Goldeneye (1995)

Despite the Berlin Wall coming down 6 years previous, and the end of the cold war, the intro credits leave us in no doubt that it is a traditional foe who are the enemy here. What is surprising is that Bono and The Edge wrote the title song, performed with typical gusto by Tina Turner. No Shirley Bassey, but far better than the 80s cheesefest that was Gladys Knight’s Licence to Kill.

The film’s opening scenes are all pretty dramatic; 007 bungee jumps down a dam, 006 is callously shot in the head, and then Bond drives a motorbike off a cliff to escape in a nose-diving plane. It’s a fair statement of intent for the series now featuring many new faces both in front and behind the camera. Pierce Brosnan is the most obvious newbie; and after the hard-hitting Dalton performances, Brosnan’s Bond is more of a return to the suave Sean Connery days. However, when Brosnan tries too hard to be suave, I think he often comes across as arrogant. No doubt that 007 is arrogant, but Brosnan’s Bond almost has an arrogant arrogance!

Judi Dench is making sure she carves her own M, and during her brief screen time is very hard-nosed. Introduced as an accountant (I’m not actually sure what the ideal qualifications would be to direct MI6) she does have great banter with 007. I thought it interesting that following Licence To Kill, M specifically tells 007 not to go off on a personal vendetta to avenge the death of 006. I guess this is as close as we get to continuity of stories from film to film, other than the same actors recurring as different characters, or the occasional nod to the fact that Bond was married once.

Sean Bean is, well, Sean Bean; but he is good as long as he’s not trying to do a plummy accent. Of course his “death” at the beginning sets alarm bells ringing, and within the first 5 minutes of the film we know there will be a reveal later on showing him as the villain of the piece. It is Sean that has the best line in the film “I might as well ask if all the vodka martinis ever silenced the screams of all the men you killed; or if you find forgiveness in the arms of all those willing women, for all the dead ones you failed to protect.” Ouch baby!

In fact 007 comes in for quite a few reality checks. Alec (Sean's character) also refers to him as “Her Majesty’s loyal terrier” (good dog), and M calls him a "sexist, misogynist dinosaur!" Then Natalya tells him that being a hero and being so cold is what keeps him alone. Brosnan can’t portray his emotion the same way that Dalton could, but he has to deal with a lot of criticism of his character here.

Famke Janssen is a pretty good henchwoman. OK, she has a fairly ludicrous name, and an over-the-top way of dispatching people(!); but I liked her Zorin-like glee in the way she killed people. Now here’s a nugget of information that has been lodged in my brain for years. The woman who stunt-doubled Famke was Eunice Huthart, and I remember that she was a champion of Gladiators! Yes, that! For some reason I must have caught the show when she returned as a champion or something, and she mentioned how she’d had to wrap her legs around Pierce Brosnan! Now I’ve told that story maybe I can mercifully forget it!

In term of action, there are some pretty impressive set pieces. The first is the stunt at the beginning involving the bungee jump (at the time the world’s highest from a fixed position) and 007 launching himself off a cliff on a motorbike so that he can freefall and climb into a crashing plane. The other spectacular scene is 007 tearing up St Petersburg with a tank. With a budget over twice that of any other Bond film (presumably not inflation-adjusted) the sets that the tank charges through are tremendous, if indeed lacking some mortar.

Director Martin Campbell successfully managed to take 007 in a new direction. By concentrating on the story Goldeneye is a solid entry into the franchise. Indeed Campbell focuses on the plot so much that there are noticeable swathes of the film without 007 at all. When he does appear, Brosnan’s Bond is very committed and really looks like he cares about finding the Golden McGuffin. At the same time the writers are trying to keep the edge to Bond that characterised the previous two films, by slagging him off a few times and giving in him a slap in the face by having someone he considered a friend to be a two-faced megalomaniac. Let’s see where Brosnan’s hunted 007 goes from here.

