Author Archives: The Red Dragon

Nativity 2 : Danger in the Manger!  (2012)    50/100

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Rating :   50/100                                                                     105 Min        U

This is the sequel to 2009’s children’s film ‘Nativity!’ and it once again focuses on the kids of St. Bernadette’s primary school. Any film that has the subtitle ‘Danger in the Manger’ deserves a little credit straight off the bat as far as The Red Dragon is concerned – the rest of the film though is likely to divide parental opinion. The first film was a surprise hit, proving entertaining for children and adults alike. Here, the presumably busy with ‘The Hobbit’ Martin Freeman has been replaced with primary school teacher David Tennant, who tries to provide the voice of reason as his classroom assistant takes the kids, including one baby, on an increasingly dangerous and unlikely trek to reach a Christmas singing competition in Wales, much in the style of an ‘X Factor’ for primary schools. The adventure is deliberately over the top but nonetheless features such stunts as the whole gang going white water rafting with the hapless baby strapped to someone’s chest. The Red Dragon also considers there to be a bit too much of the singing at the end. If your kids dislike ‘The X Factor’, or are wont to copy what they see on the big-screen (especially if you also have a small baby), then give this one a miss. Otherwise, not as good or as wholesome as the first one, but probably decent enough to entertain the family if there’s nothing else showing. Or if you don’t fancy sneaking your kids past the ushers to go and see ‘Skyfall’.

Gambit  (2012)    61/100

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Rating :   61/100                                                                       89 Min        12A

This really isn’t very funny at all. A remake of the 1966 film of the same name that starred Michael Caine and Shirley Maclaine, it bares precious little in common with its predecessor and spent the better part of two decades in development hell before finally being helmed here by Michael Hoffman (‘Restless Natives’ 85) and features a perhaps degraded over time script from the Coen brothers.

It stars Colin Firth as an art expert who is intent on defrauding the boss he hates, played by Alan Rickman, with the help of Cameron Diaz sporting a rich Texan accent, which takes most of the film to get used to. Stanley Tucci makes an appearance as a German rival to Colin Firth, and the talented and roundly respected cast are what finally lift the film someways from the doldrums of the truly awful first half. It won’t have you laughing much, but it may leave you with a smile on your face by the end of it. Not quite the beaming, bedazzling smile of Cameron Diaz, but a smile nonetheless.

The King of Marvin Gardens  (1972)    52/100

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Rating :   52/100                                                                     103 Min        15

The name of this film is a reference to an area on the American monopoly board, one which was famously misspelt (the real area is Marven Gardens, not far from Atlantic City where the rest of the board is set). It ties in with the dreams of one of the protagonists, Jason Staebler, played by Bruce Dern, who thinks he’s found a sure fire way of striking it rich via a real estate scam. His brother is played by a, for once, subdued and introspective Jack Nicholson, and the two are accompanied by Ellen Burstyn giving one of her trademark spirited performances and Julia Anne Robinson, for whom this was to be her only film appearance despite a convincing debut.

The film focuses entirely on the relationship between the four characters, both on the reflections these relationships cast, and the unexpected advent of inevitable consequence. Eventually, it is pithily eloquent and memorable. Be warned, however, despite an interesting last third the first two have little of any real viewing interest, and seem to meander aimlessly much as the viewers attention is invited to do. Debatable whether or not it’s worth pushing through the tedium, but if you’ve seen ‘Five Easy Pieces’ (the director Bob Rafelson’s previous film from 1970, also starring Jack Nicholson) this follows very much in the same stylistic vein. Also one of the four films to star Jack Nicholson with his buddy Scatman Crothers (who, incidentally, voiced ‘Jazz’ in the original ‘The Transformers’ cartoon series, which surely ranks alongside his roles in ‘The Shining’ 80 and ‘One Flew over the Cuckoos Nest’ 75).

