Hot take: Skyfall

Look, Skyfall is a good movie. Hugely fun, charismatic, attitude and stylish. The best Craig Bond movie and the closest to what 21st century Bond should have been.

But in the writing there are several huge, gaping fucking problems that when you see them, they can’t be unseen. And let’s not even bother with the old tenet that the last act is Home Alone. We know that. The crux of the matter is that writers Wade and Purvis are cack handed shit shovellers who seem to write off the top of their heads, and directors then film the first draft.

Main problem with the plot. Villain Silva is supposed to be the worlds most bad-ass hacker. He wants to kill M. He could easily find where she lives and shoot her on her own doorstep. The movie starts by blowing up her office when she’s not in. Well done, dick head. THIS MOVIE DOES NOT NEED TO HAPPEN. The fact that Silva has concocted a murder plan more elaborate than that of a Columbo killer evades your attention first time around, but when the realisation lands, all the comings and goings in London become moronic. Silva boasts to Bond about all the smart things he can do, then does none of that shit at all.

Earlier, Bond is on Silva’s island and forced to shoot at Severine with his dodgy shoulder. She dies. Bond does a cool line about radio and the cavalry arrives. Erm… Why not have done that earlier and a woman wouldn’t now be dead, you complete bastard. Those helicopters must have been around the corner having a tea break.

And more that doesn’t make sense… Bond is trying to protect M so he takes her to Skyfall to lay his trap. Why take an old as fuck woman into what you are planning to be a wall to wall carnage of death? Leave her at a tea room in Lancaster bright spark. She dies. Shocker. As entertaining as it is, this movie is about a useless assassin and a useless bodyguard.

Wade and Purvis philosophy of Craig’s Bond starts to unravel to. In Casino Royale they went to huge, self congratulatory pains to say that this Bond stands apart from the others, ring fenced. Jolly good. But then here in Skyfall they fan-wank themselves into a frenzy by having the car from Goldfinger and a quip about the ejector button. That’s not his fucking car then is it? It’s some other cunts car. You made your shittily assembled bed, now lie in it.

A tiring trope too at the time: the villain plans to get captured as a crucial part of the scheme. Here Silva is reliant on Q (and Bond) cracking the London Underground puzzle. What if Q had fucked off on holiday?

Imagine how good this movie would be Wade and Purvis were as smart as they think they are.

Hot take: Casino Royale and Goldeneye

Let’s do it. Goldeneye is a better Bond movie than Casino Royale.

Let’s start by saying Casino Royale is a great movie. Technically, Casino Royale is a much better movie than Goldeneye. And yet, Goldeneye is a better James Bond movie. The tank chase is more Bond-y than any shit CGI komodo dragon, limply shot car chases in Rome, or Christoph Waltz looking sad in a cell.

There are many excellent scenes in Casino Royale (apart from all the Venice shit). The casino scenes are great. And yet the movie is disturbingly mastabatory towards the Bourne movies, a set of fine, though overrated films.

Many of the seeds of what is wrong with the Craig movies are planted in Casino Royale. The third, final act is stupid, boring and nearly senseless. This trend continues, every Craig movie stumbles to a final act that deflates all that has gone before. Quantum Of Solace has a fire in an empty hotel. Skyfall is a violent Home Alone. Spectre trundles to a boring, boring, fuck-me-it’s-boring climax. No Time To Die is a Metal Gear Solid rip off, minus the cool but easily defeated armoured suit.

A big seed planted in the Craig-iverse is Vesper. The romance between Bond and Vesper is ultimately ruined because the writers, Wade and Purvis, are convinced they are writing the love story of the 21st century. The real love story is the one between the writers and Vesper. They clearly love Vesper more than Bond, or the audience ever did, so the result is Bond having to act as if he’s been through a love story that just isn’t represented on screen. As with everything in the Craig-iverse, the writers want the end result without putting any effort in. Want another example of Wade and Purvis’ tell don’t show approach to writing? In Skyfall they tell us incessantly that Bond is old, fucked and past it. No he isn’t. Look at him. Why peddle some shit that contradicts what the viewer sees. Why write like that? Want another? In No Time To Die they’re pressing home that Felix is Bond’s “brother” and have been on so many adventures together. We, the audience haven’t seen Felix since Quantum, so we haven’t been privy to them becoming “brothers”. You can’t just bring back a character you ain’t touched for a decade then ask the audience to care.

