tyoder Reviews

A History of Violence (2005)

Striking, both overtly and covertly

[7 October 2005]

Clearly this is a polarizing film. And clearly there are plenty on both end of the opinion spectrum who are guilty of being obnoxious and needlessly inflammatory.

I definitely feel that this is a subtly brilliant work. Cronenberg is an eccentric, intellectual talent who likes to challenge his audience. Many moviegoers resent being challenged, finding it non-entertaining, even anti-entertainment. Call it elitism if you like, but savvier viewers are more likely to understand and enjoy this picture. I'm not one of those snobs who feels that if people only understood a smart film then they'd naturally enjoy it. However, one cannot help but note that those more likely to understand it are more likely to enjoy it, and that those who hate it make it abundantly clear in voicing their opinions that they didn't get the film at all. (And their atrocious spelling and egregious grammar don't help either.) Perhaps if the film's detractors would drop their defenses and do a little reading on it, they'd open their minds enough to at least appreciate if not outright enjoy this film more. Rotten Tomatoes is a great link (http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/history_of_violence/), and the Chicago Reader's response seems most salient to me, to wit: "Cronenberg isn't engaging in parody or irony. Nor is he nihilistically pandering to our worst impulses: the film-making is too measured and too intelligent. He implicitly respects us and our responses, even when those responses are silly or disturbing." Hear, hear! Cronenberg is masterful enough to embrace ambiguity and make us feel conflicting emotions simultaneously. He's entered Fellini territory in that regard (though, of course, he's stylistically worlds away from the Maestro). I'm sorry, but those who charge him with amateurism are indeed "not getting it". This entire film is in line with the third act of Spike Jonze's ADAPTATION--ostensibly straightforward storytelling thoroughly bolstered by sardonic self-examination. Committed text and subversive subtext working with each other by counterintuitively working against each other to synergistically create a dimensional portrait of America's attitude toward violence.

His composition, lighting, lensing, pacing and editing are evidence of a truly self-trusting filmmaker at work: each uneasy--almost queasy--image (especially closeups) of quotidian bucolicism is positively pregnant with dreadful possibility, such that it forces the audience along with the characters to question fundamental assumptions about day-to-day living. What is real? What can one rely on? These queries suffuse Cronenberg's signaturist style.

Some middle-brows mistakenly think that such filmmakers as he are snidely asking, "Can you keep up?" when in fact he (and they) are enthusiastically proclaiming, "You can keep up! Come along! Try!"

Laurel Canyon (2002)

Truncated, but recommended anyway

[5 August 2004]

Yes, the ending is abrupt, rather like a sex act cut off at the height of climax. Who doesn't also want that slide down from orgasm and the tingling afterglow? The essence of an ending is there, but storytelling is about explicating, delineating the specific, sensual details, including that of resolution. Usually I like ambiguous endings--when they're appropriate to the text and theme--because they commend my intelligence; but this time it leaves the viewer unsatisfied and seems like an arthouse pretense.

A shame since this film offers so much in texture, cinematography, subtle characterizations, good acting, and nuanced metaphors that lift it above not only made-for-TV dramas but most modern cinema as well, sadly. Note the driveway exchange when Alex meets Sarah and asks, "Did I leave you enough room?" Consider the house in the valley whose owner tells her how happy he and his wife were there and how he'd like to see Alex and her husband enjoy it as well; later Alex reports to Sam that another couple got to it first. Recall Jane's "AC/DC" t-shirt that Alex wears after the night in the pool. How about the opening sex scene which portrays Alex as very sexually responsive and Sam as slow on the pop, so to speak. And, of course, the remote-control boat Sam sees at the end.

McDormand is fine, as always: bracing and unapologetic in the fullness of her personhood, both as the character and as a performer beyond. Bale and Beckinsale are believable as self-controlled academicians who logically become engaged and find that self-control and logic does not equal self-knowledge and happiness. McElhone's character seems underwritten, but her seductive beauty delivers the point of Sam's temptation. And in mousy-librarian-unleashed terms, Beckinsale delivers the eye-candy.

