by Oscar O’Sullivan

Monday – A View to a Kill

And so Roger Moore’s long and tempestuous tenure as James Bond comes to an end with, in my opinion, the best of his seven outings, though not by too wide a margin. A View to a Kill isn’t redefining the formula by any means – much like the disastrous Octopussy, this is practically a remake of Goldfinger, with Bond taking on a psychotic billionaire and his superhuman hench(wo)man to prevent an industrial scheme that will cause untold death and destruction in the name of pure profit. While Octopussy felt like a lame retread, this proves that there’s nothing inherently wrong with breaking out the old playbook and dusting off the hits. Even the cold open is comfortingly familiar, with Bond engaging in a mountainside ski-slope battle for the fourth time by my count. After being visibly uncomfortable and floundering through the action of Octopussy, Moore thankfully buckles down and delivers one last solid turn in the role. The action has wisely been rejigged to rely less heavily on Bond’s athletic prowess, affording him more dignity than the pratfalls of his previous adventure – I’m happy to look the other way and ignore the abundance of obvious stunt doubles in the bigger setpieces. These are some of Bond’s most thrillingly heroic moments – including saving heiress Stacey Sutton (Tanya Roberts) from a blazing inferno and fighting off a squad of home invaders with shotgun blasts of rock salt. He also gets plenty of grounded spycraft to buff up his badass credentials, an aspect of the franchise that is often neglected even in the better entries. For better or worse, this is one of Moore’s more balanced takes on the character, a fun-loving trickster with a dangerous dedication to his work and a soft spot for damsels in distress. It’s a solid Bond story, but not one that plays to Moore’s strengths, almost as if he’d given up on making the character his own and reverted to the standard set by Connery. This entry is also made more fun than it has any right to be by having one of the best-ever villain/henchman duos in Christopher Walken and Grace Jones. Jones is an immediately commanding presence who manages to feel like a threat even when Bond is bedding her (or is she bedding him?) while Walken is clearly enjoying himself as he plays every traditional trope and cliche completely over the top as Zorin, the sophisticated, soft-spoken sociopath with a gleefully violent temper. The straightforward plot leaves little room for complaints, as even the unnecessary padding in the long first act is couched in solid comedy beats and at least a sense of progression as Bond inches closer to the truth of Zorin’s master plan. Considering they knew this would be Moore’s last go round in the role, perhaps they could have made an effort to make something of a swan song of it, rather than just another Bond film (albeit an excellent turn on the standard formula). Still, it’s long past time for a fresh face in the role, and after some rocky ups and downs, I’m happy to be able to bid farewell to Moore on a high note. 9/10. Bring on Dalton!

Tuesday – Judgement at Nuremberg

I am always saying this – people talking in rooms can be the most thrilling genre of film imaginable when executed correctly. The three key components to pulling this off are your script, your performers and your camerawork. To begin with the last of those three, director Stanley Kramer has made the most of the limited space the courtroom provides with a restrained but highly mobile camera. If it weren’t so handsomely shot and measured in its approach, the constant spinning of the camera around subjects could become tiresome, but it feels earned and intentional each time the move is pulled out. We circle defendants and prosecutors, basking in the glory of lengthy, unbroken monologues while simultaneously taking in the faces of the courtroom crowds absorbing the (often harrowing) testimony of the Nazi war crime trials. Snap zooms are also used to great effect, most notably in an early scene where a sudden push-in instantaneously breaks down the in-universe language barrier, allowing the audience to hear the German-speaking characters in English and circumventing the lengthy translation process established for the opening comments. Then there’s the performances, an all-star cast pushing the material to its limits, even the one-scene witnesses like Judy Garland and Montgomery Clift leaving a lasting impact with their raw vulnerability while being grilled by defence lawyer Hans Rolfe (Maximillian Schell), who was so impressive in the role of a noble-minded devil’s advocate that he won Best Actor despite being fifth-billed. Actual lead Spencer Tracy is no slouch as the presiding judge in the case, a truly impartial character who is nevertheless visibly succumbing to a creeping uncertainty as the details of the case take their toll on his psyche. He’s especially moved by his accidental connection with war widow Mrs Bertholt (Marlene Dietrich), who is deeply bitter about her late husband’s summary execution during the earliest Nuremberg trials. She increasingly tries to influence Tracy to show the German judges the clemency she believes her husband deserved. Tracy is also swayed towards leniency by his growing respect for defendant Ernst Janning (played with typical rigid dignity by Burt Lancaster), a world-famous judge whose pre-war reputation is impeccable and who is clearly rattled by his own actions as an unwilling supporter of the Nazi regime. But while Tracy’s heart is pulling him towards Not Guilty, he has a responsibility to face the facts – no matter how uncomfortable they may prove to be. Released less than twenty years after the end of the war, there is a tangible American guilt over how the German people were treated during the subsequent occupation and war crime trials (a guilt, I might note, that America never seems to display towards the asian and middle eastern countries they occupied and ravaged), but behind the imperialist hand-wringing is a firm moral conviction – there could never be any excuse for what happened under the Nazis, and any attempt to justify or excuse those who took part in atrocities, no matter what mitigating factors there may truly be, sets a dangerous precedent. Three hours that simply fly by in a haze of excellent monologues, intimate conversations and startling emotional outbursts. Phenomenal on every level. 10/10.

