The Locked Down Monthly Review of April 2020

Posted on May 1, 2020 by badblokebob

In 2002, Blue got the city on lockdown.
In 2020, Boris Johnson got the country on lockdown.
Your move, noughties boy bands.

One thing this stressful time has been good for is my film viewing. After a 2019 that saw some of my lowest months in years — indeed, ever — I’m pleased to say that April 2020 is a record breaker:

100 Films has a new Best. Month. Ever!

#59 Rang De Basanti (2006)
#60 The Kid (1921/1971)
#61 The Three Caballeros (1944)
#62 Stop Making Sense (1984)
#63 Burning (2018), aka Beoning
#64 The Karate Kid Part III (1989)
#65 Aniara (2018)
#66 The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
#67 The Diamond Arm (1969), aka Brilliantovaya ruka
#68 I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932)
#68a The Devil’s Harmony (2019)
#69 The Next Karate Kid (1994)
#70 Never Too Young to Die (1986)
#71 It Chapter Two (2019)
#72 Andrei Rublev (1966)
#73 Dune: The Alternative Edition Redux (1984/2012)
#74 Rambo: Last Blood (2019)
#75 K-19: The Widowmaker (2002)
#76 Near Dark (1987)
#77 The Thin Red Line (1998)
#78 Jumanji: The Next Level (2019)
#79 Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987)
#80 6 Underground (2019)
#81 The Secret Life of Pets 2 3D (2019)
#82 Look, Up in the Sky! The Amazing Story of Superman (2006)
#83 Long Day’s Journey into Night 3D (2018), aka Di Qiu Zui Hou De Ye Wan
#84 End of the Century (2019), aka Fin de siglo
#85 Men in Black: International (2019)
#86 The Sheik (1921)
#87 The Son of the Sheik (1926)
#88 Extraction (2020)
#89 The Wedding Guest (2018)
#89a The Escape (2016)
#90 Ready or Not (2019)
#91 Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989)
#92 The Two Popes (2019)
#93 Ice Age: Continental Drift 3D (2012)
#94 The Lunchbox (2013)
#95 Zatoichi in Desperation (1972), aka Shin Zatôichi monogatari: Oreta tsue
#96 Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991)

I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang

Dune: The Alternative Edition Redux

Jumanji: The Next Level

Ready or Not

The Lunchbox

I watched 38 new feature films in April.
As I said at the start, that’s my most ever in a single month, beating the previous record holder (May 2018) by four films. That’s noteworthy because May 2018 is only one film ahead of the month that’s now in 3rd, which is only two films ahead of the month now in 4th, which is only three films ahead of the months now in =5th. So, four is a pretty healthy margin.
Obviously, as my best month ever, April is going to smash any comparisons I care to make. So let’s start with the only thing it wasn’t guaranteed to do, but it has done nonetheless: #96 is the furthest I’ve reached by the end of April (next best is #90 in 2018).
Averages: it increases April’s average by two whole films, from 12.8 to 14.8; increases the rolling average of the last 12 months from 13.3 to 14.8; and increases the average for 2020 to date from 19.3 to 24.0. If I maintained that average until December, 2020 would become my biggest year ever (but things never work out like that).
It’s my 21st month with 20+ films, and my 4th month with 30+ films.

Alright, now some notes on the films within those 38…

Back in February, I noted that I’d somehow never seen a film from 1932. That’s now changed, thanks to I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang. Now, since the year of the first feature films being produced in the UK and USA (1912), there are only four years from which I’ve not seen at least one feature-length film: 1912, 1914, 1915, and 1923. I have at least one title picked out from each of those years that I could use to settle this matter, so I ought to get on with them…
I’ve seen David Lynch’s Dune before, but it was over 20 years ago and it was the theatrical cut. The fan edit I watched adds material from a longer TV cut and deleted scenes, plus generally rearranges and rejigs stuff, so I figure it must be substantially different enough to count as new.
Having watched 92% of the alphabet in January, February, and March, only X and Z remained — with the latter now claimed by Zatoichi in Desperation. X will go whenever I get round to watching Dark Phoenix — I think that’s literally the only X film I have in my collection or on Netflix/Amazon/etc.
This month’s Blindspot films: Andrei Tarkovsky’s biopic of 15th century religious icon painter Andrei Rublev. I found it as dry as that sounds. Also, from my ‘overflow’ list, Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line, which I was also underwhelmed by. I knew it would be more Malickian than your typical war movie, but still, something about it didn’t connect with me.
From last month’s “failures” I watched Aniara, End of the Century, It Chapter Two, Rambo: Last Blood, Ready or Not, and The Secret Life of Pets 2, plus The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (see Rewatchathon). That’s a record haul, besting the five failures I watched last April. It was driven by most of those being time-limited Amazon rentals.

The 59th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
How to define “favourite”? On the one hand you’ve got something like I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, which is a weighty and still-pertinent condemnation of the American justice system. On the other, something such as Jumanji: The Next Level, which is just a whole lot of fun. More tickling my fancy in the former camp is Aniara, about the psychological strain of being stranded in space with little hope of ever returning home, some of which feels very pertinent to our current world situation (I know we’re all at home rather than far from it, but the cooped up with no hope of escape… yeah). And in the latter camp, Ready or Not is a deliciously gonzo horror-comedy, which didn’t quite push as many buttons as I’d hoped but is still massively entertaining. On balance, bearing in mind its unexpected timeliness, Aniara takes it.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
This is a more straightforward category… although, personally, I included Andrei Rublev on my shortlist, which is a Highly Acclaimed Movie (just check out how many Greatest Ever lists it’s on), but it bored me senseless. Still, it did have some parts I admired — I’m not sure I can say the same about Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. Actually, that’s not strictly true: Christopher Reeve was always perfect as Superman; but the film definitely lets him down.

Best Musical Discovery of the Month
I’d never consciously listened to Talking Heads before I watched Stop Making Sense. I recognised exactly two of the songs during that concert movie, and one of those I know best from a cover version. While I wouldn’t exactly call myself a convert to their music, I liked most of it well enough, with opening number Psycho Killer my favourite. In fact, I preferred the live version in the film to the original recording. Maybe it’s just because I heard that take first, I dunno.

Best Audition to Be James Bond of the Month
It never even crossed my mind that the skinny kid from Slumdog Millionaire could ever be considered for Bond, and I bet it didn’t yours either. It was David Ehrlich’s Letterboxd review of The Wedding Guest that first flagged up the idea for me, and, having seen the film, I can see what he means. Dev Patel as James Bond… it’d certainly be different.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
The second half of last month’s TV review sat pretty atop the chart for most of the month (the Doctor Who half, meanwhile, wasn’t even close), but then Extraction came barrelling through my stats like Tyler Rake through an overcrowded Indian apartment block. Five older TV posts topped it overall, but it was by far my most-viewed new post.

The Avengers	Diamonds Are Forever
The Elephant Man	Extraction
Hustlers	Inferno
Jigsaw	Laura
The Lunchbox	Men in Black: International
Never Say Never Again	Spider-Man: Far from Home
Superman II	Superman III
Superman IV	Terminator 2 3D
Yesterday	Zatoichi at Large

The Past Month on TV #57a	The Past Month on TV #57b

The name’s Connery, Sean Connery.

Yes, there’s a distinct theme to this month’s rewatches. It wasn’t deliberate… well, not at first. Once I noticed it, obviously I had to maintain it.

