Cynical Cinema

I have just come from the advance screening of Quantum of Solace.  I went with my buddy Mark, and we discussed the movie in a rather in-depth way on the drive home.  And it occurs to me, only now at this moment, that we never discussed the title at all.  And wrack my brain as I might, I can’t for the life of me remember what it means.  Or what scenes in the movie were relevant to this title.  I’m at a loss.  I really can’t understand where this title came from.  It doesn’t, really, even sound very cool, or very James-Bondy.  It could just as easily be the title of one of those sci-fi movies about cute children and magical bunnies.

The word “quantum” means only “a specified amount”.  Quantum physics refers to the smallest discrete amount of some physical property that a system can possess.  And the word “solace” means “comfort or consolation”.  So, really, this movie could have been called A Specified Amount of Consolation.  Or, A Modicum of Revenge.  Or A Certain Amount of Vengeance.  Because I suppose, the idea behind the film is that James Bond is getting revenge upon those who caused the death of his girlfriend Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale.  Perhaps that’s what it means.

But just because I don’t understand the title does not mean that Quantum of Solace isn’t cool.  Because it is.  It’s very, very cool.  Just like in Casino Royale, Daniel Craig is the most badass Bond of them all, with less charm and more hardcore skills-of-a-badass.  I remember saying when I watched that first film that he reminded me, (and I mean this) more of George Lazenby than of any other Bond, in that he puts more emphasis on being tough and mean than on being clever and charming and slick.  And I like that.  But now, having watched this second Daniel Craig installment in the Bond series, he no longer reminds me of George Lazenby.  And even though he ends the movie bloody, beaten up, and exhasuted, he doesn’t remind me of Bruce Willis either.  He reminds me of Daniel Craig.  And that is a terrific thing.  I said it in the last movie, and I will say it again about this one - Daniel Craig is the best actor to play James Bond.  Ever.

Quantum of Solace kicks off right where the last one left off.  We see a car chase through the mountains, and before Bond destroys the opposition with some fancy driving and some gunfire, we know what’s going to happen when he opens the trunk.  Mr. White (Jesper Christensen) is going to be in there.  Possibly still alive, more likely dead, what with all the crashing and bullet holes.  This is one of those car chases where a bunch of stuff is happening all the time, and the camera leaps from the road to the car to the hand on the gearshift and then back to the road.  Bond’s car appears to be headed toward an impossible gap between say, two dump trucks, where not even a bicycle could fit, then we flash to his gearshift and then back to the road, where his car comes out of some mess of traffic where it had clearly not been split seconds before. 

This must be one amazing gearshift.   In Quantum of Solace, we don’t see a single one of those fancy James Bond gadgets that are a staple in this series, and I think it is safe to assume that this gearshift is one of them.  There is no Q to explain how it works, but it appears to be able to teleport Bond’s car from one side of a snarl-up to the other.  This would be an extremely useful gadget for the average commuter, but until it hits the mass market it’s best that such a prototype would be used to save the life of James Bond.  Now, I have no idea how the henchmen chasing him manage to execute similar manouevers, perhaps they have stolen this same amazing technology and they are chasing Bond to get his copy of the instruction manual.

There are other chases in this movie, some that make more sense (editing-wise) than others.  There is a terrifically intense rooftop-chase scene on foot, and while it doesn’t compare to the one in Casino Royale where Bond chases that guy with the mad monkey skills, it is pretty cool nonetheless.  There is a plane chase, where Bond is able to make a fighter plane crash through a combination of smoke from his engine and…turning left…I think.  Either way, there is a fireball and the other pilot loses and Bond made it happen somehow.  Then there is a boat chase.  It flows rather nicely but is based on a rather questionable premise. 

You see, a woman named Camille (the smoking hot Olga Kurylenko) has just mistaken Bond for an assassin.  And she has tried to shoot him.  He divines that she is in league with the bad guys he is chasing, so after she attempts to kill him he follows her.  So far so good.  She is one of the bad guys, she will lead him to the other bad guys, and he will exact his bloody revenge for the death of the Woman He Loved in the first movie.  He watches Camille interact with the bad guys on a pier, and then watches her get onto a boat with some other bad guys.  He manages, telepathically I suppose, to figure out that the bad guys on the boat are going to kill her.  She is still one of the bad guys, as far as he knows, and she has already tried to kill him.  Yet he decides, in a situation that must be against his better judgement, to rescue her by stealing a boat and ramming a yacht and then kidnapping her.