This film is worth your while, but you have to watch it--REALLY watch it. Watch everything in it. Usually one has to view foreign films to receive so much storytelling value per scene, per shot, per line of dialogue. It just lacks that ending--that top bun on an otherwise splendid sandwich, if you will--to take the viewer home. I wanted to see what choice Sam made and the emotional repercussions for Alex who had awakened to so much within her. Screenwriting teachers will tell you to end your story as quickly as possible after climax, but this movie proves an extreme and ill-considered example of that notion. Granted, a dragged-out denouement such as in "The Lord of the Rings III: The Return of the King" is a too-long goodbye, but there's a happy medium.

I look forward to Lisa Cholodenko's next project. Hopefully, she won't jet out the door so quickly.

The Stunt Man (1980)

Remake of "The Tempest"?

[14 June 2004]

SOME SPOILERS AHEAD!

Though I saw this film--which I highly recommend--projected with its 'Making of…' documentary and enjoyed an in-person Q&A with director Richard Rush (at San Diego's marvelous Museum of Photographic Arts in Balboa Park) a year or so ago, it didn't occur to me till last night that this brilliant entertainment bears striking resemblance to William Shakespeare's last great play, 'The Tempest'. Consider:

Eli Cross (Peter O'Toole in a masterly memorable performance) is Prospero, the victimized yet himself rather cruel sorcerer who commands the spirits, fairies and pixies of a remote island, updated as a flamboyant, eccentric, royal-mannered movie director in charge of many cast and crew members, craftspeople, stuntmen, etc. as they shoot a film on and near Coronado Island. Whereas Prospero was embittered by betrayal and losing his Dukedom, Eli is embattled by studio investors who would squelch his artistic vision. Both Prospero and Eli can be tender or sadistic, by turns. Both can seem to appear from nowhere, Prospero using his magic to become invisible at will and Eli popping in and out on his ubiquitous crane chair (director Richard Rush's most fabulous contrivance).

Nina Franklin (gorgeous Barbara Hershey in perhaps her best role) is Miranda, Prospero's innocent, wide-eyed daughter, updated as an up-and-coming movie actress who is Eli's protégé and former lover. Like Miranda to Prospero, Nina is torn in her relationship to the mercurial director as he vacillates between the behavior of a loving father and that of a treacherous tyrant.

Cameron, the titular stunt man (Steve Railsback, whose performance one can't quite decide is canny underplaying or merely vacuous and weird), is Ferdinand to Nina's Miranda, the handsome mystery man who captivates her imagination, and Caliban to Eli's Prospero, the subhuman slave who is grateful for his master's protection and resentful of his abuse. Like Caliban, Cameron's past is haunted; but we later discover that he's actually much more an innocent like Ferdinand. As Caliban escaped a painful life to arrive at a less painful but more confusing scenario, so does the army deserter Cameron escape the authorities and probable imprisonment only to find himself in Eli's kaleidoscopic clutches.

Chuck Barton, the stunt coordinator (Chuck Bail, an actual stunt coordinator), would seem to be Ariel, the foreperson of spirits and Prospero's right hand, updated as the 'go-to guy' who can arrange for Eli's every whim. As Ariel will be set free of service at the end of Prospero's scheme, Chuck will further his career elsewhere when this production wraps.

Sam, the screenwriter (Allen Garfield as one of his signature sensitive 'everyman' roles) could, I suppose, be seen as Stephano, the comic-relief character who befriended Caliban in hopes of exploiting him, updated as an insecure fellow who knows his contribution is considered to be bottom-of-the-totem-pole by Hollywood tradition and yearns for greater income and respect. Yet, as a salient observer of human nature, he can be Gonzalo also, the wise and well intentioned but ponderous and powerless adviser.

Jake, the smiling studio representative (Alex Rocco in another small part requiring someone with a memorable look to make some impression) is, I think, the castaway King of Naples, a figure of power who is out of his realm and consequently clueless.