The Last Detail  (1973)    69/100

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Rating :   69/100                                                                     104 Min        18

Starring a young Randy Quaid, a youngish Jack Nicholson, and Otis Young, ‘The Last Detail’ follows the exploits of three US marines as two of them are put in charge of escorting the third across the country to Portland, where he is due to begin serving an eight year prison sentence for the grand crime of attempting to steal forty dollars from a collection fund for Polio victims. The harsh sentence forms the primer for the relationships that evolve and, despite the unrestored film quality looking decidedly dated, the story and the three leads have enough strength to make this an interesting and noteworthy film. Unfazed at being almost comically dwarfed by the physical stature of his two companions, this is a quintessential performance of Jack Nicholson being, well, Jack Nicholson, whose impish impiety finds itself more than at home in the body of a sailor on a road trip to an earthly hell.

Seraphim Falls  (2006)    45/100

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Rating :   45/100                                                                     115 Min        15

‘Seraphim Falls’ is a western that pits Liam Neeson against Pierce Brosnan. This is a winning premise, but it is misleading. The film opens with Neeson and his posse wounding and then hunting a desperate Brosnan through the Ruby mountains in Nevada, a few years after the Civil War. We have no idea why, and the chase continues leading to what we soon realise will be the inevitable confrontation in order for us to learn about the back story. It’s fairly dull, and nothing we haven’t seen many times before. Pierce Brosnan comes off least worst from this, and there are a few nice touches and shots of the both beautiful and oppressive landscapes (by director of photography John Toll, Oscar winner for ‘Legends of the Fall’ 94 and ‘Braveheart’ 95) but the acting isn’t at fault here, it’s the screenwriting and direction that are fully to blame for allowing what could have been a decent modern western descend into nothing more than a humdrum TV movie. At one point Brosnan gives a particularly convincing performance of removing a bullet from his arm with a knife he’s heated in a fire, but then drops it and noticeably rolls the flesh of his arm onto it with no effect, which pretty much sums up the attention given to detail throughout the whole film. Angelica Huston and Wes Studi make random appearances toward the end too.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid  (1969)    51/100

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Rating :   51/100                                                                     110 Min        PG

This is one of the most famous westerns of all time. Directed by George Roy Hill and starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford (Hill would later receive an Oscar for directing the same duo in 1973’s ‘The Sting’), one already a Hollywood giant and the other soon to become one, the film is very much one of two halves. It follows the exploits of the eponymous outlaws as they rob trains and try to evade the consequences. Little of the real facts about their lives are known, but Butch Cassidy was the leader of one of the gangs that made use of ‘The Hole in the Wall’ in Wyoming, a pass that sheltered various gangs for over forty years and was never successfully infiltrated by the law.

The opening of the film displays an immediate level of class in the way it’s shot and edited, and the entire first half of the film has a sincere artistry to it as it successfully creates the feeling that the riders in pursuit of the main characters are more like vengeful riders of the Apocalypse than real men. It gives it a real tension, and distinction within the genre, as the characters are fleshed out amidst this grim and pensive backdrop.

Then, however, as the pair make their famous emigration to South America, there is a montage of stills to denote the change in location whilst some truly woeful music plays. It completely breaks the wonderful previous buildup. What ensues thereafter is much closer to standard western fare, and as we see more of the two outlaws we realise that they aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed and ennui starts to creep in. This is summed up by their decisions come the finale, one which is as famous as the song written for the film: Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s ‘Raindrops keep falling on my Head’ (which won them the Oscar for best original song, the film also won best cinematography for Conrad L. Hall {he won again for ‘American Beauty’ 99 and ‘Road to Perdition’ 02} and somehow for best writing, courtesy of William Goldman).

