Monthly Archives: March 2016

Casino Royale (2006)

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100 Films’ 100 Favourites #18

Everyone has a past.
Every legend has its beginning.

Country: UK, USA, Czech Republic & Germany
Language: English
Runtime: 144 minutes
BBFC: 12A (cut, 2006) | 15 (uncut, 2012)
MPAA: PG-13 (cut)

Original Release: 14th November 2006 (Kuwait)
UK Release: 16th November 2006
US Release: 17th November 2006
First Seen: cinema, 16th November 2006

Stars
Daniel Craig (Layer Cake, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo)
Eva Green (The Dreamers, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For)
Mads Mikkelsen (Valhalla Rising, The Hunt)
Judi Dench (Iris, Philomena)
Jeffrey Wright (Shaft, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire)

Director
Martin Campbell (GoldenEye, Green Lantern)

Screenwriters
Paul Haggis (Crash, The Next Three Days)
Neal Purvis (Die Another Day, Johnny English)
Robert Wade (Stoned, Skyfall)

Based on
Casino Royale, the first James Bond novel by Ian Fleming.

The Story
British agent James Bond, newly promoted to exclusive double-oh status, investigates a terrorist plot that leads him to Le Chiffre. Banker to the world’s terrorists, Le Chiffre has managed to lose a lot of his clients’ money, and intends to win it back in a high-stakes poker game at the eponymous establishment. Bond is charged with joining the game and bankrupting the banker, with treasury employee Vesper Lynd along to keep an eye on the money and off Bond’s perfectly-formed arse.

Our Hero
“James before he was Bond,” as the awful US tagline went. Daniel Craig instantly disproved the not-that-numerous-but-certainly-vocal critics (remember all the “Bond isn’t blond” rubbish?) by being perhaps the most convincing actually-is-a-highly-trained-agent Bond since Connery.

Our Villain
Le Chiffre, a total banker. Fond of poker, bleeds from his eye, brilliantly played by Mads Mikkelsen, who has deservedly gone on to many other things, no doubt some wholly due to this.

Best Supporting Character
Eva Green is Vesper Lynd, a woman so remarkable that Bond names his personal Martini recipe after her. He also falls in love with her. Considering the rest of the Bond canon, that’s not likely to end well.

Memorable Quote
“I’m afraid your friend Mathis is really… my friend Mathis.” — Le Chiffre

Memorable Scene
At dinner on the train to Montenegro, Bond meets Vesper for the first time. They verbally size each other up. She wins. “How was your lamb?” “Skewered. One sympathises.”

Write the Theme Tune…
Easily the best Bond theme of the Craig era (though I like the QoS one more than most, and my main objection to Adele’s is that it’s about a flying baby horse and its receptacle for bread waste), You Know My Name was co-written by the series’ regular composer since the mid ’90s, David Arnold. That meant he could integrate the tune into his score, which was a Good Thing.

Sing the Theme Tune…
Far removed from Bond’s Bassey-imitating default style, the slightly gravelly sound of Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell (the first male vocalist on a Bond theme for nearly 20 years) helped indicate the series’ harder, manlier new direction.

Technical Wizardry
After four films of honing the Maurice Binder “naked silhouettes” style, title designer Daniel Kleinman cuts loose with an array of inventive playing card-based imagery. The most original Bond title sequence since at least Thunderball and, by being so atypical, the most unique of them all.

Truly Special Effect
Chasing after a kidnapped Vesper in the middle of the night, Bond suddenly sees her in his headlights, tied up in the middle of the road. He swerves, his Aston Martin crashes, and barrel rolls… seven times. The stunt team set a world record with that, which (despite Fury Road’s best efforts) is still unbeaten a decade later.

Making of
James Ferguson, a doctor from Aberdeen, came up with the idea for the scene in which Bond is poisoned and then remotely diagnosed by experts at MI6 HQ in London. Ferguson, a Bond fan, was retained as medical adviser for future Bond films.