Just as 'The Tempest' began with an ostensibly ship-wrecking storm called forth by Prospero to deposit the balance of the dramatis personae on his island, 'The Stunt Man' begins with a harrowing wartime conflagration on a rocky shore except that it's really a movie scene created by Eli and observed by Cameron. But, ironically, as Prospero called forth more wind, rain, thunder and lighting later on, Eli mounts a bridge to brashly proclaim that the elements shall not dare to interfere with their day's shooting schedule.

Just as Shakespeare's play cluttered the stage with colorful pixies flitting about, Rush's compositions are filled with visual invention, like the gloriously tumbling roof-top stunt sequence, his famous 'rack focus', and Hershey's beauty framed in an ornate glass window (which Rush had installed for that purpose and is still at the Hotel Del Coronado today).

Both Shakespeare and Rush are concerned with a preoccupying question: What is real? And, therefore, what can one trust? Miranda is unsure if Ferdinand is a man, Stephano and Trinculo suspect Caliban is a fish, and on this mysterious island, a mystical being may be a tree one moment and quasi-human the next. Eli likes to keep his actors and new stunt man guessing so as to goose their performances (and probably to savor his manipulative power), creating an atmosphere wherein Nina must question her loyalty and Cameron his own sanity.

Some may say I'm being deterministic in my analysis, but certain dramatic templates are indeed endlessly recycled and reconfigured. We know that 'Forbidden Planet' is a direct lift of 'The Tempest', but we can see the prototypical eccentric, exiled, visionary in Jules Verne's Captain Nemo and H.G. Wells' Dr. Moreau as well. Television's original 'Dr. Who', as portrayed by William Hartnell (1963-1966), was somewhat Prospero-like himself: brilliant and powerful but self-interested and dismissive (not the bold hero of later incarnations). His time machine was a treasure trove of sci-fi wonders, and he even had a sweet granddaughter in his charge.

Interestingly, whereas the harsh and oppressive Prospero restores himself to the nobility, ending Shakespeare's tale 'happily' for an early 17th-century audience devoted to a social hierarchy and the Christian injunction that they subjugate all things of nature (one imagines), most of his 'mad scientist' progeny must meet bad ends. It offends our modern egalitarian sense that such a martinet should achieve rewards while his slave Caliban suffered so. So Dr. Morbius perishes while his slave, Robby the Robot, lands a new gig on the Earth-bound spaceship. In progressive times, the aristocrat may still be offended, but the commonweal is soothed. But where does Eli Cross fit into this spectrum of just/unjust desserts? The darkly comic 'Stunt Man' ends with the movie director--indeed a Duke-like figure of artistic, social and financial reverence in our day--flying high above worldly concerns in a helicopter as his star stunt man--a literal underling in that shot--shouts epithets to the sky. Rush's complex, layered exploration of reality doesn't cop out-and in contrast perhaps Shakespeare's play does. Cameron, like Caliban, survives and may advance. But Eli, unlike Prospero ('this rough magic I here abjure'), will likely carry on creating emotional chaos throughout his sphere of influence. Simply stated, 20th-century reality hadn't fully changed: fairness is still fleeting and s*** continues to roll downhill. The modern twist is that it's harder to know when you're getting screwed.

Well, I wished I'd thought of this when I had Rush in front of me. Anyone know how to contact the guy so I can ask him if my take is at all warm?

Tron (1982)

Scruffy Jesus meets Spartacus-Moses on the Motherboard

[17 May 2004]

I saw this film upon its release in 1982 and thought it looked cool but wasn't much of a story. Having just seen the 70-millimeter re-release on the El Capitan's giant screen, I've a much greater appreciation for it. Certainly, the characterizations are paper-thin, the dialogue is nothing special, and the music is poorly used, but the writers were quite canny in their Christian allegory, which made the whole show much more than a mere exercise in special effects.

Jeff Bridges as Flynn is basically a scruffy Jesus figure who descends into the world of computer programs immaculately to find that his sort is worshipped as gods by the programs. He also finds that he has powers considered miraculous by programs, such as to heal, resurrect and divert the beam of a lightship (the video game equivalent of walking on water?).

