Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery - 2022 film review

I enjoyed Knives Out, a nice escapist whodunit. In commenting on my blog post about the film, the eminent critic Michael Dirda made some accurate criticisms of the plot, but like me he didn't let them spoil his pleasure too much. The success of the film meant that a sequel was inevitable and this takes the form of Glass Onion, in which Daniel Craig reprises his role as Benoit Blanc, the greatest detective in the world.

I feel that Glass Onion differs from Knives Out in two key respects. First, the set-up is even better. I was definitely gripped. Second, the film loses its way badly - in my opinion - in the latter stages. The mystery was easy to solve and the resolution excessively drawn out. 

Miles Bron, a tech billionaire, invites five associates to a murder game party on his private Greek island. Their challenge is to solve his murder. Blanc also turns up, but Bron denies having invited him. Another guest is Cassandra, whom Bron removed from the business and subsequently defeated in litigation. It's clear from the outset that he cheated her and it also emerges that the other guests have motives to commit murder. However, when someone dies, surprise, surprise (or perhaps not!) - the victim isn't Miles. And then someone else is shot...

So far, so good. Edward Norton, as Bron, is convincingly odious. But we then get a very extended flashback which gives a very different perspective on the events as they have been presented to us so far. To a degree, this is quite clever, but it also tests credulity to the limits and beyond. Given that, at this point, most mystery fans will have figured out what is really going on (the central trick can be found in a couple of Agatha Christie novels), I began to lose interest. A pity, but perhaps writer and director Rian Johnson simply got carried away. 

No Time to Die - 2021 film review

No Time to Die is the latest James Bond film, long-awaited and much-delayed as a result of the pandemic. Was the wait worthwhile? Were expectations met? For me, the answer is yes. You know what you are going to get with a James Bond movie and the key question is: how well does it deliver the goods? This is Daniel Craig's final appearance as Bond and as always he does a good job. I was a fan of Sean Connery, but on the whole I think that the Cheshireman is my favourite 007.

It's a long film, and making an action thriller that sustains interest for almost two and three-quarter hours is a major challenge. However, No Time to Die rises to that challenge, which is probably just as well given that apparently the total budget for the film was in the region of $350 million. Some of the action takes place in Matera and I visited the town on holiday just after most of the filming there was done. A brilliant location, for sure, and that is true of several other stunningly atmospheric backgrounds, including the frozen lake in Norway which features early on in the story.

The premise is that Bond has actually retired from being a secret agent. There's a new 007. Five years have passed since an attempt to kill him in Matera failed, and he left Madeleine Swann because he thought she'd betrayed him. He is persuaded to resume active service following the kidnap of a scientist who has developed a bioweapon (the script was written pre-pandemic, but perhaps this aspect of the story makes a greater impression now than it might otherwise have done).

There are some pleasing performances from Lea Seydoux (Madeleine) and those terrific actors Ralph Fiennes and Rory Kinnear, but naturally Craig is dominant. He will be a tough act for someone to follow. And I liked the fact that the film included one of my favourite songs of all time, the Bond classic 'We Have All the Time in the World', written by two greats, John Barry and Hal David. When it featured originally in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, the song didn't receive the acclaim it deserved. But it stands the test of time, and so - perhaps unexpectedly - does James Bond.  

Knives Out - 2019 film review

Knives Out has attracted a lot of attention as a high profile film which is also in the vein of the traditional mystery. The cast is superb, led by Daniel Craig (sporting an unlikely American accent) and including such famous names as Jamie Lee Curtis, Don Johnson, Frank Oz, and Christopher Plummer. Reviews and audiences have been very positive, and there is talk of a sequel being made.

Plummer plays Harlan Thrombey, a crime novelist who is cared for by a nurse, Marta Cabrera (Ana de Armas) has made a fortune from his books (well, it is fiction..) and who invites members of his family, in classic fashion, to his great mansion to celebrate his 85th birthday. Needless to say, there is a lot of jockeying for position among the greedy and undeserving, and again in traditional manner the contents of Harlan's will play a central part in the story.

