Evil Angels

The taking of baby Azaria Chamberlain by a dingo in 1980 outback Australia snowballed into one of the great media witch hunts of our time, culminating in the wrongful imprisonment of Lindy Chamberlain, the child's mother. This kind of tale of injustice and tragedy would normally be enough fodder for a scandalistic TV movie, but the role of the Australian media in the incident gives a film like Evil Angels scope to examine the way our media works and how it can affect society in such a powerful way. It's this angle that gives Evil Angels international relevance, and was no doubt instrumental in drawing the talents of Meryl Streep.

A lesser film might've implied some level (or possibility) of guilt on Lindy Chamberlain's part, playing into the longstanding beliefes that some of the wider Australian public still hold even today despite her eventual acquittal. Thankfully, Evil Angels doesn't muddy the issue in such a way - her imprisonment is depicted as a gross miscarriage of justice aided and abetted by a pervasive and relentless trial by media. The film starts in a naturalistic and unassuming fashion, and shows Azaria actually being taken by a dingo (it isn't gratuitous but it's pretty clear that this is what happens). This clears the deck for the film's media-focused subtext to unfold without the viewer getting caught up on the irrelevance of whether Lindy is guilty or not. In the context of the film, she's innocent.

Evil Angels builds a strong case for the conviction of other parties - the media and the Australian legal system. Let's break it down.

• Reference is made to fears from the Northern Territory authorities that if a dingo is deemed responsible for the death and disappearance of baby Azaria that it will affect tourism to the reigion, and this is shown to be instrumental inthe way they handled (or mishandled) the case.
• The N.T. police automatically assumed Lindy Chamberlain was guilty of murdering Azaria, and so the gathering of evidence was not taken seriously and inadvertently interfered with by people who were dismissive of certain possibilities (not the scene where Azaria's clothes are found in the desert).
• Australian society in the early 1980s was predominantly made up of lapsed protestants or lapsed catholics, and was hence mistrustful of smaller religious sects or religion in general. As the Chamberlains were devout 7th Day Adventists it meant that a lot of the public couldn't empathise with them. Their religious views were seen as 'weird' and their pious attitude regarding the death of their daughter was out of step with how mainstream Australia expected them to react.
• The media is shown manipulating images and facts by taking things out of context to reinforce the opinion that the Chamberlains were guilty. The presence of journalists and cameras throughout the film shows how oppressive an influence they become on this family's life (this is seen mainly through the breakdown of Michael Chamberlain [Sam Neill]).

Director Fred Schepsi does a great job of presenting this metaphorical crucifixion in an easy accessible and uncondescending way. His effective use of cutaways to the Australian public demonstrates how Azara's disappearance stopped a nation and held it in its grip. This, along with with a brutally honest depiction of daggy 1980s suburban Australia with its footy socks and severly mishapen haircuts, helps set the tone for a drama with historical relevance.

HIGHLIGHTS: A lot has been said about Streep's performance (mainly her adoption of the Australian accent) but I think her replication of Australian cadences is very much on the money, especially in regards to her character and the era. Also, the performance beyond this more than artisictially sound in the sense tha Streep gives the blinkered performance the film needs rather than falling into the trap of trying to win the audience's sympathy via hysterics and overt humanisation.

TRIVIA: There is some controversy surrounding what this film is actually called... in America (and apparently the UK) it was released as A Cry in the Dark. There is a lot of heated discussion on both wikipedia and IMDB.com on whether the film should be referred to by this more internationally common title or the (correct) Australian title, Evil Angels. Personally, I think the rest of the world should let us have this one - it's our film and our story, so call it by our name. No one calls Beijing 'Peking' anymore, do they?

DIRECTOR: Fred Schepsi
WRITER/SOURCE: Script by Robert Caswell and Fred Schepsi, based on the non-fiction book Evil Angels by John Bryson.
KEY ACTORS: Meryl Streep, Sam Neill, Bruce Myles, Maurie Fields, Charles Tingwell, Nick Tate, Sandy Gore, John Howard, Frankie J. Holden, Deborah-Lee Furness, Tony Martin, Ian McFadyen, Mark Mitchell, Glenn Robbins, Jeff Truman, Kim Gyngell

RELATED TEXTS:
- The non-fiction book Evil Angels by John Bryson, which is still in print today.
- Through My Eyes, the autobiography of Lindy Chamberlain, published in 2004.
- Channel 7 produced a 2004 mini-series based on Chamberlain's book, also called Through My Eyes, this time starring Miranda Otto as Lindy Chamberlain and Craig McLachlan as Michael Chamberlain.
- There was also an earlier TV movie called Who Killed Baby Azaria?, starring Elaine Hudson, made in 1983 while Chamberlain was in gaol.

AWARDS
Academy Awards - nomination Best Actress (Meryl Streep)
AFI Awards - won Best Film, Best Director, Best Actress (Meryl Streep), Best Actor (Sam Neill) and Best Screenplay. Also nominated for Best Editing, Best Sound and Best Music.
Cannes Film Festival - won Best Actress (Meryl Streep). Nominated for the Golden Palm.
Golden Globes - nomination Best Director, Best Film - Drama, Best Actress - Drama (Meryl Streep) and Best Screenplay.

G.I. Joe

Celluloid trash of the most expensive kind, G.I. Joe: The Rise of the Cobra is a would-be franchise drowned in Michael Bay-like ditz and muscle. Even with putting aside my prejudices regarding a high budget cash-grab based on a line of thoroughly uninteresting toys from twenty to thirty years ago, G.I. Joe: The Rise of the Cobra is worthless in every sense. Here's five reasons why...

1. Far too many characters... I could barely keep track of who was who, let alone what was going on. I also did not have a chart of G.I. Joe figures to refer to whilst watching the film so maybe that was entirely my own mistake.

2. Christopher Eccleston. He trounces around as a dastardly businessman with a bad scoohtish accent, and that's pretty much the gist of his plans.

3. A lot of the action left me unenthused - it's mostly bloodless CGI-heavy stuff that makes it fairly interchangeable with Transformers.

4. Brendan Fraser. I'm told he was in this film. He could've been, I didn't really notice him.

5. I'm sorry, but the whole concept is a bit silly, isn't it? Basing a big budget live-action film on some toys from the 1980s and insisting on cramming about twenty characters in for maximum merchandising opportunities - the whole thing just felt shallow and about as far as you can get from a good reason to make a movie. See Small Soldiers for something that touches on the same ideas (IE. A toy line based on military idolatry) in an infinitely superior way.

If I was the sort of person who rated movies I'd give this a zero out of ten.

DIRECTOR: Stephen Sommers
WRITER/SOURCE: Script by Stuart Beattie, David Elliot and Paul Lovett, with story input from Michael Gordon and Stephen Sommers. Based on the 1982 re-launch of the G.I. Joe toyline by Hasbro.
KEY ACTORS: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Sienna Miller, Christopher Eccleston, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Jonathan Pryce, Ray Park, Channing Tatum, Marlon Wayons, Dennis Quaid, Rachel Nichols

RELATED TEXTS:
- G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero was an animated TV series that ran from 1985 to 1987, based closely on the toyline. It was re-launched again in 1989 and ran for another year or so.
- G.I. Joe: The Movie followed the original TV series, and was intended for theatrical release in 1987. The box office failure of a similar animated-film for Transformers meant that it got released directly to video though.
- There have also been a couple of direct-to-DVD animated G.I. Joe films released in the mid-2000s.
- Director Stephen Sommers has a lot to answer for, he also directed the first two Mummy films with Brendan Fraser and the abominable Van Helsing.