Bruce Boxleitner, meanwhile, is a champion in the programs' Roman-style gladiatorial games, and though he lacks Spartacus' army, he compensates with Moses' heroic religious fervor and sense of rightness. As Moses went up the mountain, spoke with a burning bush, and returned with tablets inscribed with law, Tron goes into the Input/Output Tower, communicates with his User through a beam of light, and returns with his identity disc imprinted with the code necessary to defeat the Master Control Program.

And said MCP? The spirit of conquest and tyranny that informed the cultures of Rome and Egypt, with David Warner's Sark character a blend of Pharoah and Crassus.

As a teenager, I didn't appreciate the allegory, but now I have new respect for this film which many fans tend to dismiss. Science fiction used to try to be about something, but these days they've devolved to being ultra-violent, CGI-choked retreads. True, there's a cheese quality to it, but that's part of the fun. And I think I prefer a nice block of cheese with some character to it than the processed glop squeezing out of Hollywood's tube currently.

Battlestar Galactica (2003– )

Mixed Bag

[10 December 2003]

I thought it did what it sought to do very well. Pity it didn't seek to do much. It's just more military sci-fi, which we have way too much of. Remember back in the days of the original versions of "The Twilight Zone", "The Outer Limits" and "Star Trek" when science fiction was about ideas, themes, and emotional impact? When it showed human beings interfacing with the strange and uncanny? Remember metaphor and allegory? Hell, remember striking visuals? Laugh all you want about when Adonis' giant hand stopped the Enterprise dead in space, but it was memorable. We can create special effects much more believably now, but to what end if there's no inspiration involved?

This show had strong storytelling mechanics, decent dialogue, solid acting (especially from Mary McDonnell and James Callis), fluid exterior dogfighting visuals--smooth yet chaotic--and the balls to (A) be sexy (I saw Tricia Helfer's "privacy patch" in that first love scene-hell, yeah!), (B) shock the viewers (snapping a baby's neck, showing military figures making the tough decisions to sacrifice lives, and revealing in the end that the most sympathetic character harbors an insidious evil), and (C) best of all, make two middle-aged people its leads (the maturity of Olmos and McDonnell was a welcome refreshment).

Unfortunately, it lacked the ambition to explore ideas and bend our brains into pretzel shape the way the best S.F. does. The sets and costumes, however believable, were dull to look at--it needed more visual punch. I know that headstrong, adventurous characters like Starbuck are supposed to excite us but they're tiresome, even when they're women. Apollo was bland. Most of all, I never got why the Cylons hate humans at all to say nothing of hating us to the point of genocide. But I missed the first minute or two. Was there a narrative scroll prefacing the story?

I liked best the interesting camera work, Mary McDonnell's subtle but self-assured portrayal of President Roslin's worldly-wise dedication, the balancing of military with civilian concerns (rare for military S.F. and thankfully received by this viewer), and James Callis' balanced delivery of Baltar's dilemma. He actually seems helpless in the face of his own selfishness and cowardliness, and that makes him wonderfully sympathetic despite his flaws, because, ultimately, aren't we all more like Baltar than Apollo or Starbuck? And I like the casting of insanely gorgeous Tricia Helfer as the heavy. Why shouldn't she be a hot sexpot? Her mission is to seduce. Wouldn't you give in to her? I thought she acquitted herself well in the part; not just another pretty face overreaching her grasp.

I was bewildered by the decision to remake the 1978 show as it wasn't really good to begin with. Even at the age of 12, I found it unoriginal in both conception and execution. (Actually, it's not bewildering: they smelled money.) But now I'm glad they did, because even with its shortcomings, it finally brings some true value to the name "Battlestar Galactica". If it becomes a show, I'll probably watch it for what it does well, however limited that is. But I wouldn't call it "appointment television". Honestly, current science fiction television is so bland and uninspired that the only show I definitely try to see each week is "Smallville". The Sci Fi Channel was supposed to save us from all the mainstream mediocrity. What happened? How did our culture become so bored with the future?

