Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery: Hercule Poirot and Elon Musk

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery was even funnier and more fun than Knives Out, which was plenty funny and fun.  Plus, Glass Onion was just brimming with social relevance, extending its satire of Agatha Christie to our real world at large.  All to the good -- given what our real world is like, we could use all the satire we can get our eyes and ears on.

[Spoilers ahead ...]

COVID is the first real calamity to receive this treatment.  I certainly wouldn't want to see an entire movie lampooning anything about the pandemic -- it's no laughing matter -- but the start-up of Glass Onion with the masks and the protective blast to the throat was just right.

Elon Musk, on the other hand, deserves all the satire anyone can lob at him.  And Miles Bron, who turns out to be the villain of the story, surely has elements of Musk, hawking a scientific miracle energy breakthrough, flaunting his billionaire wealth, and all the rest.  Social media in general get a good ribbing in this movie, too,

The acting was great.  Daniel Craig (as sleuth Benoit Black) and Ed Norton (as Miles Bron) have never given anything less than a top performance, at least as far as I know.  And the supporting cast were in fine form, too.  For some reason, my favorite was Madelyn Cline as Whiskey (hey, she was excellent in Outer Banks, too).

Of course, in a satire whodunnit, the mystery plot has to be tight and well resolved.  I won't give everything away, on the slim chance that you're reading this and haven't already seen Glass Onion.  But I will say Hercule Poirot would've approved.

Oh, and the music was good, too!  "Glass Onion" is always a pleasure to hear.  And it sounded fantastic at the end of this movie.  I'm thinking the producers of the movie did to the sound what Peter Jackson did for the Beatles in Get Back -- the Beatles never sounded better!

And while we're on the subject of music in this movie, Nat King Cole's "Mona Lisa" gets that same -- let's call it Peter Jackson -- treatment. Cole's uniquely warm voice, like "chestnuts roasting on an open fire," sounds like it's in the same room with us. Mona Lisa -- the Leonardo da Vinci painting -- makes a major appearance in the movie, a symbol of Bron's boastful greed -- as does an acoustic guitar alleged to be Paul McCartney's, which Bron strums for "Blackbird" to impress his guests. 

Okay, this review is about a movie, not its music, but as long as I'm into it, the Bee Gees' "To Love Somebody" sounded crystal clear beautiful, too, as did David Bowie's "Starman" (his "Star" is in Glass Onion, too, but I always liked "Starman" much more). And one last point, promise, about this music: it was fun to hear Toots and the Maytals sing "Take Me Home, Country Roads," but yeah, it made me wish I was hearing John Denver singing his song with co-writers Taffy Nivert and Bill Danoffin this supersonic mix. 

 All credit goes to Rian Johnson, who not only selected the songs, but wrote and directed this gem of a movie.

not the least bit funny ... well, maybe a little

alternate reality about The Beatles on Amazon, and  FREE on Vocal

No Time to Die: Quibbles about that Death

My wife and I finally saw the new (to us) final Daniel Craig as James Bond movie -- on Amazon Prime. We very much enjoyed it.  In fact, although it has its flaws, I'd say No Time to Die is certainly among best James Bond movies ever made.

[Spoilers follow, of course.]

Let's begin with that shocker of an ending: Bond dies.  I didn't like to see that as it was happening --not at all -- but it is a highly original way of ending a Bond movie, and deserves credit for that.  It does explode or reveal as a myth the fact that Bond never dies.  Those around him die, and he must suffer that.  But not Bond himself.

The words on the screen at the end of the movie assure us that we'll see Bond again, and this will no doubt occur the way it's been presented in every transition to a newly acted Bond since it first happened back in Sean Connery's reign, actually twice, once for one time with George Lazenby, and then for a new series of Bond movies with Roger Moore.  In those and every subsequent case, the new Bonds were introduced with no mention of the fact that they looked different from their predecessor.  The same logic says the new post-Craig Bond can be introduced with no reference to his predecessor being killed.  What this, I suppose, means is that Bond's death at the end of No Time to Die is no big deal -- even though it meant the world in the context of that movie.

I did have two quibbles about the two characters must crucial to that death.  Rami Malek was superb as the arch-villain Safin who engineered Bond's death -- no one can match Malek's way of delivering powerful lines in a soft voice and a nearly expressionless face.  But given the profundity of Bond's death, I would have rather seen it done by a life-long adversary, like Blofeld, who's not able to step up to that role because he's earlier been killed by Bond in another nefarius Safin move on the lethal chessboard.  Similarly, although Madeleine (well-played by Léa Seydoux) with a most worthy love of Bond's life. we unfortunately don't meet her until the beginning of this very movie.  I would have rather seen someone we already got to know in previous movies.  Of course, since Vesper was already killed, it would have been difficult to pull someone out of the earlier Craig as Bond movies, but, nonetheless, that would have added a special gravitas in No Time to Die.  Bond's daughter was a really nice part of this movie, and had a gravitas of its own, but a mother with a history of Bond loving her before this story began would have added more.