Clint & Clyde

The idea of Clint Eastwood teaming up with an orang-utan sounds like the sort of high concept Hollywoodism that frequently gets lampooned, but lo and behold: it really happened. Twice. In every macho screen tough guy's career there comes a point where he has to do a comedy in order to prove his range as an actor. The results range from the bizarrely inappropriate (Schwarzenegger in Kindergarten Cop) to the downright awful (Vin Diesel's The Pacifier) and the surprisingly good (Dwayne Johnson's supporting turn in Be Cool). Every Which Way But Loose and Any Which Way You Can are very much freewheeling, low-brow products of their time (the late 70s/early 80s - the era of Smokey and the Bandit and Cannonball Run) and critics ridiculed Eastwood for making such films but, as usual, Eastwood laughed all the way to the bankas audiences lapped it up in droves.


Every Which Way But Loose
Philo (Clint Eastwood) is an illicit barefist boxer and professional truckdriver who gets into a series of misadventures as he searches for love and glory in the American mid-west. Accompanied by Clyde (his trusty orang-utan sidekick), his best friend Orville (Geoffrey Lewis) and his feisty grandmother (Ruth Gordon), Philo seeks to beat the legendary Tank Murdock (Walter Barnes) whilst avoiding the wrath of a local neo-nazi biker gang and some corrupt highway cops.

The unusual (or smart) thing about Eastwood doing comedy is that he isn't really funny nor does he try to be. Part of the 'joke' is putting Eastwood in the middle of this madcap 70s comedy and having him react and interact in typical Eastwood fashion despite being in a different kind of film with a different set of rules. When most 'serious' actors try to do comedies they often think they need to try and be funny and usually their dignity suffers if they fail. Eastwood doesn't take that risk, so no matter how silly the movie gets his image remains fairly untarnished.

DIRECTOR: James Fargo
WRITER/SOURCE: Jeremy Joe Kronsberg
KEY ACTORS: Clint Eastwood, Sondra Locke, Geoffrey Lewis, Ruth Gordon, John Quade, Hank Worden, Bill McKinney


Any Which Way You Can
The sequel is very much just more of the same, it repeats the honourable rival and honour-amongst-fighters theme and chucks in some inept mafia hoods alongside the neo-nazi bikers. Both of these films are very much aimed at a lowest common denominator audience, so there's lots of awful country music peppered throughout. Any Which Way You Can veers into the downright cartoonish and inane sometimes (especially in regards to the bikers) but one thing I will say though is that I never thought I'd see Clint Eastwood playing a sex scene for laughs!

These films won't set anyone's world on fire (some parts are so bad that it's downright painful to watch) and I wouldn't really recommend watching them back to back whilst sober. I guess Any Which Way You Can holds a special place in history as the last true film in the 'ape-thinks-he's-people' subgenre of comedy.

DIRECTOR: Buddy Van Horn
WRITER/SOURCE: Stanford Sherman
KEY ACTORS: Clint Eastwood, Geoffrey Lewis, Sondra Locke, Ruth Gordon, Bill McKinney, Barry Corbin, William Smith, John Quade

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie seems at first to be of the teacher-student subgenre where great teachers change the lives of their students forever by teaching them independence, self-esteem and the ability to be an adult (EG. Goodbye Mr. Chips, Dead Poets Society, Stand and Deliver, etc, etc). In essence, this film adaptation sneaks onto the ignorant viewer's radar under the guise of such a story, but the character of Miss Jean Brodie (Maggie Smith, who is unforgettable in the role) is a lot more vivid and complex than your film-standard heroic teacher. At the film's heart is the question of whether she's heroic at all, with a slightly disturbing subtext on fascism and the dangerous influence adults can have on children.

Miss Jean Brodie is a progressive history teacher at a 1930s Scottish girls' school. She turns her nose up at the regular curriculum and demonstrates an astonishing level of openness with her class. She is a romantic of the highest order - idealising Mussolini and his fascist doctrine, she envisions Il Duce as a neo-Roman emperor and a link to ancient and untarnished times. Her students vie for positions within 'the Brodie Set', an elite of hand-picked girls that Jean Brodie seeks to groom as future leaders and heroines of popular culture.

I found the film's themes quite hard to process at first... I came into it as a modern viewer, thinking it was an early example of a stereotypical 'teacher' film. I saw Miss Jean Brodie as a woman torn between her ideals and her love for a married man. And she is that, but the story goes beyond such a mundane level. It was difficult for me because modern 'teacher' films have primed me to accept the wisdom of teacher figures on the screen and to see them as generally heroic rather than flawed or destructive. When such teachers butt heads with their peers or rail against the system with their unorthodox methods these films usually end with a vindication of their views, often after some rather pyrrhic battles. Not so in this case, it isn't that kind of story.

Brodie starts out the film as the closest thing to a protagonist but the film shifts allegiance from her two thirds of the way through - from what I understand, this may have been an aspect of the story lost in adaptation as the novel (that it's based on) relies heavily on a non-linear narrative whereas the film takes a more traditional approach by having the viewer see the story unfold in sequence. So, due to the viewer's changing interpretation of Brodie, the film feels deliberately ambiguous... I saw it as a reflection of the problems inherent in teaching. IE. How far should a teacher go to encourage independence? I suspect the film is actually more concerned with Brodie's political allegiances though, so this is only my personal impression.

If you only want one reason to watch this film it's for Maggie Smith's Oscar-winning performance. She's equal parts inspirational and uncomfortable to watch, pouring forth a passion and self-confidence that makes the character hard to categorise in neatly defined terms like 'hero' or 'villain'. Brodie's concept of a 'prime', the unmarried state of wilful independence that a young woman should enjoy, is portrayed by Smith as stretched thin but unyieldingly strong over a sense of ageing languish and misplaced idealism. It's one of the great screen characters, and a genuinely thought-provoking film.

DIRECTOR: Ronald Neame
WRITER/SOURCE: Script by Jay Presson Allen, based on his own Broadway play, which was based on the novel of the same name by Muriel Spark.
KEY ACTORS: Maggie Smith, Robert Stephens, Pamela Franklin, Gordon Jackson, Celia Johnson, Dianne Grayson, Jane Carr

RELATED TEXTS:
- The novella The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark was semi-autobiographical and is the best known of her works.
- Jay Presson Allen's play starred Zoe Caldwell in the title role, and debuted in 1968.
- The book was also adapted by Scottish Television into a mini-series in the late 1970s, this time starring Geraldine McEwan.
- For a similar tale of realisation, naivete and independence (this time set in the 1960s), see An Education.
- There are also some superficial similarities with the more stereotypical period teacher film Mona Lisa Smile.

AWARDS
Academy Awards - won Best Actress (Maggie Smith). Also nominated for Best Song (Jean).
BAFTAs - won Best Actress (Smith) and Best Supporting Actress (Celia Johnson). Also nominated for Best Supporting Actress (Pamela Franklin).
Cannes Film Festival - nominated for the Golden Palm.
Golden Globes - won Best Song (Jean). Nominated for Best Film (Drama) and Best Actress - Drama (Smith).

