Frozen (2013)

Proving that I’ll probably never outgrow Disney movies, I’ll confess right off the bat that I thoroughly enjoyed Frozen – but not out of mere nostalgia for a childhood nearly twenty years gone.  Frozen manages to blend the classic Disney moviegoing experience with a very innovative revisionist take on the whole princess fairy tale genre, succeeding at both where other studios would struggle with only one.

After her magical ice powers accidentally injure her sister Anna (Kristen Bell), princess Elsa (Idina Menzel) shutters the kingdom until her 21st birthday.  On coronation day, however, when the palace doors are opened, Anna meets love-at-first-sight Prince Hans and is immediately engaged to him until her sister’s subjects exile Elsa out of fear of her powers.  As the kingdom falls into an unflinching winter, Anna goes in search of her sister with the help of ice vendor Kristoff (Jonathan Groff) and enchanted snowman Olaf (Josh Gad).

Frozen is a clear update of Hans Christian Andersen’s “Snow Queen,” and if the synopsis sounds unoriginal it’s because I’ve taken some pains to limit my summary to the broadest details.  In fact, Frozen contains a number of inversions on where the classic Disney formula might take that general plot.  For instance, the issue of “true love” comes up several times, only for the narrative to take a quick turn away from cliché and move in the direction of something more creative; when Anna and Hans sing about the all-encompassing joy of finding your soulmate, it’s acceptably saccharine in the fairy tale kind of way, but when the peppy musical number is abruptly followed by a quick marriage proposal, it becomes apparent that the filmmakers are up to something smarter.  We know – though the characters don’t – that true love takes a little more work.

I won’t spoil where the film lands on the issue of love, but suffice it to say that Frozen offers several models of love with varying degrees of truthiness before the story is done.  I will give the crew a big round of applause for, without spoiling, taking the film in a number of unexpected and fresh directions, even offering me things I’ve never seen in a Disney movie before (the sophisticated approach to love being one of the foremost).  And when you get an entire audience to gasp in surprise at a clever plot twist, Disney or not, you’ve accomplished something spectacular.

The marketing on this film has been, to my eyes, a little vague, focusing more on ambiance than on the actual plot.  Wisely so, I think, both because the plot is too fresh to be previewed and because the film looks astonishingly gorgeous.  Where its predecessor Tangled animated the heck out of Rapunzel’s hair, Frozen presents several tableaus that can only be translated as bragging rights; here, Disney presents itself the undisputed leader when it comes to animating ice.  The various snow drifts, ice palaces, and frost giants all glint and move like embodied snow ought to behave, to say nothing about the perfected-to-a-tee “house style” of Disney’s computer-animated fairy tales.  Don’t underestimate the value of consistency, which helps audiences settle into the film without too much laborious plot instruction; it’s not hard to imagine Frozen in the same universe as Brave or Tangled (and keep your eyes peeled for a Rapunzel/Flynn cameo).

The other curious move the advertising has taken is emphasizing the role of Olaf the snowman and his reindeer buddy Sven.  While these teaser vignettes weren’t especially compelling and played like a bad “funny animals” skit from a lesser movie studio (even giving me pause about seeing Frozen), I can safely say that’s a wholly inaccurate representation of the film.  Not only are Olaf and Sven far from the focus of the film, they’re actually quite engaging when stripped of the need to appeal to a target audience.  As members of the cast, Olaf and Sven are essentially Frozen’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, a cartoon Vladimir and Estragon who are good for a plethora of laughs both physical and verbal.  Even Olaf, with the potential to descend into irritating yet obligatory comic relief, hits the quirky derpy spots without grating on our nerves.

And at the center of Frozen is an immensely compelling and vigorously original story about family, love, obligation, and difference.  The voice cast are exceptional, but the visual direction even more so.  I think someday we’ll look back on the present moment as a kind of second golden age for digital animation – Toy Story heralding the first – and I predict that Frozen will take its place in that canon, both for its breathtaking animation and as that movie to which you can point when people jeer that Disney gives its viewers unrealistic expectations about love.  Frozen, I have no doubt, will thaw the hearts of even Disney’s iciest objectors.

Frozen is rated PG “for some action and mild rude humor.”  Both action and humor are quite tame, mostly slapsticky and oriented more toward “kisses are yucky” than actual inappropriate-ness on the affectionate spectrum.