Previously on…
Casino Royale was adapted for TV in 1954, starring the great Peter Lorre as Le Chiffre, and its title (and little else) was used for the awful 1967 Bond spoof. This version is the 21st in the canonical James Bond film series, and the first time that series has performed a reboot: the film opens with Bond attaining his famed double-oh status, something we’ve never seen before.

Next time…
Daniel Craig’s second outing, the somewhat misunderstood and underrated Quantum of Solace, was the first direct sequel in the Bond canon, picking up on various plot threads from Casino Royale and even resolving a few of them. After Craig’s third, Skyfall, went off on its own, last year’s Spectre tried to tie together the entirety of Craig’s era, with mixed success. Beyond that, James Bond will return indefinitely, though Craig may not.

Awards
1 BAFTA (Sound)
8 BAFTA nominations (British Film, Actor (Daniel Craig), Adapted Screenplay, Music, Cinematography, Editing, Production Design, Visual Effects)
1 Saturn Award (Action/Adventure/Thriller Film)
4 Saturn nominations (Actor (Daniel Craig), Supporting Actress (Eva Green), Writing, Music)
2 World Stunt Awards (Best High Work, Best Stunt Coordination and/or 2nd Unit Director)
1 World Stunt Awards nomination (Best Fight)

What the Critics Said
“I never thought I would see a Bond movie where I cared, actually cared, about the people. But I care about Bond, and about Vesper Lynd, even though I know that (here it comes) a Martini Vesper is shaken, not stirred. Vesper Lynd, however, is definitely stirring, as she was in Bertolucci’s wonderful The Dreamers. Sometimes shaken, too. Vesper and James have a shower scene that answers, at last, why nobody in a Bond movie ever seems to have any real emotions.” — Roger Ebert

Score: 95%

What the Public Say
“While there is very much a dramatic and sensitive undercurrent to this Bond film, Casino Royale doesn’t shortchange the audience on action. From Bond chasing a skilled free runner enemy to a brutal staircase battle, Casino Royale delivers a harsher and bleaker sense of violence that had been missing from some of the predecessors and not seen since Timothy Dalton’s dark turn in Licence to Kill.” — vinnieh

Elsewhere on 100 Films…
Just before Quantum of Solace was released in 2008, I wrote that Casino Royale was “a damn fine Bond film, returning to Fleming and resetting the character without losing anything truly essential about the franchise. […] this one’s up there with the very best, not just of Bond but of action-spy-thrillers in general.”

Verdict

In the early ’00s, it didn’t feel like the Bond series was in need of a reboot. Die Another Day had been a huge hit at the box office and gone down pretty well with critics (no, really, it did), and Brosnan was all set to do a fifth (though, considering his age, likely final) film as Britain’s top secret agent. Then Bourne happened, shifting the playing field of the spy-action genre, at the same time as Bond’s producers finally regained the rights to Fleming’s very first Bond novel. For the first time in the series’ 40-year history, they decided to reboot.

What Casino Royale does skilfully is acknowledge the changes brought by Bourne, but adapt them to Bond’s slightly more classical style (something Quantum of Solace fumbled). At the same time, it acknowledges and frequently subverts that Bond formula (“Shaken or stirred?” “Do I look like I give a damn.”), the antithesis of DAD’s uber-referentiality. In itself, it took Fleming’s relatively slight novel, with its lack of action by modern blockbuster standards, and expanded and modernised it effectively to fit current tastes. The result is arguably the best Bond movie ever made.

#19 will be… the last days of the human race.

Macbeth (2015)

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2016 #23
Justin Kurzel | 113 mins | Blu-ray | 2.39:1 | UK, France & USA / English | 15 / R

Macbeth is my favourite Shakespeare play. Not that I’m a great scholar of the Bard, but I’ve seen and/or read enough to have a favourite. I also think it’s one of his most accessible works: its story and characters are relatively straightforward without being devoid of complexity; it’s got some immensely effective imagery and dialogue, including a solid compliment of famous lines; and it’s not excessively long either (it’s Shakespeare’s shortest tragedy, in fact). I also studied it twice over in secondary school, so I know it fairly well. Now, this doesn’t mean I have exacting standards when it comes to film adaptations (Shakespeare is plenty open to interpretation), but it does mean I have my expectations up, especially as there isn’t a film version of Macbeth that could reasonably be described as “definitive” (though I know Polanski’s has its fans). After this latest effort, that’s still the case — but that doesn’t mean it’s without merit. Far from it.