Holy Rollers

An interesting based-on-a-true-story film that examines the twin traditional/stereotypical vocations of the Jewish people - business and religion. Schmul (Jesse Eisenberg) is a young Jewish man in New York's Hasidic quarter. He has business acumen but his ambitiousness is stifled by his father's strict adherence to Hasidism (Jewish orthodoxy). They are a poor but pious family, but they're also happy. Schmul becomes bored of this missionary-like lifestyle and wants bette rfinancial prospects so he can marry. As it stands the religious poverty of his family means that no one wants to marry him, least of all the girl he likes. These factors draw Schmul towards the freer lifestyle of his neighbour and friend Yosef (Justin Bartha), a fellow Hasidic Jew who smuggles ecstasy for Israeli drug dealers.

The beauty of Holy Rollers is that it's as much about these naive guys interacting with the wider world as it is about ambition and drugs. Schmul is a perfect drug mule, he looks so traditional and innocent that no one would suspect him of transporting drugs from Amsterdam to New York. Holy Rollers is about the seduction of an attractive lifestyle but it also draws upon Jewish philosophy, such as knowing where one stands in relation to Earthly pleasures. The film traces the paths to ruin in clear, definable terms - for Yosef it comes via greed, whereas Schmul plays a dangerous game with a druglord's girl and doesn't play dumb enough to not be considered a threat. Dealing drugs isn't compatible with who he is, in this sense the film is his coming-of-age.

This naturalistic indie memoir should appeal to anyone who likes films like Blow and Half Nelson. File it under 'stranger than fiction', and watch it for Jesse Eisenberg's performance; he showcases a maturing sense of depth and plays his role with real emotional intensity beyond anything I ever expected of him.

DIRECTOR: Kevin Asch
WRITER/SOURCE: Antonio Macia, loosely based on real events.
KEY ACTORS: Jesse Eisenberg, Justin Bartha, Ari Graynor, Jason Fuchs, Q-Tip

RELATED TEXTS
- Whilst this is based on the phenomenon of Hasidic Jewish drug mules in the late 1990s, it's not actually based on any real people. The only remotely related original source I can think of is the memoir The Holy Thief, about a Jewish con man who turned rabbi. It has nothing to do with drugs but it's a true story that deals with the same unlikely themes relating to Jewish orthodoxy and crime.
- Also see A Serious Man, another (more high profile) recent indie film that deals with Jewish philosophy.
- For the drug side of things, you probably can't really go past Blow, the true story of cocaine smuggler George Jung, or Maria Full of Grace, which deals with South American drug mules.
- Snatch features a more comedic depiction of criminals disguising themselves as Hasidic Jews.

AWARDS
Nominated for a Grand Jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival. Kevin Asch also won a Breakthrough Director award from the Gotham Awards.

Moonraker

(Here be spoilers if you are yet to see the James Bond movies...)

The Mission
The Moonraker shuttle gets hijacked in mid-air and James Bond is sent to investigate it's disappearance. He stumbles upon some secret experiments being conducted by Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale), the man behind the Moonraker project, and discovers an ambitious scheme to poison humanity that leads him to a hidden space station.

Jimmy Bond Yo!
One thing I noticed about Moonraker was the bit where Bond is almost killed by a centrifugal force in an astronaut-training facility... he's visibly more affected by the experience than by anything else in his spy career so far, and for once he doesn't have a foolhardy quip. He also seems out of his depth in a space shuttle but remains cool and collected at all times, even when the Moonraker shuttle looks like it's about to burn up on re-entry. Bond does however know something about rare Orinoco plants, which stretches credibility a little.

Roger Moore breezes through the role with his trademark qualities of barely-contained mirth and a certain quizzicalness. He looks perhaps a little too comfortable in a Venetian ribbon-hat and loose open-necked shirt.

Villainy
Hugo Drax is a space tycoon who lives in a grandiose chalet that has been improbably transported from France to California brick-by-brick. He's cultured, plays the piano, enjoys hunting, and keeps highly-trained Doberman Pinschers that kill on command. His plan is to repopulate the Earth with genetically-superior humans after killing everyone with a special nerve gas whilst he and his 'children' wait the holocaust out on a space station. The character and his plans are virtually a direct retread of Stromberg from The Spy Who Loved Me, substituting space for water (and an anaconda for a shark).

The unkillable Jaws (Richard Kiel) returns but his presence is mostly played for laughs this time around. He's evidently not very bright - he tries to convert a regular speedboat into a hang glider when he sees 007 do the same with his own specially-modified boat. Jaws is working for Drax now, which is faintly ridiculous in itself - do henchmen like Jaws advertise their services somewhere? How is it that he was able to find work with yet another world-threatening megalomaniac? Most memorably, Jaws becomes an unlikely ally of Bond during the film's climax, and even gets to speak a line of dialogue in one of his final scenes.

Drax also employs the services of another henchman early on in the film, a Japanese aikado expert named Chang (Toshiro Suga). He and Bond have an entertainingly destructive fight in a Venetian museum.

Buddies and Babes
The lead Bond girl is Dr Holly Goodhead (Lois Chiles), an undercover CIA agent and astronautical scientist. The dynamic between herself and Bond is playfully antagonistic and a little remniscent of his relationship with Agent XXX in The Spy Who Loved Me. Both filsm demonstrate a more modern attitude towards female capabilities, though the name 'Goodhead' and the casting of a beautiful actress in the role suggests that the filmmakers haven't really come all that far at all.

Bond also gets assistance from Manuela (Emily Bolton), a Brasillian agent, but her presence is brief and fairly forgettable. Early on in the film he also teams up with Corinne Dufour (Corinne Clery), Drax's buxom helicopter pilot.

M (Bernard Lee) is forced by Sir Frederick Gray (Geoffrey Keen) to reprimand Bond at one point by giving him a two-week suspension. Off the record however he is more than supportive of 007, and never doubts his word at any point. Meanwhile, Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell) is starting to show her age now with the haircut of an old lady.

Locations
There are four main locations for Moonraker - California, Venice, Rio de Janeiro and space. The Californian sequences may as well be anywhere (they were actually filmed in France) btu Venice, with its canals and sense of history, is used quite well. Rio is great too, lending itself to carnivale sequences, breathtaking cable car action-scenes, jungels, rivers and ancient (Mayan?) ruins.

A (mostly) realistic approach is taken to the climax set in space, with appropriate weightlessness and use of accurate vehicles. However, this all goes out the window when two floating armies noisily duke it out in space with lasers and no survival cords.

Gadgets and Tricks of the Trade
Q (Desmond Llewelyn) gives Bond a rather handy watch with a dartgun hidden inside it, operating by a flexing of the wrist. 007 also gets a special canal boat that converts into a land-skimming hovercraft and a hang glider/speedboat hybrid that ejects bombs and heatseaking mini-torpedos. Bond also carries a cigarette case that doubles as a safe-cracking device, and has a tiny reconaissance camera with '007' embossed on it.


Licence to Kill
Bond inadvertantly kills an enemy agent in the opening pre-titles sequence when he confiscates his parachute pack in mid-air. After that the action is pretty constant - he discretely shoots a sniper in a tree when Drax invites him to hunt pheasant, throws a knife into another henchman on the Venetian canals, and throws Chang through a high window. He kills a man disguised as a medical orderly by rolling him down a street in a trolley, where he lands headfirst in an advertising billboard. He also blows up two boatloads of pursuing men and ejects Drax into space without a spacesuit.

Shag-Rate
Bond 'rewards' Drax's pilot after getting some information out of her. He and Dr. Goodhead also 'pool' their resources after realising they're essentially on the same team. His sexual appetite is more voracious than usual, he also shags Manuela within two minutes of meeting her! Finally, he and Goodhead enjoy a zero gravity bonk at the film's end (this time with the Queen herself watching via a live satellite feed).