The film was released in 1969 and was the top grossing film of the year. It was, in fact, an extremely big year for westerns with the original ‘True Grit’ and ‘The Wild Bunch’ coming out too. The Red Dragon doesn’t care much for ‘True Grit’, but rates ‘The Wild Bunch’ as one of the best films of all time, whose new editing and camera techniques left an enduring legacy on cinema as well as an ending which has scarcely been rivalled in the western genre. Indeed, both ‘The Wild Bunch’ and Butch Cassidy have been chosen to be preserved by the American National Film Registry (which, since 1989, has chosen 25 or so American films each year for preservation): ‘The Wild Bunch’ was preserved in 1999, Butch Cassidy in 2003, and it’s interesting that the name of Cassidy’s gang had to be changed in the film to avoid confusion with the earlier release of ‘The Wild Bunch’ – in real life his gang were Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch, probably named after a more notorious band of the same name from Oklahoma (‘The Wild Bunch’ features entirely fictional characters), and in the film they become ‘The Hole in the Wall Gang’, which is misleading as in reality no one gang was called this but the hideout featured several ‘hole in the wall gangs’. As a result of the film’s popularity, Butch Cassidy is often still erroneously associated as being the leader of ‘The Hole in the Wall Gang’. The endings of the two films have a couple of storyline points in common too, and whilst in ‘The Wild Bunch’ they have a real context, here in Butch Cassidy they feel more like artificial insertions for the finale, and it’s impossible not to see it as trying to imitate the previous release.

It’s a real shame the promise shown at the beginning is subverted and replaced by torturously bad and even conflicting dialogue, and direction, come the end. It stands as a shining example of how Hollywood can make anything successful with little more than high profile leads and cheesy romanticism, a formula still oft repeated today.

SPOILER ALERT

The Red Dragon wonders why they did not try and fight their way out of the back exit, or indeed risk a peek over the many small walls to the left and right of the place they end up cornered in. Having gone to extreme lengths to avoid the law (including leaving the continent) it is most unexpected to see them run into the arms of a tiny army in order to commit suicide and immortalise themselves in cinematic history. Cassidy initiates this lemming like crusade in order to procure more ammunition for himself. Why? He can’t hit anything anyway, and he seems to still have a reasonable amount left. We learn that the Kid has somewhere in the region of five million bullets left anyhow as the film descends into a version of Operation Wolf with the Kid shooting a never ending stream of useless Bolivian military as they appear from behind the smallest pottery bowl and wicker basket. It is unfortunate they make a decision to fight it out in a tiny village that just so happens to be housing the entire Bolivian army. Would the Kid’s bullets not have fitted Butch’s gun? Didn’t the Kid or the numerous corpses have another weapon? Alas, such is the price to pay in order to become Hollywood icons.

The Twilight Saga : Breaking Dawn Part Two  (2012)    58/100

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Rating :   58/100                                                                     115 Min        12A

‘Breaking Dawn – Part Two’ is a reasonably fulfilling conclusion to the Twilight Saga. Unfortunately, it suffers massively from the decision to separate the story from the final novel into two films. It begins with Kristen Stewart exploring her new found ‘self’ and then builds toward the inevitable climax, but everything else, including the central love triangle and vampiric dilemma, has already been resolved. You could literally edit out an entire hour from part two and not miss anything, apart from some of the nice scenic shots which feature throughout. In fact, the cinematography has been chosen to directly mirror the red, white and black colours of the book covers and it works pretty well as a direct tie in, and although a little more flare to properly define it in its own right may not have gone amiss it still creates an impressive atmosphere and background.

Diehard fans of the series upset at it all coming to a close may be consoled by the fact that the makers of the films have been in talks to possibly continue the story beyond that of ‘Breaking Dawn – Part Two’, but regardless, this finale will be largely remembered for one particular, unique moment. There was a palpable reaction in the cinema from the midnight audience viewing it, and whether or not you enjoy the film will largely hinge on how you feel about it. The Red Dragon, although not familiar with the books, considers it a rather brave decision given the popularity of the franchise. Indeed, a reel of classic film excerpts shown at this year’s Oscars ceremony featured a clip from Twilight and although it first seemed a little odd, it was justified given its extraordinary fan base and success, and most people whether they admit it or not will probably find something to like amongst the five film saga. The Red Dragon’s own opinion is that he rather enjoyed the carnage….