We know from the start that Thrombey is dead, but a good deal of mystery surrounds the precise circumstances. The police are willing to treat the case as one of suicide, but an unknown person hires the great private detective Benoit Blanc (Craig) to investigate. Craig has a lot of fun in this part. He's an actor I really like, although I did struggle to get accustomed to that accent.

The film is written and directed by Rian Johnson and his screenplay manages to keep you interested in the plot while making points about greed, power, and entitlement. I find it very interesting that, many years after Alfred Hitchcock highlighted the difficulties inherent in filming whodunits, a young film-maker has shown that it's possible to entertain twenty-first century filmgoers with a puzzle mystery. 

   

Spectre - film review

Spectre, the latest James Bond film, is the fourth to feature Daniel Craig, and mixes up the familiar ingredients with enough flair to ensure that, although it runs for well over two hours, the action and interest never flag. Once again the director is Sam Mendes, and if he doesn't quite recapture the brilliance of the last Bond movie, Skyfall, which is arguably the best of them all, he comes fairly close.

The film gets off, as you'd expect, to an explosive start, with Craig in pursuit of bad guys at the Day of the Dead festivities in Mexico City. When he returns to London, it is to find that things are changing in the world of the secret service. Is there any future for the lone agent with a licence to kill in an age when hi-tech global surveillance is the name of the game? Well, we know the answer to that one, but there's great fun to be had along the way to having our suspicions confirmed.

Q - the excellent Ben Whishaw - is pressed into service again, and comes up with some of his best gadgets. I loved the witty moment when Bond, having nicked 009's Aston Martin, found himself playing a Frank Sinatra song from his colleague's playlist in the midst of a breathless chase through the narrow streets of Rome. The jokes are an important part of the Bond movies, and there are some good ones in this film.

About the plot itself, possibly the less said the better: it's not a strong point. But when the confection as a whole is so entertaining, this doesn't matter as much as it would do usually. The theme song by Sam Smith, "Writing's on the Wall" makes much less of an immediate impact than Adele's brilliant theme for Skyfall, but having listened to it several times since, I've warmed to the song. Not quite up to the late, inimitable John Barry, but not at all bad. As for the film itself, it's fun viewing, and that's what a Bond movie should be.

Dream House - film review

Dream House is a 2011 American movie starring three British actors and a New Zealander, and a sense of contrariness persists throughout the film. It starts in a fairly conventional way, veers off in a new direction at the half way stage and ends with a mixture of dramatic violence and mawkishness. Interesting, but rather odd.

At the start, we are introduced to Daniel Craig as Will, who has given up a top job in publishing to downshift with his wife Libby and their two adorable daughters. They have moved into a new house in an idyllic setting, but something is amiss. Who has left flowers on the doorstep? Who is the mysterious character hanging around the house at night? What is going on in the cellar? It turns out that murder was done in the house five years earlier, but when Will tries to investigate what happened to the killer, he is given shocking news.

Libby is played by Rachel Weisz (now Mrs Craig) and their glamorous neighbour by Naomi Watts. Marton Csokas, who impressed me very much when playing the Spanish cop Falcon in the TV versions of Robert Wilson's books, is the neighbour's estranged husband. They are all very talented performers,and their quality makes the film watchable.

Overall, however, I had reservations. I would not say Dream House is formulaic, but it felt rather like a blend of several formulas, an unevenness of tone and treatment persisting throughout. My impression was that the scriptwriter had a very good story idea, but nobody was quite sure how best to execute it. The Rotten Tomatoes rating of the film is abysmally low,but I think it's rather better than the basement ranking suggests. One thing is for sure, however. Skyfall it ain't.

Skyfall - film review

If you don't like James Bond, better look away now, since here comes a rave review. I saw Skyfall the other day, and it's possibly the best action thriller movie I've ever seen. If you were wondering whether all the adulatory reviews are over-done, the answer in  my opinion is that they are not. Provided you suspend your disbelief (better still, lock it up in a cupboard), if you are a thriller fan, you can scarcely fail to enjoy this film.