#15 Diamonds Are Forever (1971)
#16 The Avengers (1998)
#17 The Rock (1996)
#18 The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003)

…and, if you want to take it further, you could argue they’re all movies where Connery returned to the role of James Bond. Sure, Diamonds Are Forever is the only one where that’s literally true, but there’s long been a fan theory that Connery’s character in The Rock is Bond under a pseudonym, and in The Avengers he plays an innuendo-spewing former British secret agent turned villain. As for LXG… yeah, okay, the idea runs out there.

When I included The Rock in my 100 Favourites, I only rated it 4 stars. Now I feel like a fool — it’s easily a 5. Some thoughts as to why on Letterboxd. Mind you, that kind of thing cuts both ways: when I finally got round to rewatching Face/Off 18 months ago, I discovered I didn’t enjoy it as much as I used to, and if I’d done that before publishing 100 Favourites then I might’ve dropped it from the list entirely. I intend to update my favourites list someday, but I think I need to do a good deal more rewatching before then.

My rewatch of LXG was prompted by this defence of the film. While I wouldn’t call the movie a masterpiece, I do generally agree with that article — the film has its moments (many of them thanks to Dorian Gray), and it’s certainly no worse than many other ’90s/’00s Hollywood blockbusters. Quite why it provokes such vitriol from anyone but fans of the book is beyond me. (Book fans have every right to be disappointed, because the film sanitises and Hollywoodises the concept. That said, as a fan of the books myself, I’m happy to take both forms as differing executions of the same idea.)

This may be the biggest month in 100 Films history, but there was still plenty of stuff I failed to watch. Nothing in cinemas, obviously (though Trolls World Tour did get released direct to premium streaming, and consequently looks like it might change the world), but the other avenues for film viewing offered more than enough alternatives.

For starters, Netflix completed their Studio Ghibli lineup with Howl’s Moving Castle (the only one I’d seen), From Up on Poppy Hill (which I own on Blu-ray), Ponyo (also on Blu-ray), When Marnie Was There (also on Blu-ray, jeez!), Pom Poko, Whisper of the Heart, and The Wind Rises. On the new films front there was CG animation The Willoughbys, which looks vaguely interesting, and for (relatively) recent releases they mustered the remake of Child’s Play. They also added the second Maze Runner film, The Scorch Trials. One day the whole trilogy will be available somewhere and I’ll give them a shot.

Amazon actually had more to offer in terms of recent acquisitions, though the quality level is dubious — I’m talking of films like Angel Has Fallen (the second sequel to the less-good “Die Hard in the White House” movie), Playmobil: The Movie (a rip-off of The LEGO Movie that wasn’t as well received), 21 Bridges (which received middling notices), and The Current War (presumably in its director’s cut form, for which the most positive comment Rotten Tomatoes can muster is “a significant improvement over previous versions”). Additions from the archive include a handful of Hong Kong actioners, led by the appropriately-titled Police Story: Lockdown (the sixth film, and second reboot, in the Jackie Chan action franchise), plus unofficial prequel The Legend is Born: Ip Man (I believe Ip Man 4 is also now available to rent over here), and Donnie Yen in Legend of the Fist (a version of the story from Bruce Lee’s Fist of Fury and Jet Li’s Fist of Legend).

Also new to Amazon was medical disaster movie Outbreak, which was already on Netflix; and they both added Contagion, after everyone was talking about it last month. I noticed it still made it into Netflix’s UK top ten, though.

Over on Now TV, sequel-cum-reimagining Four Kids and It caught my eye because I remember enjoying the BBC’s 1991 adaptation of the original book when I was a kid, but this new one didn’t seem to go down terribly well (though the British critics collated by Rotten Tomatoes have got it to 61%, which counts as ‘fresh’). Other recent films now on Sky include Ma and Tolkien.

Finally, I went a bit potty in Blu-ray sales again, this time mostly at Arrow, picking up a couple of Vincent Price horrors, Tales of Terror and Tower of London; a couple of artier titles from Second Run, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders and Ikarie XB 1; Third Window’s double-bill of The Whispering Star and The Sion Sono; and some Westerns and noirs and noir-Westerns that include The Ox-Bow Incident, My Name is Julia Ross, and Terror in a Texas Town. The latter pair were directed by Joseph H. Lewis, whose So Dark the Night I enjoyed last month, so I also bought his Gun Crazy in its HMV-exclusive edition, paired with their edition of Out of the Past in their 2-for-£25 offer. Meanwhile, Eureka tempted me with new releases, namely Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain and Masters of Cinema titles Rio Grande, Kwaidan, and their second box set of Buster Keaton features, which includes The Navigator, Seven Chances, and Battling Butler. International travel may be closed to humans, but it isn’t to Blu-rays, as evidenced by my imports of 3-D Rarities Volume II (which includes Mexico’s only 3D film, swashbuckler El Corazón y la Espada) and A Boy and His Dog (which I look forward to rewatching in good quality, unlike the print I saw on Prime Video a few years ago). I tried to resist the UHD upgrade of The Elephant Man, but then I saw the PQ comparisons and the limited-edition pop-up packaging (damn my love of a cardboard gimmick!) and caved.

And, inevitably, I did purchase The Rise of Skywalker, in 3D. You know, I’ve never got round to rewatching The Last Jedi. The idea of pairing them up as a double bill should be the most natural thing in the world, but instead it feels like a bold experiment in combining chalk and cheese. Still, I might try it sometime.

Barring any unforeseen circumstances (though, at the minute, who can accurately foresee anything?), I should definitely pass #100 early next month. As for my new-goal-I-keep-half-forgetting of #120, well, that’s within reach too. And then…

In my final monthly review of 2019, I mentioned that “it’s entirely possible [2020 will] be the year I reach #2000”. Now, it’s all but certain that it will (unforeseen circumstances, remember). If May gets to 35 films (which, before this month, would’ve been a record for biggest month ever), that’ll be 100 Films’ #2000! Is it likely I’ll achieve two such huge months in a row? Funnily enough, the last couple of times I’ve set a new “best month ever” it’s been immediately beaten by the very next month: September then October in 2015; April then May in 2018.

No pressure, May 2020…

The Lunchbox (2013)

Posted on April 30, 2020 by badblokebob

Yesterday the world heard the sad news that the actor Irrfan Khan had passed away aged just 53. An award-winning film star in India, Khan also had a noteworthy presence as a supporting actor in Western films — the police inspector in Slumdog Millionaire; the owner of the eponymous park in Jurassic World; the adult version of the main character in Life of Pi; not to mention The Darjeeling Limited, The Amazing Spider-Man, Inferno, and more. I’d seen all of those films and noted Khan’s presence — he’s the kind of actor who turns up and elevates the film almost just by being there, bringing a depth and interest to even the smallest roles. But I’d never seen any of the many films (he has 151 acting credits on IMDb) in which he played the lead, so it seemed appropriate to turn to one of the most internationally acclaimed of his films, The Lunchbox, in tribute.

Khan plays Saajan, an office worker who receives his lunch every day via the dabbawala service. It’s a remarkable network that delivers 200,000 lunches daily across Mumbai with unerring accuracy. Indeed, their precision is so famed that one of the major criticisms of this film in some quarters was that its premise is too far-fetched — that being that, due to a continued mixup, Saajan begins to receive the lunches Ila (Nimrat Kaur) has prepared for her husband, rather than the ones he ordered from a local restaurant. He’s so impressed with the quality of the food, when the lunchbox is returned Ila observes that it looks to have been licked clean. This is good news, because she was trying to up the quality of her lunches as a way to reignite her stagnant marriage; but when her husband returns home still disinterested, with only thin praise for something she hadn’t even included in his lunch, she realises the delivery mistake immediately. But politeness compels her to send lunch again, this time with a note explaining the mixup. After a rocky start, soon Saajan and Ila are in daily communication through short letters passed back and forth in the lunchbox.

