CASINO ROYALE: Discussion

Man, I haven't seen such a good Bond movie in so long! After the last few, I was starting to give up on the series.... don't get me wrong, I liked Brosnan as Bond... but the stories (aside from GoldenEye) were just terrible and unbelievable and campy. THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH was like the BATMAN AND ROBIN of Bond in my opinion. I mean Denise Richards as a nuclear scientist in hot pants????? COME ON!!!!!!

But enough about Christmas Jones....

CASINO ROYALE just got so much right. If THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH was like BATMAN AND ROBIN, then I guess CASINO ROYALE can be likened to BATMAN BEGINS.... where both films re-invent their respective series with a darker, grittier and more serious tone. I love the way all the action felt so raw and ugly, and you always got the sense that these guys were really fighting it out to the death. There was nothing romanticized or glorious about the action in this film. It was all up close, in your face, and vicious. I particularly liked that Parkour sequence in the beginning of the movie, where they're running and jumping like crazy around those cranes!

The thing that I liked most about this film though, was the way it handled all of Bond's iconic elements. Everything that makes Bond the legend that he is was set up so nicely in CASINO ROYALE:

1) THE CARS. Having Bond show up for his first mission with a Ford rental car, then spotting the Aston Martin in the parking lot and eventually winning it off that bad guy during the poker game. Pure genius!

2) THE MARTINIS. Loved all those running jokes throughout the film. After he loses everything to LaChiffre and the bartender asks him "shaken or stirred?" And then Bond exclaims, "Like I give a damn!" That was such a fun little moment. I also liked the fact that a stirred martini almost killed him, and that's the reason why he always asks for them shaken from this point on!

3) THE TRADEMARK TUX. I got so fired up when Vesper gave it to him and then we see him checking himself out in the mirror!

4) The introduction of FELIX may in fact have been my favorite thing about this movie. I was completely blindsided when Jeffrey Wright came up to Bond and introduced himself as Felix... never saw that one coming!

5) And finally, the usage of Bond's THEME MUSIC was just perfect in CASINO ROYALE. It was so sparsely used throughout the film, but when it did show up it really packed a punch! I loved that feeling I got at the end, when the music comes on full blast and he says those legendary words.... "Bond. James Bond." Absolutely fantastic!

The only thing I wasn't crazy about with this movie was the way it really slowed down and lost focus towards the end. The lovey-dovey stuff went on for a little too long, and because the main bad guy had already been killed off, I just didn't care that much about seeing Bond go after the man with half-lensed sunglasses. In fact, that whole action sequence at the end felt a bit anti-climactic to me. I wanted to find out what the deal was with Vesper Lynd and all, but I cared very little about everything else going on. Visually, this sequence didn't quite come together for me either, as the exterior shots of the building collapsing didn't seem to match what was going on inside.

Overall though, I gotta say I was ultimately very impressed with CASINO ROYALE, and am really psyched to see more of Daniel Craig as 007!

How about you guys? What'd ya think?

STRANGER THAN FICTION: Discussion

I thought STRANGER THAN FICTION was a really good film. It's got great performances, it's well crafted, and it ultimately all comes together.... But I still found myself wanting just a little bit more out of this movie in the end.

There were two things in particular that I think could have been done with STANGER THAN FICTION to turn it into a really incredible and significant film. The first, is the differentiation between the real world (the world of the author) and the fictional world (the world that Harold's living in). In this movie, there doesn't seem to be any clear-cut differentiation whatsoever. It's like; the filmmakers set up this gimmick of, "he's a fictional character," and then didn't really do very much with it. The only two things that present Harold as a fictitious character are the numbers that pop up on screen occasionally, and the narration, which was somewhat sporadic and inconsistent as well. Coming from the director of FINDING NEVERLAND, a movie that does an incredible job of establishing fantasy realms, I definitely expected more.

I actually thought Emma Thomson's "world" was, in some ways, more imaginative and playful than Harold's.... At least with her world we got to see all those dark fantasy sequences of her imagining terrible death scenes for her novel. Personally, I would have really liked to have seen some of those scenes get played out in Harold's world, so he's actually enduring those near death experiences and then cursing Emma Thompson's character for coming up with them.

But this brings me to my second issue with STRANGER THAN FICTION... For the most part, we never get a clear idea of what is or isn't written by Emma Thompson's character. I kept waiting for this film to become a story within a story. For some acknowledgement that Thompson's novel was about a fictional man who can hear his narrator. That her book essentially WAS "Stranger Than Fiction." And I kept waiting for some hint that the author had inserted herself as a character within her book, and that the Emma Thompson we were seeing on screen was fictitious as well.

