Movie Review: Spectre (2015)

by Tony Dayoub


A bravura, single-take shot launches Spectre, the latest 007 film. Sam Mendes helms this follow-up to his brilliant Skyfall, with cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema stepping into Roger Deakins' big shoes. Van Hoytema certainly announces himself loudly with the shot that propels one of Bond's best opening sequences in some time. The camera snakes through Mexico City during a colorful Day of the Dead festival, first following a thug clad in a light colored suit, before switching over to a masked reveler dressed in a skeletal suit with a top hat whose distinctive walk soon makes it clear we are seeing Daniel Craig's superspy in medias res. Before long, Van Hoytema has taken us through a busy public square, up a palatial set of stairs, into and out of a cramped elevator, into a bedroom and out a window to a balcony where Bond sets up to assassinate the thug in question. For those brief minutes, Spectre soars higher than even Skyfall did. It all goes downhill from there sadly, with Spectre devolving into probably the most conventional of all the Craig flicks (yes, more so than even the unfairly maligned Quantum of Solace).

Illuminating Bond in Skyfall

by Tony Dayoub


We've come to expect a certain formula from the 007 movies, now numbering 23 with the release of Skyfall: opening stunt scene, sexy title sequence playing over a torch song, 007 on a mission where he first meets the bad girl, then the evil villain that keeps her and finally, the good girl before he fights the baddie to the death. Any freshness injected into the traditional outline has usually come through the recasting of James Bond himself (Daniel Craig is the sixth actor to play him in the official series) or by stripping the character down to his gadget-less essence so that the only thing he can depend on are his wits. In only one instance have we ever strayed close to knowing the man behind the facade. That was in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, my personal favorite and most underrated of all the Bonds, in which he gets married not because of any ulterior mission but because he has truly fallen in love. Things don't end well for Mrs. Bond needless to say. More grist for the cold, callous mill.

Movie Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

by Tony Dayoub

I was one of many who wondered about the wisdom of remaking a film which was an international phenom only one year after it played domestically. After all, there was no way a prudish Hollywood version would be able to dive into the depths of the type of depravity that the Swedish adaptation of Stieg Larsson's novel sinks the viewer into. As was the case with the American remake, Let Me In, though, David Fincher's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo goes all in and maybe even further in both sexual explicitness and thematic scope. Surprisingly, it also provides further insight into Fincher's growing preoccupation with the breakdown of secrecy as a result of the increasing advances in information brokerage.

The Year 2002: Counting Down the Zeroes - Road to Perdition (Sam Mendes)

There was a time when Sam Mendes seemed like he was at the vanguard of young directors. His first film, American Beauty (1999), struck a very resonant fin de siècle chord at the time of its release. But with subsequent releases like Jarhead (2005), Revolutionary Road (2008), and as some early reviews indicate, Away We Go (2009), it has become apparent that while Mendes has a nose for talent, he doesn't seem to have much to say. This strangely superficial quality that he disguises fairly well in his selection of material to bring to the screen doesn't seem to affect his second film (perhaps because it is the only genre piece in his oeuvre), Road to Perdition. Maybe its because the film, based on a graphic novel, treads some familiar ground. The neo-noir follows some well-established gangster drama tropes, like "blood is thicker than water", "it's only business", and "honor amongst thieves." Fusing these cliches to a family psychodrama contrasting the relationship between button man Michael Sullivan (Tom Hanks) and his eponymous son (Tyler Hoechlin), to the one between his surrogate father, mob boss John Rooney (Paul Newman, in his last onscreen film performance) and his envious son, Connor (Daniel Craig), may freshen up the proceedings somewhat. However, thanks to the film's powerful performances, a moving score by Thomas Newman (The Shawshank Redemption), and the gorgeous cinematography, the movie still holds up in a way that most of Mendes later work doesn't. Here, I've chosen to focus on the wonderful imagery by the late, great Conrad Hall (In Cold Blood, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid). This was his last film, and won him the last of three Academy Awards for Best Cinematography. And for my money, this poetic film succeeds mostly on the basis of its beautiful and evocative images. This post was first published at Film for the Soul for its continuing series on the best movies of the 2000s, Counting Down the Zeroes, on 6/15/09.