Perhaps the twenty seconds he spent with her in her car before she decided to kill him were enough to convince him that she was alright, basically a nice person, with a warm heart and a purity of purpose.  And that her decision to murder him with a gun was really just an unfortunate but understandable misunderstanding and he holds no grudge.  He clearly doesn’t need her for anything.  She gets knocked out during the boat chase.  Now, she IS in league with these bad guys, and must know something that could help Bond get his men.  But he didn’t save her to find out what she knows.  He merely hands her unconscious body to a perplexed bystander and continues on his way.  So…why did he save her life?  What was that all about?  Perhaps he knew (because she is obviously the hottest chick he’s met and it’s a James Bond movie) that she will resurface later and feel kindly toward him for all that life-saving boat-chasing action.

So, the boat chase is gratuitous.  But it is cool, and John Woo himself might even be impressed with that one.  The chase on foot makes sense, the chase in the plane makes sense, and it is easy to understand how the car chase could have come about.  All that was missing in Quantum of Solace was a submarine chase and a space-shuttle dogfight.  Next movie, perhaps.  Actually, that wasn’t all that was missing in the film.  There are no gadgets.  There is no Q, although there is an M.  He only sleeps with one woman, and it isn’t the one we expect.  There are no duplicitous women.  Not once did I hear him say “Bond.  James Bond.”  Nor did he mention a martini, shaken, stirred or otherwise.  He is drinking something that looks suspiciously like a martini on a plane at one point.  And he makes quite a point of letting us all know that he has no idea what the name of this silly, fruity drink might be.  Which is far cooler than actually ordering one.

Because this Bond has no need for fruity drinks or charming cleverness or slick lines.  He is not Pierce Brosnan, after all.  He is Daniel Craig, and he’s a bull in a china shop compared to Brosnan, who was more like fine china at a rodeo.  Does that make sense?  Maybe not.  Who cares.  Brosnan was all hair gel and arched eyebrows, Craig is all guns and fists and scowling.  Which is far more badass, makes for a far more badass movie, and enhances my enjoyment considerably. 

I was worried a few times near the beginning of the movie.  For a while, it looked like it was going to be one chase after another without a break for explaining the story.  When those concerns were alleviated, it appeared as though Quantum of Solace might fall into that middle-years-Bond trap of having too many characters and too much intrigue and a story that was difficult to follow.  Like, who’s that bad guy?  How does he relate to that other bad guy?  What exactly is the plan here, and how does Bond even know these people are evil?

But fortunately, that is not the case either.  Soon, we learn exactly what is going on.  The American spies (including Felix, played by Jeffrey Wright, who was also in Casino Royale) are doing business with the Bad Guy Boss, Dominic Greene (played by Mathieu Amalric).  Greene is a rich, shadowy businessman who runs some kind of bizarre clandestine organization, apparently the same one responsible for the death of Bond’s girl Vesper in Casino Royale.  He is setting up a deal with a deposed Bolivian dictator, which would return that dictator to power in return for some abandoned desert in the middle of the country.  Greene has managed to convince the Americans that there is oil in that desert, and that is why the Americans are willing to look the other way during this Bolivian coup d’etat.  However, he is deceiving them.  His real target is water.

And that’s what made me enjoy this movie most of all.  The bad guy.  Sure, Bond is a badass.  And yes, Olga Kurylenko and Gemma Arterton are ridiculously hot in the Bond-girl tradition.  But this bad guy is a little more layered than the standard Bond villain.  He is similar to the other villains in the series, in that he commands a cartel of bad-news international players who can make things like coups take place.  But he is different in that he doesn’t have a crazed plan for world domination.  He isn’t after uranium or plutonium or even oil.  He is after water.

The idea here is that he will control, from his “useless” patch of desert, Bolivia’s water supply.  And he will make the people of that country pay him for their own water.  And he will get richer.  That’s about it.  Not only is it a rather small-scale evil plan for a Bond villain, but it is also plausible.  Sure, it is the kind of evil plan that shows a complete disregard for human life, but it could really happen, in this world.  In fact, it often does.  We all know there are corporations who buy up water rights in poor countries.  So Dominic Greene, in Quantum of Solace, is not only the most realistic evil villain in a Bond movie, but he is also an amazingly plausible villain for any movie.

