THE JAMES BOND COCKTAIL HOUR: License to Kill & Colonel Sun

The James Bond Cocktail Hour is back, with two episodes of 007-flavoured awesomeness!

In the first episode, we are joined by comedian Tom Sainsbury (Kiwis of Snapchat) to talk 1989's License to Kill, starring Timothy Dalton, and the novel Colonel Sun. The first novel to feature Bond that was not from the pen of Ian Fleming (who died in 1964), Colonel Sun was the only Bond novel written by Booker Prize-winning novelist Kingsley Amis.

Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, or alternatively, at the links below.

License to Kill 

Timothy Dalton returns for his second and final appearance as James Bond. After his friend Felix Leiter is brutally attacked by drug baron Frans Sanchez (Robert Davi), Bond goes rogue to destroy the villain's empire from the inside...

Colonel Sun

When his boss M is kidnapped, James Bond heads to Greece to rescue him - only stumble into the middle of an invisible war between the Russians and a mysterious mastermind known as Colonel Sun...

You can find the James Bond Cocktail Hour on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and leave us a review!

IN THEATRES: Alita: Battle Angel

Re-activated and re-built by a kindly inventor, the cyborg 'Alita' (Rosa Salazar) is on an abortive quest to find out who she is...

I remember hearing about this movie in 2003 in an Empire magazine feature on unmade movies that were stuck in development hell. I cannot remember all the titles, but I remember it included Darren Aronofsky's The Fountainhead (made in 2006), The Gemini Man (a project mooted in the mid-90s for Mel Gibson, now due for release in October starring Will Smith) and a little movie called Avatar.

Every interview I’ve read with James Cameron mentioned his obsession with bringing this property to the big screen. After all this time, it has finally been brought to the screen under the stewardship of  Robert Rodriguez.

According to the credits, Cameron was a co-script writer (with Laeta Kalogridis). Apparently the script Rodriguez used was assembled from an initial draft of 186 pages and 600 pages of notes. You can definitely feel that bigger story in the movie's ever-shifting narrative and lack of focus.

Criticising this movie is fairly easy (the plot is labyrinthine, the characters lack clear motivation, and the whole movie feels like a couple of different plots stitched together). The movie had a 170 million dollar budget yet it feels like a TV show - the compositions lack depth (probably an affect of green screen) and the lighting feels flat.

In re-watching Avatar, one of the big takeaways was how Cameron’s camera obeyed the rules of physics- his camera follows characters and never feels free-floating, so when a CG character stumbles while walking across a gorge, or is flying another CG creature through the sky, there’s a sense of depth and tactility to the images which makes the experience more immersive.

The problem with Alita is that the rules of how physics in this world works make no sense. Furthermore, it never really feels like Alita can lose.

The movie’s major saving. grace is Rosa Salazar, and the motion capture team who bring the title character to life. If she was not in it, the lack of character development would have been far more grating.

But I have to say (write?), I had a pretty good time. This movie is silly - it is almost on the level of Valerian and the Cornucopia of a Thousand Inanities. At points the movie verges on Axe Cop in terms of the way the plot is constantly resolving and then veering in a new direction (the beat where Alita gains the warpaint is almost comedic in how arbitrary it is). These story points probably made more sense in the manga (and the 186 page script) but in this movie they feel pleasantly haphazard (It probably helped that I have not read the manga, and had eaten an entire bag of sour worms).

Definitely one for a late night on Netflix.

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond called The James Bond Cocktail Hour. Every episode, we do a review of one of the books and one of the movies, picked at random. 

The latest episode is out today - to get in the holiday spirit, we review the 1987 film The Living Daylights, starring Timothy Dalton. Available wherever you get your podcasts.

Related

Valerian and the whatever the hell the rest of the title was

IN THEATRES: Happy Death 2 U

Picking up the day after HD1, Tree (Jessica Rothe) finds herself  caught back in the loop - only this time, she is stuck in an alternate timeline where the only thing that is guaranteed is a killer wearing a baby mask and a big knife.

A sequel to the 2017 Groundhog Day riff, this sequel is a full-on horror comedy. Thrust into an alternate universe that inverts the conditions of her old one, our heroine is faced with losing what she has gained, or re-gaining what she has lost.