Quotes
HUGO DRAX (to Chang): Look after Mr. Bond. See that some harm comes to him.

DR. GOODHEAD: I can only hope our meeting here is a coincidence. I dislike being spied on.
JAMES BOND: Oh, don't we all.

JAMES BOND (whilst undoing Manuela's robe): How do we kill five hours in Rio if you don't know how to samba?

JAMES BOND (on seeing Jaws): I might've guessed.
DR. GOODHEAD: Do you know him?
JAMES BOND: Not socially. His name's Jaws. He kills people.

DR. GOODHEAD: Have you broken something?
JAMES BOND: Only my tailor's heart.

HUGO DRAX: Mr. Bond, you defy all my attempts to plan an amusing death for you. You're not a sportsman Mr. Bond, why did you break off the encounter with my pet python?
JAMES BOND: I discovered he had a crush on me.

SIR FREDERICK GRAY (seeing Bond and Dr. Goodhead copulating on viewscreen): My god, what's Bond doing?
Q (watching radar screen): I think he's attempting re-entry sir.

How Does It Rate?
I guess it was inevitable that the success of The Spy Who Loved Me would mean the filmmakers would try to replicate its formula as closely as possible. This means that Drax and his 'ubermensch' plot is almost identical to Stromberg's Atlantis scheme. The other big influence on Moonraker is the then-recent success of Star Wars and the resulting big budget sci-fi boom. The space sequences (with accompanying use of 2001-ish classical music) are suitably serious and well-executed, demonstrating the high production values and slickness that characterised The Spy Who Loved Me and would become an intrinsic and expected part of the James Bond series from this point on.

Moonraker is entertaining enough but it's also weighed down by some of the silliness that made The Man with the Golden Gun so unfortunately mediocre. The love story angle with Jaws (he gets a girlfriend) is stupid and his scenes lack the fright factor that previously made him such an effective presence. Also, Jaws' place in this film doesn't make sense... I can (just) buy into the fact that he has found work with another villain mastermind, but this doesn't explain why he'd be on the plane with 007 in the pre-titles sequence (which otherwise seems unconnected with the main Drax-related plot). Also, the film repeats the plane trick from You Only Live Twice and makes the same mistake again - why ruin a perfectly good plane to kill someone when you can just shoot them (or if you're going to just push them out anyway?)

I don't think it's too much to ask for consideration to be made with Bond films in relation to basic logic. I know they're largely intended as escapist fun, but some elements of Moonraker just take the piss.

Visit my James Bond page.

DIRECTOR: Lewis Gilbert
WRITER/SOURCE: Script by Christopher Wood, based on the novel by Ian Fleming.
KEY ACTORS: Roger Moore, Michael Lonsdale, Lois Chiles, Richard Kiel, Toshiro Suga, Corinne Clery, Bernard Lee, Geoffrey Keen, Desmond Llewelyn, Lois Maxwell

RELATED TEXTS:
- Loosely based on Moonraker, the third James Bond novel in Ian Fleming's series.
- Moonraker was first adapted as a South African radio play in 1956.
- A lot of this film's look and its use of space was directly inspired by the success of Star Wars. The more realistic nature of the James Bond franchise (relatively speaking) means that the space sequences owe inevitably owe a stylistic debt to 2001 as well.
- The second Austin Powers film, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, draws upon and spoofs several elements from this film.
- Some aspects of Ian Fleming's original novel were also used in the later James Bond film Die Another Day.

AWARDS
Academy Awards - nominated Best Special Effects.

Factotum

Factotum continues the adventures of Rossamund from the novels Foundling and Lamplighter by D. M. Cornish. It seeks to give Rossamund's story a sense of completion or resolution by bringing him to a part of self-actualisation, a theme that had bubbled beneath the surface of the previous two novels like a driving undercurrent. Cornish succeeds in this aim by rounding off Rossamund's trilogy in a satisfying if abrupt manner, however the fantastic setting of these three novels - the dark and intriguing Half-Continent - means that the reader is left wanting much, much more.

The previous novel saw Rossamund shift careers from lamplighter to factotum. A factotum is a personal aide to a teratologist (a monster-slayer/expert), and Rossamund's skills with potives and his taboo-breaking empathy for monsters makes him a unique sidekick for the legendary teratologist Europe. In Factotum Rossamund must adjust to life in the big city of Brandenbrass, where he makes newfound enemies after stumbling on an illicit monster-fighting ring, and questions his own existence after encountering one of the mythical monster-lords.

The level of detail that Cornish has built up for these novels suggests such a depth of richness that each chapter, character or throwaway remark lets the reader know that the Half-Continent and its history already exists in the author's mind; fully-formed and as near-infinite as the real world. I would like to know so much more about characters like Four Feathers or the Rabbit Lord. I look at the map at the novel's beginning and after these three novels I feel like it's a real place that I've only just started to get to know.

The care and development that Cornish has invested in Factotum means that the pace of the adventure sometimes gets a little bogged down in arcane language and pesudo-historical minutiae. My fascination with the novel's striking originality never leaves me bored thugh, I just had to read on to find out more and more, but I'm not sure if the bulk of the novels' supposed readership (young adults/teenagers) would latch onto it in the way that I did. I do appreciate the lengths that Cornish has gone to in order to carve out a self-sufficient niche in an oversaturated fantasy market though - especially when the end result is just do damn cool.

Luckily, despite this being the last in the trilogy, Cornish plans to continue exploring the Half-Continent in other stories that don't feature Rossamund. I just hope we don't have to wait too long to read them!

Cronos

An early low-budget Mexican horror-fantasy from Guillermo Del Toro, one of the genre's (future) masters. Cronos takes the well-worn vampire mythos and re-imagines them with a new back story and context. In this film a vampiric-like condition becomes a side effect of an incorrectly-used alchemic device from the middle ages. This device is a golden scarab beetle-like instrument that houses a rare insect capable of administering 'fountain of youth'-like properties via its venom. However, its use comes with certain rules that, if disobeyed, can lead to bloodlust and an undead-like state of existence.

The hero of the film is Jesus (Federico Luppi), an elderly antique dealer who gets accidentally stung by the cronos device. He is the guardian of a young grandaughter, Aurora (Tamara Shannath); the veritable apple of his eye. When the cronos device causes him to get younger her finds himself tempted to use it further in order to get a second lease on life... he will be able to see his grandaughter grow up and rekindle a passion with younger wife. But there are others who seek the device, a terminally ill businessman (Claudio Brook) and his brutish nephew (Ron Perlman) who understand its properties and side effects, and a stand off will arise between the themselves and Jesus.

Unlike Hollywood horror films where the protagonists are young people with motivations tied to lust or love, Cronos takes on a fairytale quality in that the protagonist is an old man with a 6 year old grandaughter. This reflects the nature of the story and its motifs of age vs. youth - the presence of antiques and characters preoccupied with their impending deaths. It also contains the dark fantasy aspects that characterise most of Del Toro's work - the gallows humour, offbeat characters, and truly horrifying contrasts of the regular with the abject (such as the scene where Jesus develops a taste for blood). The emergence of a vampiric subtext is also slow and understated... it's an epic story told in a small way, with no direct reference to the hallmarks of the vampire genre and with its own self-contained mythology. The gradual transformation of Jesus is presented as a curse, and he never stops being the film's hero (albeit a flawed one).

HIGHLIGHT: Ron Perlman is the grumbling Angel de la Guardia, a more regular guy then he usually gets to play. His character is obsessed with getting plastic surgery, which plays into the film's themes of vanity and tampering with nature.

