Review: "Spectre"

Just a few thoughts today on the new James Bond film. Evan Dossey is handling the main review over at The Film Yap, so head there to read his more complete thoughts.

The Daniel Craig Bond flicks have been defined by their dourness, and while that was a welcome change from the breeziness of the Pierce Brosnan and Timothy Dalton movies -- not to mention the nearly pure comedy of the Roger Moore era -- it's starting to wear down the franchise, like a repetitive stress injury.

Director Sam Mendes is back at the helm again, a rarity in the Bond tradition, but "Skyfall" was the highest-grossing 007 film ever, so if he was game there really wasn't anyone to tell him different. Craig is loudly and publicly musing over whether he wants to play the British agent again, and there's a lot of chatter about Idris Elba or Tom Hiddleston or (insert latest rumor here) sliding into the role.

Without giving anything away, I will say that the ending of "Spectre" is such that it could either neatly wrap up Craig's tenure in the black tuxedo, or set up one final go-round.

It's very much a story of beginnings and endings, with most of the familiar Bond solar system -- M, Q, Moneypenny -- now replaced with fresher faces. James Bond is widely viewed as an anachronism by the British intelligence services, who are more keen on data and satellite imagery and drones than guys wandering around with a license to kill.

The movie for me is more of a Greatest Hits version of James Bond than anything else I've seen. Names and faces of villains and allies from the recent past are recalled and, forcibly, linked to one another. We're told that a sinister organization named Spectre has been behind nearly all the troubles Bond has encountered in recent years, with one shadowy figure at the head of the table.

I'm not giving anything away in saying that Christoph Waltz plays the chief villain, or surprising anyone by stating that he's the best thing about the movie. (You could say that about most films with Waltz.) He plays Franz Oberhauser, a supposedly dead guy with an intimate connection to Bond that I wouldn't divulge.

Suffice to say that rather than pursuing some overarching goal of world domination, Oberhauser -- who also has adopted another, familiar, moniker -- seems to delight in creating chaos and pain for its own sake. Particularly when that pain is Bond's own.

Waltz has surprisingly little screen time, but makes the most of it.

The main "Bond girl" is a bit of a disappointment, the sloe-eyed Léa Seydoux as the daughter of an infamous villain. (Why are so many female characters in spy movies the daughter of somebody important, instead of just being important themselves?) The script, a thinly written affair by a committee of four, doesn't give her much to do but react to Bond's carnivore magnetism. 

Better is Monica Bellucci in an all-too-brief appearance as a recently widowed Italian who gets intimate with the man who made her a widow. Bellucci, still a stunner at 50 -- rendering her the oldest Bond conquest of all -- shows more steel and fire in her few minutes of screen time than Seydoux does in the rest of the movie.

Craig is still a terrific Bond, the best I think aside from Sean Connery, a skilled enough actor to let slip the pain that lies just behind the eyes of the icy killer. And there are a few good action scenes and chases, particularly when Bond mixes it up with Dave Bautista, a Herculean tentacle of Spectre.

"Spectre" is entirely watchable, and parts of it are even thrilling. But there's something missing here, a vital essence that seems to have drained away. This iteration of the Bond legend feels tired, grumpy, chippy. It senses the anticipation for the next thing, even shares it, but isn't quite ready to let go of the Walther PPK and Aston Martin. 

Review: "The Sorcerer's Apprentice"

I know what you're thinking: A live-action feature film version of a sequence from a 70-year-old cartoon starring Mickey Mouse and a bunch of ensorcelled brooms?

With Nic Cage in glib blockbuster mode? Reteamed with "National Treasure" director Jon Turteltaub? And Jerry "boom baby" Bruckheimer producing?

It almost sounds like a practical joke. But don't forget Disney previously leveraged a kitschy theme park ride with cheesy animatronic pirates into a multi-billion-dollar franchise.

The good news is the resulting movie is anything but cynical. It's a goofy, silly thrill ride without a thought in its pretty little head.

The fun parts of "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" are really, really enjoyable. The parts that aren't fun really make you wish they would get back to the good stuff. The ratio of fun to not-so-fun isn't quite high enough for me to recommend the movie, but it's a lot better than first impressions might suggest.

Cage plays Balthazar Blake, an ancient sorcerer and one of three apprentices to the great Merlin, who was undone by his arch enemy Morgana (Alice Krige) with the help of Maxim Horvath (Alfred Molina), another of Merlin's pupils. Horvath went turncoat when his affections for the third apprentice, Veronica (Monica Bellucci), were rebuffed in favor of Balthazar.

In 740 A.D., Veronica trapped her soul along with Morgana's in the Grimhold, a prison inside a magic nesting doll. Over the years, Balthazar has imprisoned many of the evil Morganian magicians inside successive layers of the doll. He's spent the last millennium searching for the Prime Merlinian, the greatest sorcerer in history who will take up Merlin's dragon ring and put an end to Morgana forever.

Balthazar thinks he's found his candidate in Dave Stutler, a physics student with a severe confidence problem. Played by Jay Baruchel, Dave is a collection of tics and shrugs who can't even summon the courage to ask out his dream girl Becky (Teresa Palmer), let alone wield powerful magic in battle against evildoers.

Dave becomes a student to Balthazar, who teaches that science and magic are essentially the same thing, just focused by a sorcerer wearing a special ring. Dave's a screw-up at first, his spells fizzling or bouncing off the walls.

Turteltaub and his trio of screenwriters do include an homage to the animated sequence from "Fantasia," in which Dave zaps a bunch of mops into cleaning up his dank underground laboratory, with predictable results. You know it's coming, but I'm still glad the filmmakers included it.

Cage and Baruchel have a nice chemistry together, with Dave subtly mocking Balthazar's taste for long leather coats and pointy "old man" shoes. Dave's been told he's a loser his whole life, so when this strange guy pops out of nowhere and starts talking about him being mankind's savior, he can't quite swallow it.

Despite only a few days (apparently) of training, Dave soon turns into a half-decent sorcerer, and even gets Becky to notice him. Meanwhile, Horvath recruits his own sidekick, a Chris Angel-type magician/metrosexual who traded his meager sorcery skills for fame and fortune.

Everything builds toward a showdown with Horvath and the resurrected Morgana, who plan to raise an army of the undead, blanketing the land with evil, yada yada.

Was "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" necessary? No. The spell it casts over the audience is a silly one, but it doesn't totally fizzle.

2.5 stars out of four