For thems that don’t know, Macbeth is set in 11th Century Scotland, where the eponymous character (Michael Fassbender) is a lord and general in the army of King Duncan (David Thewlis). After winning a decisive battle, Macbeth and his BFF Banquo (Paddy Considine) bump into a coven of witches, who forecast Macbeth will receive a new title and eventually become king. Although the men are naturally dubious, they soon learn that Macbeth has indeed been granted the prophesied thaneship. With the prospect of being king too tantalising to ignore, Macbeth’s ambitious spouse (Marion Cotillard) eggs him on to plot regicide…

Although director Justin Kurzel (of Snowtown, a film I have no intention of watching thanks to ghost of 82’s review) wasn’t hired until after the film was in development and Fassbender had been cast, the final film has been very much guided by his vision. The text is heavily cut (a copy & paste & delete-bits job that somehow took three screenwriters), to the displeasure of some critics, though this is primarily because Kurzel chose to supplant some of the dialogue with Filmmaking. In a film?! How very dare he! What I mean, more specifically, is that he’s visualised parts of the text; applied the old rule of “show don’t tell”. So rather than a messenger giving the King a full account of Macbeth being awesome in battle, we see some of the combat; Banquo has hardly any lines early on, but we still understand his friendship with Macbeth just from the way they look at one another and go into battle together.

Throughout, it’s the imagery that Kurzel and DoP Adam Arkapaw have crafted that’s the real standout of this particular adaptation (however good the cast are, and I’ll come to them). The compositions, the unusual use of almost tableaux-like blocking, the lighting, the colour palettes, the rhythm of the editing and the use of slow-mo… This is a highly filmic film, in a good way. At times, it manages to turn Shakespeare into an action movie, a feat rarely (if ever) accomplished previously. At others, it’s just mighty purdy. The pictures are well complemented by the score, composed by the director’s younger brother, Jed Kurzel (he’s also scored the likes of The Babadook and Slow West, so it’s not just nepotism). His work here is appropriately haunting and folksy.

To say the text has been cut and the film is strongest in its visuals does not mean this is an empty-headed version of Shakespeare, however. The director and his cast have some interesting variations on the usual depictions of the characters, in particular Lady Macbeth’s motivations. Normally shown as greedy and power-mad, here she is grief-stricken — there’s a single line in the play that’s interpretable as the Macbeths having lost a child, which here is both made explicit and highlighted in an opening funeral scene. These characters are acting out of some kind of desperation or emptiness rather than pure greed. When, later, she (spoiler!) goes mad, it’s subtle and sad, rather than frantic and delirious. Cotillard is fantastic in all of this, and certainly worked hard for it: the way the French language applies emphasis is not suited to delivering iambic pentameter, apparently, so she worked hard with a dialect coach to nail her delivery. Her accent clearly marks Lady Macbeth as the only non-Scottish character here, which becomes another layer added to this interpretation.

As Macbeth, Fassbender negotiates well the accomplished general who is also dominated by his wife. Here the guiding concept was Macbeth The Warrior; to portray him both as someone looking to replace what he’s lost by the battle being over, and as suffering from PTSD after what he’s witnessed, hence repeated hallucinations of a boy killed in battle. This isn’t out of place with the text, of course — “is this a dagger I see before me” and all that. Fassbender is on furious form, particularly as Macbeth gives in to his paranoia later on. A word too for the supporting cast, in particular Sean Harris as Macduff, who makes the character feel more essential to the story (as he should, considering the climax) than I remember him being in previous versions.

