Skyfall

Skyfall - Dir. Sam Mendes (2012)

It's been a rocky road for the Daniel Craig-era of James Bond. After the critically reviled Die Another Day, the 007 franchise was rebooted for a post-9/11, post-Jason Bourne world. Gone were the corny double entendres, goofy gadgets, and tongue-in-cheek tone. In their place was a Bond who would rather shank someone with a steak knife than kill them with an exploding pen. Casino Royale was one of the best Bond films since the early Roger Moore flicks The Spy Who Loved Me and Live and Let Die. Only Goldeneye, Pierce Brosnan's first outing as the iconic spy, comes close. However, the series almost fizzled out before it really got going with Quantum of Solace. The sequel suffered from script problems and a director with only a loose grasp of action sequences. Marc Forster was an experienced hand at smaller dramatic fare like Monster's Ball and Finding Neverland, but was clearly overwhelmed while directing his first blockbuster. It seems he's had similar problems with the troubled production of World War Z.

Skyfall rights the ship immediately with a thrilling chase through the streets of Istanbul. Bond is after a stolen hard drive containing the identities of undercover NATO agents embedded within terrorist organizations. Within the prologue, we get shootouts, a motorcycle race across the rooftops, vehicles blowing through a crowded bazaar, and Bond ripping through a train car with an excavator. A fistfight on top of a speeding train leads to Bond being accidentally shot by fellow agent Eve (Naomie Harris). He plummets into the river below and is presumed dead.

Bond returns months later following an explosion at MI6 headquarters. Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem), a malevolent figure from M's (Judi Dench) past has returned to wreak havoc for previous betrayal. Bond must also contend with another dangerous adversary: old age. Has 007 lost a step, especially when he's faced with a brilliant enemy who can kill with a simple keystroke?

Skyfall boasts one of the strongest pedigrees of any Bond film with Sam Mendes as director and Roger Deakins as cinematographer. It's wider in scope than anything Mendes has directed before, but he has a firm handle on intimate character moments as well as exciting action scenes. Mendes embarks on a globe-trotting adventure that traverses a floating casino in Macau, the London underground (where Silva tries to kill Bond with a subway train), and the bleak moors of Scotland. The most impressive sequence takes place in a gleaming skyscraper in Shanghai. There, Bond confronts a sniper on a floor with walls of glass where everything is shot in silhouette and bathed in a blue light from a digital billboard across the street. Mendes also gives Silva the grand entrance befitting such a flamboyant villain. The camera is kept static for one long take as Silva enters from the background and strides towards a captive Bond while giving a creepy monologue about rats fighting for survival. It gets stranger when Silva caresses Bond's thighs in an effort to unnerve the masculine secret agent.

Bardem's performance rivals his chilling turn as Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men. Silva is flamboyant cut from the same cloth as Heath Ledger's Joker. Indeed, The Dark Knight served as an inspiration for Skyfall, which is ironic since the Bond movies partly inspired Christopher Nolan's take on Batman. Silva is a villain for the 21^st century who isn't out to conquer the world or steal its wealth. He has a vendetta against M, making his assault far more personal than Quantum, the clandestine organization that previously antagonized Bond. In stereotypical fashion, Silva has his secret headquarters on an abandoned island in the midst of a ruined city.

As a result, Skyfall reexamines the mythos of James Bond by making him more vulnerable and exploring his damaged psyche. Following the botched mission, Bond retires to paradise and drowns his sorrow with booze and meaningless sex. To paraphrase Sean Bean in Goldeneye, he silences the screams of the men he's killed with vodka martinis and finds forgiveness in the arms of willing women for the one she failed to protect. When he has returned, Bond faces his own mortality and the fact that he's a few steps off. There are even allusions to Bond's troubled childhood. Thankfully, the filmmakers avoid simplifying the complexities of Bond. They've expanded the character beyond just a dapper secret agent armed with a few quips and a Walther-PPK.

A recurring theme in Skyfall is the idea that the "old ways are best" with an undercurrent on the relevancy of the Bond franchise in the 21^st century. Silva's crusade has pulled MI6 out of the shadows and into the light where they face two other fearsome foes: public scrutiny and bureaucracy. Q (Ben Whishaw) is re-introduced to the series as a tech savvy youngster in the vein of Jesse Eisenberg. Although Q has an embankment of supercomputers, he prefers to equip Bond with a radio transmitter and the trademark Walther-PPK though it does use a biometric grip. There are jokes about the aforementioned exploding pen and ejector seats as a playful homage to the Bond of the past. The same goes for the opening credit song, "Skyfall" by Adele, whose soulful vocals are a throwback to the classics sung by Shirley Bassey.

The one weakness of Skyfall is its treatment of women who've always had it rough in the Bond series. It's almost tradition to have one tagalong Bond girl and one disposable Bond girl. The sidekick here is Eve who is revealed to be Miss Moneypenny. Rather than portraying her as a formidable agent, she's given a reverse character arc where she's taken from the field and put behind a desk. Hopefully, future films will not stick her in the tired role of secretary. To her credit, Naomie Harris is a great verbal sparring partner for Daniel Craig. The disposable Bond girl is French actress Bérénice Marlohe as the sultry Severine whose death is quickly disregarded.