Both are characters desperately in need of that connection. Ila’s loveless marriage, and young daughter who spends most of the day at school, means her primary human contact comes in shouted conversations with her upstairs neighbour. Saajan, meanwhile, is taking early retirement, but first must train Shaikh (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), the overeager new recruit appointed to replace him. He tries to duck even this level of interaction; at home, he tells off kids for playing in the road outside his house, refusing to return their ball. We could infer Saajan is a misanthrope, and the impression is given that his colleagues do (they share a story that he once kicked a cat in front of a bus then casually walked away), but the film affords us more insight than that, primarily through Khan’s performance. It’s the underlying sadness in his eyes that first give the clue to his true loneliness, and the way his demeanour begins to brighten as the relationship with Ila brings a spark back into his life.

Lest you think this is all somewhat dour, the way it plays is uplifting. Saajan and Ila may be miserable at the start, and continue to confront problems in their lives throughout the film, but their connection injects a measure of happiness into both their lives, the mutual support helping them through. Plus there’s a strong vein of humour, at first from the faltering beginnings of our leads’ relationship, then from the antics of Siddiqui’s junior employee. This isn’t the kind of broad comedy you might expect from a Bollywood movie, but something more grounded and closer to reality. At first Shaikh seems as irritating to us as he is to Saajan, but soon the latter’s growing empathy leads him to become a father figure to the younger man, and we too begin to see the truth underneath his cheery facade.

While that subplot is a bonus, the film really comes down to Saajan and Ila, and consequently the performances of Khan and Kaur. That’s particularly important because so much of the story occurs in the form of letters, and so the characters’ true reactions come across in doleful expressions, or changes in posture or behaviour; subtle, human indicators that leave us in no doubt what they’re feeling, and only strengthen our own connection to and investment in these characters. This pair of deeply-felt performances carefully steer The Lunchbox into being a heartfelt, quietly affecting film.

Extraction (2020)

Posted on April 25, 2020 by badblokebob

Chris “Thor” Hemsworth stars in this action-thriller masterminded by the Russo brothers (directors of Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame) and directed by Sam Hargrave, who has dozens of stunt coordinating credits to his name, including three Hunger Games, Atomic Blonde, and work on six Marvel Studios movies. But don’t take all those MCU connections to heart — this is not a Marvel-style PG-13 action-comedy. Oh no.

We first meet mercenary Tyler Rake (Hemsworth) engaged in a gunfight on a bridge. He’s covered in wounds, spitting up blood, looks like he’s about to die. Cut to two days earlier! No, really, it’s one of those openings. They just won’t bloody die. Never mind “skip titles” or “watch credits”, Netflix needs to add a “skip pointless in media res prologue” button. It would improve almost any film/TV episode where it was featured.

Anyway, two days earlier we’re introduced to Ovi (Rudhraksh Jaiswal). Just an ordinary, well-to-do schoolboy in India… except his dad’s an imprisoned drug kingpin, and when Ovi slips out to a club one evening he’s kidnapped by goons from the competition, run by the thoroughly ruthless Amir Asif (Priyanshu Painyuli). With daddy behind bars, it falls to Saju (Randeep Hooda) to get the kid back, for which he hires some organisation, I guess — the film is incredibly light on specifics here. Basically, it involves Nik (Golshifteh Farahani) sending in Mr Rake and a support team to extract the kid. Naturally the mission goes sideways, leaving it up to Rake alone to get Ovi and himself out of a city crawling with henchman and corrupt cops who are all out to get them.

Of course, Rake has issues in his backstory, and rescuing the kid becomes more than just a job, etc, etc. The “Man on Fire Lite” plot is as predictable as this sentence ending with a simile. When David Harbour turns up halfway through as an old mate of Rake’s who lives in the city and agrees to help him out, I’ll be surprised if you can’t guess what inevitably happens a couple of scenes later. Though it is amusingly bold of the film to try to make us believe David “dad bod” Harbour could hold his own in a fight against Chris “literally a Norse God” Hemsworth.

That minor brawl aside, the action sequences are great, more than making up for the lightweight plot mechanics. Letting stunt coordinators move into full-on directing has been the saviour of the action movie genre in recent years, working wonders for the John Wick series in particular, but also several other movies that have followed suit. Hargrave is the latest to suggest he might have a bright career ahead of him on the basis of his ability to stage electrifyingly choreographed combat scenes. The action is fast and hard-hitting; not unnecessarily horror-movie gory like it was in fellow Netflix actioner 6 Underground, but certainly not PG-13 material either. Clearly Netflix don’t force the makers of their expensive movies to hit that PG-13, presumably tied to not having to worry about box office takings. One advantage of going direct to streaming.

The highlight of the film is undoubtedly an already-much-discussed 11½-minute single-take action sequence. We’ve seen plenty of these trick shots in the past few years (Atomic Blonde and, obviously, 1917 particularly come to mind), but Extraction offers another belter. It starts as a full-blown car chase, which transitions into a game of cat-and-mouse around a warren-like apartment block, then tumbles into a mano-a-mano knife duel on a busy street, before ending in a second car chase. Obviously there are myriad hidden cuts in there, but that’s almost beside the point: it’s not physically doing it in one long shot that’s impressive, it’s the design and choreography and planning and execution to make it feel like one. It pays off handsomely.

You wonder if Netflix might look to turn Extraction into a franchise — in many non-English-speaking countries it’s been titled Tyler Rake, which might suggest that’s what they’re thinking. But then, they could’ve retitled it that in English if they wanted, so maybe not. It’s not the most sophisticated thriller ever made, and it doesn’t reach the giddy heights of John Wick in the action department, but it’s nonetheless entertaining at what it sets out to achieve. If they do decide to make more, I’ll definitely be there.

Extraction is available on Netflix now.

Men in Black: International (2019)

Posted on April 24, 2020 by badblokebob

When Men in Black: International* hit cinemas last summer, many, many, many critics used a neuralyzer-related pun prominently in their review. (Someone did a Twitter thread compiling all the near-identical jokes. It reached 120 examples.**) For those unfamiliar with the MIB franchise, the neuralyzer is a small device that can wipe people’s memories, used by the MIB to keep their activities secret. The repetitive and inevitable joke was that International is so bad you’ll want to be neuralzyed afterwards. Now, I swear the film itself is trying to get in on the gag: the only photo printed on its disc is of a neuralyzer, as if the Blu-ray itself is going to wipe your memory when you take it out of your player. If only it did…

International is essentially a spin-off from the previous trilogy of MIB movies: whereas they followed Agents J and K (Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones) on adventures in New York, this time we follow newbie Agent M (Tessa Thompson) as she’s relocated to London and paired with hot-shot-agent-gone-off-the-boil H (Chris Hemsworth) on a globetrotting adventure to unearth a mole in MIB.

Reinvigorating the franchise with new blood isn’t a bad idea. The third film was a marked improvement on the second, but neither recaptured the glories of the first, and K and J’s story was pretty well played out. Hemsworth and Thompson are good picks for the leads, too, given he displayed noteworthy comedic chops in the Ghostbusters reboot and the pair had clear chemistry in the well-liked Thor: Ragnarok.