Making a sequel is fraught with peril: do you repeat what you did before? Do you try something different? 

The makers of Happy Death Day 2 U choose to maintain the concept AND bring back the main character. What makes this movie work is that the way the central premise has been re-worked provides an opportunity for further development of Tree's character.

Another benefit is the shift in town. Whereas the original felt like a murder mystery with humour, the balance is inverted here. There are some scares and kills, but the movie is at its best as a black comedy - heck, when the movie focuses on Tree's (spoilers) relationship with her mother, there's probably a solid argument for analysing HDD2U as an extended commentary on life and loss.

The slasher mystery ends up feeling like a subplot. 

This movie is so well-constructed. It never feels bloated or a conscious copy of the original, and the tonal shift works great - these movies are ultimately about Tree’s growth (no pun intended) rather than the more cookie cutter slasher tropes.

Once again, the cast are excellent, centred around the terrific Jessica Rothe. Rothe is great at maintaining the story's pathos without losing the humour.

The sense of frustration and rage she feels at having to relive her nightmare is palatable. She has been through this scenario so many times she actively seeks out her own destruction so she can get it over with. The movie does not lean too hard into this idea - once again, the movie’s balance of content and tone is terrific.

Once again, it is a testament to the movie as a whole that at no point do either the humour or the horror feel extraneous to Tree's journey, and Rothe's excellent performance is the key component that ties the whole project together.

I am curious to see what writer-director Christopher Landon does next - there is an assurance to the way the movie juggles time, and a clarity to the way it handles its characterisation that gives the story a sense of weight, without negating the comedy.

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond called The James Bond Cocktail Hour. Every episode, we do a review of one of the books and one of the movies, picked at random. 

The latest episode is out now - we review the 1987 film The Living Daylights, starring Timothy Dalton. Available wherever you get your podcasts.

Related

Happy Death Day

IN THEATRES: Glass & Cold Pursuit

Here's a catch-up of recent releases.

Glass
Two decades after he rescued a family from a home invader, David Dunn (Bruce Willis) has become a vigilante. His latest case involves Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy) aka 'The Horde', who has kidnapped another group of teenagers to sacrifice to his alter ego, the Beast.

After tracking Crumb down, both super-powered people are arrested by the police and placed into the care of psychologist Dr Staple (Sarah Paulson), who is determined to prove that they are suffering from a unique form of delusion.

The only variable she has not reckoned with is Elijah Glass (Samuel L. Jackson). Locked away since his acts of terror in Unbreakable, the self-styled super-villain has his own plans for Dunn and Crumb...

Wow baby!

Towards the end of this movie, my mate and I started laughing uncontrollably.

This movie is a poor sequel to Unbreakable, a meh denouement to Split and a great future episode of How Did This Get Made.

This movie is fun, dull, creepy, silly, vaguely smart and completely in love with its own ridiculousness. And I still don't know howe I feel about it.

I kind of like its willingness to do its own thing, even though I don't particularly care for where it decides to go.

I was kind of into this movie for the first half, but then the movie escalates to a level of absurdity.where I had to re-adjust my expectations. I ended up wishing it did a bit more - once the climax swings into view I was surprised at how ham-fisted the comic book lore was, and how committed Shymalan was to avoiding the big climax you expect.

While the movie's ridiculousness is enjoyable to a point, it never goes far enough. Plus the flashbacks to Unbreakable kept me from truly getting onboard with the shift in tone. I'm not a fan of callbacks to other movies, particularly when the movie you are referencing is so much better than this one (here's looking at you, Spectre).

It's not as dramatically solid as Unbreakable, and does not pack Split's punch, but as a bizarre gumbo of world-building and sheer weirdness, Glass is worth a look. Especially with alcohol.

Cold Pursuit

After his son is murdered by drug dealers, small-town snowplow driver Nelson Coxman (Liam Neeson) goes on a mission of vengeance to kill the murderers and everyone they worked for.

As Nelson's vendetta progresses, his actions have ripple effects which increase the bodycount, and endanger everyone he knows.