Otherwise, I thought every other aspect of the movie was outstanding.  I especially loved the reprise of Louis Armstrong's "We Have All the Time in the World" at the end of No Time to Die.  The reprise, of course, was from Her Majesty's Secret Service, where it was also played at the end of the movie.  In other words, the death of Bond's true love, and then all these years later, the death of Bond, get the same musical aftermath.  Unless you're made of stone, that song is bound to bring a tear to your eyes.

Thinking about what the next Bond movie will bring, we have  the question of how many of the agents and administration in No Time to Die with survive.  I see no reason why all of them can't, deprived of course of any grief at the loss of the Bond played by Craig.  I've seen and really enjoyed every Bond movie ever made, pretty much in the year in which they were released, and I'm looking forward to more.

See also The New James Bond -- Without the Golden Pun ... It's Not HBO -- It's a Quantum of Solace

Skyfall Great with Barely a Bond Girl

There was barely a Bond girl in Skyfall - no double entendre - and it is still one of best Bond movies ever made.  Certainly better than any non-Connery Bond, and right up there with Goldfinger, From Russia with Love, and On Her Majesty's Secret Service, which of course wasn't a Connery, but Lazenby looked just like him, and it was a powerhouse of a personal and spy-thriller story.

Which describes Skyfall, easily the best movie about Bond's life, along with OHMSS.   There's not a weak or wasted scene in Skyfall, from the stunning opener in which Bond is killed to the last in which Moneypenny is revealed and Bond reports to the new M for work.   Of course Bond isn't killed in that opening segment, and the fact that we know that and still find the opener a shocker is a measure of how good this movie is.

The villain - Silva - is excellent and close to exceptional.  Played by Javier Bardem with a blond wig, Silva is probably most reminiscent of Christopher Walken's Max Zorin's in a View to a Kill (probably Moore's worst), except Silva is a little more intense, brilliant, cracked, and makes a pass at Bond.   Silva's also a lapsed MI6 agent, which also gives him a kinship to Alec Trevelyan in Goldeneye.  These similarities to earlier Bonds are actually one of the best features of Skyfall, which also brings back and nobly sacrifices Bond's Astin Martin and its firepower, which served so well in Goldfinger, Thunderball, and other Bond movies, and also has a call-out to Jaws' teeth,

Ah ... noble sacrifice.   Skyfall is as much M's movie as Bond's - she more than Bond is the target of Silva's sociopathic anger - and the curtain call for Judi Dench's M is memorable indeed, and gives Skyfall another kinship to OHMSS.  Just as Bond's beloved Tracy dies in his arms at the end of OHMSS, so M dies in Bond's arms close to the end of Skyfall.  But rather than losing the love of his life, Bond is losing his metaphorical mother, another milestone in the gradual growing up of this Bond.

There's a wonderfully winning balance of old and new in Skyfall, with Bond at the fulcrum.  M literally passes, Albert Finney puts in a strong appearance as Kincade (and old friend of Bond's family), and we see the gravestone of Bond's parents.  On the new side of the ledger, we have a sharp young cyber-arrogant Q and a bright new Moneypenny - who actually is the first Moneypenny in Daniel Craig's Bonds and in this incarnation a field agent who comes in from the cold to take up residence in M's office.  Ralph Fiennes is the new M, who comes in the from the cold of being Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee, and is pretty good with a gun.  It's assuring to see Fiennes, who played Voldemort, put his acting power to the good.

Craig's performance is altogether perfect, ranging from the near-derelict Bond to the full tuxedoed casino man.  The action scenes take him from the top of a train to nearly getting hit by a train from above in the Tube, with a man against helicopter, man on the underside of elevator, and all sorts of other goodies thrown in.  There's gunplay everywhere you turn, from courtroom in London to misty fields in Scotland.  Craig does these better than well, and the sheer intensity of the cinematography and speed of the scenes make the movie breathtaking.

Bond is in bed with just one woman, once, and Silva kills her before she has a chance to do much in the movie.  That's the only fault I can find in the film, which was otherwise so extraordinary that it almost didn't matter, and maybe didn't matter at all.  What Skyfall has finally given us is a Bond for the 21st century, as strong in its own way as Bond through the 20th, and I'm looking forward to many more.

Valkyrie and Defiance

I finally saw Valkyrie and Defiance last night on Netflix DVD - a Nazi true-story double-header in the household. As harrowing as such movies are, we watch them from the cushion of knowing we won the war, in the end - though not before horrendous damage was done to humanity, including the Holocaust.

Valkyrie was a reasonably good rendition of the daring 1944 Germany Army bomb plot that almost killed Hitler. Tom Cruise was effective as von Stauffenberg - who planted the bomb and in many ways spearheaded the operation - and Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, Terence Stamp and Tom Wilkinson are a pleasure to see in any role.

The plot failed for several reasons. Hitler survived the bomb because it went off in a meeting room larger and more open than expected. Had the explosion occurred in the original room, its bunker construction would have contained and thereby made more lethal the explosive power. And the briefcase with the bomb was inadvertently moved to a place under the table where the blast was somewhat deflected from Hitler.