Goldeneye gives the people what they want (following Elliot Carver’s rule) . It has action, gadgets, one of the strongest villains, a tight plot, it’s well paced, and with the exception of Boris has great characters. Best of all though is that it stars Pierce Brosnan, a man over the moon to he playing Bond. Brosnan loves being Bond, and his Bond loves being 007. The lack of joy drags down Craig, and it’s not all his fault. On the rare occasion Craig is given some quips and funny lines he nails them. Craig had an untapped side as a Bond who gives no fucks, and the first part of Quantum Of Solace actually showcases him well. He is great as a bull in a china shop. But the writers keep hamstringing him with misery. Given he’s having a whale of a time when he plays Benoit Blanc you have to wander what his Bond could have been like.

It is totally, totally understandable that people love Craig and the Craig movies, but ultimately… If you like Casino Royale but don’t like Goldeneye… Maybe the thing you don’t like is James Bond?

What the hell is wrong with giving the people what they want anyway?

No Time To Die gets a well deserved slating here: No Time To Die Review ⭐⭐

Check out the Contents page!

24 Hour Party People: The Beat of the Show

The best way to recount what happened at a party isn’t to tell a story about it; it’s to throw a similar party and invite people to that. So the lesson is: if you want to tell people the story of the last night of the Hacienda, you need to host the last night of the Hacienda, and film that. Logical? When did logic play a part in Factory Records?

24 Hour Party People, a lodestone for Manchester music, is a movie which told the story of Tony Wilson, Ian Curtis and Shaun Ryder. Or did it? What sort of movie is 24HPP?

It’s a biopic with a fleeting, flirting, disrespectful relationship with fact, truth and accuracy. It could be said it treats its three subjects at best with disdain and mockery, and at worst with a level of respect just not fitting. This is to miss the point though as 24HPP isn’t really a biopic of three people. It is not a Classic Rock article.

So if not a biopic, what then? In the Empire top 100 British movies, they refer to the movie as a comedy. It isn’t. It’s funny, very funny, and has well written lines. But being funny doesn’t make a movie a comedy. 24HPP is a mirror image of life. Life isn’t a comedy, but has funny things in it.

So what is it? 24HPP is a love story. Although they might be the central characters, the movie is not about Wilson, Curtis and Ryder. It is about music, friendship and drugs, and the love generated when those three elements join. It’s the love of a city, that found itself for a time, as the cultural hub of the world, until Oasis took too much coke. The movie ends on a roof with friends sat around chatting, passing a spliff. They know they have done special things but not the how or why. It’s the real Wilson’s fave scene. Wilson knew what it was about.

When Control rolled around in 2007 it seemed to offer the “serious” retelling of the story. But its black and white ornate vision is so curated and stylised it reduces the story to the level of a chocolate box historical. Control treats its subjects like stars: cold, distant and frigid. Only 5 years separated the two movies but it might as well be a life time. Control feels as distant from Joy Division as Shakespeare felt from Caesar. Control is happy touching from a distance. Control is content to tell the story of the myth of Joy Division.

As Wilson himself always said: “trust the art, not the artist”, in following Wilson’s advice, 24 Hour Party People acts as embodiment of what he stood for, a piece of art, as flawed as most of the artists he championed.

No Time To Die Review ⭐⭐

—————————————————- SPOILERS

Not to spoil it for you (the writers have done that), if you don’t want to know what happens in No Time To Die, stop reading!