I think that will be true even for those who are not Bond fans. Daniel Craig (surely one of Cheshire's greatest action heroes!) is, I now think, the best of all Bonds. I am a long-time admirer of Sean Connery, but I think there is a decent case for saying that Craig, in three films, has not only reinvented the character, but made even more out of him than Connery managed. He is helped by a clever and witty screenplay. When I went to see it the twists of the story-line brought gasps and murmurs of appreciation from the audience at several points.

There is a great central idea - the secret service, led by M (Judi Dench at her best in this role) has managed to lose vital information identifying embedded secret agents. And, of course, it's fallen into the hands of a bad guy. The story opens with Bond and a female sidekick in Turkey, trying to get the material back from a trained assassin. But it all goes wrong, and M's career looks doomed.

A series of fascinating scenes take us to Shanghai, Macau, central London and finally a remote part of Scotland, where we learn the significance to Bond of Skyfall.  Thomas Newman's soundtrack is very good, and Adele's theme song worthy of the late great John Barry. Naomie Harris is appealing as Eve, and Javier Bardem suitably menacing as Silva. Albert Finney also makes the most of a nice role near the end of the film. As I say, you have to suspend your belief. But trust me, it's worth it.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - 2011 movie

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by the late Stieg Larsson is one of the most remarkable of all crime debuts. I very much admired its ambition and scale - quite breathtaking in a first novel. Lisbeth Salander is a dazzlingly original creation and I also loved the way Larsson combined elements of classic mystery fiction with a highly contemporary story-line that is absolutely crammed with plot material. I don't claim it's a perfect book, of course. What I'm not sure about in particular is whether a certain unevenness in the narrative, and e a bit of over-writing (I felt maybe as much as 100 pages could have been cut without great loss, and the result would have been an even tighter and more focused book) is due to the fact that Larsson died before publication, and may have chosen to go back to the book, and edited it down somewhat, had he lived.

I haven't seen the 2010 Swedish movie adaptation yet (but I will soon, as I recently acquired the box set of DVDs). However, I've just watched the 2011 American version, directed by David Fincher and starring Daniel Craig, and I felt - though it may verge on heresy to say so - that it was even more impressive than the book, because the need to condense the story enabled Fincher to concentrate on the core elements of the story, and he did so very effectively.

Craig really is a good actor - one of Cheshire's best! - and he puts in a characteristically strong performance as the journalist with a conscience who tries to solve a series of killings of women dating back many years. I also felt that Christopher Plummer was excellent as the elderly tycoon who hires him - one thing's for sure, The Sound of Music this movie ain't. Special praise goes to Rooney Mara, who tackles the enormously challenging role of Lisbeth Salander with aplomb.  

Fincher makes some of Larsson's points about crimes committed by powerful men against women (depressingly very topical in light of current horrifying allegations about the late Jimmy Savile) but he doesn't do so in a heavy-handed way. As a result, the film grips from start to finish, despite the unusual and convoluted plot. I really enjoyed it.

Layer Cake

I like good gangster movies, but mediocre ones can be very tedious – and the really good ones are rather thin on the ground. So I approached the film of J.J. Connolly’s book Layer Cake with some trepidation, drawn as much by the fact that it starred the excellent Daniel Craig as by optimism that I’d enjoy the story.

But enjoy it I did – very much. In fact, Layer Cake now lines up alongside Get Carter, The Long Good Friday and The Italian Job as one of my absolute favourite British gangster films. Craig is predictably cool and classy in the lead role, but he is assisted by a first rate cast which includes, as senior Bad Guys, those fine actors Kenneth Cranham and Michael Gambon, both of whom perform with gusto.

