Film review: Knives Out

Just when I was thinking "Knives Out" was the funniest, best written episode of "Murder She Wrote" ever, doesn't Jessica Fletcher appear on the screen. This is Rian Johnson's wink to the audience, he's reminding us to not take this seriously, it's just a really big budget, better written episode of "Murder She Wrote." At one point a detective says the creepy gothic mansion where the murder takes place is like a Clue board and that's exactly the game you're playing.

A rich cranky geezer (Christopher Plummer playing a more delightful J. Paul Getty) turns up dead on the night of his 85th birthday party and as the suspects tell their stories it appears he was going to end all of their allowances. So we have a creepy old mansion (complete with secret entranceways) and a bunch of eccentric family members who'd do anything to keep the family riches. This is an homage to old-timey Hollywood mysteries which would work wonderfully on a double bill with "The Thin Man."

The detective is Daniel Craig having the time of his life as a southern-drawling Hercule Poirot, yes he's a genius detective, but the humor comes in when some obvious clues are playing out right under his nose.

Also playing against type is Chris Evans, trading in the squeaky clean Captain America for the prickish rich grandson

The breakout star is Ana de Armes  as the family maid. As the only suspect who's not a scheming family member, she has no motive, or is that what they want us to think? The character has a unique tell when she's lying and de Armes makes it hysterical or suspenseful. It's an exceptionally clever conceit: A whodunnit character incapable of lying, imagine the possibilities.


To tell anything else would spoil the tightly constructed story, but if you enjoy a good, funny whodunnit, by all means go see it.

Overdue film review: "Spectre"

Here's a good rule of thumb for the James Bond producers: If your tropes are parodied in "Austin Powers" movies, stop using the trope. Just stop.

This occurred to me during the scene where Spectre gets together around a big table, a member admits a failure and is promptly killed. And the viewer is not surprised at all.

I know, templates must be followed, but "Casino Royale" found new ways to tell an old story. "Spectre" finds old ways to tell an old story.

The pre-credits sequence features the same fight-in-a-helicopter scene we saw in "For You Eyes Only." Bond is beating on the pilot, why is he beating on the pilot of an airborne helicopter! This is the Indiana Jones problem of always having a fight in a moving vehicle. Why doesn't the driver just pull over and continue the fight?

Then after destroying Mexico City, Bond is called into the boss's office for "The prime minister wants my guts for garters," speech, which we've seen in the Daniel Craig Bond movies and every "Dirty Harry" movie.

No, no more!

Once again, this was parodied in the "Naked Gun" movies where Leslie Nielsen is dressed down for shooting up a Playhouse in the Park production of "West Side Story."

OK, Bond then gets a microchip injection so they can keep track of him. Umm, what happened to the chip he got in "Casino Royale" for the same reason?

Let's just ignore the making love to the widow of the man he just killed scene. We'll give them that.

Then he's using a biplane to chase the bad guys' cars, one of which has the kidnapped heroine. He destroys the cars randomly, fortunately, not the one with the damsel in it. But really, isn't using a biplane the worst way to chase cars in a mountainous forest?

Later we finally meet the villain. Hey everybody, MGM finally regained the rights to Spectre and Blofeld. Woo hoo. This is just like making a Star Trek movie with Khan because, um, you know, the fans will like it. Yeah, Bond and Star Trek have this in common: Recasting an old villain with a new actor with none of the charm of the original actor (or actors) doesn't mean it's going to be good, it just pretty much means you've run out of ideas.

The Daniel Craig films have two innovations for better or worse, they work as as running story arc, (a Bond girl gets killed and it still haunts him; she hasn't been forgotten, the stories kind of tie in together), and they're working to give Bond a backstory. Admirable, but unnecessary. It's like all fan fiction. The writer finds a single sentence from the original source material and thinks, "I can write an entire book (or make a movie) about this."

Remember that sentence from "Star Wars: A New Hope."? "Many rebels lost their lives to steal these plans." Ta-dah! We get "Rogue One." An entire movie based on one sentence.

They do the same thing here. In the novels, it's mentioned James Bond's parents were killed in a skiing accident. "Spectre" takes it from there. What if Blofeld's dad adopted James, so James and Blofeld were practically brothers?! Genius!, No, not really, first of all, they stole this from the Austin Powers movie that proposed that he and Dr. Evil were brothers. See my rule of thumb (above) warning against stealing from your parody. Secondly, did I mention this is all unnecessary?

(There's also some bad photoshopping of young Daniel Craig and young Christopher Waltz).

There's also a scene where they're riding the Istanbul Express (or some kind of luxury train,) and the damsel gets an evening gown from nowhere, and he gets a tuxedo from nowhere.

At the end of the movie, Blofeld is captured, but does not die a horrible death as all Bond villains do. I'm mixed about this. I've been faulting this movie for copying from all the others, so it would be wrong for me now to complain when they don't follow the template.

Also, after not killing Blofeld, we have M on one side of the bridge they're standing on, and the damsel on the other side, giving Bond a clear choice, the service, or the girl. He chooses the girl, but this rings hollow because by the next film, she'll be forgotten, or worse yet, they'll do like they did in the second Jason Bourne movie and just kill her in the first five minutes.