First Part: A Bond Movie

From the action sequences in Italy through to Bond’s hi-jinks in Cube, this feels more or less like a Bond movie having some fun. More importantly we meet Ana de Armas as Paloma, who steals the show by giving the impression of wanting to be there. Happily starting by spoofing the Bond girl tropes by being ditzy, she then proves herself to be a sensationally kick arse character, who bosses the environment. The movie then commits a cardinal sin by then leaving her behind, in the manner of Jim Bowen showing Bullseye contestants what they could have won, the movie saunters off leaving it’s best new asset behind, in favour of the eternally moody Madeleine. Unforgivably, one gets the impression that Paloma went on to be in a much better movie than the one we’re stuck with.

Second Part: The Silence Of The Blofeld

Look let’s talk about the elephant in the room. What exactly was the point in keeping Blofeld alive at the end of Spectre if they had nothing interesting to do with the character in the follow up? The fact that Spectre is wiped out in No Time To Die is Exhibit A that from start to finish they didn’t have a fucking clue how to handle the crime organisation, like being handed a 2000 piece jigsaw without the picture. Neither Spectre or Blofeld drive the story of No Time To Die, beyond the heavies chasing Bond at the start.

Instead getting Bond visiting Blofeld drags the movie down to a grinding pace while the writers demand we care about this face off. Having Bond inadvertently kill Blofeld is a nice enough twist but wont stand up to rewatching.

Third Part: Metal Gear Bond

Wow – entering a weapons facility on an island via a torpedo thingy! This is so Metal Gear Solid! I’ve waited since, what, 1998 to see a movie version of Metal Gear Solid! Wow, Metal Gear Solid was great. Hey! This sequence of going up the stair well is just like the sequence in Metal Gear Solid! Cool. Hey! The control room looks a lot like the control room in Metal Gear Solid! Metal Gear Solid was so cool. Hang on… this isn’t Metal Gear Solid… what was I supposed to be watching…?

…ah I see, Bond’s going to die. OK so they’re going with the Dark Knight Rises ending then, I see. Hmm… did I get the meter readings? Is this movie ending soon?

If you’re going to kill your hero do it face to face with the villain, death by missile is so impersonal.

And talking of Metal Gear Solid – know what that game had lots of – great villains! Which brings us to…

…Rami Malek! Yeesh talk about phoning it in. He underplays his part to the extent he has the demeanour of someone checking their Barclays app to see if the fee has landed before putting the effort in. It looks like they filmed dress rehearsal. There’s next to nothing for him to work with, but what there was, put some effort in.

It doesn’t help that his character’s motivations aren’t clear: is he just selling the virus from Mission Impossible 2? Or does he want to use the virus from Mission Impossible 2? Moreover, is it nanobots or poison? Pick one, movie.

General thoughts:

I haven’t been a big fan of Craig but he’s carrying this. He might look like Sid James* these days but ol’ blue eyes is doing all the heavy lifting.

So, Bond gets poisoned so he can’t touch Madeleine. In a fit of pique he decides he might as well just die. Just put some gloves on?!

More seriously, in a narrative sense, Q is a fucking wizard. The film is seriously suggesting that Q can build an invisible car but can’t make an antidote?

Oh no a new 007?! After all the hype and botheration about Lashana Lynch as the new 007 she’s totally, utterly ephemeral to the plot, the entire thing would happen without her character. Without getting into the politics, this is a work-place box ticking excercise nothing more, nothing less. If you’re gonna do it, go big or don’t bother.

Obviously Q and Moneypenny have to do some Scooby Doo style off the books digging, again. Desmond Llewelyn may have had hands like trotters* but at least he’d be in the movie once to give the gadgets then fuck off.

Painting of Judi Dench’s M. She’s dead, we get it.

Vesper Lynd blah blah blah. She died five movies ago, Bond might care, but the audience doesn’t.

Apart from creepiness, why was Freddie Mercury wearing that mask at the start?

Very nice of Freddie Mercury to let Madeliene’s daughter go, who just fucks off and meets no peril whatsoever. Imagine if in Aliens Ripley had gone to find Newt only to find the Alien Queen bringing Newt’s mid morning snack and tidying away the toys.

I very much enjoyed the action sequence when they’re in the jungle from Jurassic Park 2.

Killing Felix Leiter is the equivalent of throwing out that toasted sandwich maker you find at the back of your cupboard.