Then again, there are still the implausible James Bond touches.  Like the final showdown in the five-star hotel in the middle of the desert.  This just wouldn’t work.  It may be an amazing place, but if it’s hundreds of miles away from everything else, then who would ever go there?  Even the richest people on earth, who want the solitude that comes from such complete isolation, would much rather have that solitude in the mountains near lakes and rivers than in the middle of the open desert.  I assume. 

Not only is this hotel fiscally unrealistic, but it also contains far more tanks of hydrogen than one would anticipate.  This is a pretty poor architectural plan if this building will be your evil-guy hideout.  After all, if one wayward truck say, backs into the garage and explodes, this could (conceivably) lead to a chain reaction of hydrogen-tank explosions that would destroy the entire place.  Perhaps.  I can’t complain too much, if that (hypothetical) giant explosion ending came after both the leading man and the leading lady got their respective sweet revenge on the people who had done them wrong in the past, and had a badass walk off into the sun.  And also if that leading lady was the ridiculously hot Olga Kurylenko, and that leading man was the totally badass Daniel Craig.  That would be OK.  If it happened like that.

Paramount Home Entertainment is coming out with a movie called Chicago 10 on August 26th. It’s a very strange take on the famous Democratic National Convention held in Chicago in 1968, and the anti-war demonstrations at that convention that led to riots, arrests, and a really bizarre trial. Chicago 10 is basically a documentary about that trial, featuring archival footage of Abbie Hoffman, Allen Ginsberg, Norman Mailer, Bobby Seale, and the rest of the people involved with the trial. Interviews with them at the time, footage of Hoffman and David Dellinger at speaking engagements, and of course footage of the demonstrations, the police response, and the riots that took place. What happened after the disturbance in 1968 was that eight people were put on trial for “crossing state lines for the purposes of inciting a riot”. The trial really was a farce, and film maker Brett Morgen wants to accentuate this by creating a cartoon representation of the trial itself.

Which means that between the archival footage and the documentary pieces, we get a re-enactment of the Chicago trial by cartoon characters. They look like the people they represent, they talk like the people they represent, and Morgen has recruited some big names to help voice these characters. Jeffrey Wright, Amy Adams, Hank Azaria, Nick Nolte, Mark Ruffalo, Liev Schrieber and many others participated in this film. Which is impressive, and really adds punch to the courtroom scenes, which are taken directly from the transcripts of the trial itself. A trial which saw the judge order Bobby Seale, the national leader of the Black Panther Party, to be bound and gagged right in the courtroom because of his frequent outbursts. This was an absolutely crazy time in North American history, and this trial really encapsulates what was craziest about it. And this movie provides a really interesting look into that trial.

Interesting, but not as interesting as it should be. This trial and these events in Chicago in the late sixties fascinate me, and I wanted to learn everything I could. And in watching this movie, I learned an awful lot. But the style of the movie and the “artsy” nature of the animated segments don’t really help. It’s better than one of those cheesy “courtroom re-enactment” scenes from other, worse documentaries, and I frankly don’t know what I would have preferred to see in it’s place. But the style of the movie becomes overpowering, and I found myself getting distracted from the actual story by the animation. It isn’t a major fault, because this movie is still impressive and thorough, but it prevents the film from being a great one.

There is an absolutely phenomenal box set being released on August 26th. Woody Allen has been one of the greatest American directors for many years, and while he is mostly remembered for his all-time classics, Manhattan and Annie Hall, every one of his films is worth watching for one reason or another. With his latest, Vicky Cristina Barcelona in theatres, Alliance Films decided to release Woody Allen: The Collection today, August 26th. Every movie in this box is good, some are great. And while six of the discs have been readily available before this on DVD, the seventh is the bonus.

Wild Man Blues, a 1997 documentary film about Woody Allen, has been a hard-to-find item for some time. Not a film about Allen the film maker, but a film about Woody Allen the jazz musician. Allen, when not making films, plays jazz clarinet at a New York club. This film, directed by Barbara Kopple, follows Allen around as he takes the jazz ensemble on the road. The documentary was made right around the time when the public image of Allen was at it’s lowest. He had just left Mia Farrow for their stepdaughter Soon Yi Previn, and people were beginning to look on him as some kind of sexual predator. This film was accused of apple-polishing by some critics upon it’s release. As though it were some kind of brown-nosing attempt by Kopple to repair Allen’s tarnished image, and the movie was quickly forgotten. But in watching it now, it is merely a window into the man’s private life, his relationship with Soon-Yi, which really does appear to be pretty normal, and his relationship with his parents, which is eye-opening.