For Your Eyes Only (1981)

There’s a recurring gag in Monty Python skits where Graham Chapman interrupts as “The Colonel,” who always intercedes when he feels that the skit has become “far too silly.”  While there’s no Chapman cameo in For Your Eyes Only, one gets the feeling that The Colonel’s refrain was bandied about in the wake of Moonraker, resulting in a Bond film that takes itself much more seriously, even if the end product is somewhat forgettable.

After the pre-credits disposal of a villain who for legal reasons (and in spite of the Nehru suit, traction collar, and white cat) can’t be named Blofeld, James Bond (Roger Moore) travels across Eastern Europe to Greece in order to locate a missing MacGuffin – here, it’s a missile guidance control system or whatnot.  Bond becomes entangled in a smuggling rivalry between Aristotle Kristatos (Julian Glover) and Milos Columbo (Topol), each of whom claims the other is Bond’s target; at the same time, Bond allies himself with Melina Havelock (Carole Bouquet), out to avenge the death of her parents.

By way of opening remarks, let me applaud the filmmakers – particularly director John Glen, on his first outing as a director – for moving Bond in a more serious direction.  For the past few months, I’ve contended that there is a solid James Bond lurking somewhere inside Roger Moore, but it’s often buried beneath bland chicanery and an overdose of camp.  We get to see some of that “solid Bond” come out in For Your Eyes Only, but at the same time it seems that much of the Bond humor has been stripped away from this one.  There are numerous moments begging for a Bond quip, deaths of henchmen that go unremarked.  (Later, we’ll see Daniel Craig find a nice middle ground with his dry sardonic black humor.)

So while this Bond is a conscious refutation of its campy precursors, that distancing comes at the cost of the overall Bond vibe; For Your Eyes Only feels like James Bond has been dropped into a different film franchise altogether, in which he’s playing a kind of guest role.  I’m not saying Bond doesn’t get enough screen time; he’s omnipresent as always, but he seems like a silent observer to a lot of the film, even taking a backseat at times to Melina Havelock’s revenge plot.  It’s a good thing Carole Bouquet holds her own in the film, proving capable in action sequences and in close-ups of simmering vengeance.  The chemistry, though, is never really there; she and Bond feel perpetually in each other’s way until they end up in bed together.

The honest truth?  That’s about all I remember from this movie.  As someone who prides himself on a particularly strong memory, For Your Eyes Only is like a complete blur for me, even after only a few days.  While the idea of a more serious Bond is a fantastic one, the execution on this is just passable; the film meets the bare minimum standard for gravitas by stripping away the fun but without replacing it with something compelling.  The bait and switch with the villain is a real eye-roller; Bond simply takes the word of the second “suspect” that the first is the real baddie, who admits with what amounts to a casual shrug, a “Yeah, you got me,” and a perfunctory mustache twirl.  And (spoilers) Julian Glover is terribly disappointing as Kristatos; where his Nazi sympathizer Walter Donovan in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was memorably sinister, here his chief act of villainy seems to be his relentless pursuit of a sexual liaison with an underage figure skater.

James Bond deserves better.  Heck, this film deserves better than to fade into the foggy recesses of my mind.  There’s enough that could have worked had the movie been... well, had the movie been a different movie altogether.  But in spite of it all, For Your Eyes Only is not offensively bad, which is more than I can say for Moonraker.  Moonraker was at least an unwatchable train wreck that descended into madcap incredulity with whiplash-inducing speed before our very eyes; For Your Eyes Only merely plods forward until it ends, bizarrely enough, with a Margaret Thatcher caricature.  It’s a step in the right direction, but darned if I can’t remember which direction it is.

For Your Eyes Only is rated PG.  Aside from the standard seductions, one woman very nearly exposes too much décolletage, while another wears a transparent white top and (in another scene) exposes her buttocks.  A few men are injured in aquatic scenes, with blood floating in the water; several other deaths occur, mostly off-screen and/or bloodlessly.

James Bond and The Cinema King will return – in the New Year – in a review of Octopussy (1983) on January 7, 2014!  (Heads-up:  like Moonraker, I’ve never actually been able to finish Octopussy.  We’re in trouble.)

About Time (2013)

I’m about to say something extremely significant, and for its significance to hit you like it ought, please keep in mind that Iron Man 3, Man of Steel, and Gravity all came out this year; each of them received a rather glowing review from yours truly.