But clear-eyed plans alone don’t make a good movie, as Men in Black: International proves. It’s not that the movie is bad per se, it’s just mediocre; bland; uninspired. It’s devoid of wit or charm — which, considering the cast, is kind of remarkable. I mean, it’s not just Hemsworth and Thompson — two appealing, capable leads. There’s also Liam Neeson and Emma Thompson, and Rebecca Ferguson pops up (I didn’t even know she was in it ’til she did), and there’s Rafe Spall (limited by having to be a blatant red herring), and the voice of Kumail Nanjiani. Whoever’s your favourite out of that talented cast, they’re wasted. Neeson is a particular bit of miscasting. Calling the head of London branch “High T” is a perfectly adequate joke, playing on Britishness and poshness… until you cast a guy with a pronounced Northern Irish accent, which just kills the gag dead. Nanjiani fares best as the voice of a little CGI creature, who’s probably meant to be cute but errs more towards annoying, though I didn’t hate him.

Of course I didn’t hate him — nothing in this movie is emotive enough to be hate-worthy. But by being so bland, it becomes objectionable. MIB2 wasn’t great, but at least it was kind of entertaining in its poorness. International is playing it so safe that you can’t even groan at it, or be delighted when something half-decent emerges from the mire, or be amused by it in spite of itself.

I guess this is what happens when you hire a primarily action director to helm a movie that should primarily be a comedy. F. Gary Gray did start off his career with a comedy, Friday, but that was 25 years ago. He’s better known for the likes of The Negotiator, the Italian Job remake, Law Abiding Citizen, and The Fate of the Furious. He hasn’t turned this into a straight-up action movie — it does still try to be amusing — but it’s clear the focus is in a different place to before. It’s partly because it’s far too long and lacking in pace. It’s always stuck in my mind that the director of the previous MIBs, Barry Sonnenfeld, once said he’s the only director whose Director’s Cut would be shorter than the original film because he’s always looking to strip things back. I suspect that may be part of why the previous movies worked, and it feels like International could really benefit from the same approach.

Cute and/or annoying CGI creature? Check

It certainly seemed to me like it was several more drafts away from completion. The twist is so obvious you can guess it just from looking at the cast list, underscored by a prologue that fades to white before it resolves and so may as well scream “what happened next is not what you’ll think”. More vitally, why is M a rookie agent? You’d think it would give an obvious and easy character arc, but that’s not really played. Instead, there are loads of times throughout the film where she Knows Stuff, so they have to explain it with “it says it in the handbook” or something similarly hand-wavy. The fact she managed to find the MIB, rather than them choosing to recruit her, is a cute origin but then has nothing to do with anything. It would’ve been better if she was a desk jockey forced out onto her first field assignment. Sure, that’s a tired characterisation too, but at least it’d be something a bit different for the franchise, and a bit more in keeping with how the movie wants to use her.

At one point it was mooted that this would be an MIB / Jump Street crossover movie, which was a barmy idea; but with MIB in need of a fresh start and Jump Street already being pretty immune to the fourth wall, it could’ve been great. At least it would’ve been different — even if it hadn’t’ve worked, they’d’ve tried something bold. Instead, they went for the much safer option of a straightforward soft reboot, and everything about International screams “safe”. Earlier I said it wasn’t bad, but by being so dull, well, it kinda is.

Men in Black: International is available on Sky Cinema from today.

* Don’t get me started on that colon in the title. I could practically write an essay just about that choice. ^
** Most of the critics took it well, apparently. ^

Review Roundup: Superman Sequels

Posted on April 21, 2020 by badblokebob

Superman: The Movie is one of the greatest superhero movies ever made, perhaps even the greatest. Its sequels… not so much.

It took three movies to get there, but through them you’ll believe a franchise can die…

Superman II
(1980)

I feel like I must’ve seen Superman II as a kid — I know I saw Superman and enjoyed it, so why wouldn’t I have seen the sequel? But all the things people go on about from it (“kneel before Zod!”) I only know because other people go on about them, not from any memory of my own, so maybe I never saw it? Well, sitting down to watch it now, I didn’t remember any part of it. But that doesn’t mean I definitely didn’t see it because, frankly, I didn’t find Superman II particularly worthy of being remembered. I know some people love it — heck, James Gunn even included it in a list of “sequels that are better than the original” the other day. But James Gunn is wrong.

For me, the film breaks down into a few simple and distinct sections. First, it begins with an eight-and-a-half-minute recap of the first movie. That’s… long. And largely unnecessary. I mean, when it bothers to include the telephone booth gag but omits the turning-the-world-backwards climax of the movie, you get the impression it’s not there to get you properly up to speed on the plot.

Next, Lois and Clark spend most of the first hour titting about at Niagara Falls investigating a honeymoon hotel scam (a what now?!), while evil Kryptonian General Zod and his gang veeery slooowly make their way to somewhere significant. Then there’s half-an-hour of Lois and Clark being too self-absorbed to notice Zod take over the world. Not-so-super, Superman. Then, finally, the all-action last half-hour actually gives us some Superman stuff. Hurrah!

The humour quotient is waaay upped from the first movie. Based on his previous work, I guess much of that was the influence of replacement director Richard Lester. He wasn’t a good choice all round: Margot Kidder disliked working with him; Gene Hackman didn’t return (all his scenes are either footage previously shot or done with a lookalike and impersonator); John Williams walked off the film after seeing Lester’s footage. He reshot a bunch of stuff original director Richard Donner had already filmed, partly to get a sole director credit, partly because he didn’t approve of the epic visual style Donner had chosen. Instead, Lester aimed for a visually flat “comic book” style. Ugh.

25 years after Superman II’s release, Warner Bros relented and let Donner complete his original cut of the movie, released in 2006 as The Richard Donner Cut. Maybe that version’s better — I haven’t watched it yet, but it does have a much higher score on IMDb. But how anyone could genuinely love the originally-released version, I don’t understand. It’s not outright bad, it’s just mediocre, and not a patch on its predecessor.

Superman III
(1983)

If you said “imagine a Superman film by a director who won the Palme d’Or”, you wouldn’t picture Superman: The Slapstick Comedy… and yet here we are.

The director in question is Richard Lester, returning after Superman II, a movie he inherited, so I guess it’s only here that he’s really allowed to show what he thinks a comic book movie ought to be. Turns out, that’s more like Airplane or a Jacques Tati film than the David Lean influence he felt Richard Donner was aiming for on Superman: The Movie. He even lets the title card appear over the epic superhero imagery of… three phone boxes that have been knocked over dominoes-style by a hot dog cart. Wow.

Ironically, almost all of the film is humour-focused apart from the scenes starring comedian Richard Pryor (who thought the screenplay was terrible, but did like the $5 million salary). Concurrently, the technological and scientific parts of the plot make absolutely no sense. Like, a weather monitoring satellite can be accessed from a small-town wheat firm and then be reprogrammed to control the weather. And that same satellite can then use its lasers to analyse rocks millions of miles away to find out what elements make up another element, which just… Ugh. It so doesn’t make sense that it’s too much effort to explain why it doesn’t make sense.

With Gene Hackman presumably only too happy to be rid of this franchise, the villain is now Robert Vaughn, who has an entourage that feels like a blatant attempt to emulate Lex Luther & co from the previous films. There’s also an all-powerful supercomputer, which Superman defeats with what appears to be a bubbling-over pot of strawberry jam.