The other films in the set are all second-rate Woody Allen films, which would be first-rate films by almost anyone else. Mighty Aphrodite, the film for which Mira Sorvino won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar, is a pretty fluffy film that works best as a reminder that Mira Sorvino CAN actually act. Bullets Over Broadway is a brilliantly funny comedy about gangsterism and the roaring twenties, featuring terrific performances by Chazz Palminteri and Dianne Wiest. Everyone Says I Love You is a musical comedy that is absolutely jammed with star power, and as such is one of the only Julia Roberts movies, AND one of the only Drew Barrymore movies, that I actually enjoy. Deconstructing Harry is a very dark comedy that is equally star-studded, with Robin Williams, Demi Moore, Billy Crystal and dozens of others in perhaps Woody Allen’s most under-rated movie. Celebrity is also jammed with big names, but isn’t one of Allen’s best efforts. And Scoop is likely the low point of the box set, with Scarlett Johanssen turning in a surprisingly mediocre performance and Hugh Jackman being a little more irritating than necessary. Not a horrible movie, but weak by Woody Allen standards.

Woody Allen: The Collection is a must for fans of his work, with Wild Man Blues being the icing on the cake. Get this box set, then pick up Annie Hall, Manhattan and Crimes And Misdemeanors, and you have all the Woody Allen you’ll ever need.

BlacKout is about an event we likely all recall. That giant blackout that turned off the power across Ontario and upstate New York a few years ago. I remember exactly what I did. I got a couple of girls from work to come home with me, we grabbed ice bags from the store in my building, we filled the tub with the ice and the beer that was still in my fridge, and we waited. Our phones were dependant on power, so we didn’t call anyone, we just waited. My roommate came home. Then the girls from downstairs came up. Then the two college guys from across the hall came over. Then other girls we knew just arrived from nowhere. Somehow the word was out, phones be damned, that our place was the central gathering point. People had beer, put it in the tub, and we had a great time out on our balcony and around our house for an entire night. This good time was aided by a small act of violence. When Dave from downstairs came up carrying his guitar, and set it down for a moment, we hid it in the ceiling until the next day. We were pleased to have a small party, but we’d be damned if it would turn into a campfire kumbaya party.

In other parts of the country, things weren’t so orderly. In particular, a neighbourhood in New York City called East Flatbush, where the tension boiled over into violence, looting, and a vey scary night for everyone in the area. BlacKout tells their story, and it is out on DVD this coming Tuesday courtesy of Paramount and BET. Most exciting for me was seeing that Melvin Van Peebles was in the film. Van Peebles (and yes, he is Mario’s father) is a cinematic legend, the man who almost single-handedly created the “blaxploitation” genre in the 70s with his film Sweet Sweetback’s Baadaasss Song. He certainly hasn’t done much of note recently, and I’m just glad to see that he’s working. By now, he is playing George, who is in his nineties and is the super of a building in East Flatbush, the building that is central to the movie. The movie deals with several couples, a mother and son, three old ladies and a few other individuals who live in that building, and what they do during the blackout. Believe me, it is much different from what I did.

BlacKout (I don’t know why I’m still putting that big K in there. I still don’t get the big K) plays like a second-rate Spike Lee film. Specifically, a second-rate Do The Right Thing. Very very similar films, in that Do The Right Thing was centered around one day, in that case the hottest summer day of the year, and BlacKout is centered around one day, the day of the…blackout. Also similar in that it follows many people around, and their stories intersect with one another without building to any kind of massive cheesy ending where every story comes together. They just exist on their own, and in relation to one another, and it is quite good. Second-rate Spike Lee is not really a put-down. Few films could match the tempo, the dialogue and the feel of Do The Right Thing. For example, Disturbia was a second-rate Rear Window, but it was still pretty good. Comparisons to Do The Right Thing I think are unavoidable with this film, but if you can watch the whole thing while constantly thinking of Spike Lee’s masterpiece and still enjoy it, the film maker here (in this case Jerry LaMothe) has done something impressive. BlacKout is good. It just isn’t classic.