Order of Preference so far:

You Only Live Twice, Goldfinger, The Living Daylights, Licence to Kill, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Goldeneye, Live and Let Die, The Spy Who Loved Me, For Your Eyes Only, From Russia with Love,  Dr No, The Man with the Golden Gun, A View to a Kill, Octopussy, Moonraker, Diamonds are Forever, Thunderball

Alien (1979)

I can’t remember when I first saw Alien, and so watching this again as a countdown to Prometheus, the story holds few surprises. Kind of like Empire Strikes Back, I can’t remember not knowing that Darth Vader is Luke’s dad, I can’t remember not knowing that Kane will “give birth” during dinner! However, that doesn’t mean that I can’t enjoy it, because the film is magnificent.

One of the things that makes the film so great is the setup. What makes the setup so good is that the crew of the Nostromo are just ordinary folks, they just happen to live and work on a spaceship. Bret and Parker are concerned about how much they are going to be paid, Ash is more interested in the distress call, and as Captain, Dallas is trying to get everyone to work together. As the camera moves around the ship, we see how grimy, functional and lived in a lot of it looks, and the fact that all of the sets were built makes it all the more real. In fact all of the rooms in the Nostromo were built as one big complex, so the cast couldn’t just pop in and out of a room for filming, they had to wind their way through several other rooms and corridors of the Nostromo to get to where they had to be. This just enhanced the feeling of claustrophobia and in turn affected the performance of the actors.

As well as the design of the sets, the design of everything alien is amazing. Unsettling as a lot of H.R. Giger’s work is, anything else just wouldn’t have been, well, alien enough. Not only does the alien look creepy and macabre, the life cycle is horrific too. Playing on our fears of rape and not being in control of our bodies, the host is impregnated, the alien then gestates inside the body before the victim eventually “gives birth” to the creature. As the creature matures and starts picking off the crew one by one, the tension mounts and is helped by not really seeing the alien very much. Rather, we only see flashes of it, and it is lit in such a way that we can’t really tell what we’re seeing, only that it’s gruesome yet elegant, but lethal.

Ridley Scott is often credited with being a very visual director, and for Alien he story-boarded the whole film himself so he knew exactly where he wanted to put the camera. The result is a film which really puts the viewer right in the drama, and is often a visual feast. One thing in particular that I noticed on this viewing was the amount of lens flare, very often there are obvious lights shining directly at the camera; years before J. J. Abrams thought of doing it.

The cast is all amazing. Tom Skerritt brings a sense of authority to Dallas despite being a laid-back captain; Yaphet Kotto is larger than life as Parker, but his facade of bravura soon falls following the chest-burster’s appearance. Of course the star of the show is Sigourney Weaver, carrying the final 20 minutes of the film all by herself (well there’s Jonsey as well but he doesn’t say very much). She’s quite an unlikely hero in this first film where the situation is thrust upon her; here she is not the ballsy Ripley that we see in the later films. Where she is fantastic as the kick-ass Ripley, she is equally great as the warrant officer who is overtaken by events out of her control.

An amazing film, with so many iconic scenes, putting a new spin on what is essentially an isolated haunted house story. Combine this with Ridley Scott’s style and some amazing visual effects, and Alien is rightly considered a classic that is up there with the greats of cinema history.

Labyrinth (1986)

I wish the Goblins would come and take you away! Right now!

Our local Picture House cinema The Belmont, is currently showing several classic 80s films. Back to the Future and American Werewolf in London have been and gone, and the next in line was Labyrinth. I know a lot of people talk about The Princess Bride as being a childhood adventure favourite, but I didn't see it until I was in my 20s so didn't really get the appeal; for me Labyrinth is the iconic childhood adventure (as well as The Goonies naturally).

Despite being 26 years old Labyrinth is still great fun. Bowie is hilariously camp, Jennifer Connelly is pretty good as Sarah, and of course all the creatures are nicely brought to life by Jim Henson studios. In fact it is the puppets that save the film from looking too dated. Because there is precious little blue screen (the little that there is doesn't look good), and all the puppets are right there with Jennifer, it still looks pretty great. The story is very straightforward, but since the focus is getting lost in the labyrinth and meeting fantastic creatures the film really scores. I had never realised before that George Lucas was the executive producer, so that explains why it is all so fantastic and outrageous fun; the highlight of which is the Bog of Eternal Stench!

