Sam Mendes made a great Bond film with writers John Logan, Neal Purvis, and Robert Wade in “Skyfall” because they embraced a tricky opposition between the past and the future. Could the unabashedly old-fashioned spy James Bond survive in a more gritty, grey world without sacrificing his core identity? They found that the answer was yes by striking a balance between these two forces vying for the soul of 007.
The band gets back together for “Spectre” (plus an additional writer in Jez Butterworth, architect of many a frustrating script in the past two years) and finds themselves preoccupied by the same kind of debate. This time, instead of the fear of age leading to obsolescence, the anxiety stems from post-Snowden malaise.
When a government has the ability to do its dirty work with drones and collect information on all its citizens through their devices, who needs human intelligence likes James Bond? This question is being seriously debated outside the world of the movie, and kudos to “Spectre” for not ignoring the elephant in the room. But the way Mendes and the writers choose to resolve the tension feels rather disappointing.
They use this threat as an excuse to retreat to some of the most outdated aspects of the character. Womanizing abounds as Bond pity romances a grieving widow to extract a key plot point. And Bond’s reward for neutralizing a key opponent? The “Bond girl,” Lea Seydoux’s Madeleine Swann, immediately feels the need to let him take her to bed. Simply put, there is a way to let James Bond be the ultimate man that does not require denying women agency. “Spectre” does not care to find that way as “Casino Royale” did, justifying lazy misogyny because of a rather facile challenge to Bond’s relevancy.
Bradley Cooper is among the most interesting American actors working today, so it’s a shame that he chose such an uninteresting project like “
If someone were to cross the cross-cultural outlandish humor of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” with the sociological insight of Aziz Ansari’s book “Modern Romance,” it would probably look a lot like the documentary “
We still live in a time where deeply internal, emotional performances from male screen actors are rare – especially from younger ones. Perhaps because most major roles for men are written with external, goal-driven motivations as opposed to looking within, the smart career move is to position oneself for those. But every once in a while, a miraculous turn appears.
Disney’s expensive attempt at an experiment, “
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If your memory of inspirational Internet stories only extends as far as the last Upworthy story your random high school acquaintance shared on Facebook, the documentary “
There’s an odd feeling when you watch a filmmaker’s work in reverse, starting with their most well-known project and regressing back to their origins. Perhaps you can see the roots of their latest film in their beginnings, or maybe you can even see the leaps and bounds they make as a filmmaker. If the work is not perfect, you also cannot help but wonder, “Would I have recognized this director as a talent to watch?”
Almost as if anticipating that the majority of people who saw his film would be through Netflix, Cary Joji Fukunaga opens “
Generally, when I read any piece of criticism that refers to a movie as some kind of “metaphor for capitalism,” I cringe inside. It usually feels like an easy fallback, a way to sound smart when they just purely enjoyed something. But in the case of Sebastián Silva’s “The Maid,” it actually applies.
Marshall and the Movies 
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