It would have meant something if this were Daniel Craig's last film as Bond, but it's already known he's coming back.

Also, M sends him a video from the grave to find a terrorist and kill him!? Why didn't she just ask him to do it while she was alive?

Bringing back Spectre was a terrible idea. They were never that good to begin with. Let's think about it, a super secret society of evil where all members get identifying rings (or tattoos), pssst, if you want to keep your society secret, don't all wear matching rings.

It's so disappointing, Casino Royale was so good, the rest of the Daniel Craig films have been awful, and speaking of Daniel Craig, has he ever looked more bored than in this film? He shows no emotion the entire film.

Really overdue film review: Skyfall

I get the feeling everyone looked at their watch and said, "Ohh, time to make a James Bond movie." And that's all the thought they put into the script. By its nature, the James Bond series is going to have some recycling, but "Casino Royale" managed to recycle things so well, it all seemed new. "Skyfall" seemed like minimum effort script-wise.

And I'm not talking about the standards: he must be in a tuxedo in a casino, he must have a doomed lover, he must have a physically deformed villain. I'm talking about plot elements stolen without any hesitation.

Judi Dench in jeopardy just like "World is Not Enough"
James Bond resurrected like "You Only Live Twice"
James Bond being told he's too old and must undergo training, just like "Never Say Never Again"
The rogue MI6 agent from "Goldeneye"
The palm-reading gun, just like from "License to Kill."
Bond breaks into M's flat, just like in "Casino Royale," and that was only two films ago.

But then there's the scenes overdone from other movies:

The criminal mastermind being questioned in his super secure standalone cell from which he'll escape,… from "Silence of the Lambs," "X-Men 2," "Avengers," and last night's episode of "The Blacklist."

The last act was like "Die Hard," except without the henchmen with individual personalities

Head scratchers:

How did Javier Bardem hack into MI6's computers? He worked there ten years ago and they still have the same computers with the same passwords?
How did he escape from the super inescapable cell? And how did he kill all the guards?
They introduce the new Q and all he has to offer is a gun and a radio? Why bother?

If the Daniel Craig films represent a reboot, where did he get the Aston Martin with built-in machine guns? There's no reason he should have Sean Connery's car except to get cheap applause from the audience.

(And the headstones at Skyfall disprove the Internet theory that "James Bond" is just a codename passed down from agent to agent, just like the 007 designation.)

The Moneypenny introduction was cute albeit unnecessary. Samantha Bond was still probably the best Moneypenny.

Great action scenes, great cinematography, great locales, but, nothing original.

Bond Lore

In William Goldman's "Adventures in the Screen Trade" (run out, buy it), he talks about a script he wrote in the 1970s loosely based on a true story. In the 1800s in Virginia, a rich dandy fancied himself a pirate, and even had a pirate ship commissioned (the only one ever) so he could take to the seas and play pirate.

That's the true part, in the Goldman script, the dandy runs across a real pirate, a Blackbeard type, and the two come to loggerheads until (as in true buddy cop movie formula) they must overcome their differences to fight a bigger threat.

Here's the genius part: For the pirates he suggested to the studios that Roger Moore play the dandy, and Sean Connery play Blackbeard.

Genius!

How come no one else thought of putting the two James Bonds in a movie? I would have paid money to see that.

The script of course never got produced due to the regular list of Hollywood reasons, but still, can you imagine how cool that film would have been?

But...what if...what if they wanted to make the film today? Quick, someone get Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig on the phone!

James Bond farm teams

As a James Bond fan, I've been interested in the use of copycat casting in the films. Let's think about this for a second. As James Bond became a big phenomena, naturally, imitation being the most sincere form of television, the copycats began. In "The Avengers" we have dapper international crime fighters.
Now, when the James Bond filmmakers needed a love interest for Goldfinger, they turn to the Avengers and recruit Honor Blackman.

OK, as they say in the novel Goldfinger, once is happenstance.

Then Honor Blackman was replaced in the Avengers by Diana Rigg. And when the Bond producers needed a love interest for "On Her Majesty's Secret Service," they get...Diana Rigg.

Twice is coincidence.

When it was time to replace Sean Connery (for the second time), they turned to "The Saint," a TV show about a dapper, tuxedo-wearing globetrotting crime fighter and snagged Roger Moore.

Three times is enemy actions.

(In fairness, the literary Saint predated the literary James Bond.)

But it doesn't stop there. When it was time to replace Moore, the first choice was Pierce Brosnan, who at the time was playing a dapper, tuxedo-wearing globetrotting crime fighter in "Remington Steele." (a Bond footnote. "Remington Steele was as good as cancelled when it was announced Brosnan would be the new Bond. NBC happy with all this publicity, un-cancelled Remington Steele, forcing Brosnan to sit out the next two Bond films. (This worked out for the best I think. I think Brosnan needed time to age into the role.)

All in all, not a lot of imagination in these casting choices. This is why they should get credit for taking chances on the actors with no Bond farm team experience: George Lazenby (a model), Timothy Dalton (who had never played a contemporary role in a film before), and Daniel Craig (who had experience playing gun-toting tough guys, but not as a good guy.).

They should also get credit for casting Sean Connery after his role in "Darby O'Gill and the Little People," in a role obviously written for Cary Grant or David Niven.