That's Larry Lamb on the left, would you believe

The story also involves Superman going bad — you can tell because he’s grown a five o’clock shadow, developed bags under his eyes, and started wearing a suit with a colour scheme more suited to a Zack Snyder interpretation of the character. And he begins to do really terrible things, like… straightening the leaning tower of Pisa, and… blowing out the Olympic flame. Ooh, edgy. Why does he do it? God, I don’t know. There’s no logic in this. There’s a fight between good Superman and bad Superman, which some think is brilliant; “a highlight of the series”, said one comment I read. Maybe it’s just because Evil Superman is so damn cartoonish, but I didn’t particularly care for it.

It did inspire the original title of the movie, though, which was Superman vs. Superman, and that in turn led to a bit of trivia more batshit insane than anything in the film itself: that original title was dropped after legal action was threatened by… the producers of Kramer vs. Kramer. What in the fucking what now?! I know America is famed for spurious lawsuits, but c’mon!

Of course, if you take the whole film at the face value of its tone, it doesn’t really matter — it’s just a daft comedy. But it shouldn’t be, should it? This isn’t the Superman the first film promised us.

Superman IV:
The Quest for Peace
(1987)

At one point in this movie, a young character calls Superman “the Dude of Steel”. Yeah, we’re down with the kids now! Superman (okay, Clark Kent) even does aerobics. Hip and happening!

After Superman III tried its damnedest to turn Superman into a comedy, Superman IV swings the other way and turns it into a polemic. It’s like an 8-year-old was asked to write an anti-nuclear weapons essay and chose to do it in the form of a Superman story. It seems like a mercy that it only runs 90 minutes, although that’s part of the problem: the original final cut was 134 minutes, but the producers chopped out 45 minutes of material. No wonder it grows increasingly nonsensical as it goes on. But then so did Superman III and they had no such excuse, so there’s no saying the longer cut would’ve been better.

Indeed, on the evidence of what’s left, I think we can assume it wouldn’t have been. Gene Hackman’s Lex Luthor is back (goodness knows how they talked him into it), but his plan involves creating a physical adversary for Superman: Nuclear Man! Nuclear Man has many of Supes’ powers and strengths, but none of his brains, as he stomps around just roaring at people. He flies around the world basically just being a vandal, and Superman follows along to clean up after him, like some kind of super-powered babysitter. Then he punches Supes once and… he loses all his powers? And then Nuclear Man sees a woman on a cover of a newspaper and suddenly getting her is his only motivation; and Superman’s back, thanks to a magic crystal, and he somehow knows exactly what/who Nuclear Man is after; and so Superman defeats him by… tricking him into an elevator… which he drops off on the Moon; but not the dark side, so the sun’s rays revitalise Nuclear Man… when the sun rises. On the Moon. Jesus wept.

The Moon isn't made of cheese, but this film...

There are some good ideas in Superman IV. As co-writer Mark Rosenthal discusses on his audio commentary, the idea had been to explore the age-old question of “if God is all-good and all-powerful, why is there still suffering” — because, with all his powers, Superman is basically a mythological God; so why doesn’t he just get rid of all those nasty nukes? The answer, of course, is that he’s not real. And so in the fictional world of the fictional film, the fictional hero gets rid of the nukes, which is nice for the fictional people but not so much use to the rest of us.

Because Lois Lane is in love with Superman but not so much Clark Kent, they decided to give Clark a love interest, which I’m not sure quite understands the characters or their dynamic properly, but whatever. It did inspire one fun idea, though: a double date between Superman & Lois and Clark & new-lady. The idea was for a quick-paced farce of a scene, with Clark and Supes coming and going at speed, like something out of a Cary Grant screwball romantic comedy. I guess no one told the director, because the scene as filmed lacks the fast pace needed to make it work. You can have all the great ideas in the world, but if you don’t have the skills to execute them properly, it’s worthless.

Apparently it was really Christopher Reeve who fought to make the movie happen, and everyone involved had good intentions and didn’t want to let him down. Well, they did. The returning cast are the only people who emerge unscathed from this mess — Reeve is as wonderful as ever as Superman; just perfect. His chemistry with Margot Kidder is great, and Gene Hackman is still managing to have fun as Lex. But why suffer through the rest of this terrible movie for those scant bright spots when you could just watch the first Superman instead?

Superman IV featured on my list of The Worst Films I Saw in 2020.

19 years later, after a couple of decades relegated to various TV incarnations, they attempted to return the Man of Steel to the silver screen in big-budget style with Superman Returns, which was conceived as a continuation of the Christopher Reeve series. My original review of that movie is here.

The Avengers (1998)

Posted on April 18, 2020 by badblokebob

The 100 Films Guide to…

Saving the World in Style.

Also Known As:
Chapeau melon et bottes de cuir (France — Bowler Hat and Leather Boots)
Mit Schirm, Charme und Melone (Germany — With Umbrella, Charm and Bowler Hat)

Country: USA
Language: English
Runtime: 89 minutes
BBFC: 12
MPAA: PG-13

Original Release: 13th August 1998 (Israel)
UK Release: 14th August 1998
Budget: $60 million
Worldwide Gross: $48.6 million

Stars
Ralph Fiennes (Schindler’s List, Harry Potter)
Uma Thurman (Batman & Robin, Kill Bill: Vol. 1)
Sean Connery (Goldfinger, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen)

Director
Jeremiah Chechik (National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, Benny & Joon)

Screenwriter
Don MacPherson (Absolute Beginners, The Gunman)

Based on
The Avengers, a ’60s British TV series created by Sydney Newman.

The Story
After the UK’s weather control project is destroyed, apparently by one of its own scientists, Ministry agent John Steed is assigned to investigate. Teaming up with that scientist, Mrs Emma Peel, they uncover a plot to hold the world’s governments to ransom…

Our Heroes
Extraordinary crimes against the people and the state must be avenged by agents extraordinary: John Steed: traditional, stylish, reserved, lethal. Emma Peel: doctor, atomic scientist, poet, meteorologist, physicist, marksman.

Our Villain
A former agent of the Ministry, Sir August de Wynter is now head of BROLLY, the British Royal Organization for Lasting Liquid Years, who have developed the technology to control the weather and now seek to put it to nefarious ends.

Best Supporting Character
Machine-gun firing granny Alice. Eileen Atkins was offered the role of the Ministry’s deputy leader, Father, but thought the part of Alice sounded more fun, so they re-wrote to enlarge it for her.

Memorable Quote
“Now is the winter of your discontent!” — Sir August de Wynter

Memorable Scene
Instructed to meet Steed at his gentleman’s club, Mrs Peel waltzes into the place, despite the objections of the receptionist. She marches through the building, shocking the patrons, until she finds Steed in the steam room — naked but for the newspaper he’s reading. “Please, don’t get up.” “I was about to throw in the towel.”

Memorable Music
Michael Kamen was originally hired to score the film, but eventually quit after being constantly given revised cuts of the movie to work with. His replacement, Joel McNeely, had to turn something round in short notice, and I’ve seen his score described as clearly rushed, dull and uninspired. But at least the TV series’ classic theme is in there, and fairly well used — once right at the start (although there’s an ever-so-’90s X-Files-y number over the main credits), and then again perfectly as a farewell over the final scene. Rumour has it Kamen’s score was darker and more atmospheric, with a greater and more interesting use of the original theme. Given the general disregard for the movie, I don’t imagine it’ll ever be unearthed for us to find out for ourselves.