Some of this analysis is thanks to the short handful of featurettes found on the UK Blu-ray (the US release, out tomorrow, has different special features, so I’ve no idea what the overlap will be, if any). There’s no commentary track, which is a real shame. I don’t often get round to listening to them, but I’d be interested to hear Kurzel talk through his and his cast’s decisions on a scene-by-scene basis. The special features that there are give some insight into how thoroughly they thought through their adaptation and prepared for it, but that only means the lack of further insight is even more pronounced. And Kurzel, Fassbender, Cotillard, and Arkapaw are all now working on the film of Assassin’s Creed, out this December, which is an intriguing prospect — is it going to be an arthouse video game adaptation? I suspect not, but maybe it will be the rarest thing in cinematic history: a good film based on a computer game.

I was initially on the fence about whether this Macbeth was a 4-star or a 5-star achievement, especially as I maintain it’s not the be-all-and-end-all of Macbeth on screen. But it’s one of those films that, whatever the experience of actually sitting and watching it is like (at times: odd), its imagery and feel really stay with you.

5 out of 5

Macbeth is released on DVD and Blu-ray in the US tomorrow, and is out in the UK already.
Next month, Polanski’s Macbeth is one of the initial releases in Criterion’s new UK range (yay!)

Casablanca (1942)

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100 Films’ 100 Favourites #17

They had a date with fate in Casablanca.

Country: USA
Language: English
Runtime: 102 minutes
BBFC: U
MPAA: PG (1992)

Original Release: 7th December 1942 (Brazil)
US Release: 23rd January 1943
UK Release: December 1942 (BBFC)
First Seen: DVD, 2006

Stars
Humphrey Bogart (The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep)
Ingrid Bergman (Notorious, Autumn Sonata)
Paul Henreid (Now, Voyager, Deception)
Claude Rains (The Invisible Man, Notorious)
Conrad Veidt (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Thief of Bagdad)

Director
Michael Curtiz (The Adventures of Robin Hood, Mildred Pierce)

Screenwriters
Julius J. Epstein (Arsenic and Old Lace, Cross of Iron)
Philip G. Epstein (Arsenic and Old Lace, The Last Time I Saw Paris)
Howard Koch (The Letter, Letter from an Unknown Woman)

Based on
Everybody Comes to Rick’s, an unproduced play by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison. (Despite the film’s popularity, a legal dispute between the playwrights and Warner Bros meant it wasn’t staged until 1991.)

The Story
Controlled by the German-subservient French government, Morocco in 1941 is a congregation point for German officials, collaborating French, and refugees attempting to get to neutral America. When letters of transit allowing that passage come into the possession of nightclub owner Rick Blaine at the same time as the love of his life, Ilsa Lund, walks into his joint with her husband, Resistance leader Victor Laszlo, Rick has some tough decisions to make — and quickly, with corrupt police captain Renault hunting for the letters and German Major Strasser gunning for Laszlo…

Our Hero
Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, everybody comes to Rick’s. That’s because Rick is Humphrey Bogart. You’d go to a bar run by Humphrey Bogart, wouldn’t you?

Our Heroine
The most beautiful woman to ever visit Casablanca (a gross understatement), here’s looking at you, Ingrid Bergman. (Yes, I added this section pretty much just to say that.)

Our Villains
It’s set during World War 2 so, I mean, who do you think?

Best Supporting Character
Claude Rains was the Invisible Man, but here he’s Captain Louis Renault, a corrupt copper who — despite being fourth-billed in a film packed with memorable dialogue — still gets a good many of the best lines.

Memorable Quote
“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.” — Rick

Quote Most Likely To Be Used in Everyday Conversation
“Louie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” — Rick

The Most Famous Misquote in Movie History
“Play it again, Sam.” — Rick
(Ilsa says “Play it once, Sam,” and “Play it, Sam.” Rick says, “You played it for her, you can play it for me. If she can take it, I can take it, so play it!”)