Cube (1997)

NOT Ellison's story...much, much older

[11 April 2003]

Sorry to the guy who commented that `Cube' is based on the famous Harlan Ellison story `I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream', but it ain't so, my friend. (The fact that the pugnacious Ellison did not sue, as he did the producers of `The Terminator' for ripping off his OUTER LIMITS episode `Soldier', is proof enough of that. He won that case, by the way.) This movie is obviously an update of the Greek myth of the Labyrinth and a brilliant one at that (far more so than Clint Eastwood's over-obvious `Space Cowboys'). `I Have No Mouth…' bears great resemblance to that classic story as well, but Ellison's point was different, much more about high technology reflecting our own self-hatred than the complex thematic web spun by the makers of `Cube'.

For those not in the know, the myth goes like this: King Minos commissioned the great inventor Daedalus to build an unsolvable maze for his amusement. Upon completion, Minos imprisoned Daedalus in the Labyrinth so he couldn't reveal the solution to anyone and threw in the inventor's son Icarus for good measure. There they were stalked by the Minotaur, a deadly half-man/half-bull predator. Daedalus cleverly constructed wings for them to fly out of the Labyrinth, but tragically, Icarus, in his hubris, flew too close to the sun which melted the glue holding his wings together, causing a great fall to his death. An astonishing and deservedly enduring comment on the responsibility of the ingenious.

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!

In "Cube", the Canadian government (King Minos) awards contracts to various engineering firms (Daedalus) to build a damn-near-unsolvable, three-dimensional, changing maze (the Labyrinth), ostensibly as some sort of defense (though admittedly, that's the sole weakness in the concept; whaddya do, drop a cube on Iraq and wait for Saddam's whole regime to wander in?). Upon completion, one of the cube's builders and many innocents (Icarus) are imprisoned therein where they are endangered and killed, one by one, by insidious death traps (the Minotaur). The clever mathematician figures a way out, but as in the myth, only one survives.

But just as this maze twists and turns and reorganizes itself like a Rubik's Cube, this movie twists and turns and reorganizes the symbology of the myth. It is the autistic man, not the brilliant man, who survives. Additionally, one of the original "Icarus"s, the angry cop, becomes a latent "Minotaur" himself, putting a fine point on the film's theme: "We have met the enemy, and he is us." In the contemporary ambiguous world, EACH of us is Minos AND Daedalus AND the Minotaur AND Icarus.

So, finally, the cube becomes an allegory of the social labyrinth we moderns have constructed. Through some elliptical course or another, we are all guilty, and we are all victims.

The Life of David Gale (2003)

The script should be executed.

[12 February 2003]

This strikingly bad movie right out of Screenplay 101 is one of the most shallow "mysteries" I've ever seen. Even though I saw it at an free advance screening, I still wanted my money back--they should've paid me to watch it!

The characters are not characters, they're nondimensional, unbelievable, and uninspired walking attitudes--undermotivated attitudes at that. Spacey, despite being a smart guy, is not believable as a celebrated intellectual because his role is written as an un-self-aware jackass. Kate Winslet is embarrassingly wasted as a reporter of so-called integrity, objectivity and ostensible investigative acumen, none of which she displays at any point in the picture. Laura Linney is a mere functionary at first, and though she has a couple of affecting scenes later on, she lends way too much of her talent and courage into service for a dog film. Any character conflict, such as it is, is pointlessly contrived.

The dialogue is clumsy when expository (characters telling other characters what they already know so that we'll know it too) and self-congratulatingly hyper-glib at all other times. A death-penalty debate scene--meant to seem typical, I guess--comes off like a high school debate (though admittedly, that's the level a Texas governor might argue at), and it seemed that even Spacey's character wasn't fully informed, as he failed to make essential and well known points that would have easily counteracted his opponent (such as the fact that `presumption of innocence' provides that one need not prove an executed person was innocent, merely that they were unfairly found guilty; or that thanks to DNA evidence, many such executed persons have posthumously been found to be innocent; or the fact that Jesus preached against the `eye for an eye' attitude).

The annoying little tricks used to enhance suspense were trite and worn out 50 years ago, such as the suddenly appearing train cutting off a pursuit and an overheating rental car (which the screenwriter puts in early so as not to make us feel cheated, I suppose, but why in the hell didn't they just get a new rental?). Curiously, though, when one character needs to borrow a motel TV, he conveniently finds it to be unsecured. When's the last time you saw a motel TV that wasn't nailed down?