Having said that, About Time is very nearly (if not entirely) my favorite movie of the year – a beautiful moving comedy that yanks at those heartstrings without losing sight of its own unique sense of humor.

On his 21st birthday, Tim (Domhnall Gleeson) receives some shocking news from his father (Bill Nighy) – the men in the family can travel through time.  After realizing it’s not a practical joke, Tim moves to London to live with depressed playwright Harry (Tom Hollander) and falls in love with Mary (Rachel McAdams) in a plot that is making me weepy just to think about it.

Truly, I cannot do justice in words to just how hard “right in the feels” this movie hit me.  About Time is a story so well told that it achieves greatness by virtue of its innocuous sincerity.  I’m often accused (sometimes by myself) of taking films too cerebrally, of a chronic inability to surrender to being moved by a film, but I can safely point to About Time as the evidence that proves I can still be swept wholly and completely away by the right film.

About Time is that film, offered as a litmus test for true empathetic humanity.  Aside from the obligatory remark of how refreshing it is to see an original, self-contained film that does everything right without gambling on a franchise, About Time handles characterization with a pitch-perfect blend of spot-on casting (especially with the avuncular ethos of Bill Nighy) and brilliant writing from director/writer Richard Curtis, who already won hearts with Love Actually.  Rather than being didactically instructed which characters to care about, About Time allows us to come to love Tim, Mary, and Dad (and even curmudgeonly Harry) as though we really knew them.  Gleeson distills the brand of endearingly awkward into a compelling performance, McAdams is as stunningly lovable as always, and Nighy is the force of nature that is “Bill Nighy” at his best – paternal, charming, and witty.

The performances are all top-notch (what else would we expect from a predominantly British cast?), but what’s truly remarkable is the plotting of the film, which Curtis’s screenplay unfolds without the typical show-off flourishes of most time travel narratives.  Instead of wowing us with sleight of hand, Curtis opts for an exploration of the basic human condition – the search for the meaning of life in finding the love of your life – that just so happens to include time travel.  As a result, the real surprises of the film come not from “wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff” (as The Doctor so snappily put it) but from smart scripting, as when the sideplot involving Tim’s sister develops in the background until its significance becomes foregrounded in a way that’s both surprising and (in hindsight) obvious.  Throughout it all, nothing is wasted, no scene goes by without deepening the characters or furthering the plot.

The greatest surprise, the most fantastic triumph of About Time comes from the astounding emotional resonance the film carries without resorting to the saccharine tropes we might expect from a romantic comedy.  Instead, we get moments of powerful devotion, assisted by the touching chemistry between Gleeson and McAdams, and a brutally slow-burn approach to making the audience cry.  I saw the film with a mostly full house, and the sniffles could be heard beginning an hour from the end; my eyes were on a perma-misty setting I didn’t know I had until the waterworks turned on all the way about twenty minutes to the end, at a point which I could identify precisely if it didn’t spoil one of the most touching scenes in the film.  Suffice it to say that About Time is the film that would move even the stonyhearted Pharaoh to tears – it certainly got me.

With the onslaught of Oscarbait movies coming this month (some of which will probably be very good), I’m holding onto About Time as the movie that moved me the most, which left me physically enervated but emotionally rejuvenated.  Even in a year filled with successful superhero outings like Man of Steel and works of breathtaking artistry like Gravity, About Time has moved into that place in my heart for movies that resonate so profoundly with everything I believe about the world – a movie to which I can point and say, “That’s a movie about the world I live in.”  For those of us looking for that emotionally perfect movie, a panacea for the hopeless romantic in all of us, it’s About Time.

About Time is rated R “for language and some sexual content.”  A topless photograph of Kate Moss is seen in a gallery exhibition, while a few sexual encounters (and their aftermaths) are depicted with no nudity (one does, however, include my new favorite seduction line, which involves the removal of new pajamas).  There is a smattering of strong profanities, and one character is hospitalized with a few cuts and bruises.  Ultimately, a rather soft R.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013)

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire has been compared to The Empire Strikes Back, particularly along the lines of being a solid and just-different-enough second entry in a trilogy (though Hunger Games is going the cashgrab route by splitting Mockingjay into two).  The positive reviews are fantastic news for fans of the franchise – and, I suspect, newcomers – even if the movie doesn’t quite stick the landing.