The Invasion is a remake, yet again, of the 1950s classic sci-fi horror film Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, a film that has been done many times, in many different ways, including an excellent 1978 remake featuring Donald Sutherland. The basic premise here is that aliens are invading Earth, and doing so by taking over the bodies of humans. In this way, no one can tell that the aliens are here - they still look like the same people. But their loved ones and people close to these people begin to notice. Those people are somehow different. You see, they seem to have lost all capacity for emotion. And it’s easy to spot emotionless people when you are close to them. This leads to some creepy scenes without the need to have some kind of high-tech computer generated monster spitting venom at the screen, or an actor of Anthony Hopkins’ calibre talking about fava beans and Chianti. All you really need to be creeped out is real people who can register no emotion and convey an icy demeanor.

Enter Nicole Kidman. No one does icy demeanor and cold-fish emotionlessness better than Nicole Kidman. She looks like a china doll, as though her features have been carved out of some kind of fine china, and might shatter if she smiles or frowns. And that’s when she’s being interviewed. One big problem with the 2007 edition of The Invasion is that Kidman does not play the leader of the emotionless drones who take over the world. That is a role that would suit her immensely. Yet she plays the emotional centre of the movie, for some reason. The only scenes where she is truly convincing are the ones where she must blend in with the invaders by acting emotionless. Another big problem with The Invasion is that there is nothing terribly interesting about it. Daniel Craig plays Kidman’s best friend, with some romantic tension, but nothing really develops there. Kidman’s son is the catalyst for the proceedings, as he has been taken by his father, and Kidman must get him back before hiding out in the safe zone away from the steel-faced mobs. Her ex-husband, the child’s father, fills the role of the big villain in the film, as he is perhaps the First Person Infected, and therefore the Most Evil.

During the shooting of this movie, there was a well-publicized accident during a car chase scene. A car (with Kidman inside) slammed into a wall with six or seven stunt men hanging onto it. The headlines in the papers - Nicole Kidman survives scare! The details in the reports were that Kidman had suffered only minor scrapes and bruises. Ummm…what about the stuntmen? They must have been completely smashed up, right? They were hanging onto the car, it crashed into a wall…no mention of them. I tried to do some research on this to include here in the review. Other than the fact that two stunt men had to be hospitalized, there was no information about them at all. I assume broken bones, smashed ribcages, horrible injuries. But who knows? And this is in a way another problem with the movie. Only Nicole Kidman matters. Daniel Craig exists mainly as her driver. Jeremy Northam exists only to put a bad-guy face on the “invaders”, and Jeffrey Wright has a part that could be fairly interesting, but takes up only about three minutes of screen time.

Wright is a scientist and doctor who can solve the problem of the epidemic. The key to stopping that epidemic is finding Kidman’s son, who seems to be immune to the infection. I guess they will just mulch him up, synthesize his remains, and create an antidote that will be administered to the emotionless masses by means of an army of crop dusters. Who knows. The climactic scene is nerve-wracking for a moment, but loses all the momentum it has right at the end, leading to something of an anti-climax. The one thing I will say about the movie is that it is a bit of a throwback to those classic horror sci-fi films of the 50s, (like the original Bodysnatchers) and attempts to make a social commentary at the conclusion of the film. It comes off as a bit heavy-handed, since early in the movie there is a Russian diplomat inserted into the story for the express purpose of making that social commentary. Was there anyone who didn’t think his words would come back to seem prescient? No. By the way, during that scene, Kidman is praised for her intelligence in shooting down the theories of this diplomat, but she does so by making statements that have nothing to do with his. It’s like someone says to you “I think abortion is the murder of babies”. And you say “I once burped a baby, and he was grateful”. And then people say “what a brilliant way to win that argument!” What?

As far as modern horror or sci-fi movies go, The Invasion is in the middle of the pack. Far below The Descent and The Host and 28 Days Later, far above Resident Evil and Stay Alive and The Village and Lady in the Water. But all that means is that sci-fi fanatics might find it worthwhile just because they will watch anything in that genre. Really, this movie is made for rabid fans of Nicole Kidman, who want to watch her run around, pretend to talk smart, and get into her underwear several times. That’s the target audience, that’s who should watch this film.