A truly daft film that has no right to be as entertaining as it still is. Lots of detail and great little touches (e.g. 2 bottles of milk outside the door to the Goblin Palace!). And let's be honest, The Princess Bride doesn't have David Bowie in tights does it!

                                                                   Truly terrifying!

Never Let Me Go (2010)

Never Let Me Go is one of those films that I either don't remember putting on our LoveFilm list, or my wife did. Either way, I knew nothing about it other than Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield were in it. This probably explains why I felt it was so hard-hitting and emotional; if I had known what the story involved I would have been prepared for it. As it was I was completely caught off guard, and the impact of the story was so much more brutal than it would otherwise have been.

I'm not going to mention the plot at all as that would spoil everything. If you don't know the story, keep it that way before you see it. It isn't far into the film that we find out the crux of the plot and from there we kind of know where the film is likely to take us, but that doesn't make it any easier to handle. Carey Mulligan gives a typically mature and excellent performance as Kathy, Andrew Garfield is good as Tommy, and Keira Knightley is OK as Ruth. Actually, Carey Mulligan is perfectly cast as she has really sad eyes, and she often looks like she is about to burst into tears. Her face really is a reflection of the atmosphere of the film as a whole. The relationship between the three main characters is the driving force of the film, and as such the leads all work really well together. If their performances or their chemistry hadn't worked, then the film would not have been as emotional as it was.

A very beautiful yet haunting film, both aspects of which are enhanced by the music which I half expected to have been composed by Warren Ellis and Nick Cave (The Road; The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford). Well made and very well acted, Never Let Me Go is definitely worth seeing, just make sure you have someone to cuddle up to near the end.

The Avengers (2012)

The Avengers (or to give it its stupid title Avengers Assemble) is one of the most entertaining films I have seen in quite a while. Managing to avoid the pitfalls of making a ensemble film, Joss Whedon has managed to weave together the heroes and personalities from several great films into a tapestry of non-stop action, which never-the-less still has a heart. It is also more jam packed with humour than a lot of comedies I’ve seen.

The one main advantage that an Avengers film was always going to have was that it didn’t have to explain the genesis of any of its characters. Thanks to some great films over the years we know what an arrogant playboy Tony Stark is, we know how Steve Rogers became Captain America and why a Second World War soldier is still just as young today, we know the relationship between Thor and his brother Loki, and we know that there’s some weird blue energy than ties them all together. The flip side of this was balancing all these characters out, giving them all enough screen time to shine, and making them all connect in a believable way. And Joss Whedon did it perfectly.

A lot of the humour comes from Robert Downey Jr who once again demonstrates that only he could play Tony Stark; and while his relationship with Captain America, Thor, or Mark Ruffalo’s excellent portrayal of Bruce Banner isn’t the heart and soul of the film, it’s these connections that help make the film so enjoyable. Tom Hiddleston is fantastic as Loki. I know a lot of people thought his performance in Thor was really good, but in all honestly I didn’t really think it was that noticeable, but here he is superb. In film of great acting talent, Tom’s is perhaps the standout performance.

The action of course is all tremendous. I saw this in 2D, and couldn’t see how 3D would have made it any better. The final part of the film is non-stop action (actually most of the film is), but it was never boring or repetitive, and the camera moves were fluid enough so that it was never confusing. I also liked the several little Joss Whedon touches that really made the film his. For example I thought that the shuttle that the Avengers fly had more than a passing resemblance to Serenity; and there were also quite a few quick zooms and jerky focusing like in Firefly. On a different note, I thought Loki’s helmet must have been modelled on Hellboy!

Great cast, great action, great story, great film. I’m sure there is a lot more to discuss, but 1) I’m sure other people will do it anyway, and 2) I want to see it again so that I can notice more detail!