DIRECTOR: Guillermo Del Toro
WRITER/SOURCE: Guillermo Del Toro
KEY ACTORS: Federico Luppi, Ron Perlman, Claudio Brook, Margarita Isabel, Tamara Shanath

RELATED TEXTS:
- Guillermo Del Toro continued his exploration of dark fantasy in The Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth.
- David Cronenberg's adaptation of Stephen King's The Dead Zone has a similar tone and atmosphere to Cronos.
- For other 'sideways' looks at vampirism, check out the TV show Ultraviolet and the films The Hunger, Let the Right One In, Martin and The Addiction.

AWARDS
Cannes Film Festival - won Mercedes-Benz award.

The Man Who Knew Too Much

Alfred Hitchcock's original 1930s version of The Man Who Knew Too Much is probably lesser known than his Hollywood remake from the 1950s but perhaps just as good. The remake, featuring Doris Day and James Stewart, is very much in keeping with Hitchcock's colourful and watertight 'big' suspense films from the 1950s, whereas this version from the 1934 is much darker and grittier in tone and very much in keeping with the director's other mid-309s espionage thrillers Secret Agent and Sabotage.

The Man Who Knew Too Much concerns a British couple holidaying in the Swiss Alps. Through a chance meeting with an undercover French spy they find themselves privvy to sensitive information. It's information that will put them in danger after said spy is suddently assassinated. Hitchcock tightens the screws by having the couple's daughter kidnapped by the killers and held as collateral, and Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence find themselves thrust into the midst of a political powderkeg back in London as a result. Unable to turn to the authorities, they might just be a high-ranking European diplomat's only salvation as the assassin's continue their dastardly plans.

I can't say I enjoyed this version as much as the North African-flavoured remake but it has a certain desperation to it that feels a bit more realistic. The famous climactic scene at the Royal Albert Hall is more effectively realised in the James Stewart-Doris Day version, but this 1930s version does have the incomparable Peter Lorre in one of his first English-language roles as a villain. There's also a pretty cool street shoot-out that's based on the real life London street siege known as the Battle of Stepney.

DIRECTOR: Alfred Hitchcock
WRITER/SOURCE: Script by Charles Bennett and D. B. Wyndham-Lewis, with input from Edwin Greenwood, A. R. Rawlinson and Emlyn Williams.
KEY ACTORS: Leslie Banks, Edna Best, Peter Lorre, Hugh Wakefield, Pierre Fresnay, Nova Pilbeam.

RELATED TEXTS:
- Alfred Hitchcock remade his own film under the same title, The Man Who Knew Too Much, twenty years later in 1956. This American-financed version is often considered one of his core classics from his golden period in the 1950s.
- Also see Hitchcock's other 1930s British espionage films: Secret Agent, The 39 Steps, The Lady Vanishes and Sabotage.
- Bill Murray starred in a spoof-spy film called The Man Who Knew Too Little in 1997. It wasn't very successful.

Rango

Slightly surreal and thoroughly entertaining, Rango took me completely by surprise. When we see animated films coming out these days we tend to more or less know what we're going to get - a Disney, Pixar, Dreamworks film or something in between. Rango is none of these things and so much more... it's an existential comedy-western that pits an unlikely hero against the ruthless march of progress, a search for identity, and a gruesome gallery of wonderfully realised western stock-characters. Some of the film is downright shocking - not because it's neccessarily too adult, but simply because I've become so used to the 'rules' of animated American feature films. I mean, you don't expect to see characters die or joke about the 'active social lives' of their mothers, let alone question their existence or casually get around with an arrow lodged in their eye socket! I don't think Rango is inappropriate for kids, they see and hear much worse in real life or a Transformers movie, but some viewers may find the film's independence completely unexpected.

Rango (Johnny Depp) is a pet chameleon who finds himself stranded in the desert after a car accident. An encounter with a tire-flattened Armadillo (Alfred Molina) leads him to the sun-hardened town of Dirt; a decrepit wild west-like settlement inhabited by animals who covet water (something that is getting increasingly hard for them to procure). Through a combination of tall tale-telling and accidental heroics, Rango is made the town's new sheriff. He enjoys his newfound status as a 'somebody' but his ineptitude unwittingly puts him on the trail of a water-hoarding conspiracy, and soon he's leading a motley posse of crusty townsfolk across the Mojave desert.

First of all, Rango is absolutely and delightfully crazy. Not in a self-consciously 'wacky' way, it's just so hilariously bonkers and audacious that you can't help but love the way it flies off on tangents or breaks the fourth wall to talk directly to the audience. The humour gets very dark at times but it's never an unpleasant or Tim Burton-y experience mainly due to the inspired character design and some enthusiastically nervous vocal work from Depp. The western setting is the film's number 1 star, it allows for a range of animals that don't normally get anthropomorphised in cartoons - burrowing owls, cactus mice, ground squirrels, gila monsters, desert toads, peccaries, etc. I think my favourite character Spoons... some o fthe supporting characters are so fascinatingly horrible to look at that I couldn't take my eyes off them!

Another great thing that the film has going for it is that it's refreshingly free of pop culture references and annoyingly sassy characters designed to appeal to kids. The story itself is a well-crafted homage to a variety of great westerns (see Related Texts) and an introspective character-study, with some amazing set pieces that manage to always be surprising. Rango has all the inventiveness of a quirky animated short film, only it somehow manages to keep this tone inplace consistently from beginning to end. If this film had come out a few months earlier I would've pegged it as a more deserving Best Animated Film Oscar winner than Toy Story 3... and that's not to put Toy Story 3 down, it's just saying how amazing and original Rango is.

DIRECTOR: Gore Verbinski
WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by John Logan, with story input from Gore Verbinski and James Byrkit.
KEY ACTORS: Johnny Depp, Ned Beatty, Alfred Molina, Timothy Olyphant, Isla Fisher, Abigail Breslin, Bill Nighy, Stephen Root, Ray Winstone, Harry Dean Stanton, Ian Abercrombie

RELATED TEXTS:
- Gore Verbinski and Johnny Depp previously teamed up The Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy.
- A lot of the western mythology (and music) that the film draws on comes directly from Sergio Leone's westerns, namely A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, The Good The Bad and the Ugly and Once Upon a Time in the West.
- The character of Rango has been compared to the 'hero' of the Don Knotts comedy-western The Shakiest Gun in the West and the character of Barney Fife (also played by Don Knotts) from The Andy Griffith Show.
- Other influences include Chinatown, Blazing Saddles, Three Amigos, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Rio Bravo.

Lamplighter

Today's review, if you hadn't gathered from the handily provided picture above, is of Monster Blood Tattoo: Lamplighter, the second volume of the strikingly original teen fantasy series by Australian writer and illustrator D. M Cornish. Anyone who has read my review of the first book in this series, Foundling, should be aware of how much a fan I am of this author's work. I'd like to start off this review by saying that I was very happy to find Lamplighter even more entertaining and fantastic than the first book. This bodes well for Volume 3! But let's not get too ahead of ourselves...

Picking up almost immediately from the last novel, we find our diminutive and strangely-named hero Rossamund settling into his new career as an apprentice lamplighter. The job of the lamplighter is to keep the lamps along the many roads and highways on the Half-Continent well lit. This is a lot more dangerous than it sounds. Often, the lamplighters find themselves in remote locales and all too frequently at the mercy of bizarre and deadly monsters. It's not a popular job either, and they seem to receive little support from anyone, so from the outset it's pretty clear that Rossamund is going to have his work cut out for him.