Dear Frankie  (2004)    87/100

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Rating :   87/100                       Treasure Chest                     105 Min        15

The Red Dragon challenges you not to be moved by this film. ‘Dear Frankie’ tells the story of a single mother living in Greenock, played by Emily Mortimer championing a pretty convincing Scottish accent, and her deaf child (Jack McElhone) and the scenario she has created to explain the absence of the boy’s father. Emily Mortimer was the perfect choice for the role as her performance fully embodies a restrained and possessing sadness and indeed the entire cast display real emotion throughout, with touches of comedy from Mortimer’s mother in the guise of Mary Riggans, and the appearance of a certain well known Scottish actor whom you may be able to recognise from an early voice-over… Reportedly receiving a fifteen minute standing ovation at Cannes, the film retains the feeling of a real scenario throughout, and watch out for possibly the longest ‘pause while you think about doing it’ scene in cinema history.

Joe Kidd  (1972)    64/100

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Rating :   64/100                                                                       88 Min        15

‘Joe Kidd’ is a western directed by John Sturges, the man behind classics like ‘The Great Escape’ (63) and ‘Gunfight at the O.K. Corral’ (57), and it was one of the last films he ever did (the very last being ‘The Eagle has Landed’ with Michael Caine and Robert Duvall in 1976). It is also a classic Clint Eastwood film that was shot the same year he did ‘Dirty Harry’ (72), in between helming his directorial debut ‘Play Misty for Me’ (71) and his next outing behind the camera ‘High Plains Drifter’ (73). It stands up well against those better known films, with Clint in his usual hard man role complimented by some wonderful one-liners, casual standoffs with armed goons, and the use of whatever is at hand to defeat the bad guys, including at one point a train…

Eastwood plays a reluctant ex-bounty hunter hired by ruthless land owner and hunter Robert Duvall to take care of a little problem. Duvall appeared in ‘The Godfather’ the same year, and it’s interesting to see the contrast in the two characters. Here he is just as convincing at being somewhat dishevelled and unhinged, as he was at being the controlled and calculating Tom Hagen. As is common with westerns though, the characters don’t really get much in the way of backstory. What prevents this from being a film in the genre that everyone has heard of is there isn’t much in the way of the big showdown that makes it really stand out. There are some nice touches here and there, but several people on both sides don’t seem particularly concerned whether or not they get hit, judging from how much cover they’re taking.

If you generally like westerns and/or Clint Eastwood then this is certainly a worthy watch, and you will no doubt acquire some new lines to practice while you’re shaving by the mirror …

Skyfall  (2012)    95/100

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Rating :   95/100                       Treasure Chest                      143 Min        12A

Skyfall is very, very good. Part of its success is that it at times has you thinking ‘goodness I’m bored’, and ‘doesn’t Daniel Craig look way older in this one than in the last two’. The former attribute avoids the pitfall of many an action movie – trying to constantly outdo the last scene and ‘ramp up the action’ to the point where what should be a story becomes an avalanche of machine gun flashes and damsels in distress being propelled through the air by grenades that have hair stylists as secondary functions. The filmmaker must play tricks on the viewer’s mind in order to captivate it properly. Here it’s done in a number of ways, the plot slows, then gradually becomes more intriguing. The music matches this pace, with long stretches that have no music at all, allowing for the appreciation of more nuances in the acting as well as the feeling that we are watching real people rather than scripted movie stars.

Within this framework, it’s the acting that’s really allowed scope to carry the whole, and Judi Dench and Javier Bardem really deliver here. Don’t be at all surprised to see both of them nominated in the best supporting category again this awards season. It is the difference that a great deal of, no pun intended, intelligence into the piece has made. From the Broccoli’s decision to hire an Oscar winning director in the shape of Sam Mendes, and nine times Oscar nominee Roger Deakins as director of photography (who is a true master of his craft, evinced by several of his films: ‘True Grit’ in 2010, ‘No Country for Old Men’ in 2007 and ‘The Shawshank Redemption’ in 1994 to name but a few), to their whole outlook with regard to revamping the franchise, beginning with ‘Casino Royale’ in 2006.