After she and Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) defied the Capitol to win the 74^th Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) learns that the evil President Snow (Donald Sutherland) has arranged for her to enter the arena once more in the 75^th “Quarter Quell” Hunger Games.  While facing off against other returning winners of Hunger Games past, Katniss and Peeta struggle to form new alliances while convincing the spectators they’re still in love.

Though Gary Ross did a fine job with the first outing, director Francis Lawrence (no relation, apparently) outshines his predecessor by eliminating some of Ross’s arthouse excesses – especially the shaky-cam and what I called “decadence by Lady Gaga” – and opting for a steadier approach to the story which lets the narrative instability – that is, the internal conflicts and burgeoning rebellions – carry through nonetheless.  Lawrence is equally at home directing ballroom dances, political scheming, and stealth-based action, a versatile hand at the till.

Perhaps more remarkable is the unbelievably talented cast, elevating this from the “teenybopper” genre into something with a little more gravitas.  Jennifer Lawrence, despite being an Oscar winner, never feels like she’s slumming it, instead giving it her all as the steely archer Katniss.  The rest of the returning cast are all still quite good; Sutherland is deliciously smarmy, Woody Harrelson is still stalwart as the drunken mentor Haymitch, and Elizabeth Banks steps up her game as Effie Trinket, the PR shadow who grows a conscience.  For my own philosophical reasons, I wasn’t wholly convinced by the love triangle plotline (something I didn’t dig in the books, either), but Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth are capable – the former more so, since he’s given more to do.

As with Thor: The Dark World, in which the supremely talented Idris Elba gets a solid bit part as Heimdall, god of light, Catching Fire is littered with resplendently talented thespians fleshing out the side characters.  Ostensibly the most significant such example is Philip Seymour Hoffman’s appearance as shifty new gamemaker Plutarch Heavensbee; though he doesn’t go in for all the zany beards and spangly outfits, Hoffman’s Plutarch fits in with the sinister Capitol crowd, shiftily untrustworthy with an innocuous glint in his eye.  Also joining the cast:  Geoffrey Wright as a tech-savvy Tribute, bringing his usual class and impeccable diction; Amanda Plummer, his schizo opposite number; and Jena Malone as Johanna Mason, compellingly managing the character’s manic oscillations between sultry and shouty.  (Spoilers?  I’m especially glad she’ll be back for the sequel, since she has perfect love/hate chemistry with Lawrence.)

This sequel manages to achieve that different-but-familiar sensation, preserving the basic dystopia/decadence/arena formula of the first film without feeling repetitive (a claim, oddly enough, I can’t say holds true for the source material).  There’s just enough difference – difference done well, too – that the film manages to step into what feels like a new place, giving it that Empire Strikes Back feel:  doing the right stuff again, adding in new and better stuff (in this analogy, I suppose Hoffman is our Lando Calrissian), and ditching the parts that didn’t work.  Unfortunately, also like Empire, Catching Fire doesn’t really end; instead, the movie cuts to black just when things were getting really interesting, inviting moviegoers back for what’s already a cashgrab in two pieces.  

After Prometheus, I have a little less patience for this kind of thing, but I suppose that the biggest compliment I can pay Catching Fire is that the preceding two hours are so successful that the last-minute “To Be Continued” ends up being entirely inoffensive.  If this is fire, I’m happy to catch it.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is rated PG-13 “for intense sequences of violence and action, some frightening images, thematic elements, a suggestive situation and language.”  The combat scenes are shorter than in the first Hunger Games, though there are several explosions that toss bodies around.  In one scene, howling monkeys torment our heroes; in another, demonic mockingbirds.  Throughout, the specter of death haunts each character, and in one scene a woman undresses in front of three others, with no nudity shown.

Last Vegas (2013)

We’ve come to regard The Hangover as a kind of golden standard which at least perfected the “weekend gone wrong” genre (if not kickstarting it).  And Last Vegas, with its all-star cast of Hollywood’s golden-year’d actors, has been marketed as a kind of Hangover for the over-50 crowd (or, unintentionally, 20-somethings like me).  But where Last Vegas sputters in places The Hangover soared, the film ultimately entertains on the sheer ethos of its A-list, A-game stars.

Last Vegas finds Michael Douglas on the eve of his marriage to his early-30s trophy girlfriend.  After convincing the reluctant Robert De Niro to join in spite of his “unresolved issues” with Douglas, Kevin Kline and Morgan Freeman fly to Las Vegas for the big reunion and the bachelor party for their perennially single friend.  Hijinks, of course, ensue.