Letting the Side Down
The teddy-bear meeting, where the participants are kept anonymous by wearing giant teddy-bear costumes. It’s an attempt at emulating the whimsy of the TV series, but an empty one — as the series’ regular writer Brian Clemens once commented, if the plot’s about controlling the weather then the meeting should’ve been weather-themed somehow.

Some people would say there’s a lot more wrong with the film than just that one scene, but there’s more to it than that…

Making of
When Warner Bros execs saw the first cut of the movie, it was not what they were expecting. I don’t know what they were expecting, but I guess not something so tongue-in-cheek, whimsical, and camp. Apparently the first test screening in Phoenix, Arizona, was to a “largely Spanish-speaking, working class” audience — hardly the film’s target market, and unsurprisingly they hated it. The studio forced cuts and reshoots, taking the movie from 115 minutes to a sprightly 89, sacrificing plot coherence for the sake of speed. And so a true disaster was born.

Previously on…
This is a reboot rather than continuation of the original TV series — it shows how Steed and Mrs Peel met for the first time. I don’t know if the TV series actually covered that (I really should watch it all one of these days), but I don’t imagine it went like this.

Next time…
The Avengers ultimately became a massively successful multi-film franchise under the auspices of Marvel Studios. Oh, no, wait, that’s some other thing. No, after suffering atrocious reviews (it’s sometimes cited as one of the worst movies of all time), the ’98 Avengers slinked off into relative obscurity (it’s probably better remembered here than in the US thanks to the TV series connection, but Marvel’s super-friends are gradually replacing it in the consciousness, sadly). Still, the world of the TV series lives on in occasional comic books and audio dramas.

Awards
1 Razzie (Worst Remake or Sequel (tied with Godzilla and Psycho))
8 Razzie nominations (Worst Picture, Actor (Ralph Fiennes), Actress (Uma Thurman), Screen Couple (Fiennes & Thurman), Supporting Actor (Sean Connery), Director, Screenplay, Original Song (Storm by Grace Jones))

Verdict

I was one of the half-dozen people who actually saw The Avengers at the cinema in 1998. I don’t remember disliking it, but then I was all of 12 so what would I have known? Its poor reputation has only grown in the intervening decades, so I wasn’t expecting to think much of it as a more critically sophisticated adult. But, much to my surprise, I kind of loved it.

I guess in ’98 people were expecting some kind of serious-minded thriller, probably in the Bond mould — this was just after GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies had relaunched that series to much acclaim and box office success, of course, and The Avengers was another hallmark of ’60s British spy-fi. But The Avengers and Bond were never the same tonally, and the film embraces the mannered, quirky tone of the TV series, then turns it up to eleven. Personally I think it’s a tonne of fun, with arch performances, ripe dialogue, and a deliciously camp air.

If it wasn’t for WB’s post-production fiddling, which has left the plot feeling a bit janky and spasmodic, I reckon this would be a cult classic by now. They really ought to have a bad reputation for that kind of fiddling at this point — Batman Forever, Suicide Squad, and Justice League come to mind. But never mind the Snyder cut, I want them to #ReleaseTheChechikCut. Sadly, it’ll never happen.

Spider-Man: Far from Home (2019)

Posted on April 13, 2020 by badblokebob

For those not keeping track (who can blame you?), Far from Home is the third Spider-Man 2. It follows in the footsteps of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 from 2004, widely regarded as one of the topmost examples of the superhero genre, and Marc Webb’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2 from 2014, widely regarded as one of the poorest examples of the superhero genre. (As you can see, they’ve ditched the numbers. Probably wise at this point.) Personally, while I agree with the accepted view of Raimi’s film, I actually rather enjoyed Webb’s sequel. That’s important to know when I say that I think Far from Home is my least favourite Spider-Man 2 so far.

This one is the sequel to 2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming… except Spidey’s in the MCU now, so it’s also a sequel to Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. And that’s not just a checklist of “other Spider-Man appearances”, either: the events of Endgame are absolutely vital to the storyline of this movie. It may be another Spider-Man 2, but more than that it’s Marvel Cinematic Universe: Episode XXIII.

Some people criticised Homecoming for having too much Iron Man and going too far in making Spider-Man into Iron Man Jr. I felt they got the balance about right, all things considered — it’s not very true to comic book canon, but, as the third big-screen iteration of Spidey in the modern era, it made a reasonable change. Far from Home is where it becomes overpowering. It has to lean heavily on the overall continuity of the MCU, which means all the business of The Blip (as what we call The Snap is called in-universe) and Iron Man’s death is front-loaded into the movie. The former is waived away as quickly as they can; the latter weighs heavy on the entire rest of the plot.

Meanwhile, Nick Fury is trying to get in touch with Peter Parker, who isn’t interested in the big world-saving antics that implies. He’s more concerned with going on a school summer trip around Europe. How a poor kid from Queens is supposed to afford a weeks-long vacation around Europe isn’t even one of my issues with the film, but if you’re a Spidey devotee it might be. But go on this vacation he does, only to have it interrupted in Venice by a giant water man/monster thing, which is battled by a new hero Peter’s classmates reckon is a cross between Iron Man and Thor, and name Mysterio. Turns out he’s working with Fury, and Fury wants Mysterio and Spider-Man to team up to fight the possibly world-ending threat. But Peter doesn’t want to because he’s on holiday goddammit and he has a plan to woo MJ.

So far, so Spider-Man — the conflict between his personal and ‘professional’ life is a regular feature of the character. But it’s the way this story unspools that didn’t work for me, as it drags its heels through every storyline it’s got going at once, indulging in comedic asides from a whole range of characters. Having a comic relief character or double act is fine, but four or five of them? It just eats up screen time. The lack of focus robs the film of impetus or tension, as the characters and plot both meander around Europe and from set piece to set piece.

At least some of those set pieces are quite good. The Venice one is a nice change of pace, because Mysterio is off doing the main fighting bit, so Spidey’s left to tidy up around him. It’s something a bit different in a blockbuster action sequence. The real highlight, though, is an illusion trap Spidey endures, which is imaginative and creatively realised. Tom Holland gives the title role his all, but Jake Gyllenhaal is the standout as Mysterio, waltzing into the film and stealing it out from under everyone else’s noses. His real-life alter ego, Quentin Beck, has a really nice relationship with Peter, pitched as a kind of mentoring, older brother type role, admiring of the kid’s ability but not blind to his flaws. Even better, if you watch the gag reel you get the impression Gyllenhaal is kinda treating Holland like Beck treats Parker, which is… amusing.

Like every other MCU film, Far from Home is competently made with occasional flashes of inspiration, so manages to dodge being an outright disaster. But, speaking as someone who thinks Homecoming is pretty great and saw a lot of promise in this sequel’s trailers, I was disappointed by the end result. Future Spidey appearances in the MCU are assured (naturally there’s a post-credits tease for them), so I hope they can recapture more of that Homecoming spark next time.

Spider-Man: Far from Home is available on Sky Cinema from this weekend.

As Far from Home is officially the final film of the Infinity Saga (I guess it works as an epilogue; or perhaps the saga’s very own feature-length post-credit tease), here are links to my reviews of every other MCU film so far… except for one, which this has reminded me I’ve forgotten to write.