With Hitler alive, the only chance the plot had was for the conspirators to quickly wrest power from the Gestapo, and this turn in depended on the belief that Hitler had perished in the explosion. Hitler's voice on the phone to a key army official was the decisive turning point depicted in the movie. I favor the interpretation that Hitler's voice on radio, the day after the explosion, was even more decisive, because the radio reached everyone (see The Soft Edge for more), but the point remains about the power of the voice to save or change everything in an age of telephone and radio. Given the capacity for spoofing and deception in the digital age, that power may no longer exist today.

Defiance tells the heroic, inspiring story of the four Bielski brothers, who escape into the forest and organize resistance after the German occupation and slaughter of Jews in Belarus in 1941. Daniel Craig as Tuvia, Liev Schreiber as Zus, and Jamie Bell as Asael are simply superb, and I'd say Defiance was one the best movies I've seen in years (better than the excellent Munich, in which Craig also played a take-no-prisoners Jewish fighter, and better than Valkyrie). My wife and I have grandparents and relatives who come from that area, and we could see their faces and hear their voices in this movie.

All of the brothers - and their love interests (it was good see Mia Wasikowska, Sophie on In Treatment, play Asael's in Defiance) - survived against all odds, and our knowing that Tuvia, Zus, and Aron (who was a boy in 1941) made it to New York after the war, and opened a trucking business, was especially satisfying. (Asael joined the Russians against the Germans and was killed in action.) Tuvia died at 81 in 1987, Zus at 82 in 1995, and Aron is still alive.

So, yes, the bomb plot failed, the Bielskis did not, and we beat the Nazis.

But as the extremist part of the debate now raging about health care reform in America now shows - with some opponents of Obama likening him to Hitler, which is itself a classic Hitlerian propaganda tactic (false association and insistent exaggeration) - we need to take care more than ever to keep our democratic processes and protections real and robost. The Weimar Republic, which the Nazis overthrew, was after all a democracy too...

It's Not HBO - It's A Quantum of Solace

Just back from Quantum of Solace - it was far better than some of the critics have been saying, but not as good Daniel Craig's first James Bond, Casino Royale, in 2006. There's not much in the way of gadgets, though MI6 has some cool thing which looks a lot like CNN's Magic Wall. And no real puns - about the closest we get of that is James telling a man on shore, "she's seasick," as he hands over an unconscious Camille he carries off the boat. But A Quantum of Solace has more than a quantum of humanity - of James Bond as not just a killing machine, but a human killing machine. Craig's killer, unlike Moore's and Brosnan's, tempers his performance with an underlying everyman soul, not flippant humor. As was the case in Casino Royale, Craig's Bond seems most like Sean Connery's, but Craig's is more vulnerable. The story this time is barely a story on it own - more a continuation of Casino than a story of its own - and that's mostly, I think, because the villain, Dominic, is second rate. No Blofeld, of course, but not even Le Chiffre from Casino Royale, who had great quirks and was a fine match for James in both cards and killing. But Dominic and the storyline worked ok, anyway, because what this movie was mostly about was Bond and his developing relationship with M, who has the best line of the movie ("I don't give a shit about the CIA," delivered only as Judy Dench can). Why was this low-key story ok for the 2nd Craig Bond? Because this rendition of James Bond, here at the end of the first decade of the 21st century, feels more like a series on HBO or Showtime, than what the Bond movies were throughout all of their earlier renditions. And as I've said many times, television can be a great medium. 

See also The New James Bond - Without the Golden Pun

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 The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly
"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News
"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Read the first chapter of The Plot to Save Socrates .... FREE!

The New James Bond - Without the Golden Pun

Actually, I thought Daniel Craig was great as James Bond in Casino Royal - I thought the movie was was excellent, too - but I missed two things in the new movie: gadgets and puns.

I'll save the gadgets and Q for another post. Here, I'll just lament the loss of puns. There were so few of them in Casino Royal that you could hear a pun drop. In fact, I heard only one (but I won't tell you what it is, because that would spoil the fun, and give away an important part of the plot).

The puns were always one of my favorite parts of the Bond movies - Sean Connery saying Lotta Lenya got her kicks (she wielded a shoe with a knife), Roger Moore saying he was keeping the old British end up as he made love to the heroine in a boat under the closing credits ... you know, that sort of bling.

Now, it makes good sense that Craig's Bond doesn't say many of those things - he's just starting out, and the whole point of the movie is that he doesn't yet have the polish and sophistication of the later Bond. He's not sure of his drinks or his clothes or even his poker cards. He's more vulnerable to women. He's driving a Ford in the first part of the movie.

So we can forgive him and the movie makers if they left him with barely a verbal barb. Who knows, maybe the world has outgrown that kind of repartee, which was most in vogue when Cole Porter was the top, a good two decades before the first Bond movie, anyway.

But I miss the license to kill which if it didn't make you die of laughter at least left you with a chuckle. Let's hope we haven't had the last laugh on Bond.

Listen to the podcast of this review: The Man Without the Golden Pun

See also Quantum of Solace Felt Like HBO or Showtime - High Praise

---

The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

more about The Plot to Save Socrates...





Read the first chapter of The Plot to Save Socrates .... FREE!