Memorable Scene
As Laszlo boards the plane out of Casablanca, Ilsa thinks she’s staying with Rick… until he convinces her to go. Standing in the doorway of an aircraft hanger, it’s probably the film’s most iconic scene — if you’ve not seen it, you’ve certainly seen it parodied.

Memorable Song
You must remember this: a kiss is just a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh. The fundamental things apply, As Time Goes By. Play it again, Sam!

Making of
Casey Robinson re-wrote the film’s romantic scenes and was offered a credit, but turned it down because he only took credit for screenplays he wrote entirely himself. Of course, with that decision he missed out on winning an Oscar.

Awards
3 Oscars (Picture, Director, Screenplay)
5 Oscar nominations (Actor (Humphrey Bogart), Supporting Actor (Claude Rains), Black-and-White Cinematography, Editing, Score)

What the Critics Said
“bear in mind that it goes heavy on the love theme. Although the title and Humphrey Bogart’s name convey the impression of high adventure rather than romance, there’s plenty of the latter for the femme trade. Adventure is there, too, but it’s more as exciting background to the Bogart-Bergman heart department. Bogart, incidentally, as a tender lover (in addition to being a cold-as-ice nitery operator) is a novel characterization” — Variety

Score: 97%

What the Public Say
“the script’s greatest strength is not quotability. It’s character development. Rick, Ilsa, Renault and Laszlo are complex individuals, about whom we care, no matter their flaws. Sam (Dooley Wilson), an African American pianist, is layered by loyalty to Rick and emotional acuity, while Major Strasser, the antagonist, is not a comic book villain. Because he’s a Nazi, we do not like the Major, but director Michael Curtiz and his writers are smart enough not to make him stereotypically evil, instead opting to develop him as determined and efficient. Because all of the characters are so genuine, the filmmakers earn our emotional investment” — Josh, Cinema Parrot Disco

Verdict

Casablanca is remembered now as much for its selection of ever-quotable lines as for anything else — you don’t have to have seen the film to know that if you go walking into all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world and someone’s looking at you, kid, then maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon you should round up all the usual suspects again, Sam, for the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Or something. It’s much more than that, though: an engaging romantic drama, with enough overtones of noir to keep it snappy, set in perhaps a ’40s equivalent of the Wild West. It may be three-quarters of a century old next year, but it still merits playing again.

#18 will see… Bond begin.

12 Years a Slave (2013)

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2016 #3
Steve McQueen | 134 mins | streaming (HD) | 2.35:1 | USA & UK / English | 15 / R

Oscar statue2014 Academy Awards
9 nominations — 3 wins

Winner: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay.
Nominated: Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Film Editing, Best Costume Design, Best Production Design.

As we know, the Oscars are racist and always have been, especially recently. Like two years ago, when they didn’t give a load of nominations and several awards to a film about slavery from a black director and black screenwriter.

Oh, wait…

That film was, obviously, 12 Years a Slave, the true account of Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a free black man who was kidnapped from his New York home and sold into slavery in the South. His story provides an overview, of sorts, of the experience of working as a plantation slave, both for a relatively decent master (Benedict Cumberbatch) and an evil SOB (Michael Fassbender).

One person who didn’t win an Oscar was Ejiofor (he lost to Matthew McConaughey, but he did win the BAFTA). His nomination was certainly deserved, though, because it’s an incredible lead performance — restrained most of the time, evoking Solomon’s internal life subtly rather than showily, but with carefully executed break-outs of emotion. Indeed, I’m slightly baffled by online commenters who felt the film was cold and lacking emotion or character. At the risk of getting on a high horse, I wonder if it was just too subtle for some? Ejiofor isn’t sat there tearing his heart out, but I thought there was considerably more to his performance than “looks happy in flashbacks, looks miserable in slavery”.