The biggest flaw in this painful film (honestly, I was squirming from the very first scene) is its utter predictability. An ad for it said "Don't reveal the surprise ending!" The "surprise ending" was apparent within the first 30 minutes to anyone who's seen a few movie and TV mysteries. Considering how obvious it all was, the film should never have presented itself as a mystery at all, but merely a meditation on capital punishment; then the "shocks" might've had merit. But because you're in mystery-watching mode from the beginning, that part of your movie-going brain that is well versed in irony has already skated ahead of the filmmakers. The film undercuts its message severely in this way by forcing us to engage an unengaging puzzle rather than contemplating the facts of the debate.

Moreover, it makes the most fatal error any "message film" can: it's simply bad. Good intentions do not excuse bad storytelling. Rather, tell a good story, and its dramatic weight will help the message sink in. I recently reviewed Vittoria De Sica's "The Bicycle Thief", a film that delivers a striking message by basically not doing so; it just tells a sad, striking story, and we get the point, don't we?

"The Life of David Gale" would be bad even by TV-movie standards. Why three actors of considerable talent would commit to this crud is the true mystery.

Adaptation. (2002)

Don't you get it?!

[17 January 2003]

I can't believe how many people posting here (and even some published critics) don't get the ending. I'm reading so much about what a letdown and a failure the third act is. THAT'S THE JOKE, FOLKS! This is a comedy!

When Charlie, understandably at his wits' end trying to accommodate the Hollywood conceit of adapting a nonfiction book into a linear, structured drama, invites brother Donald to New York to help him, the film becomes the cheap thriller that Donald would write. What choice has Charlie got? Knowing what Hollywood expects of him, and realizing that the task set before him is not only probably impossible but inherently ridiculous anyway (why must every decent book, no matter the content or style, become a movie?), he simply must deliver. Doesn't matter if what he delivers is good, it must merely be graspable. Kaufman and Jonze may seem to be making the audience the butt of their joke, but in fact they are letting us in on the joke, which is this:

Writing may be a tortuous process, but writing movies to Hollywood's "standards" can be a kaleidoscopically ludicrous process, often pointless, often meaningless, often futile--but that's what the paycheck's for.

Charlie adapted, but not toward perfection as Darwin's misleading words have us believe, merely toward a state more suited to surviving in his current environment: Hollywood. That's what evolution is; not changing for the better but changing to fit in better and therefore last longer.

The real Kaufman is a great enough writer to make unsavvy people think he's a lousy writer in the end. That took guts. This movie is brilliant from beginning TO END!

Die Another Day (2002)

Mixed Bag

[25 November 2002]

These critiques crack me up, partly because one-third of them ("...the best Bond ever!") and another one-third of them ("...the worst Bond ever!") are the same extreme comments made about every one of movies to date. Examine the last one-third of the comments, and there you'll find the truth of the picture: it has its strengths and its flaws and is neither the best nor the worst.

It's rather schizophrenic in that in it's first act, it humanizes Bond more than ever before, a bold risk on the filmmakers' part which I respected, but then in the second act, it shows him to be as much of a superman, if not more so, than ever before--so much that it required a laughable CGI cartoon character to explicate one mighty feat.

Also ironic is that it is Brosnan's best performance even though his character is not as well written in this one as in "GoldenEye" or "The World is Not Enough". He wears the part more comfortably now, and unlike all his predecessors, including the severe Dalton (and, yes, including even fan-favorite Connery), he gives Bond an interior life; when Brosnan is onscreen, you always feel an undercurrent of a man strategizing how he'll survive physically AND EMOTIONALLY.

His personal drama (and I'm so grateful that since "License to Kill", he's actually been allowed palpable personal dramas) begins early but sadly peters out by mid-point, and it becomes the villain's story in the third act. Better to begin it midpoint and end it with the movie as in "GoldenEye", or better yet to begin it early and carry it through as in "License to Kill", in which Bond drove the plot for once instead of the villain.