But that never came. The movie never really touches upon any of this. It seemed to me that Harold Crick being able to hear his narrator was some sort of magical, unexplainable rip in the time space continuum or something, and was completely independent of what Thompson was writing in her novel. Now, I know Dustin Hoffman said that her book was a masterpiece and all, but from what I could gather, the only things she actually wrote about were how boring Harold's life was, that he had met a girl, and that he was going to die soon. Seemed kind of lame in my opinion. And I certainly didn't see how Harold getting hit by a bus was pure poetic genius!

I don't know... but for a movie that seemed to put so much emphasis on the idea of a fictional man's fate being in the hands of his author, I didn't feel that STRANGER THAN FICTION took a strong enough stance in establishing who or what actually had control of the events unraveling within this film.

What do you guys think?

BORAT: Discussion

Jagshemash!

This is very exciting. I saw Borat a couple of months ago at an advanced screening, and thought it was absolutely hilarious. The only problem was, I couldn’t talk about it with my friends because I didn’t want to give anything away! It's been eating away at me like crazy ever since, but now that it’s out... my vow of incredibly selfless silence can finally end!

OH MY GOD! There are so many great moments in this movie. So many times where you feel soooo uncomfortable, and yet you just can't help but crack up!

First of all, I have to get this off my chest... the naked wrestling! That may in fact be the funniest five minutes ever. Definitely the best part of the movie in my opinion. I love the way Borat is all censored, and yet his friend Azamat is just hangin’ out there for all to see. (Actually, “love” might not be the appropriate term here exactly, but it certainly was something to behold!) I'm just shocked they were able to keep this whole sequence in and still get an R rating! So glad they didn't have to cut it out. Can you just imagine being one of those poor unsuspecting people in that elevator?

I also really loved the formal southern dinner sequence. The progression of events builds so well, and watching all the dinner guests' reactions to Borat's antics was just fascinating. It was great when Borat gets up to go to the bathroom, and that one woman in red sort of sticks up for him, and then he comes walking back in with a bag of his own excrement. Her reaction there is just priceless. You think she is absolutely going to flip out, but then she winds up still thinking she can change him and takes him to the bathroom. It's not until Borat brings in that adorable black prostitute that everyone loses their cool and threaten to call the cops on him! Was it because she was a prostitute or because she was black?

The part of the movie that I felt the most uncomfortable with (and that is saying a lot), is where Borat and Azamat realize they're in a Jewish household and flee the place in fear for their lives. I think it's kind of interesting that this scene struck the biggest nerve with me, namely because it was completely staged and didn't involve any real-life displays of racism or bigotry the way, say... the rodeo scene did. Maybe the reason I felt this way is because with the real, unscripted interactions, there's a sense of satisfaction that comes along with seeing Borat expose these ugly people. So even though we're hearing something truly scary come out of someone's mouth, Borat always has the one-up on them because he's capturing their true colors on film. But with that staged scene of Borat and Azamat fleeing, you don't get that satisfaction. It's just them drumming up the worst stereotypes they can think of... and of course it's totally ridiculous, because Sacha Baron Cohen himself is Jewish and this is obviously a joke.... but it was unnerving for me to think that those stereotypes actually are out in the world, and you know that some people out there still DO believe them (Mel Gibson I'm typing in your general direction)! Don't get me wrong though, I laughed pretty damn hard through this entire sequence!

It was kind of cool the way you couldn't always tell what was staged and what wasn't. Borat is so far across the line for the majority of this movie, and it's hard to figure out if anyone else is in on the joke with him. It seemed like all the stuff in Kazakhstan, the horse falling over, the kids approaching the ice cream truck with the bear, the "Jew House," and the yard sale with the Baywatch book, must have been staged.

But what about the Pamela Anderson thing... do you think that was real or staged? I mean, they must have let her in on it, right? Right???? She definitely seemed REALLY shocked! It's certainly a better performance than we've ever seen in Barb Wire. But there was also something weird about the way she was acting in the parking lot that didn't completely ring true. And also, if she wasn't warned ahead of time... wouldn't the things Borat did to her be considered at least a felony???? Then again, a friend of a friend of mine used to work for Sacha Baron Cohen, and eventually had to quit because they were so sick and tired of getting into trouble with Johnny Law all the time! One thing's for sure though... Cohen really commits whole-heartedly to his characters!

What'd you guys think?