Do we need another “we’re not so different you and I” scene? The answer is no.

‘Cuckoo’ is not the villain catch phrase the writers think it is. It’s hardly “no Mr Bond I expect you to die”

Imagine if, at the end of Goldfinger, Goldfinger is arrested, then dies in prison during Thunderball.

Can you imagine if Natalia had died at the end of Goldeneye, and Bond was still bleating on about it during Die Another Day?

Sigh.

⭐⭐

Where next for Bond? A two hour movie, Bond is given a mission and does it, more action, less continuity, a scenery chomping baddy and a Bond who enjoys being a bull in a China shop. Not hard…

*Gags nicked from the wonderful SMERSHPOD which I cannot recommend highly enough.

Head on over to CONTENTS to find the best in new music – with reviews, articles and interviews!

If you love movie podcasts check out For Screen and Country and our exclusive interview with the hosts!

We also have some movie articles on good movies! Read about Miami Vice, Repo Man, To Live and Die In LA, Bullitt, Concrete Island and the lost Dune movie!

The Dark Tower ⭐⭐

The Dark Tower isn’t a terrible movie, it’s merely a disastrous attempt to bring the project to translate Stephen King’s magnum opus to life (as if being only in written form just isn’t good enough). Watch it on it’s own values and it’s an entertaining enough 90 minutes.

It makes a certain sort of sense to introduce the story and world of The Dark Tower through Jake’s eyes. It’s a quick and accessible method to use him as the audience identification, hey, he even gets bullied at school. This does have knock on effects though. Putting so much emphasis on a teen character gives the impression of a studio chasing a Young Adult franchise and if execs thought The Dark Tower could be the next Hunger Games, boy, they picked the wrong series of books.

Avoiding killing off Jake in the first instalment (as happens in the books) would have saved a lot of bother further down the line, and introducing the breakers here has it’s positives, dropping in concepts from much further down the line. Having Walter, the villain of the piece, in charge of the operation and trying to get his hands on Jake is neat and tidy enough. Tom Taylor does a solid job as Jake and Matthew McConaughey if anything, doesn’t ham it up quite enough.

The problem is spending so much time on Jake and Walter means that Roland, the actual main character of The Dark Tower, comes a distant third place in the character stakes. By the time Jake meets him we’re a good way into the movie and at 90 odd minutes there isn’t enough time to get to know Roland. It’s like telling Temple Of Doom through Short Round’s eyes and keeping Indy to the sidelines. There was either a lot of Idris Elba left on the cutting room floor, or it was one of the quickest jobs of his career.

The most impressive thing watching The Dark Tower is how after a certain point the movie becomes thoroughly ashamed of itself. The first half or so ticks along nicely and confidently enough but when Jake and Roland come back to Earth you’d expect things to really kick into gear and the story to open out. Instead it suddenly can’t wait to be over; we have a few moments of fish-out-of-water comedy, then an entire one action scene, then the movie ends. It seems determined to wipe itself from your screen, apologetically. The sense of self-loathing is palpable. When the final credits roll, it’s like seeing a dog sat next to the turd on the kitchen floor.

Again, this comes back to time. The reduced running time causes the frantic dash for the finish line. Like Disney’s Artemis Fowl, this has the stench of a nervous studio that has smelled turkey and ordered repeated cuts. Artemis Fowl is a pillar to post fuck up so complete it makes The Dark Tower seems like a piece of cinematic perfection to rival Aliens.

What are we supposed to come out with from The Dark Tower? We have’t been on a rollicking adventure, we haven’t been introduced to a new world beyond hefty info-dumps of exposition, and we haven’t fallen in love with characters we want to see again.

It’s clear that this team hasn’t got what it takes to translate The Drawing Of The Three, the much improved second novel of the series. If they moved Roland to the background here, imagine what they would do with the junkie Eddie Dean.

You have forgotten the face of your father…

Michael Mann’s Lost Dune Movie! The Untold Story!