Cornish takes the opportunity here to explore the institution set up around the fictitious trade of lamplighting. More than half the novel is set in the labyrinthine school where these young boys are all too briefly trained in this thankless trade and, with the hindsight provided by this interview with the author, it's clear that the Gormenghast books work their influence here more strongly than ever. We are introduced to a myriad of new and sometimes grotesque characters, each one uniquely sketched (both literally and descriptively) and equally memorable. My favourite would have to be the damaged but well-meaning Numps. We also get to re-meet some of the more interesting characters from the previous book (the much-anticipated return of the Branden Rose is very welcome in particular). And, of course, what would this book be without monsters? Cornish brings forth a whole new slew of fascinating and original creatures, aided by both his wonderful drawings and magnificently evocative and easy-to-read prose.

I don't want to go into too much detail for fear of spoiling it for anyone interested in reading the series, but the author also builds on the themes of morality hinted at in the previous book and we also get to learn more of Rossamund's curious origins. I'm not being over the top when I say that this book is outstanding and that it more than exceeded my already high expectations, and all I can say is that my appetite for the third book is well and truly whetted. Lamplighter was an absolute pleasure to read.

Bloody Mama

There's been some degree of critical re-evaluation of Roger Corman's work in recent times, attesting to the maxim that if someone sticks around long enough they'll be accorded the status of a legend. I can't say I'm on board with this view, there isn't really much of merit in Bloody Mama - it's very much a schlockly Shelley Winters veheicle that seeks to exploit the blood and guts glory of Bonnie and Clyde by emulating it in an incredibly vapid and half-arsed way.

Winters plays a highly fictionalised version of Depression-era gangster Ma Barker, with the film following the escalating hi-jinks of her lawless sons as she tenuously tries to exert control over them. The film's prologue shows Barker's sexual abuse as a child at the hands of her father and brothers. She vows to raise a family of loyal boys that will become her instrument of revenge on society. What follows is an episodic hillbilly-gangster B film that juxtaposes jolly hoedown music with violence and pseudo-sermonising, aided by a healthy helping of stock footage and irrelevant voiceover to help establish the era. There's no real cohesiveness to the film, it's more or less just a series of scenes pretending to be a real movie, and it gets boring really fast.

There are some good actors but the hack script and paint-by-numbers direction makes it what it is: a cheaply produced midnight movie. Shelley Winters might've been good if she'd had a decent director to reign her in but instead she goes way over the top. Sometimes this sort of thing can be a welcome relief in poor films but Winters' wailing and yabbering becomes intensely grating and unbearable. Also look out for a young Robert De Niro as her skinny hillbilly-junkie son. He's at his best when he's completely smacked out and I couldn't help but laugh when he impersonates and mocks Scatman Crothers. It's a small glimpse of light in an otherwise dim film though.

DIRECTOR: Roger Corman
WRITER/SOURCE: Script by Robert Thom, with story input from Don Peters. Based on the true story of Ma Barker.
KEY ACTORS: Shelley Winters, Robert De Niro, Pat Hingle, Don Stroud, Bruce Dern, Scatman Crothers.

RELATED TEXTS:
- Directly influenced by Bonnie and Clyde, a superior film in every way imaginable.
- Other Depression-era gangster exploitation films from the 60s and 70s include Big Bad Mama, Boxcar Bertha, The Grissom Gang and Bonnie's Kids.
- Roger Corman has produced and/or directed nearly 400 films and TV productions, tackling a wide variety of popular genres and almost all of a uniformly low budget. Prior to directing Bloody Mama he had previously produced the gangster film The St. Valentines Day Massacre.

It Happened One Night

This Depression road movie throws together a spoilt heiress on the run and a jobless reporter hoping for a big story to create one of the all-time greatest romantic comedies. It's one of only three films to sweep all 5 major Oscars at the Academy Awards (Best Film, Screenplay, Actor, Actress and Director) and is the film that legitimised director Frank Capra as one of the first Hollywood kings of the talkies.

It Happened One Night is the tale of an unlikely romance between two very different people. Claudette Colbert is the rebellious wayward (and stubborn) daughter of a stuffed-shirt family of inherited wealth. She absconds from her father when he frowns upon her choice of a husband, and whilst traveling incognito across the country she meets Clark Gable, a working class journalists who falls for Colbert despite his cynical misgivings about her background. They strike a deal - Gable will pose as Colbert's husband, offering her protection and cover, and in return he will get the scoop on her story.

It Happened One Night is the ultimate Depression-era comedy. Only four years earlier America had experienced the devastating Wall Street crash, which led to a radical restructuring of American values. During the 1930s the American conscience was very much in a state of flux... the rich and the privileged were frowned upon by the larger masses (many of whom were undergoing financial hardships) due to the widening economic gap between them. Colbert's naive but spoilt heiress embodies this, whereas Gable represents a new man for a new era... a man who cannot be bought, an ideal that had some resonance with Depression-era audiences looking for a new moral compass in an economically bereft landscape. Gable's sarcasm and practicality is very much a voice for the American public of the time, and hence this film struch a big chord with audiences in the mid-1930s. They got a kick out of seeing Colbert and her character's sense of entitlement taken down a peg or two.

The modern romantic comedy genre owes everything it has to this film too. All the cliches and hallmarks of the genre (and the way they all get put together) can be traced to this film - the misunderstandings, crossed wires, the love-hate relationship, tall tales and breezy banter. Gable's central dilemma is that he will have to choose between true love and his career. The film even has the 11th hour ending where one character has to run to get to the other and tell them they love them before it's all too late! This climax has pretty much become the template for all romantic comedies each. One thing that I did find odd however is that we don't actually get to see Gable and Colbert's reconciliation - instead we get some snappy visual shorthand from Capra that lets us know that everything is absolutely peachy (a longshot of a motel room - the type of locale we've seen the inside of for the bulk of the film's duration suddenly becomes something we only get to see from the outside now that the relationship between the protagonists has changed). It's fine in itself, and there's a logic to it, but it seems strange for a film of any era to not let it's two stars have a big final scene together.

Like all Capra films, It Happened One Night bounces along at a rollicking pace whilst extolling the virtues of enjoying life and celebrating a kinship with one's fellow strangers as the most important thing of all. Colbert in particular stands out, her impeccable sense of comic timing cracks through the facile inetractions of early 1930s films with a knowing sense of humour that should connect with more modern audiences.

DIRECTOR: Frank Capra
WRITER/SOURCE: Script by Robert Riskin, based on a story by Samuel Hopkins Adams
KEY ACTORS: Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, Walter Connolly, Jameson Thomas

RELATED TEXTS:
- Night Bus, a fictional magazine story by journalist Samuel Hopkins Adams. I'm sensing that Gable's character might've be slightly autobiographical.
- The other winners of the 'big' 5 Oscars were One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and The Silence of the Lambs.
- This film was remade as a musical, You Can't Run Away From It, in the 1950s.

AWARDS
Academy Awards - won Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor (Clark Gable), Best Actress (Claudette Colbert) and Best Screenplay.
Venice Film Festival - nominated Best Film.

Scum

Some background first... the 'borstal' was a kind of prison unique to Britain between 1902 and 1982, designed specifically to seperate young prisoners from older and institutionalised convicts. The idea was that the system would be more conducive to reform amongst juvenile delinquents but the failure of borstals to be anything other than prisons led to their dissolution in the early 1980s. This film, Scum, was originally filmed in 1977 as a teleplay about the borstal system but the graphic nature of it's content (specifically, violence) drew so much controversy that it was banned by the BBC before even going to air. Director Alan Clarke responded by remaking the teleplay as a film. It remains a brutal and unflinching indictment of a process of institutionalisation that ruined lives and reinforced systems of prejudice and violence in the UK.

