SPECTRE Isn't Especially Bond At Its Best

Now playing at a multiplex near you:

SPECTRE (Dir. Sam Mendes, 2015)

WARNING: This review contains Spoilers! But I bet you guessed the supposed biggest one two years ago.

James Bond is back, but this time he’s far from “better than ever” as the ad campaign has declared every time a new entry has appeared since the series began in the early ‘60s.

There’s a considerable drop-off in quality in Agent 007’s 24th adventure, SPECTRE, from his previous outing, but since that was the universally acclaimed, box office record-breaking smash SKYFALL, that’s hardly surprising.

And that's just it - as hard as they tried, there are no surprises in Daniel Craig's fourth time out as Bond. Let's start with how Mendes and Co. misguidedly took a page from the reboot rulebook established by STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS by lying to fans for years about the villain's identity.

J.J. Abrams and his crew swore up and down that Benedict Cumberbatch was not playing the series' most notorious villain, Khan, in the second installment of the rebooted Star Trek franchise and we got burned bad there. So much so that Abrams admitted later that they screwed up the reveal.

When news got out that Christoph Waltz was cast in SPECTRE, the first thought everybody interested had was that he must be playing the Bond series' biggest villain, Ernest Stavro Blofeld.

But when Waltz was asked if he was playing Blofeld, he replied: “That is absolutely untrue. That rumor started on the Internet, and the Internet is a pest.”

Well, the internet must be a pest because they guess things right sometimes.

Beyond that, the film is a stitched together collection of overly familiar action set pieces hung on a story-line that's no match for the plot of the last MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE movie.

The plot being that Bond, spurred on by a cryptic video message left by his deceased superior M (brief final Judi Dench cameo!), Bond goes on a rogue mission (hello, LICENSE TO KILL) to track down the titular evil organization behind a new electronic global surveillance initiative called Nine Eyes set to dismantle the MI6 00-division.

SPECTRE starts off smashingly with a pre-credits scene involving a high-jacked helicopter (hello, FOR YOUR EYES ONLY!) going out-of-control above the huge crowds of Mexico's Day of the Dead festival, but after the rather lackluster theme song “Writing's On The Wall,” it settles into draggy drama for a bit.

The new M (Ralph Fiennes) puts Bond on leave, so Q (Ben Whishaw) only gives him one gadget (a watch that can explode) and tells 007 “enjoy your downtime!” Of course, Bond disregards the notion of taking a break, steals MI6's snazzy new Aston Martin DB10, and heads off to Italy where he hooks up with Monica Bellucci as the widow of the guy Bond killed at the film's beginning, and he learns of a secret meeting of international terrorists that he is able to infiltrate a little too easily.

This is where Waltz as Blo...sorry, Franz Oberhauser, clothed in shadowy darkness, comes in and senses Bond's presence in the room immediately. This leads to a pretty standard-issue car chase through the streets of Rome, then Bond follows another lead to the snow-covered mountain terrain of Austria. 

There he hooks up with Léa Seydoux as Madeleine Swann (sadly, the more age appropriate Bellucci is long out of the picture), the daughter of Bond's former adversary Mr. White (Jesper Christensen, making his third appearance in the series after CASINO ROYALE and QUANTUM OF SOLACE). 

This, of course, leads to another chase, with 007 chasing after the film's Oddjob stand-in Mr. Hinx (WWE wrestler-turned-actor Dave Bautista) in a commandeered private plane that gets its wings clipped (hello, LIVE AND LET DIE!).

Meanwhile, Fiennes's M frets over a merger with MI5 and clashes with his new superior, C (Andrew Scott, best known as Moriarty on Sherlock), while Moneypenny (Naomie Harris) and Q (Whishaw) have more screen-time than usual on the sidelines aiding 007 and M.

Bond and Swann follow another lead to Morocco, and after a brutal fight on a train with Mr. Hinx (Hello, FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, LIVE AND LET DIE, and THE SPY WHO LOVED ME!), they make their way to SPECTRE's meteor crater lair (like Blofeld’s volcanic lair in YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE!), and that's where we get the lowdown on our villain's background and all that other spoilery stuff (apart from Waltz's identity as Blofeld there actually are some plot-points here I'll refrain from describing).