Iron Man

The Incredible Hulk

Iron Man 2

Thor

Captain America: The First Avenger

Avengers Assemble

Iron Man 3

Thor: The Dark World

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Guardians of the Galaxy

Avengers: Age of Ultron

Ant-Man

Captain America: Civil War

Doctor Strange

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

Spider-Man: Homecoming

Thor: Ragnarok

Black Panther

Avengers: Infinity War

Ant-Man and the Wasp

Captain Marvel

Avengers: Endgame

this one!

I’ve also reviewed a bunch of the shorts and (sorta-)tie-in TV series, but I’ll let you track those down if you’re interested.

…and, in keeping with the style of the MCU, here’s a surprise post-‘credits’ mini-review!

Peter’s To-Do List
(2019)

Sony chose to bill this as a short film on Far from Home‘s Blu-ray release, so I’m going to treat it like one and review it. Let’s begin with a dictionary definition (from, er, a very real dictionary, honest) of “short film”…

short film
noun

1. an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes or less, including all credits. “The Silent Child won the Oscar for best short film.”

2. a deleted scene long enough that someone thought they could get away with pretending it was conceived and created as an original motion picture. “The Spider-Man: Far from Home Blu-ray includes a short film called Peter’s To-Do List.”

That pretty much sums up my reaction to this — it’s a glorified deleted scene. To be precise, it’s several deleted scenes, so really it’s a deleted sequence — Peter running various errands before his trip to Europe. If you watched any of Far from Home‘s trailers then you’ll have seen almost all of this already because it’s footage that was used extensively to advertise the movie. I believe they also did some kind of special re-release of Far from Home with this bit cut back into the feature (an option not available on the home release).

So, it’s not a short film, but it is a fun-enough deleted scene. It wouldn’t’ve been out of place left in the movie, but considering the first act is already too long and a trudge as it is, I see why they wanted to lose some stuff.

Yesterday (2019)

Posted on April 12, 2020 by badblokebob

Jack Malik (Himesh Patel) is an aspiring — and failing — musician. He’s unlucky in love too, although that’s also his own fault, because he’s missed the blatant fact his friend-cum-manager Ellie (Lily James) has fancied him for the past couple of decades. One day there’s a weird blackout thing across the world, and (long story short) Jack is apparently the only person who remember the Beatles exist. Shocked that the world has been deprived of this amazing, culture-defining music, Jack begins to perform and record it… with zero success. Clearly, there’s more to it than just the music and lyrics. And he’s still none the wiser to Ellie’s obvious affections. Maybe Jack is just one of life’s losers?

Ooh, that all sounds a bit depressing, doesn’t it? Don’t worry, this is a Richard Curtis movie — things pick up. Because of course someone notices the music Jack’s now playing is amazing, and of course that leads him to global success. Curtis is a massive Beatles fan — I believe that’s how the concept for the movie came about in the first place — so there’s no way he’s going to let what he believes is the wondrousness of their music go unnoticed. We know that as well, I think, so the bit where Jack still fails, despite now having good material, is a nice little plot red herring.

It’s welcome, too, because the plot doesn’t have a whole lot else surprising going for it. (Well, there’s a subplot about the song Wonderwall that is such a plot structure red herring as to seem like a plot structure mistake, but I’m not sure it counts as a surprise when it’s only likely to be noticed by film buffs who incorrectly predict where it’s going.) It’s one of those films where the one-line premise is more interesting than what the film actually does with it. “What if only one man remembered the Beatles?” sounds like a neat idea for a story, but where is there to go with it? For the sake of there being any story at all, he has to be able to perform these songs that only he can remember. Then he either has to be a success or not, as discussed. It all feels inevitable, the only real question being what’s the ‘out’ — how does this end? Well, I shan’t spoil it.

To add more bulk, there’s a romance storyline. Of course there is, it’s a Richard Curtis movie. But a romcom is hardly more original, is it? No, this is a very comfortable movie — you’re rarely going to be surprised about where it chooses to go. That said, I liked this side of the film more. In fact, I feel like the film would actually have been better without the whole Beatles thing — just a movie about a struggling wannabe musician realising he doesn’t really love music, he loves Lily James. As it is, at one point he has to choose between his lifelong dream of pop music mega-stardom or being with Lily James, and he choose the dream, which is wholly implausible because Lily James.

But for all its predictability, there are some really nice bits along the way. (Proper spoilers follow.) It turns out there are two other people who remember the Beatles, and they begin to stalk Jack as he has success… but it turns out they’re just glad this music is back in the world. Neat twist. The surprise-cameo John Lennon scene is another unexpected moment heavy with emotion. The closing montage not being to any ‘big’ Beatles song, but to Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da (well, life does go on). Ed Sheeran ruining one of the greatest songs ever written. That one’s not so much nice as “funny because it’s true”, but I’ll take it. (If you thought Ed Sheeran was bad in his Game of Thrones cameo, just wait ’til you see him try to act as, er, himself. The role is very convincingly written, mind.)

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the film is that it’s not only the Beatles that have disappeared in this alternate world. Oasis have gone too, which, as Jack observes, “makes sense” — though the film doesn’t go very far in this regard. It’s based on the notion that the Beatles’ music was The Best Ever, but what has removing them from history actually changed about pop culture? As far as we can see, all it means is that Oasis don’t exist. Is that really the sum total of the Beatles’ influence? Anyway, my point was that other stuff has disappeared too, including Coca Cola, Harry Potter, Saturday Night Live (although that’s just become Thursday Night Live for some reason), and smoking. So this isn’t just “a reality without the Beatles”, it’s a subtly different world entirely. That’s an interesting creative choice. It’s basically just used as a source of humour — an easy go-to gag — but it still provokes the question: why has this random selection of things disappeared? What else has gone that Jack doesn’t notice?

Ultimately it doesn’t matter, because this is a comedy like Groundhog Day or Sliding Doors in that the sci-fi/fantasy aspect is a means to an end, not a thing to be queried in itself. But in those films the change only affected our hero: in Groundhog Day, Bill Murray is the only one in the time loop; in Sliding Doors, it’s only Gwyneth Paltrow’s life that’s significantly different (and none of the characters are even aware there are two versions of events). In Yesterday, Jack isn’t the only person this happened to, which emphasises the “what happened?” question. Why did it affect most people, but not these few? Why is so much of the world the same, but random things are missing? The film doesn’t care — it’s not about that — but, with the narrative choices the storytellers have made, it invites these kinds of wonderings.

That is, unless you just switch off and let it be a pleasant bit of fluff about a guy becoming famous with borrowed music while finally realising that the girl who’s wasted her life waiting for him to realise she loves him, er, loves him (Jack doesn’t deserve Lily James). Yeah, it’s mostly predictable, but that’s part of the comfort factor. There’s some good music, some likeable performances, and a general amiability to its tone. Let it be, indeed.

Yesterday is available on Sky Cinema from today. (Maybe I should’ve reviewed it tomorrow…)

Sean Connery as James Bond, Part 2

Posted on April 11, 2020 by badblokebob

If everything had gone according to plan, this weekend Americans would’ve been flocking to cinemas to see Daniel Craig’s final performance as Bond, James Bond, secret agent 007, in No Time to Die (us Brits would’ve all been to see it last weekend, of course). As that’s not to be, here’s something both entirely similar and entirely different: my reviews of Sean Connery’s final performance in the role — both of them.