Part of that outlook is evident here, as we see a beat up version of Bond, far removed from the suave, unruffled, and ridiculously cheesy Bond of past movies. In some of the novels Bond was at times much more human and fragile, and that certainly is how the opening of Skyfall feels. It’s almost like subverting the symbol of movie land masculinity. There is a scene where Bond has to go through a medical exam – it would have been wonderful to have seen him go through an STD test as well. One can imagine Q, ‘em, we may have to add a few to the number of women that have died as a result of having had intercourse with you 007…’. It would make sense for the future of the franchise to see a Bond musing on the family he never had, or indeed discovering a hitherto unknown son, or twenty. So long as none of them are called Mutt…..

Skyfall then is a well crafted and bold statement from the crew who worked on it. An engaging tale that reinserts Bond as a real person fighting modern day enemies, and one that leaves the audience thirsty for more. There is more than one nod to previous films in the franchise along the way too. Though, as is always the case when you encounter a film that you really enjoy, there are the inevitable parts where you wish they’d said this instead of that, or omitted that line, or why did he do x instead of y. For example, one scene has Bond receive his new weapon in an open case from Q whilst they admire some of Turner’s work in the National Gallery. The National Gallery which, oddly enough, has cameras covering every single part of the public space and security warders on constant patrol around no more than two or three rooms each. It doesn’t take MI6’s finest to work out this is not really the best place for the handing over of live arms and a nice chit chat to go along with it (although the moment does go well with the last scene the pair of them, Craig and Ben Whishaw, shared onscreen together in ‘Layer Cake’ 04). These things are though consistent with the other two instalments of the new Bond franchise. If you watch the keys Bond presses to insert the password for the money in ‘Casino Royale’ you’ll notice they do in fact not match what he later states the password to be. The Red Dragon, upon realising this, figured Bond was one step ahead of the game…

Spoiler alert!

To go into the specifics of Skyfall in a little more detail, the opening of the film has a few things that could have been tweaked. Like the way bond states he’s trying to stop the downed agent’s bleeding, and all he does is dab his wound with a grotty looking cloth. Then when Moneypenny shoots him, she has ample time to let off another round with that rather deadly looking weapon she’s holding and actually hit the now sitting duck bad guy. Probably best, as they acknowledge, she takes up an office job afterwards. These details make the feel of the opening sequence, although the stunts are good and it is actually Daniel Craig on the train travelling at fifty miles an hour, more like an episode of ‘Spooks’ than a big budget film. Having said that, The Red Dragon was thinking as Bond faces the bad guy in the forklift truck ‘O yeah, like he wouldn’t get shot through the glass’, and then he does. Great!

They are running through the same streets and along the same rooftops in Istanbul as Maggie Grace and co do in ‘Taken 2’ (12), which is interesting. If I’m not mistaken Clive Owen appeared on them too in ‘The International’ (09), interesting if one influenced the other, or if Turkey has realised a good business opportunity. Unfortunately, there are shadows of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy here, as there are in many films now. This is especially noticeable with the music as they are besieged in Skyfall at the end, but also the concept of the criminal mastermind who plans to be captured for some greater purpose (also with Loki in the ‘The Avengers’ 12), and the explosives under the city, though ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ would probably have been filming around the same time as ‘Skyfall’. It’s not a major complaint, enough of the rest is completely original.