The London-set climax, which involves blowing up the remains of the old MI6 building, and more helicopter shenanigans, isn't very inspired and whatever excitement was in the film had drained from the film way before they get there.

Screenwriters Neal Purvis, John Wade, John Logan, and Jez Butterworth unsuccessfully try to duplicate the highlights of SKYFALL, which all but Butterworth scripted, and the result is an uneven, and frustratingly paced narrative.

And, running at 2 hours and 40 minutes, it’s the longest, and most drawn out, Bond movie of the series. That’s another strike against it. 

But back to my original beef about how they tried to hide that Waltz was playing Blofeld. This is no way to treat the re-introduction of SPECTRE, absent from the franchise since DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER for legal reasons.

It would’ve been a better move, and, I bet made for a better movie, if they’d just announced up front that the two-time Academy Award winner was portraying 007’s most powerful and iconic foe, instead of fashioning their film around such an obvious “twist.”

Instead we’ve got this epically ineffective Bond in which Craig looks bored and ready to go home. After this routine ride with such a surprise fail, that’s sure how I felt.

More later...

HORRIBLE BOSSES 2: A Tediously Tiresome Thanksgiving Turkey

HORRIBLE BOSSES 2 

(Dir. Sean Anders, 2014)

Okay, so yeah, the first film was a fluke – a one-off throwaway that was just funny enough to recommend. But the sequel, opening everywhere today, is a tiresome rehash that wears out its welcome before it even hits the 10 minute mark.

However, up to that point, with its inspired use of the Clash’s cover of Eddy Grant’s “Police on My Back” to take us into a crudely amusing opening scene featuring Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, and Jason Sudekis promoting their new invention, a bathroom accessory named “The Shower Buddy,” on a morning TV talk show, the movie seems like it could possibly match the original.

But this misguided mash-up of 9 TO 5, which they reference several times so it’s okay to steal from I guess, and BACHELOR PARTY goes downhill fast from there once its incredibly uninvolving and annoyingly familiar plot kicks in.

This time, our returning comedy trio trying to strike out as their own bosses gets screwed over by Christoph Waltz (seemingly loving slumming it here) and Chris Pine (Captain Kirk from the J.J. Abrams’ STAR TREK re-imaginings) as a father-son pair of wealthy, conniving corporate investors who steal the product and re-name it “The Shower Pal” (“That’s a better name, too,” says Sudekis).

So Bateman, Day, and Sudekis plan to kidnap Pine and collect ransom from Waltz, but guess what? Things don’t go down as smoothly as they hope.

In lame attempts to rekindle the comically criminal shenanigans of the first time around, the bickering buffoons visit Kevin Spacey, reprising his role as one of the horrible bosses, in jail for advice; Jamie Foxx, reprising his role as “Motherfucker Jones” in the same seedy bar for more contrived consultation; and Jennifer Aniston, reprising her role as a sex-addicted dentist, who has the most regrettably creepy lines to spout throughout this mess.

The so self consciously twisted scenarios the fellows get tied up in, via the screenplay co-written by director Anders and creative partner John Morris (who also both co-wrote the currently playing DUMB AND DUMBER TO), just go in circles with a clear lack of momentum.

These guys can be very funny - the stressed out Day and the all too smug Sudekis play off each other effortlessly while Bateman deadpans some choice one-liners - and amid their wacky scrapes I chuckled maybe a dozen times, but there was nothing resembling a big genuine laugh to be found.

If you stitched together these guys’ individual appearances on late night TV talk shows into a feature length 90 minutes or so it would be much funnier than this. Especially as it wouldn’t have the tired as hell kidnapping tropes (code name gags ‘n all) that all fall horribly flat here.

And there’s also the unfortunate and badly timed (because of the Cosby controversy) rape jokes that Aniston’s character, puts forth that left a disgusting taste in my mouth. As well, it’s weird that Pine puts forth some dramatic acting about dealing with his dad Waltz not loving him – in what movie does he think he’s in?