Wednesday – Lolita

Even if it may seem tame by today’s standards, there’s still plenty to be shocked by in the text of Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita, the archetypical groomer story. It’s a story so infamous that most people are at least aware of the concept, if not the exact details. In brief – socially awkward academic Humbert Humbert (James Mason) finds himself entangled in a dangerous game of deceit when he falls madly in love with his landlady’s teenage daughter Dolores (Sue Lyon), known by the childish nickname Lolita. Humbert has little problem justifying his perversion to himself, especially since Dolores seems to be coyly encouraging his affections. Whether or not Dolores holds any real love for him is besides the point, as nothing could justify his actions, but it should be obvious to any slightly clued-in viewer that her teasing flirtation is primarily a rebellion against her bitter and controlling mother Charlotte (Shelley Winters). Charlotte spends most of her screen time all but throwing herself at Humbert, becoming furious at the idea of Dolores driving him away or coming between them. Later, when Humbert and Dolores are alone together on the road, she begins to rebel against his authority too, having grown bored with his jealous love. This drives her into the machinations of an even more dangerous pedophile, Clare Quilty (Peter Sellers), an eccentric writer with a penchant for elaborate mental tortures. While this is all quite grim and disturbing on paper, the tone of the film doesn’t quite get this feeling across, instead skewing nervously towards black comedy. Humbert is something of a bumbling unfortunate, the exact kind of unlucky sap who would usually be the sympathetic leading man of a thriller. Mason’s performance certainly has an element of the absurd about it, with his affected manner of speech and beaten dog expressions. Even more dissonant is contrast between the depraved actions of Quilty and the brilliant comic performance of Sellers, improvising at such a high level that his most ridiculous outbursts seem entirely natural. This disconnect between the text and the tone is not a failing, by any means – in presenting these awful situations with a wryly comedic bent, the film forces us to view the characters as more than just abstract moral figures. To make them ridiculous has the effect of making them more human than they might otherwise seem. However, the film doesn’t commit fully to being a black comedy, suddenly taking itself seriously as it approaches the climax in a way that doesn’t quite ring true dramatically. Kubrick plays it cool for the most part, avoiding the visual flash and spectacle associated with the thriller genre. Though it may feel a little lacking in they type of pulpy thrills that, say, Alfred Hitchcock would bring to the table, Kubrick’s level-headed approach was probably the right decision – to add any more lurid or sensational elements to such a sensitive story would risk approaching bad taste. 8/10.

Thursday – Dr Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Comedy, no matter how brilliant upon release, faces the curse of often aging more rapidly than other genres. Our general idea of what makes something funny changes extremely quickly, more and more so in the internet age. It is difficult for humour to feel truly timeless, but I think the idea of “timelessness” is a false ideal anyway. Everything is a product of its time, so it must be approached from both perspectives – our modern perspective and the perspective of the world it was made in. Dr Strangelove is a film that was extremely topical when it was released, using absurdity to comment on Cold War paranoia and the fear of nuclear destruction. Some of the subtleties of the humour are lost today, and the film oscillates wildly between dry observation and blunt parody, but the message still comes through clear as crystal. The central performances are all a joy to behold – Sterling Hayden is sinisterly sincere as the deranged General Ripper, George C. Scott plays to the cheap seats as the buffoonish bigot General Turgidson, and Peter Sellers gives three startlingly different performances as beleaguered British officer Captain Mandrake, reasonable but ineffectual President Muffley and the demented Nazi scientist who gives the film his name. What also holds up perfectly is the visual design, with each of the three primary locations being distinctly presented and gorgeous in it’s own way, especially the magnificently cavernous War Room with it’s enormous round table and great big board of maps. A classic with good reason, even if it doesn’t stand up to Kubrick’s later masterpieces. 8/10.