The plot is complex – multi-layered like some cakes, in fact. Briefly, Craig is planning to retire young to enjoy his ill-gotten gains, but a hapless henchman called Duke lands him in the mire by stealing a vast quantity of drugs from some seriously menacing Serbian villains, while Craig finds it impossible to keep both Cranham and Gambon off his back. There are some very violent moments, which are not for the faint-hearted – Cranford this is not! - but also some very funny lines and scenes.

Craig moves smoothly from one messy situation to another, pausing only (though this is entirely understandable, I think) to pick up Sienna Miller, who dumps Duke’s unstable nephew, with consequences that in the end prove very unfortunate. I liked the pace and twists of the story-line, and as long as you don’t mind violence and bad language, this is a film that can definitely be recommended.

Premier Bonds

Further to my post about Quantum of Solace, I’ve been reflecting on the Bond movies I’ve seen – at least a dozen, over the years, perhaps more. One reason for this is that, one of these days, I would like to write a thriller of some kind, and though I’ll never be an Ian Fleming (or be able to work with the kind of budget enjoyed by the Bond franchise), it’s interesting to reflect on what makes action thrillers memorable. I’ve read few of the original books, but the movies I’ve seen have mostly been great fun.

There are several key ingredients to a successful Bond movie. The hero has to be compelling (thumbs up to Sean Connery and Daniel Craig, a definite no, thanks to George Lazenby.) The villain has to be a worthy opponent (Blofeld, Scaramanga and Dominic Greene top my list – it’s a real pity that Greene won’t be returning.) The settings have to be dramatic (the Tosca scene and the Bolivian desert in Quantum of Solace worked very well) and the love interest has to be exciting (Diana Rigg and Eva Green are among my favourites.)

The story-line ought to matter more than it does. Mostly, the Bond plots are rather iffy, and Quantum’s is no exception. But the touches of wit that you find in the Bond films are important to the overall effect, and so is the balance of the screenplay – I felt that Quantum was better than Casino Royale in terms of structure, even if the latter had a little more depth.

And finally, there are the peripherals – such as the gadgets in some of the movies, and the music. I’m a great admirer of John Barry’s work, and – if we leave aside the original spoof version of Casino Royale, which featured the incomparable Dusty Springfield singing ‘The Look of Love’ - my favourite Bond theme is ‘We Have All the Time in the World’, performed by the legendary Louis Armstrong. It came from one of the less renowned films in the series, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, but that highlights the fact that even the weaker entries over the years have had their magic moments. The two songs, by the way, had different composers, but the same gifted lyricist.

Quantum of Solace

I watched the new James Bond film several days ago, but I only just got my breath back. Talk about action-packed, it’s a thriller with non-stop car chases, boat chases, plane chases, killings, beatings and attempts to hold heads of state to ransom. Most people say that Casino Royale is a better movie than its successor, but I felt Quantum of Solace held its own, despite the dodgy title and even dodgier soundtrack and theme song (bizarrely, the classic 007 theme is held back until the end.) The success of the film is thanks in the main to Daniel Craig’s mesmeric performance as an agent bent on revenge and almost out of control, but Judi Dench is at her best as M, who has a larger role in events than usual.

Bond is still hurting after the murder of Vesper Lynd in the last film, and the action gets off to a flying start with a dramatic car chase followed by the discovery that M’s bodyguard is in the pay of the mysterious Quantum organisation. It turns out that one of the top dogs in Quantum is supposed eco-campaigner and front man of Greene Planet, Dominic Greene. The ruthless Greene is played by Mathieu Amalric, whose performance is terrifically creepy – in the style of a sort of eco-friendly Peter Lorre. Amalric apparently claims to have based his portrayal on a combination of Tony Blair and Nicolas Sarkozy. Presumably we must await the next film in the franchise for a villain with an outlandish plan for saving the world, inspired by Gordon Brown, (though it may be too scary to get away with a 12A certificate.)

To be honest, though, it’s best to forget the political edge to Amalric’s performance and the screenplay. Quantum of Solace is very good escapism. And we can all do with a dose of that, every now and then.