It would be a critical cliché to say that HORRIBLE BOSSES 2 is a cinematic turkey delivered just in time for Thanksgiving, but if they’re going to so blatantly trot out such a lame retread, then so am I.

More later...

Quentin Tarantino To Direct And Star In CITIZEN KANE Remake

Even in a world with so many remakes, reboots, and re-imaginings, Orson Welles’s 1941 classic CITIZEN KANE seemed to be safe as a sacred cow that nobody would even think of touching…until now.

Wunderkind writer, director, and sometime actor Quentin Tarantino has just announced that his next project will be a remake of Welles’ masterpiece, considered by many to be one of the greatest motion pictures ever, and that it will be his final film.

“I want to make one last epic statement as a film maker and then retire, and what better way to go out with a bang than to prove that I can make a better movie out of what people think is the best movie ever?” Tarantino told Empire magazine. “My version will blow Welles’ out of the water, and it’ll be in IMAX 3D. Imagine the shards of the snow globe coming right at you! It’ll be awesome.”

The casting of himself in the iconic Charles Foster Kane part will surely be controversial, but his selection of Christoph Waltz to play Jedediah Leland, a role previously inhabited by Joseph Cotton, means that the Academy should just go ahead and engrave his name on another Oscar.

Further shocking film fans, Tarantino claims, in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, that he’s never seen the original film in full. “I’ve seen parts of it on the monitor at Video Archives, the video store I used to work at before hitting the big-time, but I always had to go help customers and missed parts of it.”

Tarantino says he will view the movie once, but then never refer to it again. “I want my own vision to take over; I don’t want to make a shot-by-shot remake like Gus Van Zant did with PSYCHO. Man, that really sucked!”

So crazy that it just might work, Tarantino’s CITIZEN KANE is slated for a Christmas 2014 release.

More later...

Oscars 2013 Recap!

Now, I wouldn’t say Seth MacFarlane outright bombed in his gig as Oscar host last night, but he sure came close with so many of his jokes being cringe-inducing duds and his song and dance routines being show-stoppers in the worst way.

That he didn’t lapse into his Family Guy character voices like he did in his Saturday Night Live monologue last year is one of the few things I can commend about his performance, but it says a lot that one of the only funny bits he was involved in was a sock puppet production of FLIGHT. 

Other attempts at comedy, like MacFarlane singing a song called “We Saw Your Boobs” (a mock tribute to actresses who’ve done nudity) with the Los Angeles Gay Men's Choir, and an ending number with Kristin Chenoweth dedicated to the losers of the evening, fell horribly flat.

I tweeted that Daniel Day-Lewis joking that he was up for the part of Maggie Thatcher in THE IRON LADY while his Oscar presenter Meryl Streep was up for LINCOLN in his acceptance speech for winning Best Actor was funnier than anything MacFarlane said all night, and I wasn’t kidding.

There were a few genuine highlights - Shirley Bassey singing “Goldfinger” for the 50th anniversary tribute to James Bond being one - but it was a largely forgettable show. The rare tie in one category (ZERO DARK THIRTY and SKYFALL shared the Oscar for Best Sound Editing) will probably be as forgotten as the other five times it happened in the Academy’s history. 

A surprise appearance by Barbara Streisand singing “The Way We Were” in tribute to Marvin Hamlisch as part of the IN MEMORIUM segment brought some much needed gravitas to the proceedings. Points to MacFarlane for not making some rude comment later about it.

But now on to how I did with my predictions that I posted last Friday.

Although up until the broadcast I’ve been referring to the 2013 Oscars as the most unpredictable race in recent memory, I got more of the categories right than I have in over half a decade -18 out of 24. That’s better than the 15 I got right last year, and much better than the 13 I got the previous two years before that.

Christoph Waltz for Best Supporting Actor for DJANGO UNCHAINED, and Ang Lee for Best Director of LIFE OF PI were the big surprises last night. I figured Waltz had won, also for a Tarantino picture, not that long ago so I counted him out.

Spielberg seemed like the safe bet for his direction of LINCOLN, but, despite having picked LIFE OF PI for Score, Cinematography, and Visual Effects I really didn’t think it would win Lee the big Best Director award, and from the other predictions I’ve seen, not many others did either.