For The Red Dragon, the feeling that this film was a little special didn’t really begin until the fight sequence with the lights of Shanghai’s advertising in the background, a poetic death to the skilled enemy assassin. From then on in it really got interesting. Even with the first face to face scene with the next Bond girl soon to bite the dust. Said Bond girl’s acting caliber seemed to be in question, until you realise there is a lot more going on, that feeling of ‘That’s rubbish…O, I see…’, almost fooling the viewer, is a very effective trick. Speaking of which, could he not have done all his heroics before Javier Bardem shoots her?!  Similarly, surely with some trusted people at MI6 clued up to Bond’s plan at the end they could have sent some reinforcements! ‘It’s OK, there’s a shotgun up there and a Scotsman, more than enough for some terrorists!’.

The Red Dragon would very much like to know if that was a real, venomous scorpion on Bond’s arm when he’s busy becoming an alcoholic and unnamed substance abuser. Whilst Daniel Craig was a real action man on the set (which really adds depth to the film when you realise it’s actually him you’re seeing doing the stunts), Havier Bardem has stated that he is a “big believer in stunt doubles”, I wonder if prior to ‘No Country for Old Men’ he could have envisioned himself as a Bond villain, as famously the Cohen brothers had to work hard to convince him he could play the bad guy, in what would later become his Oscar winning role.

For The Red Dragon, what is by far the most interesting part of this film though, and one reason it has scored so highly, is the fact that James Bond’s heritage is definitively shown to be Scottish! This gets a massive thumbs up from The Red Dragon. Earlier in the film, it did jar slightly when there was a reference to Britain and then very quickly afterward when Bond is playing word associations he gives ‘England’ as his response to country. There seemed to be a hint of double standards going on. However, at the same time his home of Skyfall is mentioned. So, is it perhaps that as a spy he has eradicated his own personal story, and so his claim to be English is to throw anyone else off the scent of his true backstory? Or does he, the character, want to forget his own childhood and its trauma, and prefers to think of himself as English? We aren’t given enough details to tell.

We see the graves of his mother and father who we know from the novels, and from previously in the film franchise, were Swiss and Scottish respectively – this lineage was introduced in the novels by Fleming as a nod to Sean Connery’s interpretation of the Bond character in ‘Dr .No’ (62), and Fleming mentioned once in a magazine article that Bond was born in Glencoe, Scotland, the site of an infamous massacre in Scottish history, and where several of the scenes in the film were shot. The specific house of ‘Skyfall’ however, is new. It may be a reference to the home Fleming’s family owned in the Scottish highlands (both his father and grandfather were Scottish, from Fife and Dundee respectively) but where previous film and novelised tales of his early years differ, here we learn he grew up there, in what appears to be an ancestral home. He also lets us know he always hated the place when he burns it, but we don’t know why. It seems odd, growing up there he can’t have known many other places so why hate it so much? Was he abused? Did he have a hand in the deaths of his parents?! Expect to see this looked at in more detail in future instalments with Daniel Craig as Bond.

It is curious to consider the timing of this introduction to the legend of James Bond. Before the next film is released, the referendum for Scottish independence will have taken place. Is this inclusion in the story linked to the politics of the day? His reference to England also means he can continue to represent England should Scotland vote to go her own way, and his dual Scottish/English background may be placed as a sort of cinematic cement on the fabric of the United Kingdom. Political annalists are expecting the biggest independence voting demographic to be the ‘Braveheart’ (95) generation, those who were growing up when the film was released, underpinning the emotive power of cinema and the age old adage ‘life imitates art’. After all, an integral part of the franchise is that 007 is a British agent (as an update to this, on the weekend before the referendum the filming schedule for the next Bond film was released – due to begin December 6 2014. Also Finland’s independence day, incidentally. RD 2.12.14). It may be that the people behind this multi-billion dollar (circa twelve with inflation taken into consideration) institution would consider a break up of the country he represents as a negative…

In any case, the revelation of more of Bond’s formative years, regardless of the exact details, adds a lot to the film, and to the depth of the character that will continue to be depicted over the next two films. Eight more films down the line, the Daniel Craig years may be remembered as the most definitive guide as to the fleshed out character of Mr Bond. A guiding template of his past, to better shape his future.