Nonetheless, the supporting performances are uniformly excellent, too. Paul Giamatti and Brad Pitt may be mere cameos, the presence of such actors highlighting their roles more than their function within the narrative does, but there are very strong turns from Cumberbatch, Paul Dano, Sarah Paulson, and in particular Oscar-winning Lupita Nyong’o, who will break your heart, and Michael Fassbender, who is overdue the gong for his many varied and accomplished performances. (I doubt his forthcoming triple of X-Men 6, video game adaptation Assassin’s Creed, and prequel-sequel Alien: Covenant will do anything for him in that regard, but he’s not yet 40, and that’s the prime part of a man’s life for Oscar winning, apparently.)

Steve McQueen’s direction is classical but effective, rarely drawing attention to itself when it has more important things to convey. That’s not to sell it short, though. A scene in which Fassbender’s plantation owner forces Solomon to do something unthinkable is achieved in a single roaming take that lasts nearly five minutes; a tour de force of camerawork, performance, and behind-the-scenes choreography, which only serves to heighten the tension and horror of the experience by never cutting.

Unsurprisingly, 12 Years a Slave is not an easily digestible film — it’s about a disgusting part of human history, and doesn’t shy away from some of its horrors. That said, it’s watchable thanks to the top tier performances, consummate direction, and moving storytelling.

5 out of 5

12 Years a Slave was viewed as part of my What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen…? 2016 project, which you can read more about here.

Snatch. (2000)

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2016 #2
Guy Ritchie | 103 mins | streaming (HD) | 16:9 | UK & USA / English & Russian | 18 / R

Guy Ritchie’s second feature met with relative indifference 16 years ago, consensus deeming it Lock Stock Mk.2 and finding Ritchie needed to branch out if he was to meet his debut’s promise. (It only took a further four films to realise that for himself.) The consensus is very different today: taking IMDb’s Top 250 as a bellwether, Snatch is #94 and Lock Stock is #138.

I thought it was like Pulp Fiction refashioned in the style of Lock Stock, but with more-connected stories that play concurrently.

It was fine. Above average, even.

That’s all I have to say about it.

4 out of 5

Snatch was viewed as part of my What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen…? 2016 project, which you can read more about here.

The Bourne Supremacy (2004)

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100 Films’ 100 Favourites #16

They should have left him alone.

Country: USA & Germany
Language: English, Russian, German & Italian
Runtime: 108 minutes
BBFC: 12A
MPAA: PG-13

Original Release: 23rd July 2004 (USA)
UK Release: 13th August 2004
First Seen: cinema, August 2004

Stars
Matt Damon (The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Departed)
Franka Potente (Blow, Romulus, My Father)
Brian Cox (Manhunter, X2)
Joan Allen (The Ice Storm, Death Race)
Karl Urban (The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Dredd)

Director
Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Ultimatum, Green Zone)

Screenwriter
Tony Gilroy (Proof of Life, The Bourne Legacy)

Based on
The character of Jason Bourne, created by Robert Ludlum. Not so much based on The Bourne Supremacy, the novel by Robert Ludlum.

The Story
Bourne and Marie are living a quiet life in India, until he’s framed for the murder of two CIA agents and the theft of files they were acquiring. After the actual culprit tries to kill Bourne, he believes the CIA have tracked him down, and makes good on his promise to bring the fight to them…

Our Hero
Living a life of seclusion with Marie, but still struggling with resurfacing memories from his time as a CIA operative, Jason Bourne has no intention of going anywhere near his former life… until they come for him, and the gloves are off. Bryan Mills ain’t got nothing on Bourne’s particular set of skills.

Our Villains
A whole host of interests are aligned against Bourne this time. From within the CIA, corrupt director Ward Abbott is still trying to cover his ass. A more physical threat comes in the form of Russian operative Kirill, referred to in early drafts of the screenplay as “Mock-Bourne” because he, a) frames our hero, and b) is his equal — well, almost.

Best Supporting Character
Pamela Landy brings some complication to the CIA side of the story: she’s out to get Bourne, same as the fellas from the first film, but that’s because she’s been conned too. Will she see the light and side with our hero?

Memorable Quote
Nicky: “It’s not a mistake. They don’t make mistakes. They don’t do random. There’s always an objective. Always a target.”
Landy: “The objectives and targets always came from us. Who’s giving them to him now?”
Nicky: “Scary version? He is.”