Here’s what else I got wrong:

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN: I predicted LES MISÉRABLES (Eve Stewart, Anna Lynch-Robinson), but LINCOLN (Rick Carter, Jim Erickson) got the gold.

DOCUMENTARY SHORT: OPEN HEART (Kief Davidson, Cori Shepherd Stern) I’ll just chalk this up to the fact that I didn’t see any of the Documentary Shorts, was just guessing, and I’ll leave it at that. I’ll have to seek out the winner - Sean Fine and Andrea Nix’s INOCENTE – sometime soon.

MAKEUP: THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY (Peter King, Rick Findlater, Tami Lane). I should’ve known THE HOBBIT wouldn’t win anything. It seems obvious in retrospect that Lisa Westcott and Julie Dartnell would get it for LES MISÉRABLES, but then a lot of things do.

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: LINCOLN (Tony Kushner) I thought playwright Kushner was a shoo-in, but since I’m more of a fan of Chris Terrio’s screenplay for ARGO I wasn’t disappointed to get this one wrong.

I was happy to be right about ARGO winning Best Picture - Affleck got snubbed for a Best Director nomination, but now that's just a future trivia question.

AMOUR's Best Foreign Picture win and LIFE OF PI's mini sweep with four wins were also nice to see. With hope, those moments will linger longer in memory than MacFarlane's lame material.

More later…

THE GREEN HORNET: The Film Babble Blog Review

THE GREEN HORNET (Dir. Michel Gondry, 2011)

A $90 million dollar superhero movie dropping in the middle of January may seem like a bad sign, but "The Green Hornet" isn't terrible - no, it's just so standard issue, formulaic, and only occasionally funny.

Hmm, maybe it is a bad sign.

Seth Rogen, who also co-wrote and co-executive produced is our unlikely hero here. His character Britt Reid is a partying rich 20 something and fairly close to roles he's played before. He's slimmer here, but he's still the same schlubby loser who lives from buzz to buzz.

When Rogen's disapproving newspaper mogul father (Tom Wilkinson) dies from a bee-sting, our slang talking bozo inherits his entire estate including his mechanic/man-servant Kato (Jay Chou) who makes a mean cappucchino.

Chou outfits a black Chrystler Imperial with machine guns and bullet proof glass and what do you know - they've got a crime fighting duo thing a-happenin'!

Christoph Waltz (INGLORIOUS BASTERDS) is the drug kingpin villain who wants to rule Los Angeles with a crew of pimped out thugs and a double-barrelled handgun.

Through the film's fast pace, albeit one with too many montages, we see Rogen and Chou fight attacking foes, getting their gear together, and smashing up their Imperial so much that they need a line of back-up cars.

There's also Cameron Diaz in a nothing role as Rogen's secretary (at least there's one lady present in this boy's club I suppose), Edward James Olmos as the newspaper's long suffering managing editor, and a slimy David Harbour as the District Attorney who's motives you can see coming from a mile away.

Its a noisy mess of a movie full of destruction displaying very little of the visual style that Gondry has shown in such films as THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP and ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND. The brief instances of Gondry's flair are lost in the slick shuffle - a segment with split screens inside of split screens in yet another montage hints at what could've been.

As much as I like Rogen and have been highly amused at his work - his jokey jargon didn't carry the movie through as amusingly as expected. He's, of course, not an actor that gets lost in a role - he's just Rogen playing dress-up - and that like just about everything else here gets pretty tiresome.

There's some entertaining chemistry between Rogen and Chou, but their dynamic seems a bit off at times. However a fight scene between them after a falling out is one of the stand-out set pieces of the film.

As the only one with grace in the cluttered comic book chaos, Chou is the film's true star. Though underwritten, again like everything else, Chou makes the most of his portrayal of a refined perfectionist who can level an army of gun toting goons.

THE GREEN HORNET is too big, dumb and ho hum to be the major fun its meant to be, but maybe for a mid-January superhero flick it can pass muster.

But just barely.

More later...