Ah, Cold Pursuit. If certain variables were different, the narrative around this movie would be about the end of an era, namely Liam Neeson's run of 'killer geezer' action movies inaugurated by 2008's Taken. Instead, because movies do not exist seperate from their context, this movie will forever be refracted through the prism of Neeson's comments about almost committing a hate crime.

It's a shame - because this movie is really good. And if this was meant to be the finale of the Neeson 'killer geezer' meta franchise, it's near-great. A remake of Norwegian thriller In Order of Disappearance (which I have not seen), it is directed by the same filmmaker, Hans Petter Moland.

The most fully-rounded of its star’s ‘killer geezer’ flicks, Cold Pursuit is a blackly comic look at violence, and its lack of catharsis or resolution.

In a traditional action movie narrative, the underlying expectation is that order will be restored by violent means: the protagonist destroying the antagonist, expunging chaos and restoring balance to the world of the story. 

In Cold Pursuit, violence does not restore equilibrium, it only creates more chaos. This is an anti-vigilante movie in which the vigilante causes more trouble than the villains.

Speaking of which, a major aspect of this movie that I really enjoyed is how much focus it places on its antagonist. While Neeson is the lead, the movie is an ensemble piece - the filmmakers have no adherence to the main character's POV, constantly shifting between major and minor characters, upending any sense that Nelson has any control over the direction of the story, or how the violence has triggered can be contained.

Aside from Ed Harris's gang boss in Run All Night, I cannot remember any of Neeson's previous foes. Cold Pursuit actually has a villain to write home about: Viking, played by Tom Bateman, is a control freak who sees the world a certain way, and is determined to keep it that way. As he and the other characters learn, there is no way to control anything in this universe - not when there are other human beings out there with their own motivations and weaknesses.

Bateman is excellent, a raw nerve of paranoia who cannot stand how his competition, his men and - most hilariously - his ex-wife refuse to obey his 'rules'.

Other members of the cast do not fare so well - Emmy Rossum is fine as an eager deputy who wants to find out what is going on, but her role ends up feeling slightly pointless. Laura Dern gets a couple of minutes as Neeson's distraught wife, but she vanishes from the movie fairly quickly. 

Apparently the movie is quite close to the original, but on its own and compared to previous killer geezer flicks, the film’s deadpan style, punctuated by brutal bursts of violence, is a breath of fresh air.

Moland shoots every death with an emphasis on negating audience investment - in this respect it is the anti-Taken. Deaths are shot from a distance, paced like the punchlines to jokes, or (in one moment of genuine pathos) alluded to with ellipsis. The closes the movie gets to feeling familiar is the barnstorming finale, but even then there is no real sense of rights being wronged. 

While Neeson's motivation is foregrounded, the most tragic aspect of the movie is offscreen - Neeson’s rampage triggers a gang war between Viking and White Bull (Tom Jackson), an indigenous drug lord who has shared control of the drug trade with Viking's family in this corner of Colorado.

Mirroring Nelson, Viking murders White Bull's son. The broader symbolism (broken treaties, loss of future generations) is hard to miss, but the subplot with White Bull is the one narrative thread that carries a weight the movie can’t sustain. 

One of the most haunting scenes in the movie is a short, silent vignette in which White Bull stares at a hotel gift shop filled with grotesque facsimiles of his people. It's a neat piece of short hand, but there's not much more to it. In the end, Nelson kills Viking, but there is no real catharsis for White Bull.

Maybe that is the point. 

The movie ends with Nelson and White Bull in the snow plow, clearing the road. A repetitive but essential act, it acts as a period on the movie's underlying message: While previous movies in this cycle have been pleasingly (or not)  formulaic and unpretentious, Cold Pursuit treats vengeance and violence as non-cathartic and unpredictable in its effects. 

While I enjoyed watching this movie, it was impossible not to view the movie without thinking about its star's recent comments.

I am not black, but I would recommend anyone reading this review take a few minutes to read any of the responses from black people available online, and then extend that research to include the history of hate crimes perpetrated against black people just for walking down the street. Neeson’s story is not remarkable - it is terrifying. 

There has been an attempt to portray Nelson’s admission as some kind of heroic act, but it distracts from the substance of the story: he spent a week trolling the streets looking to spark a fight with a black man - ANY black man - and kill him. It is purely chance that he cooled off before he hurt or killed someone.