As a new movie adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune is coming from director Denis Villeneuve, the time has come to lift the lid on an untold story, the 1990s adaptation that never was. We dish the dirt on the inside story!

Michael Mann, fresh from making Al Pacino and Robert Di Nero’s farewell Heat (not farewell to making movies, just farewell to making good movies) landed the directors job in a move that caused some consternation amongst studio execs, especially the ones who had seen The Keep.

In the end Mann didn’t contribute much to the Dune project, just spending a few months working on the colour scheme, “it was all green and blues” said an insider. “and an awful lot of colours of sand”.

Mann’s time on the project was curtailed when the studio wouldn’t let him end 80% of the dialogue with the words “slick” or “sport”. Shortly after the studio canned the entire project to fund Speed 2: Cruise Control. At that time Alien 3 was in living memory so everyone hated science fiction. It was still a couple of years before The Matrix made everyone love sci-fi again, then a few years later The Matrix Revolutions made everyone hate it again.

The only element of the Dune project finished was the masterful soundtrack by IX. In a bold and unusual move, Mann hired IX to provide the music, figuring the soundtrack would be so damn good he’s just make the movie around the soundtrack to fit. And how right he was, for IX’s soundtrack is a luscious, rich, evocative work, avoiding the cliches and pitfalls of the art. It shimmer and throbs at the right places and burst into rich, dramatic life at the right places. IX’s soundtrack would later be released under the title System VII and can be bought on bandamp here.

Michael Mann instead went on to make 1999’s The Insider, a movie so dull it might as well have starred Dustin Hoffman.

Among other works, IX was commissioned to provide the soundtrack for the PS1 game G-Police, in which gunships cruise around cityscapes, doing patrols and whatnot. His work so perfectly captured the sound of the cities depicted below their domes, and what sort of lives the people who lived there would lead, from the night clubs to the back alley drug deals, that the makers of the game realised the music was so good in fact, it would only draw attention to the how average their impossibly tricky bloody game was. So they replaced it with some generic stuff instead. IX’s soundtrack became 6EQUJ5 (reviewed here and available here). Over seven hours of G-Police longplay is available to watch here.

Considering that Villeneuve’s Dune movie adaptation is coming, it’s time to bring IX’s work to a new audience. And bearing in mind that the hired composer this time is Hans Zimmer; not always the king of subtlety, or dare we say, variety, it’s very tempting to say that System VII will be better than the one we end up with.

Or to be less controversial, IX’s work is easily on a par with Hollywood composers.

“Compromise”, “Bullshit”; Bullitt and the banal

From the moment we see a paramedic moaning that someone’s shut the door of the ambulance, it becomes clear that Bullitt is a movie about banality. Director Peter Yates has decided to make a thriller that’s such a police procedural, it emphasises what’s going on in Frank Bullitt’s life above the actual plot.

Look at the things Yates shows us. We see Bullitt eating a sandwich, reverse parking his cool car, getting a newspaper, buying some stuff from the shop. He takes Cathy on a date where loud flute-y jazz music is playing. He has to get her to give him a lift when all the cars are gone from the police car pool.

This pervades all parts of the films. The most important part of the lot, the revelation that Chalmers sent Bullitt to guard the wrong man, that the witness isn’t Johnny Ross,  is transmitted so subtly, so off handedly, it takes repeated viewings to even notice that this is the key point of the entire story. Yates spends more time and focus on the shot of all the cops looking endlessly at the telecopier. More emphasis is placed on an incredibly long depiction of the plane coming in to park.

And there’s a point, the climax of the movie takes place in an airport; the headquarters of banality. When Ross sees Bullitt and flees, most movies would use that as the moment to hit the music. Nah, fuck that. We’re just seeing parts of Bullitt’s life and this is an annoyance. This explains why the car chase, the best ever made, is without music, just the roar of the Ford Mustang. Of course there isn’t any fucking music, we’re in Bullitt’s head, of course he’s not thinking about music.

In the end Yates and Bullitt are the same. They’ll do things their way.

“We must all compromise” says Chalmers. “Bullshit” replies Bullitt / Yates.