Friday – Casablanca

A titanic, unbelievably perfect film in all regards. What can I even say? If you were, through some improbable circumstance, to meet a person who had never before in their life seen a film, Casablanca is the one you would show them to display exactly what a film is. Impeccably witty script, brought to life by a captivating cast of charismatic performers, ideal pacing and plotting, perhaps the most beautiful a simple, set-bound film can be, a fascinating product of the time it was made in and a story that will never lose it’s fundamental emotional power. Seeing this in the cinema was one hell of an experience – what better way is there to experience a classic than sitting next to someone you love? 10/10.

Saturday – Birdman of Alcatraz and The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

I love a good true-story biopic, especially when it exaggerates the life story of its subject. Burt Lancaster plays Robert Stroud, a convicted murderer who is facing an indefinite sentence in solitary confinement after knocking off a guard. A proud and adversarial character, Stroud seems set to lose his mind in captivity until, through chance, he finds himself caring for a baby bird he finds in the prison yard. This unexpected responsibility he hesitantly takes up inspires an all-consuming interest in birds. He breeds canaries, constructs makeshift birdhouses and water bowls using what few objects he can scrounge from guards, experiments with chemicals to create new bird medicines – all from behind bars. Stroud becomes famous for his work in the field of ornithology and mounts several attempts to leverage that fame into freedom, but the rigid and unfeeling prison system refuses to accept that he has really changed, instead choosing to punish him for his circumvention of traditional prison regulations. As far as I can make out, all of this is true to life, with one major difference – the real Stroud was apparently a genuine psychopath who killed at least a dozen people and never showed any signs of personal reform, remaining a dangerous man in spite of his genius work with birds. But that doesn’t make for a satisfying narrative, and when it comes to film, I’ll take good storytelling over complete historical accuracy any time. Lancaster is phenomenal in the lead role, imbuing him with a deep and subtle pathos that makes the film constantly heart-wrenching. As an actor, Lancaster’s great strength is his rigid, assured manner of carrying himself. He doesn’t have to play things over-the-top to convey a wide range of emotion, because his fundamental understanding of the character he plays comes across in every instant he exists on the screen. The majority of his transformation from violent, hardened loner to empathetic gentle giant proceeds without any significant dialogue, his development written plainly across his face as he increases his understanding of and affection for his avian companions. We first realise that his new, softer attitude extends to people too during a beautiful reconciliation with his longtime guard, who angrily tears into Stroud for being stand-offish and ungrateful even after years of friendly treatment. Stroud’s subsequent apology is calm and unexpressive, but the simple sincerity of Lancaster’s delivery still brings a tear to the eye. By making a superhumanly heroic figure of its complicated lead, the film can more easily deliver it’s message of the need for prison reform and the natural ability of man to redeem himself through good works. John Frankenheimer’s direction is masterful, deftly navigating the limited spaces of the cells, corridors and tiny exercise yards that comprise Stroud’s entire world. A powerful experience. 10/10.

A film so influential that it’s title has become shorthand for an entire sub-genre of thriller, The Manchurian Candidate is a fascinatingly off-kilter mystery that reveals its entire hand from the get-go and depends on character drama more than shocking twists and turns. Laurence Harvey plays the title character, an unpopular sergeant who saves his squad from captivity in Korea and returns home a beloved hero – except this is a fabrication, a story implanted in the men he rescued by a sinister Communist alliance that aim to use the brainwashed Harvey as an unwilling assassin when the time is right. The only person who is clued into the danger is fellow soldier Frank Sinatra, haunted by insane dreams and baffled by his own sudden admiration for a man he remembers mainly as a stuffy adversary. While Sinatra is technically the film’s hero, Harvey’s character is the more interesting subject, a severe and unfriendly man tortured by his rotten relationship with politically ambitious mother Angela Lansbury and his dashed romance with the daughter of a political rival. Sinatra and his strangely tacked-on romance with Janet Leigh remain passively entertaining throughout, but the real meat of this story is how it gradually builds our sympathies towards an intentionally unlikeable man, until the final half hour becomes a relentless emotional climax that (mostly) justifies the plodding pace of the flabby midsection. John Frankenheimer creates some intense sequences and plays with a certain amount of surrealism at key moments, but otherwise provides a steady hand for a film that is far more straightforward than the hyperbolic taglines would have you believe. 8/10.

Sunday – Captain America: Brave New World

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