Where The Hangover was innovative in the unexpected relentlessness of its rolling-in-the-aisles laughs, Last Vegas is the victim of its own marketing campaign, which tragically blew some of the best gags in the film (the rotating bed and Morgan Freeman’s window escape, to allude to a few).  And having seen the trailer more than once (the consequence of being a too-frequent moviegoer), these truly funny moments didn’t elicit much more than a weak chuckle – less than they deserved, but all I could muster.  There are a few genuine laughs (i.e., the conceit that a misogynistic “bro” mistakes the four friends for mobsters), but the best, to rework the old Browning poem, has already been.

Last Vegas never really surpasses the brilliant idea of “let’s get all our talented old people in one movie” (see also Red, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel).  And not every movie needs to surpass convention, so if I dial back my standards of grandeur Last Vegas ends up being a pretty successful film.  The “Flatbush Four” are all reliably gifted performers and play to their strengths – Douglas the charismatic bachelor, De Niro the crochety East Coaster, Freeman the polysyllabic golden-throat, and Kline the goofy sidekick.  We know their work well enough to know what to expect, though a nice surprise comes from De Niro’s more heartfelt moments; from an actor who sometimes seems to phone it in, it’s nice to see a performance that (while not Oscar-worthy) still plucks a heartstring or two.  In fact, any one of these actors is worth the price of admission, and the combination of four can’t help but succeed, even in a bad movie (which, fortunately, Last Vegas isn’t).

The other nice surprise about the film – which, decently, the trailers didn’t spoil – is Mary Steenburgen’s lounge singer Diana, a keen counterpart to the testosterone-heavy cast.  (Sidebar:  I just realized she’s for this film what Heather Graham was for The Hangover.)  She won’t be passing any Bechdel tests any time soon, and I can’t say I was a fan of the predictable “older woman course-corrects girl-crazy bachelor” plotline, but at least the film keeps us guessing on which bachelor she’ll land.  Diana is a different brand of character than the competitive machismo fleshing out the rest of the cast, often calling out characters on their self-deceptions; it’s a clever storytelling technique which allows the film to be smarter than a less rigorous draft of the screenplay would have been.

Ultimately, Last Vegas didn’t knock me out like I wanted it to, but 90 minutes in the company of four of Hollywood’s finest is, to quote one of my professors from my first semester of graduate school, “as good a choice as any.”

Last Vegas is rated PG-13 “for sexual content and language.”  There’s a seduction scene in which nudity is implied, though we see nothing more than bare shoulders; there are a few unenthusiastic and brief innuendos, as well as (according to IMDb) one F-bomb and a few weaker profanities.  Quite tame, particularly compared to The Hangover.

Thor: The Dark World (2013)

We’re halfway through Phase Two of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (Iron Man 3 behind us, Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy ahead before The Avengers: Age of Ultron), and things are looking pretty good from where I’m sitting, even with creative changes behind the scenes.  With Thor: The Dark World, Alan Taylor picks up the directorial reins and turns in an exceptionally fun fantasy that carves out a filmic identity for the Norse god.

When a cadre of Dark Elves led by the malicious Malekith (Christopher Eccleston) seeks to destroy the entire universe, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) – the god of thunder – returns to Earth to rescue his lady love, scientist Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), who’s been awaiting his arrival in the wake of the events of The Avengers.  When Thor discovers that Jane has a strange connection to Malekith’s plan, he reluctantly jailbreaks his trickster brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston), with the fate of all existence in the balance.

With a new director at the helm, it’s surprising that Thor: The Dark World feels as familiar as it does, though Taylor and crew take a few steps into new territory that keeps this sequel from feeling stale.  The best comparison I can make is to Star Wars:  like the iconic Star Wars, the Thor franchise seems to be moving in a science-fictional comedy sphere, with spaceships, laser guns, and interplanetary travel decorating the sprawling plot.  Taylor amps up the science fiction angle, stepping away from the hubristic theology of Kenneth Branagh’s work on the first Thor in favor of a more light-hearted space opera.  The comic relief might be overdone for some – Stellan Skarsgård’s Erik Selvig has become a kind of caricature, though it’s not without purpose – but for me it’s a fine counterpart to the Sturm und Drang of Chris Nolan’s DC work.