Becoming square: Alex Cox’s Repo Man

Alex Cox is all about turning things on their head; his debut, the sublimely silly Repo Man is a masterclass of this. The movie is about a young dissatisfied punk, Otto, who gets a job and discovers he quite likes it. He gets a girlfriend and quite likes that too. This is a film made by a punk about a punk who becomes a square. His friends who turn to sticking up stores get killed, much to Otto’s disdain. His favourite bands turn crappy. He learns a lot, starts dressing in white shirts and becomes a well-rounded person (more or less).

Sounds fairly dull doesn’t it? Well it might be if there wasn’t another movie slammed into it. The other movie is a conspiracy thriller to find the mysterious glowing contents of the trunk of a car before Tarantino can plagiarise it. As the car is on the repo list, it comes into Otto’s orbit.

Meanwhile, Alex’s world building proclivities are already in full sway, shelves populated with products that simply bear the name of what they are being the most obvious, and most successful illustration. Otto’s folks give money to TV evangelists and the feds crush those who get in their way. Right from the start of his career, Alex shapes characters who live in worlds he shapes. This is why his movies feel so rounded and complete. Straight To Hell features coffee addicted cowboys who populate their Spaghetti Western township. Death & The Compass‘ array of cops and crim’s live in the nooks and crannies of it’s Dick Tracy inspired primary coloured noir. Cox starts with a world, drops characters into it and worries about story later, when all the hard work is done.

Repo Man stands as the perfect example of Cox’s punk art… and it’s about a kid getting a job.

A wild and stupid ride: To Live And Die In LA

To Live And Die In LA wears its stupidity proudly. It flaunts it’s love of cliches while it turns them on their head.

–SPOILERS — if you ain’t seen it, watch it and come back, sport.

William Freidkin invented most of the damn cliches in the first place with The French Connection. Cops who don’t play by the rules! Car chases in dirty city back streets! Gun fights! Here he basks in his own glory, turning up every dial, taking it up an 80s coke notch or two.

But Friedkin is a man who wants to have his coke and snort it. He wants the car chases, the cop who gets killed just before his retirement, the revenge story. He wants you to settle in for a night with the old tropes.

But then he keeps pulling the rug out from under you. The good guy is blackmailing a woman into having sex with him. The good guy gets an FBI agent killed. The good guy gets himself shot in the face. Imagine if Lethal Weapon killed off Martin Riggs before the final reel. This is what we’re talking about here. The viewer spits out his pizza in shock.

Life flows in aftermath… the good guy’s squeaky clean partner winds up dressing like his idol, eager for some blackmail sex of his own. The story can start again. Lethal Weapon can set itself up for a series of ever-decreasing-returns sequels, and Joe Pesci, but over there not matter how much Riggs took his pants off he never went in for a spot of icky blackmail sex.

To Live And Die In LA: a wild and stupid ride where not everyone gets out alive.

Bones of the art form: Michael Mann’s Miami Vice

Miami Vice is an action movie with no interest in action. It’s a thriller with no interest in character or plot.  Miami Vice is a distillation of everything that made Michael Mann an auteur. A movie that takes the elements and boils them down to the point where nothing exists any more, then looks through the bones to see what is left over.

Miami Vice understands it’s plot. It doesn’t care if you understand it or not. Cops spout acronyms. Cops speak jargon. They understand each other, they’re cops. We are not cops, so we do not understand. Therefore there is no exposition. They’re cops, we’re observers.

In Heat they stripped Vincent Hanna of his coke habit, here the ‘heroes’ are stripped of any vestige of personality. They’re truly soulless individuals, as empty as the world they populate. Here, cops are cops and they have no other life.

& this world is M.Mann personified. Pastel colours and icy music while vehicles glide past. The heroes look longingly into the oceanic middle distance. Speed boats and planes soar. Cars zip by.

The action scenes are jumbled collages, make of them what you will.

Miami Vice takes the meaningless and turns it into an art form. Here Michael Mann reached the point where making his art is his only interest, regardless of if anyone digs it.

Michael Mann’s art got higher. Or lower.