Carlin (an incredibly young Ray Winstone) is a new inmate at a borstal, transferred in after having assaulted a warden at a previous borstal. He wants to keep his head down and do his time, but the resident alpha male Banks (John Blundell) feels threatened by his presence and draws Carlin into a power struggle that sees him take over as the 'Daddy' of the inmates. We also follow the stories of other inmates - Davis (Julian Firth), a meek and mild-mannered boy who has 'victim' written all over him, and Archer (Mick Ford), the unlikely 'Steve McQueen' of the borstal.

It should be no news to modern viewers that prisons only serve to reinforce criminal behaviour for the most part... we've seen this process of institutionalisation in the television show Oz and films like The Shawshank Redemption, Animal Factory, Bronson, etc. In Scum it's made patently clear that a chidlren's gaol turns juvenile criminals into real criminals. Unlike most prison dramas, Scum takes a very, very close look at society's need and reasoning for prisons, with particular emphasis on their (in)effectiveness in the quest for reform. I think where Scum rises above films that deal with the subject matter is that it makes no concession whatsoever to what an audience expects from a prison narrative. There's no breakout, no ultimate authority to appeal to, and (most importantly) no real heroes to cheer for.

Take Carlin for instance... he initially draws our sympathy via an identifiable attitude. At first he seems almost frightened to be in a borstal, and he takes on a subservient tone in relating to other characters. His backstory is thoroughly working class, with both he and Archer depicted as class victims forced into the borstal system by their families' poverty. All indications point to Carlin as our hero, but then he makes a violent play for the alpha position within the prison. It's clearly something he needs to do in order to survive, but the (realistic) level of accompanying violence, racism and downright viciousness alienates the viewer and puts them outside the expectation that this is an overtly fictionalised narrative. Scum isn't about Carlin at all, he just represents what happens in these borstals. The film is, first and foremost, about the borstal.

Archer steals most of his scenes as the film's intellectual heart, demonstrating an erudite rebelliousness that decnstructs the prison system and makes its flaws explicit for the benefit of the viewer. Normally such a character would seem like an overly-obvious mouthpiece for the writer but in Scum it's a welcome counterpoint to all the suicide, beatings, rape and bigotry. It also helps the viewer understand the relationship of power behind the system in clear, unarguable terms. Every step and every response of the officers only serve to enforce the balance of power. Their response to a cry for help from a distressed Davis is to ignore it, and their further response to a resulting prisoner protest is to force an epic confrontation... they never once seek to address any problems, they only reinforce them.

Scum is a brutal and confronting film but I'm not sure if I'd call it gratuitous as it has high ideals of education and exposure in mind. It's just the unvarnished and horribly bleak truth, sincerely depicted and thoroughly unforgettable.

DIRECTOR: Alan Clarke
WRITER/SOURCE: Roy Minton, based on the 1977 TV version of the same script.
KEY ACTORS: Ray Winstone, Mick Ford, Julian Firth, John Blundell, Phil Daniels, Philip Jackson.

RELATED TEXTS:
- Scum, the TV film made two years earlier. Some of the supporting cast is different and there's a subplot about Carlin taking on a 'missus'. By most accounts the film version is more graphic.
- Alan Clarke made another telemovie about youth violence in 1982, Made in Britain, which dealt with skinheads and racism.
- I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang was one of the first convict-centric films to affect reformation in a prison system - in this case it was the American chain gangs of the 1920s and 1930s.
- The 1980 film Brubaker also deals with prison reform, this time based on a true story.
- Bad Boys is an American film about juvenile detention that stars a young Sean Penn.

Is Anybody There?

A bittersweet tale of autumnal years and coming of age in a retirement home with a fantastic lead performance from Michael Caine. Is Anybody There? is a small film with a big heart, albeit in a slightly subversive way. Caine plays Clarence, an elderly former magician railing at the approach of death and still angry at the mistakes he made in his life. When the onset of Alzheimers means that he has to move into a retirement home he meets Edward (Bill Milner, from Son of Rambow), a ten year old boy whose parents run (and live in) the retirement home. Edward is resentful about having to share his childhood with the elderly and infirm, and has an unusual obsession with death and the 'other side'. Despite their initial angst towards one another, Clarence and Edward become fast friends.

This could have been a very depressing film, and in many ways it actually is quite sad, but Bill Milner's earnest and bright-eyed presences gives it a sense of quirky energy, and he strikes a genuine rapport with Michael Caine. The film is told from the point of view of Edward, whose morbid curiosity about the afterlife is chastised by his parents. Clarence's own preoccupation with death means that he understands Edward's interest though, and they form a connection through their shared loneliness despite the generational gap. Caine doesn't shy away from the bleaker aspects of his character, he embraces them wholeheartedly and gives a delightfully curmudgeonly and painfully honest performance - full of wonderfully bitter chestnuts of dialogue like "Let me tell you a secret: being a person is a pain in the arse" and "I like badgers because they're bad-tempered and look good". The supporting cast are equally good, I especially liked David Morrisey as Edward's mullet-sporting dad.

Anyway, this is a good black comedy about old age and death, a film where the darkness makes the brighter moments all the more heartwarming. Caine was brave to tap into his own sense of mortality to convey the indignity of a 'natural' death, and young Bill Milner should be one to watch in years to come.

DIRECTOR: John Crowley
WRITER/SOURCE: Peter Crowley
KEY ACTORS: Michael Caine, Bill Milner, Anne-Marie Duff, David Morrissey, Elizbabeth Spriggs, Leslie Philips, Sylvia Syms, Rosemary Harris

RELATED TEXTS
- Alzheimers and dementia have also formed the basis of the films Away From Her, Iris and the black comedy Folks!
- Old age and mortality have been dealt with by many texts, but two films that immediately come to mind are Venus and Coccoon.
- Michael Caine doesn't get to do lead roles very often now that he's in his 70s, but he did get to follow up this superb lead turn with another equally good (and vastly different) role in Harry Brown.

The Spy Who Loved Me

The Mission
James Bond (Roger Moore) is sent to investigate the disappearance of a British nuclear submarine amid worries that the Russians have developed new tracking capabilities that may help them win the Cold War. It turns out that a Soviet submarine has also gone missing, and Bond teams up with Russian agent XXX (Barbara Bach) to determine and stop the diabolical plans entrepeneur Karl Stromberg (Curd Jurgens).

Jimmy Bond Yo!
Roger Moore's James Bond is bigger and bolder than ever, the actor is clearly loving a role that has now truly become his own. He's a confident, capable and more romantic Bond, exemplifying the quintessential British-ness of the character like never before (he even has a parachute that opens up to display a giant union jack) and playing up 007's loverboy side with playful exuberance.

James Bond is shown in The Spy Who Loved Me with several more previously unseen skills - he can ride a camel, speak Egyptian Arabic, and disarms a nuclear missile (his first time, apparently). He's a man of the world in every sense of the phrase, demonstrating enough knowledge of Islamic customs to greet a Muslim in a traditional and friendly fashion. He's competitive with his Soviet counterpart (Agent XXX), and has a practical and unapologetic attitude to killing (interpretint his life as a 'kill or be killed' scenario). He's visibly horrifed by Jaws' ability to bite through chains, and is a bit sensitive when the name of his dead wife is mentioned (the first time in the series thats he's mentioned at all since she was killed).