But don’t mistake an expanded scenery for a reinvention of the wheel.  Thor: The Dark World retains much of what we loved about the first film and gives us more of it.  Those who loved Thor hitting things with Mjolnir (whose absurd nickname also gets a callback) will be satisfied, and even those who found the Thor/Jane love story less than compelling may be pleasantly surprised here.  While these individual films still haven’t quite reckoned with questions like “Where are the other heroes?” Thor: The Dark World sticks the standalone landing by focusing on what makes it unique as a franchise – near-Shakespearean characters in superheroic action.

Best of all, Thor: The Dark World recognizes the strengths of its supporting cast by giving room to the returning faces, even as newcomers like Eccleston give us classically comic-booky performances (in the best kind of way).  As snarky intern Darcy, Kat Dennings gets one of the most expanded roles, sassing her way into the audience’s heart while even getting a small sort of arc of her own.  (It’s a shame Jamie Alexander’s Lady Sif doesn’t get the same treatment; the “love triangle” the trailers promised never really comes to pass.)

Tragically for Hemsworth, though he’s more than capable as the brash yet compassionate protagonist, he’s completely and utterly upstaged by Tom Hiddleston’s Loki.  Indeed, I suspect we’re not too far away from a Loki solo film (at least, if Tumblr has anything to say about it), and it’s entirely due to Hiddleston’s charismatic smirk, dynamic eyebrows, and utterly engrossing duplicity as the god of mischief.  Resisting cookie-cutter villainy at every turn, Loki is the dictionary definition of a scene-stealer, replete deeply ambiguous motivations and an inexplicably engaging contempt for all the other characters – especially his do-gooder brother.  Enough good things really cannot be said about Hiddleston, whose every minute of screentime elicited from me an obnoxiously broad grin and repetitive murmurs of “Damn, he’s good.”

Thor: The Dark World is so full of top performers giving their all (I haven’t even mentioned Anthony Hopkins or Idris Elba) that it almost doesn’t matter that the story doesn’t break much ground.  We’ve seen the “ancient evil seeks to restore chaos” before, but the makers of this Thor sequel have put together such a well-told version of the old archetypal narrative that you’ll be too busy having fun to notice.

In fact, fun is the operative word here – an innocuous scifi/romance/adventure story worthy of the heretofore perfect streak of the Marvel brand.

Thor: The Dark World is rated PG-13 “for sequences of intense sci-fi action and violence, and some suggestive content.”  There are bunches of creatures shooting lasers and smashing hammers, all bloodlessly with the occasional explosion or debris field flying about.  There are a few references to Thor’s impeccably muscled physique, one obligatory shirtless scene of the buff god, and a few tame kisses.

Moonraker (1979)

Consistently ranked among the worst of the James Bond films, Moonraker is that rare movie on which I gave up the first time.  A few years ago, after about forty minutes, I couldn’t take it anymore, but after revisiting the film for this review series, I can safely report that I made the wrong move – but only by about twenty minutes.  There’s actually about an hour’s worth of good material in Moonraker before the film descends into a weird self-parodying science-fiction cartoon, a totally bland mess of a movie.

After a space shuttle mysteriously disappears, James Bond (Roger Moore) investigates Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale), the creator of said shuttle. Bond quickly forms an alliance with the beautiful astronaut Holly Goodhead (Lois Chiles) while uncovering Drax’s plan to foster a new master race in outer space – aided by Bond’s returning nemesis Jaws (Richard Kiel).

If the plot sounds exactly like The Spy Who Loved Me by way of Star Wars, don’t adjust your sets; what you’re detecting is a bizarre self-plagiarism that shoots for the moon, misses, and lands not among the stars but in a place devoid of the thrills and sincerity that made Spy a success.  The self-evident lack of creativity damages the film by drawing attention to its faults; what Spy did well, Moonraker bungles, and what Spy bungled, Moonraker outright fails.  Where Stromberg was a little droll yet maniacal, Drax is literally boring, mumbling his lines, shuffling his feet, and never really making eye contact with anyone.  As Drax’s opposite number, Moore is trying – he really is – but Moore’s level of tongue-in-cheek only casts too much light on the inherently absurd film before us.