Memorable Scene
In Munich, Bourne visits the one remaining Treadstone operative. They fight, using household items as weapons (see “making of”, below). Then a team of soldiers arrive. Bourne turns on the gas, shoves a magazine in the toaster, and… well, the result was disproved by MythBusters, but it’s still cool.

Technical Wizardry
The cinematography and editing, according to some.

Letting the Side Down
The cinematography and editing, according to some.

Making of
The film famously features Bourne using a rolled-up magazine as a weapon in a fight with another Treadstone operative. Fight coordinator Jeff Imada looked over the set after it had been dressed to get an idea of what would be lying around that could be used as a weapon, and had the idea of a rolled up magazine. He had to demonstrate to sceptical crew members that it would indeed be a functional weapon, but was helped by actors Matt Damon and Marton Csokas giving each other bruises from practising with it.

Previously on…
The Bourne Identity left enough hanging to help fuel this movie.

Next time…
Although Supremacy was designed to wrap up the mysteries left dangling from Identity, they found plenty to drive a third film, which completes the trilogy by answering those remaining questions. A fourth film was essentially a spin-off. This summer’s fifth film will be about… something…

Awards
2 Saturn nominations (Action/Adventure/Thriller Film, Actor (Matt Damon))
2 World Stunt Awards (Best Work with a Vehicle, Best Stunt Coordinator and/or 2nd Unit Director)
1 World Stunt Award nomination (Best Fight)
2 MTV Movie Awards nominations (including Best Action Sequence (the Moscow car chase))

What the Critics Said
“Greengrass keeps you off-balance throughout. When the fight scenes and car chases arrive, there’s no telling, from shot to shot, what we will see next or how we’ll see it. […] Working with cinematographer Oliver Wood, Greengrass shoots the fight scenes and chases so close in that we see some moments almost as a blur. The editors, Richard Pearson and Christopher Rouse, break those sequences up into quick jagged shots that key us up and keep us hyper-alert. The world is being broken into bits of information, and we look hard at the screen to take it in. The approach could have resulted in the usual visual gibberish that defines contemporary action moviemaking [but] you can always tell what’s going on” — Charles Taylor, Salon

Score: 81%

What the Public Say
“I thought the movie was shot well, though at times I felt that the shaky cam effect was overused, as instead of pulling you into the action, it just gives you a headache and a dizzy spell” — Zoë, The Sporadic Chronicles of a Beginner Blogger

Verdict

Debate used to rage about whether Identity or Supremacy was the better film, centred on their very differing directorial styles. Fans of Greengrass’ sequel seem to have settled on Ultimatum as their preferred Bourne instalment now, though, leaving Supremacy to be generally regarded as the least-best of the first three Bournes. That does it something of a disservice: it’s an exciting, twisty, complicated thriller, and its groundbreaking visuals can’t be ignored for their contribution to the action genre — for good or ill.

#17 will… always have Paris.

The Value-for-Money Monthly Update for February 2016

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It’s only words, and words are all I have to introduce this post.

So let’s get on with it.


The Martian#21 Predestination (2014)
#22 Prisoners (2013)
#23 Macbeth (2015)
#24 Daybreakers (2009)
#25 The Martian (2015)
#26 Ex Machina (2015)
#27 Quigley Down Under (1990)
#28 Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films (2014)Ex Machina
#29 SuperBob (2015)
#30 The East (2013)
#31 Pillow Talk (1959)
#32 Home on the Range (2004)
#33 Crimson Peak (2015)
#34 Grand Piano (2013)
#35 Home (2015)
Crimson Peak#36 Noah (2014)
#37 The Equalizer (2014)
#38 The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2015)
#39 Big Eyes (2014)
#40 The Hangover (2009)
#41 Muppets Most Wanted (2014)
#42 Evangelion: 3.33 You Can (Not) Redo. (2012/2013)
#43 Cinderella (2015)
#44 Lucy (2014)