This concludes my coverage of Connery’s time as Bond, the previous instalment of which I posted in, er, 2013. (And you thought No Time to Die had a long delay.) That covered his first stint as James Bond — the five films he starred in from 1962 to 1967. Now, here are his two remaining performances:

his brief return to the official series in 1971 after The Lazenby Debacle;
his unofficial return another 12 years after that, in the film that taught him to never say never — which perhaps explains how he ended up starring in the likes of Highlander II, The Avengers, and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

Neither of these films is Connery’s finest hour as Bond — they’re his worst hours, in fact — but, I must say, they were both better than I had remembered.

Click through to learn more about…

Diamonds Are Forever

Never Say Never Again

That may be it for Connery, but — as always — James Bond will return… in Daniel Craig’s case, in November (fingers crossed!)

Diamonds Are Forever (1971)

Posted on April 11, 2020 by badblokebob

The 100 Films Guide to…

You’ve been waiting for him…
Asking for him…
Now he’s here.

Country: UK
Language: English
Runtime: 120 minutes
BBFC: A (cut, 1971) | PG (1987) | 12 (2012)
MPAA: PG

Original Release: 14th December 1971 (West Germany)
UK Release: 30th December 1971
Budget: $7.2 million
Worldwide Gross: $116 million

Stars
Sean Connery (Marnie, The Untouchables)
Jill St. John (The Lost World, Sitting Target)
Charles Gray (The Devil Rides Out, The Rocky Horror Picture Show)
Lana Wood (The Searchers, Grayeagle)

Director
Guy Hamilton (Battle of Britain, Evil Under the Sun)

Screenwriters
Richard Maibaum (Ransom!, Licence to Kill)
Tom Mankiewicz (The Sweet Ride, Ladyhawke)

Based on
Diamonds Are Forever, the fourth James Bond novel by Ian Fleming.

The Story
After finally assassinating his nemesis, Blofeld, Bond is assigned to investigate a diamond smuggling operation in Holland, but following the trail leads him to the glitz of Las Vegas — and a familiar foe.

Our Hero
Bond, James Bond, agent 007 of the British secret service. He may be looking a little older than when we last saw him, but he’s still capable of wooing all the ladies and scaling the outside of skyscrapers.

Our Villains
We so much focus on the Dr Nos and Auric Goldfingers of the early Bond films — plus the ever-changing roster of villains he’d face in later movies — that it’s easy to forget Blofeld has a presence in almost every Bond movie before Diamonds Are Forever (indeed, Dr. No (which only mentions SPECTRE) and Goldfinger (which has no ties whatsoever) are the only exceptions), so it’s no real surprise that he’s not just confined to the pre-titles here. It certainly wouldn’t have been to audiences in 1971, either: he’s prominent in the trailer, and Charles Gray is rather highly billed for someone who’s only in the opening minutes. That said, Lana Wood is fourth billed and she only has about three scenes, so… Until he’s properly revealed, however, we have overtly homosexual assassins Mr Wint and Mr Kidd to tide us over. Considering they’re shown as creepy and murderous, it’s hardly an enlightened portrayal of homosexuality; but then it is from 1971, so what do you expect?

Best Supporting Character
Tiffany Case is Bond’s way in to the diamond smuggling operation. She’s a self-assured and capable woman… for about the first half of the film, before she sharply descends into a stereotypical Bond Girl bimbo. Oh well, they tried.

Memorable Quote
“That’s quite a nice little nothing you’re almost wearing. I approve.” — James Bond

Memorable Scene
Bond travels to Amsterdam under the identity of a diamond smuggler they’ve captured, but when he escapes and to Amsterdam too, Bond must intercept the chap before his cover’s blown — which he does in a small lift, leading to a brutal close-quarters brawl that’s almost as good as the famous train carriage one in From Russia with Love.

Write the Theme Tune…
One of the most famous of the Bond title tracks, its music was written by the film’s — and, by this point, the series’ incumbent — composer, John Barry. It was his fifth Bond theme song (seventh if you include Mr. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang and We Have All the Time in the World). The lyrics were by Don Black, returning for his second theme after Thunderball.

Sing the Theme Tune…
This is also the second Bond theme for singer Shirley Bassey, after (of course) Goldfinger. Apparently co-producer Harry Saltzman hated the song, objecting to the innuendo in the lyrics, and it was only saved by his fellow producer, Cubby Broccoli. That said, Saltzman may have had a point: in a later interview, Barry revealed that he instructed Bassey to imagine she was singing about… a penis. “They are all I need to please me / They can stimulate and tease me … Hold one up and then caress it / Touch it, stroke it and undress it…” Whew, crikey!

Making of
By this point in the Bond series (this is the seventh film, remember) a lot more original thought was going into which direction to take things than just “adapt a Fleming novel”. For one thing, they were worried Bond’s British style was becoming passé, so they decided to set the movie in glamorous Las Vegas — which, let’s be frank, has dated far, far more than the classier style of the earlier films. Anyway, they went even further than that: with Lazenby having deserted them, a new leading man was required, and so they cast… an American! *gasp* Unthinkable today. The man in question was John Gavin, best known for playing Sam Loomis in Psycho. He’d also played France’s answer to Bond, agent OSS 117, in a film just a couple of years earlier, which is either good training or a weird conflict, depending how you look at it. Not that it mattered anyway, because United Artists insisted they get Sean Connery back, and they did — albeit for a then-extraordinary $1.2 million salary. To Connery’s credit, he gave every cent of it to a Scottish education charity he’d established.

Previously on…
Connery played Bond in five movies between 1962 and 1967, eventually becoming bored of the role and quitting. They replaced him with an unknown Australian model, who promptly got too big for his boots and ran off after just one movie. It just so happens that the films’ storylines lend credence to the theory that James Bond is a codename that goes along with the 007 designation — normally I hate that theory, but the way it explains the events of OHMSS and Diamonds Are Forever is quite neat. (Basically: Connery-Bond retires and is replaced by Lazenby-Bond (hence the “this never happened to the other fella” line), but when Lazenby-Bond’s wife is killed he quits and Connery-Bond comes out of retirement to avenge her for him (hence him tracking down Blofeld at the start of DAF, but not seeming all that emotional about it).)

Next time…
Connery said he’d never play Bond again… which became the inspiration for the title the next time he did. But that really was his last hurrah in the role. As for the official Bond movies, they finally did the inevitable and cast Roger Moore. The rest is history.

Awards
1 Oscar nomination (Sound)

Verdict

Well throw me out a window and call me Plenty if Diamonds Are Forever isn’t actually a really enjoyable Bond movie. Okay, it’s probably still the worst (official) Connery movie, thanks to a few daft bits (the elephant playing the slot machine; Blofeld in drag; etc), and because it simply doesn’t have as many standout sequences or memorable lines as his other five. But, on its own merits, it’s good fun. The first 45 minutes or so are played admirably straight and serious; the car chase around Vegas is rather good; and while those bits of silliness do creep in, they’re only fleeting (albeit a precursor to where the whole series would go in the Moore years). I’d previously remembered Diamonds as a real nadir; a blight on the name of the series. Now, while I wouldn’t rank it among my most favourites, I found a lot to like.

(For the sake of comparison, I previously gave five stars to From Russia with Love, Goldfinger, You Only Live Twice, and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and four stars to Dr. No and Thunderball. This would be three-and-a-half, but I’ve never done half stars on this blog. If I did, perhaps one or two of those others would’ve been marked down by half-a-star too.)

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Category Archives: 2020

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