The film’s greatest sins could encompass a post all their own, though among them are an apparent misunderstanding of the physics of deep space, the whiplash-inducing tonal shift into science fiction once the NASA cavalry arrive with laser guns, and the film’s unforgivable mistreatment of Jaws.  Arguably the major find of the franchise, Jaws was a colossal contributing factor to Spy’s success; the scowl, the physicality, and those teeth all combined into an unforgettable character, which Kiel deftly brought to life.  But the promise contained in Jaws’s pre-credits appearance – really a great opener, in which Bond, Jaws, and another airman battle over two parachutes in free fall – tragically flops when the film demotes Jaws first to a Wile E. Coyote caricature, hapless yet indestructible, before shoehorning him into both an uninspiring romantic subplot and (spoiler warning?) an utterly unconvincing redemption plot.

It’s really a shame, because there’s a skeleton of a great Bond movie in there somewhere, and if we hadn’t just seen the exact same plot in Spy Who Loved Me it’d be a winner; it keeps the sleuthing intact, and the idea that Holly Goodhead is secretly a CIA agent is a clever twist that Chiles pulls off well.  Indeed, it’s almost disappointing that Bond successfully beds her, since her apparent resistance of Bond’s charms is such a compelling angle – a step, perhaps, toward the franchise’s later moves away from the “Bond girl” trope (best embodied, literally, by Britt Ekland’s bikini in The Man with the Golden Gun).

Is Moonraker the worst Bond ever?  I’m not ready to go quite that far – it is, unmistakably, a movie that is difficult to enjoy, at best tepid and uninspiring and at worst viciously schlocky and pretty much bad.  It’s in strong competition with Diamonds Are Forever for my least favorite Bond thus far, and it’s the first entry for which I’ve really agreed with the popular consensus that finds Moore’s Bond guilty of crimes against moviegoers.  And for once, in spite of my usually optimistic outlook, I’m rather uneasy about the future of the franchise; where Diamonds Are Forever might have been shrugged off as Connery’s unenthusiastic last hurrah, we still have three more outings with Roger Moore.

Moonraker is rated PG.  The violence is really quite cartoony, replete with laser guns in the film’s final battle; Bond beds three women, but there’s nothing shown below the shoulders.

James Bond and The Cinema King will return in a review of For Your Eyes Only (1981) on December 7, 2013!

Monday at the Movies - November 4, 2013

Welcome to another edition of “Monday at the Movies.”  This week, the play’s the thing!

Carnage (2011) – I was actually quite proud of myself on this one because I didn’t let Roman Polanski’s repugnant past impede my enjoyment of Carnage, an adaptation of the Yasmina Reza play.  Instead, I found myself won over by four immensely compelling performances.  Jodie Foster & John C. Reilly play the parents of a boy struck by the son of another couple, Kate Winslet & Christoph Waltz.  12 Angry Men fans will likely relish the insular nature of the film, whose action takes place solely within one apartment and its connecting hallway.  This cinematic claustrophobia permits the performances to, pardon the pun, take center stage.  Quickly we see that the ceremony on which the couples stand is a precarious peace predicated on the perpetuation of pretty faces and posturing; Foster’s performance is a bold one as she breaks down and exposes the degree to which her character is entirely full of herself by blubbering through self-satisfied liberal platitudes, while Reilly reveals the polar opposite, a suppressed John Wayne sublimated by his wife’s feelgoodery.  Across the table, Winslet and Waltz are pitch-perfect as self-righteous and condescending spouses who can barely say two words to each other without making a phone call or, quite literally, throwing up.  Waltz is the only one who seems to resist epiphany here, his eye rolls and workaholic behavior an interesting type apart from his talky Tarantino turns.  It’s not that Foster and Reilly are bad, but Winslet and Waltz are in a stratosphere all their own, though they know how to let the other members of the ensemble take the screen back when need be.  An incisive look at how the hot-button issue of bullying may be a load of grandstanding and self-righteousness, Carnage is smart and delightful, four tour-de-force performances in a riveting bundle.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.”  We’ll see you here next week, and don’t forget that this Thursday is the Double-Oh-Seventh of the month...!

Monday at the Movies - October 28, 2013

Welcome to another edition of “Monday at the Movies.”  This week, cartoons!