It is sad, because this movie feels like the finale to this stage of Neeson's career, and it is disappointing that his comments will (justifiably) overshadow it.

Cold Pursuit is not as tight as it should be - the middle act starts to feel like a series of vignettes - but as black comedy about the pointlessness of violence it's pretty good. 

Phew! Now that that's over, we don't have to talk about Neeson for a long time.

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond called The James Bond Cocktail Hour. Every episode, we do a review of one of the books and one of the movies, picked at random. 

The latest episode is out now - we review the 1987 film The Living Daylights, starring Timothy Dalton. Available wherever you get your podcasts.

Hotel Artemis (Drew Pearce, 2018)

In the near future, LA is gripped by riots. As the city dissolves into chaos, a pair of bank robbers (Sterling K. Brown and Brian Tyree Henry), an assassin (Sofia Boutella), an arms dealer (Charlie Day) and a gang boss (Jeff Goldblum) gather at the Hotel Artemis, a covert hospital for criminals.

The rules are simple: only members get in, and no weapons are allowed.

Tonight, both those rules are going to be broken...

This movie would make for a great remake in 20 years (or a Netflix series any time). What makes this movie kind of dispiriting is that it is trying to do something I love and wish more genre movies would do: a story based around characters with no defined backstories, whose personalities are defined by their actions in THIS narrative.

There is a fashion nowadays to expand upon and dissect characters - this is based on the industry's current focus on building franchises from existing IP, and in a more tangential way, from the way a certain vocal segment of the viewing public watches movies (i.e. as single instalments in on-going narratives).

Hotel Artemis feels more classical in focus: we are introduced to a group of mysterious characters in a single location, each in the middle of their own story.

The title location is an interesting idea: a hospital for criminals. And as a log line, the plot sounds like a great thriller - someone breaks the rules and the whole operation collapses into chaos.

The problem is that the movie is both too complicated in the number of characters with their own stories, and lacks a clear dramatic through-line to build and sustain the movie's tension.

It's a pity because the cast are uniformly terrific: Jodie Foster plays the Nurse who runs the hotel - she's great, but the movie spends so much time juggling everyone else's stories that her eventual arc feels like an afterthought. Sterling K. Brown and Brian Tyree Henry are also great as two bank-robbing brothers. It is a classic noir-tinged relationship of a man who has to do one last job to keep his sibling on the (relative) straight and narrow. Once again, their storyline feels sidelined.

It's no secret that I am a fan of Sofia Boutella and her Legs of Death. Aside from her physical talents, she is really good actress who has not really been given a role that can really show off her capabilities. Playing an international assassin with a sliver of heart tissue, she is undermined by a redemptive arc that never really comes into focus. She has an unspoken history with Brown's character which is one of the film's most interesting threads as she has to weigh her assignment against old feelings for Brown.

My main problem is that there is no real sense of escalation to the situation. All the pieces are there - the brothers have accidentally stolen a fortune that belongs to the crime lord (Jeff Goldblum) who owns the Hotel; the same crime lord has been wounded and his entourage are inbound to secure the location; the Nurse has broken her own rule to let an outsider into the facility; Boutella's assassin has infiltrated the Hotel to break its cardinal rule (no killing)...

All of these pressure points are solid, but are deployed in such a fashion that there is no escalation of stakes. The intent is clearly there for these various perils to feel like a series of different, horrible events leading to one collective cataclysm, but the finale never reaches that level of peril.

Sure, there is plenty of violence, but it never feels like our key players are genuinely in dire straits.

This movie is not an outright failure, but it always feels like you you can see where another draft of the script - and some tightening in the edit - could have pulled everything into focus, and turned Hotel Artemis into a genuine pressure cooker.

As a home rental, Hotel Artemis is a serviceable but flawed potboiler. The cast is great (including Charlie Day as a sleazy arms dealer), the world-building is intriguing, and the final action set piece is fun, but ultimately it never comes together.

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond called The James Bond Cocktail Hour. Every episode, we do a review of one of the books and one of the movies, picked at random. 

The latest episode is out now - to get in the holiday spirit, we review the 1969 film On Her Majesty's Secret Service, starring George Lazenby. Available wherever you get your podcasts.