quickly buying her tale of being sent to mystically jog the inspiration of surface people (the nakedness can only help the inspiration).

The narf legends are intermittently revealed through one of the Cove residents: apparently, Story must gather together a group of prophesied icons such as The Guild, The Healer, The Wordsmith – but lands a coterie of Batman villains instead, in the form of The Whiner (Giamatti), The Puzzler (Jeffrey Wright) and The Stoners (a bunch of surfer dudes).

Even as a patch of Big Bad Astroturf stalks her – all the better to scrunt you with, my dear! – Story, with Cleveland’s unintentionally-comedic help, discovers The Writer (who is actually – wink wink – The Director) whom her presence inspires to complete a magnum opus which will “change the world.” (We presume The Writer’s inspiration has something to do with seeing Cleveland’s shirt sensually draped over Story’s milk-pale shoulders.) By casting himself as The Writer, Night brings down the wrath from all walks of entertainment wannabes (critics, directors and writers alike), who begrudge Night this indulgence of Ego and frankly, I’m getting sick of the hypocrisy – who gets anything done without Ego?! It’s all ABOUT Ego. As Gene Simmons so astutely sneers, “You wish you were me.” And because they can’t or were never given the opportunity to write, direct, produce and act, all they have is vitriol for someone who can and does. Try looking on the bright side of Night’s humble, Homeric character – it may be the only time we’ll ever hear him say he is “nothing special.”

As with his two previous movies (SIGNS and THE VILLAGE), Night once again creates an insular world where nothing outside its boundaries matters in the least. This is the movie’s great sleight-of-hand and simultaneously its great failing.

The tale works effectively as long as we believe that Cleveland believes wholeheartedly in Story’s veracity – but convincing one lonely, balding man you’re a magical sprite can’t be that hard with legs like those; we are distracted minimally when everyone buys into the fairy tale as readily as Cleveland. The Night sleight-of-hand is employed just when we feel secure with the story’s predictability – what we thought was a plan coming together was merely misdirection. We recall Night’s notoriously subtle foreshadowing – how he merely pencils in, rather than hammers home – and realize that he has once again concealed his mystery in full sight.

The failing of the movie is in its less-than-compelling climax, for even when the plan does come together, we ask ourselves what exactly came together; it seems too pat for Story to find every icon that she needs amongst The Cove’s residents, and except for The Guardian and The Healer, no one else seemed to be integral to protecting Story and The Writer; that is, anyone could have picked up a rake to fend off a twiggy wolf, you didn’t need to be “seven sisters” or “a man with no secrets.”

Yet again – redemption: the stirring and stunning music of James Newton Howard dynamically spirits us into this world of twigs shaped like wolves and mermaids shaped like Twiggy, salving the wounds of weak plot; Giamatti provides a surprising amount of humor amongst the suspense, at times, overlapping the sublime and ridiculous, as when he pretends to be an infant to glean more of the narf legend; Night’s film-making itself is a wonder to behold, with his penchant for making every frame count, his creative camera placements and artful use of out-of-focus shots; and beautifully simple aspects like lighting a night scene as if it is night! – i.e. no backlit trees and shards of light aimed at actors when they hit their marks, but an overall, enshrouding darkness.

LADY even gives us a self-referential movie critic (Bob Balaban, whom some critics take as seriously as he satires them), who didactically elucidates “movie formula,” specifically so that Night can show us how LADY ingeniously subverts that formula…

LADY IN THE WATER is a suspense tale, not easily forced into a horror mold – nor should it be. Yet marketers, reviewers and audiences alike insist on calling it “horror,” then complaining that “it ain’t that scary.” As much as he is lauded by film aficionados and fans alike, an unsophisticated coterie obsessively maintains that unless an M. Night Shyamalan film contains a “twist” exactly like that in THE SIXTH SENSE, it is worthless. Who made up that rule? Writing, acting, music, sound design, ingenious plot arcs matter not to these bent-parochial netherworlders. Either they need to get over their stone-stupid provincialism, or they need to get laid.

LADY is proof that Shyamalan still gives his audience more credit than they deserve, as the “dumb” contingent, complying with the saw of empty vessels making the most noise, are the most vocal in their deprecation.

Yet the same people who denounce this master storyteller for some of the stranger aspects of this fiction (the boy reading portents in cereal boxes, the wolf hewn from garden greenery, the aquatic lady not having gills) are the same people who believe in humans with wings in a cloudy habitat called heaven; who believe in extraterrestrial anal-probing; who believe that a man can absolve them of their vilest crimes by being flayed by Romans for two days straight two-thousand years ago; who believe planets influence their lives more than the dangerous stupidity which would lead them to believe that in the first place – and whilst vilifying Night for fiction which brings only entertainment to those intelligent enough to glean it, these people would readily bring suffering to those who do not regard their idiotic fictions as reality.

Maybe one of the most poignant messages of LADY IN THE WATER is that even the insignificant among us may have a significant role to play on some grander canvas. Unfortunately, only the “significant” will glean that message. And those who pule for twists and horror and moronically await SIXTH SENSE PART II: THE SEVENTH SENSE, or SIXTH SENSE III: OCEANS’ FIFTEEN should take my advice and get themselves a massage.

And – like this movie – include a happy ending.

END