How to Train Your Dragon (2010) – Everyone and her brother knows I’m a Disney snob, a Pixar shill, and an unabashed child-at-heart when it comes to the House of Mouse.  So I will concede that it’s very near impossible for me to say something unreservedly positive about any other studio’s animated output, but I’ll admit that How to Train Your Dragon is about as good as any non-Disney cartoon can be.  In part, this is due to a departure from what I consider Dreamworks house style:  talking animals that fart in between parodies of pop songs.  Instead, How to’s dragons neither speak nor break wind; rather, they emote silently through wide eyes or menacing body language.  The voice cast is also wisely more reserved, avoiding distracting star casting (though I question the logic behind a uniformly Scottish voice cast as Vikings); as father and son, Gerard Butler and Jay Baruchel bring some new life to the less-than-fresh disappointed parent plotline, and Craig Ferguson is always a safe bet as the top supporting character.  How to Train Your Dragon’s big win, though, is in transcending the just-for-kids mentality that seems to govern so many Dreamworks features – no surprise, perhaps, considering that directors Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois, who also helped adapt the screenplay from the Cressida Cowell novels, cut their teeth over at Disney with Lilo & Stitch (Sanders even voiced Stitch).  While the studio still has a way to go before it creates something as poetic as the opening montage from Up, Dreamworks gives me some hope that there’s more like How to Train Your Dragon in the running – at least, until the inevitable dragon who, likely to be voiced by Jack Black, possesses the power of flammable flatulence.

Mulan (1998) – Does it make me an old man that I can vividly recall the breathless anticipation when we bought the VHS tape of Mulan?  I was stoked beyond belief for this one (Lion King aside, I wasn’t much of a theatergoer in my younger days until the 1999 Star Wars prequel), and fifteen years later it still holds up as a strong entry in what retrospectively looks like Disney’s “alternative princess” stage (see also Pocahontas, Esmeralda, Megara).  To save her ailing father, Mulan (Ming-Na Wen) enters military service in his stead against the invading Hun army; moral support and comic relief is provided by Eddie Murphy as the spunky dragon Mushu.  This is one of those Disney movies where all the elements just work; the “girl in boy’s position” plotline never feels overly politically correct and is played with enough humor and earnest action that there’s something for everyone to find.  At a brisk 87 minutes (that’s including end credits), there’s no fat in the movie, and you may find the movie ending long before you tire of it; the obligatory training montage is pulled off with typical Disney aplomb courtesy of a catchy Donny Osmand track, and the movie’s two big action sequences – a snowbound ambush and a capital city invasion – work better than a lot of conventional action film set pieces thanks to some wise editing and breathtaking animatics that take full advantage of contemporary technology (which still looks first-rate) to give us a breathtaking sense of scope.  Whether viewed earnestly for the first time or nostalgically after years away from a childhood favorite, Mulan is still a fine entry in the Disney animated canon.

 That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!

Monday at the Movies - October 21, 2013

Welcome to another edition of “Monday at the Movies.”  What’s more Halloween than a murder mystery?

Clue (1985) – Can we draw a line from here to Peter Berg’s Battleship?  Movies based on board games sound like evidence for the death of the imagination in Hollywood, and while the case isn’t quite so bleak with Clue I will say that the movie is significantly less funny than I remembered it.  Anchored by Tim Curry’s extremely immersive performance as butler Wadsworth (at least, in some of the film’s multiple endings), Clue is a comedic update on the whodunit board game, teasing us with Martin Mull as Colonel Mustard, Christopher Lloyd as Professor Plum, and Madeline Kahn as Mrs. White, among others.  The film is, however, almost entirely Curry’s – and well done there, since his post-Rocky Horror screen presence is more than enough to hold our attention rapt.  This isn’t a laugh-out-loud comedy like, say, The Hangover, since the laughs are more subtle (often from an underplayed line by Kahn or a facial contort from Michael McKean’s Mr. Green).  The film’s last twenty minutes, in which Wadsworth recaps the night’s events in order to identify the killer, may sound a bit tedious (and indeed the play-by-play repetition sometimes errs on the side of redundancy) but is actually the source of the film’s strongest laughs, resulting from some madcap physical comedy, shouted refrains, and the wink-nod revelation that “Communism was just a red herring.”  Redeemed by strong comedic performances that occlude the occasional laughlesness, Clue is a solid B-level comedy that leaves a better impression than it actually makes.  (Disclosures:  my rosy recollections may have led me to be disappointed, and the fact that my moviegoing partner on this one fell asleep may factor into my disenchantment.)

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!