Skyfall is a fitting way to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of James Bond. This is one of the best Bond films in decades and one of the best films of 2012.

Rating: **** (*****)

Hugo

Hugo - Dir. Martin Scorsese (2011)

Martin Scorsese has become synonymous with crime films and gritty urban dramas. When he has ventured outside his wheelhouse, it was to make pictures like The Age of Innocence or The Last Temptation of Christ. Needless to say, Scorsese is one of the last names you’d expect to direct a children’s movie, let alone one shot in 3D. But, he does just that with Hugo, based on the illustrated novel, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, by Brian Selznick.

Set in post-WWI Paris, the film follows an orphaned boy named Hugo (Asa Butterfield), whose father (Jude Law) died in a museum fire. Hugo was sent to live with his alcoholic uncle (Ray Winstone), who worked at the Montparnasse train station. There, Hugo was taught how to maintain the clocks until his uncle’s disappearance. On his own, he survives by stealing food and avoiding the Station Inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen). One of Hugo’s few possessions is a mechanical man left abandoned in his father’s museum, which they attempted to restore before his death. It has the ability to write and once repaired, Hugo hopes it will lead to some message from his dad. In order to do so, he steals parts from a toy store run by a man referred to by his granddaughter Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz) as Papa George (Ben Kingsley).

Spoiler alert.

I knew almost nothing about Hugo aside from a trailer depicting a boy living in a train station where something vaguely magical happens. That is where the film seems to head in the first act until Hugo learns Papa George is actually Georges Méliès. The former stage magician saw the potential in this newfangled contraption known as the movie camera. Méliès was the first to create elaborate sets and special effects in his pictures. He was the first to make fantasy and sci-fi movies. Méliès could even be considered one of the earliest victims of piracy as Thomas Edison exhibited his most famous film, A Trip to the Moon, in the States without giving Méliès a dime. Méliès made close to 500 silent pictures, but the majority has been lost over time. As depicted in Hugo, his studio eventually went bankrupt and most of his film reels were recycled into boot heels. The real-life Méliès really did work as a toy salesman in the Montparnasse station though he never met an ingenuous boy. Together, they forge an unlikely friendship as kindred souls lost in the clockwork machinery of a modernizing society.

Hugo acts as a love letter to early cinema and an impassioned plea for film preservation. Isabelle, who has never seen a movie, is introduced to the medium by Hugo with wide-eyed wonder. Together, they learn everything they can about Papa George and try to repair fix his broken spirit as Hugo has been doing with his automaton. Through Hugo and Isabelle, Scorsese looks to introduce a new audience to silent film. He makes sure to sprinkle in plenty of references to many of the most renowned works, such as Harold Lloyd's famous clock hanging sequence from Safety Last. This is when Hugo really shines, but it takes a while to get there. With a runtime of over two hours, Hugo is about twenty minutes too long with a first half that is meandering and unsure.

The train station becomes Hugo's movie screen as he observes the lives of the other workers in the station, such as the awkward flirtations between an elderly couple played by Richard Griffiths and Frances de la Tour as well as the one between the Inspector and a flower girl (Emily Mortimer). This is when Hugo gets bogged down with subplots that don't really add anything to the overall narrative. The Inspector himself is portrayed alternately as a foreboding villain and bumbling comic relief. Though he's played wonderfully by Sacha Baron Cohen, Scorsese never strikes the right tone for the character. Scorsese may have mastered many aspects of filmmaking, but physical comedy isn't one of them and most of the slapstick gags and wacky chases fall flat.

Visually, Hugo is nothing short of a masterpiece. Scorsese has immaculately crafted the world of Hugo with long-time collaborators like cinematographer Robert Richardson, editor Thelma Schoonmaker, and production designer Dante Ferretti. Scorsese's vision is so detailed that he even throws in background cameos by actors resembling James Joyce and Django Reinhardt. The movie's opening tracking shot that glides through the station platform and inside the clock tower will immediately bring to mind the iconic tracking shot from Goodfellas. Scorsese also makes better use of the 3D process than any other film aside from Coraline or Cave of Forgotten Dreams, even if it isn't essential to tell the story. He has created an immersive environment with a clear range and depth of field while adding a sense of wonder to all the moving gears and machinery. Even some of the subtler moments are given a little extra oomph thanks to the 3D, such as a sequence in which Sacha Baron Cohen's enormous head emerges from the screen to symbolize how the Inspector has grown a new awareness of the happenings around him. There's also something very strange about watching A Trip to the Moon in 3D.

Chloe Grace Moretz adds another fine performance to her resume as Isabelle and she often overshadows Asa Butterfield as the titular lead. The adults are all great with Emily Mortimer, Christopher Lee, and Michael Stuhlbarg as a film historian (and Scorsese's stand-in) all rounding out the excellent ensemble. However, the film lives and dies by the commanding and heartfelt performances from Ben Kingsley as Georges Méliès and Helen McCrory (better known as Narcissa Malfoy) as his wife Jeanne.

Hugo has received glowing reviews from many critics. Unfortunately, I don't share the same love for the film, which I found to be moving, yet uneven and overlong. As a tribute to silent cinema, Hugo, might have appeal more to adults and cinephiles than children.

Rating: ** ½ (*****)