  • Value For Money Assessment, Part 1: before I cancelled Netflix last month, I watched 10 films on there. That’s £0.79 per film.
  • Value For Money Assessment, Part 2: after joining Now TV this month, I snuffled out 230+ films that interested me. Of those, I watched 10, plus the Oscars. That’s £0.91 per film/awards ceremony. (That subscription’s not over, so I’ll get more value out of it next month.)
  • Value For Money Assessment, Part 3: I bought and instantly watched four new-release Blu-rays this month. That was £11.87 per film. Picture quality and special features were lovely, though.
  • No WDYMYHS film this month, for reasons I’ll come to in a minute. I did watch two last month, though, so it’s OK.


This month, I watched 24 new films. Yeah, that whole “watch fewer films so I can do other stuff” thing isn’t going so well. (“Moan when you’re not watching enough films, moan when you are watching plenty of films — what’s wrong with you?!” Yes, I do feel a bit Shinji-ish.)

The reason? The Oscars. Not watching the nominated films, but paying £9.99 for a month of Now TV so I can watch them. Are the Oscars worth £9.99? No, of course they’re not — hence catching up on lots of other films while I have it. That’ll continue until the middle of next month… when I’ll get Netflix so I can watch Daredevil season two, and also attempt to extract maximum value for money by watching a load more films. So in the middle of April I may finally stop watching so many movies…

Of course, watching so many films brings with it a number of personal ‘achievements’: it easily surpasses the February average (9.63) and crushes the February record (13, jointly held by four previous Februarys); it’s the 21st month in a row where I’ve watched over 10 films; it’s only the fifth month ever with over 20 films; oh, and it’s a new third best month ever. (“Best” in this sense just meaning “most prolific”, of course. Volume does not equal quality. Unless you’re Mad Max: Fury Road, in which case winning the most Oscars means you are the Academy’s best film of the year. Yes it does. Yes it does.)

Quick inaccurate future predictions: following the relatively-huge January and February, and as I intend to maintain my ten-per-month minimum, this year’s looking at a final tally of at least 144 films. That would make it easily my second most prolific year ever. Which is nice. If by some failure of purpose I continued to achieve my current 2016 average of 22 films per month, I’d be looking at ending around #264. Sounds utterly ridiculous, but in January 2015 I laughed at the statistics suggesting I might make it to #192, and I ended up reaching #200.


This month, I’ve all but finished posting my 2015 reviews. Just The Story of Film remains, joining Veronica Mars in the eternally-unreviewed club. Maybe I’ll fix them both next month. Plus, the debut of my monthly TV review.


Superheroes, Disney, history, and noir — both classic and futuristic. Alphabetisation leaves the structure of this series to the whims of fate, but I think it’s a nicely varied month.



The 9th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
Any month with 24 films is likely to have more than its fair share of highs and lows, and so it was with February. Shortlisting contenders for both this and the next award showed more of the former than the latter (nine vs. three), thankfully, but I think this one boils down to a three-way five-star sci-fi stand-off. Of those, I think the best marriage of idea and execution may have come from Predestination.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
Two animations with “home” in the title are the frontrunners (rear-runners?) here. However, I expected Home on the Range to be terrible (and only watched it in aid of seeing all the Disney Animated Classics), whereas I only watched Home because I thought the trailer looked entertaining, so was thoroughly disappointed.

Best Apocalypse of the Month
Plenty of movies have shown us the end of the world now, but very few have done it in a story set millennia ago. For doing it so convincingly (if not plausibly), congratulations to Noah.

Most Disappointing Shakespeare Cut of the Month
“By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.” Why did they excise one of the best lines from Macbeth?!

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
Maybe it was the broad range of series covered, maybe it was just because it was something new and different, but my most-viewed new post in February was The Past Month on TV #1. (For the sake of keeping things on topic, I’ll add that the most-viewed film-related review was my Oscars-centric take on Star Wars: The Force Awakens.)


Halfway.