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: Away We Go

by Lissette Decos In Away We Go, John Krasinksi (The Office) and a restrained—and pregnant—Maya Rudolph(Saturday Night Live) play Burt and Verona, a very much in love couple who set off in search of a new home for their growing family. These two can wander freely because they are, like most thirtysomethings nowadays, unmarried and still don’t have a baby. And like most thirtysomethings nowadays they have too many options and find it difficult making decisions (this may just be me). So away they go with the flow to check out some random cities where they happen to know someone until they find the one that feels right. These characters have the kind of relationship you want. Ok, the kind I want. They know each other so well that when they are together it’s like they are in on their own secret. They are cool and calm and say smart things to each other and nothing phases them. Well, except having a baby. So they are stumped, and try to pick up what they can from the families they meet along the way. There’s angry/drunk families; adoptive families a la Brangelina; and the ultimate so-Earth-friendly-it’s-hazardous family whose mom is played by Maggie Gyllenhaal in an excellent performance. Much better than The Dark Knight. And Stranger than Fiction. Combined. Maya doesn’t do any of her usual SNL slapstick, and maybe that’s why it felt strange to hear her normal voice. It felt like she was forcing a foreign accent. Like Gwyneth Paltrow in Shakespeare in Love. This film is also a stretch—though a clearly comfortable one—for director Sam Mendes, who breaks his usual character with this sweet, light, and innocent comedy. At the heart of the loving couple in this film is another loving couple. The script was written by real-life literary “it” couple Dave Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) and Vendela Vida. These two are successful novelists who got the idea for this film when they were pregnant with their first child and entered the whole new world of crazy strangers giving you parenting advice. Which leads me to one of my many frustrations. Should talented people be allowed to collaborate let alone marry? Should talented people in one field be allowed to enter and conquer another? Should the laws of monopoly prevent these things? Ugh. But I will give them this, they have created the most intimate pregnancy test scene of all time. At least that I have seen. So far. In a movie. That moment is only plausible because this is one intimate couple. So close that I would dare say their search for a new home is somewhat in vain, because this couple is always at home when they are together (Yes, cheesy, so what? Back off, I need a date with John Krasinski!). And because you’ve read this far, I’ll give you my too analytical (and definitely wrong) theory about the film: it’s all about going back into the womb—let’s face it—our first home.

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.

Movie Review: Revolutionary Road - Kate and Leo Don't Find Things Much Better in Suburbia

I guess because of the fact that I found myself uninvolved in the viewing of Revolutionary Road, my thoughts instead were focused on inferences I was making outside the margins of the film, so I thought I'd share. The film is a return to suburbia by Sam Mendes who directed the once overrated, and now underrated American Beauty (1999). Like that movie, Road examines the inner workings of a marriage and the effects of conformity on the couple, here played by Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio - forever associated with their previous coupling in Titanic (1997). I'm not sure it exposes any kind of revelations on the complex relationship that forms a marriage. Now I've never read the Yates novel on which it is based, so forgive me if I read into it from the cinematic side more so than the literary. Road seems a little derivative, the obvious comparison being TV's Mad Men which I've heard bandied about elsewhere. But not having seen Mad Men, it actually reminds me of a much older cult classic I've been viewing for another project, Michael Mann's Crime Story (1986-88). That show was set in the early sixties, and like its descendant, Heat (1995), looked not only at the cops and robbers, but their relationships with their wives and families against the nascent idea of women's liberation. And there's the rub, because the luxury of time afforded even a TV series with a brief run allows one to pick apart both the good things and the bad about a marriage slowly. Even Heat did not have the time nor inclination to successfully flesh out the workings of a marriage in relationship to its principal story like Crime Story did. But this film takes so much time to cover the downside of the Wheelers' crumbling relationship that one wonders what Frank and April ever saw in each other. And brief flashbacks to their first dates are not convincing enough to lay the foundation. So could Mendes have been depending on moviewatchers' own history with these two actors to fill in the blanks? Does anybody else out there find it kind of funny that from a meta-perspective, this movie's Frank and April Wheeler are the hardened, grown-up, cynical versions of Winslet's social misfit Rose, and DiCaprio's freespirited Jack from their previous onscreen match-up?