Villainy
The mastervillain of the piece is Karl Stromberg, a Blofeld substitute who love sthe sea so much he wants to wipe civilisation from the surface of the Earth so he can rebuild it underwater as a New Atlantis (why do these guys insist on courting outright war at the risk of disrupting their noble schemes? He simply could've gone underwater and lived there with his people without thrusting the rest of the world into nuclear armageddon). The original intention for The Spy Who Loved Me was to feature Blofeld and SPECTRE as the main adversary but rights issues led to a rethink. Stromberg's webbed fingers, reclusive nature and touching issues all put one in mind of Donald Pleasance's slightly freakish performance as Blofeld back in You Only Live Twice, and Curd Jurgens' cultured and restrained performance certainly makes him feel like an imitation.

The real star of the film is without a doubt Richard Kiel as Jaws, one of the most memorable henchmen ever seen in the entire series. With his lack of dialogue, 7-foot stature and sharp metal teeth, he's like the ultimate cross between a vampire and Frankenstein's monster. Kiel gives a scary, sadistic performance, using his physicality and expressiveness to convey more than most henchmen get to say with dialogue. The character is near-indestructable too, even surviving at the end of the film to fight another day. Stromberg's other henchman is Sandor (Milton Reid), a bald-headed bowtie-wearing goon who gets disposed of fairly early on in the film.

Buddies and Babes
Anya Amasova is both Bond's main ally and the Bond girl for this film, a Soviet agent codenamed XXX. She's a lot more capable than previous Bond girls, and is every bit 007's equal for most of the film. Their relationshup fluctuates between romance, rivalry, and even revenge. Barbara Bach gives a decent enough performance to make the character stick, but there have been better 'Bond girl' performances (EG. Diana Rigg, Honor Blackman).

Bond also has a rendezvous with a British-educated arab named Hussein (Edward de Souza), an Egyptian MI6 contact and one-time classmate from Bond's university days. Bond gets further support later in the film from a naval captain named Benson (George Baker). The Spy Who Loved Me also makes the first appearance of Sir Frederick Gray (Geoffrey Keen), the British Minister of Defence who will go on to appear in several more Bond films as a Super-M-like character (EG. The 'bigger' MI6 boss).

There's also a bikini-clad henchwoman named Naomi (Caroline Munro), but her screentime is only fleeting.

Locations
The film starts out in the Austrian Alps for a ski-heavy action pre-credits sequence before shifting the main action to Egypt. Cairo is one of the more memorable and effectively-used locations in the series so far, showcasing pyramids, ruins, Cairo streets, bars and bazaars. Bond even dons sheik-like desert clothes to do a Lawrence of Arabia routine. The second part of the film takes place in sunny Azure-watered Sardinia, in the mediterranean .

Gadgets and Tricks of the Trade
The big gadget for this film (and one of it's best gags) is a car that turns into a submarine with torpedo capability. It also delpoys limpet mines and an ink cloud. Bond also has a ski pole that doubles as a gun, a watch that spits out emergency ticker tape messages from MI6, and gets to use a high-powered jet ski. For unexplained reasons, Q (Desmond Llewelyn) is working on a levitating drinks tray that can decapitate people... these scenes of Q working on gadgets that have nothing to do with the main narrative will become a staple of the series from this point on.

Bond gets to 'impersonate' someone again, this time he poses as a marine biologist in order to infiltrate Stromberg's lair. This extends to just being able to name an exotic fish.


Licence to Kill
007 shoots a pursuing Russian agent with a ski pole-gun, callously drops Sandor off the top of a building after getting information out of him, and blows up Naomi's helicopter (while she's in it) with a torpedo. He also blows up one of Stromberg's men whilst underwater, and runs another over with his scuba-car. He machine guns at least four more henchmen during a full scale battle on Stromberg's ship, re-programs two submarines to annihilate each other with nuclear missiles, and shoots Stromberg several times to make sure that he's dead.

Shag-Rate
Our man is mid-business with an undercover Russian agent when he gets called away by MI6, and it's implied that Hussein offers him a woman (!) for the night when Bond stops over at his tent in the desert. Bond puts on all his charm to get a leg over on Agent XXX. They finally shag on the train after he saves her life, and do so again at the film's end whilst in Stromberg's escape pod.

Quotes
M: Where's 007?
MONEYPENNY: He's on a mission, sir. In Austria.
M: Well, tell him to pull out. Immediately.
(Cut to Bond getting cosy with a beautiful woman)

RUSSIAN AGENT: But James, I need you.
BOND: So does England.

BOND (referring to Jaws): He just dropped in for a quick bite.

BOND: Maybe I misjudged Stromberg. Any man who drinks Dom Perignon 52 can't be all bad.

STROMBERG: Goodbye Mr. Bond. That word has a welcome ring of permanancy about it.

BOND (lifting Jaws into the air with the aid of a giant magnet): How does that grab you?

How Does It Rate?
Fantastic. This is pure Roger Moore Bond without the drawbacks that plague most of his films... the humour comes less from goofy characters or parody bits and more from contrasting Bond tropes with the real world (such as the scene where Bond emerges from the sea in his scuba-car whilst beach goers look on in amazement). This film is the comic book version of James Bond - using bold shorthand versions of all the franchise's hallmarks to work in it's favour as an extra-confident, proud and slickly-produced 10th entry in the series. We get gadgets galore, a risky disco-funk version of the theme music, and one of the most iconic credits sequences in the whole series (this deftly constructed montage of iconic Bond images, coupled with the song Nobody Does It Better, is better than some entire James Bond films)

The Spy Who Loved Me also goes behind the Iron Curtain to exploit current cold war tensions for pure escapist entertainment, and builds on renewed fears of nuclear destruction that came with the invention of the Polaris missile . The character of Agent XXX is a more than effective new variation on the Bond format - Bond finally meets his match and it isn't a megalomaniac! Richard Kiel is another great find as Jaws, not only is he unnaturally large but he also has a wonderfully expressive face that helps the director use intriguing lighting effects to pay homage to the Universal horror films of the 1930s.

It's not without it's faults though, Stromberg is fairly cliched as far as Bond villains go (and we get that cliched Bond scene where 007 and the villain meet under the assumption that the other doesn't know who the other really is, though they both really do know). It's pretty easy to overlook this sort of thing though when the rest of the film is just so damn fun, easily one of the Top 5 James Bond films

Visit my James Bond page.

DIRECTOR: Lewis Gilbert
WRITER/SOURCE: Script by Christopher Wood and Richard Maibaum, based on characters created by Ian Fleming.
KEY ACTORS: Roger Moore, Barbara Bach, Curd Jurgens, Richard Kiel, Edward de Souza, Bernard Lee, Desmond Llewelyn, George Baker

RELATED TEXTS:
- Jaws (and a lot of the plot of The Spy Who Loved Me) would feature again in the next James Bond film, Moonraker.
- The mediterranean setting would be used again in the later Bond film For Your Eyes Only.
- The Spy Who Loved Me was the 10th novel in Ian Fleming's James Bond series, but aside from the title it has nothing to do with this film (Fleming actually specified that this particular novel should not be adapted directly into a film)
- The title provides the inspiration for the second Austin Powers film - Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.

AWARDS
Academy Awards - nominated Best Art Direction, Best Score and Best Original Song (Nobody Does It Better).
BAFTAs - nominated Best Score and Best Production Design/Art Direction.
Golden Globes - nominated Best Score and Best Song (Nobody Does It Better)