The villain is cleverly conceived and realized by Toby Stephens. His underwritten henchman Zao has a fascinating, evolving look but that is all. I think it's better when the villain has something slightly sympathetic about him or her, like Sanchez's value of loyalty in "License to Kill" and Electra King and Renard's troubled love in "The World is Not Enough". Here, Gustav Graves is just a snarler but a particularly good snarler. I also appreciate some inter-villain tension, again as between Sanchez and his henchmen and between Electra and Renard, but here, as well written as the inverse "prodigal son" story is presented, it's extraneous to Bond and steals his thunder.

Visually, it's the most arresting of all the films. Brosnan is showing his age a bit, but we should all look so good at 49! Halle Berry has never been more exquisite, and the camera drools over her (in a sense, literally, as we first see her bursting from the water, causing the audience to gasp in awe). She only becomes more flawless in the relentless close-ups. The film is loaded with hot cars and that ice hotel set is inspired. Its devastation, however, is a second-act climax more visually exciting than the third-act climax, which feels almost like a formality.

Berry's character, Jinx, is just a female Bond ultimately: a bedhopping butt-kicker with an almost buffoonish joie de vivre. Berry is so game and perky, it's impossible not to like her, and I know it's the age of the superheroine and 007 must keep pace somewhat. But in terms of multiple-character design, it's not dramatic to have two such similar characters on the same side. Brosnan and Berry don't exactly lack chemistry but it isn't much exercised as no tension exists between them. At least with Wai Lin in "Tomorrow Never Dies", there was a trust issue (plus Michelle Yeoh didn't need a stuntwoman as much as Berry does).

M is suitably stern, and John Cleese is a more confident Q now, as he should be to serve as a foil for Bond. The character Miranda Frost is Britishly beautiful, and I admit it was an old-fashioned pleasure to see Bond "conquer" her, in a way. (It's primarily a male fantasy, after all, folks, let's not forget.)

Gadget-wise, this film, like "Moonraker", crosses over from bleeding-edge high-tech thriller to low-caliber science fiction, what with the amazingly accomplished DNA therapy, the invisible Aston Martin, and the "second sun" satellite. (You'd think Graves would have had better sense than to name it "Icarus" though, wouldn't you?) Personally, I prefer the more human-scaled Bond. I mean, most folks can't even remember the plot of "Moonraker": Drax wanted to kill most of humanity, making him the nastiest of all Bond's nemeses, but that barely registered. Conversely, in "From Russia, With Love", the bad guys basically just wanted to kill 007--we remember that because it's personal. Let's admit it, we don't go to these movies to see the fate of the world; we go to watch our boy James.

The term that most describes this outing is "over the top". Perhaps it's a celebratory nod to the series' longevity for its 40th anniversary, but it came off as wretched excess. I don't think 007 should be competing with its own imitators for the status of greatest action movie. Bond is more than that; the glamour, the wit, occasionally even intrigue. Yes, he's a superspy, but that's one end of the spy-story spectrum; it's acceptable so long as he does some actual spying. Bond should be a balanced meal, not a Spielbergian roller-coaster ride.

And as with all meals, especially one as complex as Bond (no, the franchise's success is NOT a simple thing!), the ingredients should be cooked together for synergy. Whatever fans think of Timothy Dalton's sobering up of the character and the departure from form in "License to Kill", that film presented the most synergistic story of them all, melding the story elements into one narrative through-line with the stunts and gadgetry flowing more logically from the plot complications instead of feeling plugged in, proving that Bond should not be seen as a formula but a recipe. Unlike formulas, recipes allow, welcome, invite, and even require variation and experimentation. "Die Another Day" begins with such wisdom and courage but then slingshots back into commercialistic overkill.

Overall, I'm giving it the trite but handy "thumb's up". Hopefully, the producers and creative artists behind future editions will continue to realize that the real infusion of value needed in the franchise is not cartoonish hyperreality but more of Bond as a real human being. Any studio can offer up special effects and wild stunts. As movies go "forward" (if you can call it that), 007 needs to go "backward", back before he was even brought to the screen, back to the vulnerable, flawed and fallible man of Fleming's novels: a hero in spite of himself.