CLOUD ATLAS

“Remarkable,” “Convoluted,” “Entertaining,” “Sprawling,” “Masterful,” “Transcendant,” and “Guaranteed to divide.” Those are the words the critics have been using about Cloud Atlas. I prefer what was said by the film’s three directors, Tom Tykwer, Lana Wachoswki, and Andy Wachowski, when they premiered the six-minute first trailer: “It’s hard to sell, hard to describe, because it’s hard to reduce.”

Based on the highly-acclaimed (and highly-recommended) novel by David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas is not one 3-hour movie much like the novel is not one 500-page book. It is actually a collection of six 30-minute movies spread across time, space, and genre. These short films have been chopped up and spliced together with interruptions and mid-sentence stops, with voice-overs carrying across multiple stories, and with connections both explicit and implicit. It is an ambitous and unusual film, but unlike other attempts to create grand scope and provoke philosophical debate, Cloud Atlas is also wonderfully fun and entertaining. Tree of Life is an attempt to interweave different eras and themes, but for all its artistic quality it is still a cure for insomnia. But Cloud Atlas’ directors (creators of The Matrix and Run Lola Run) are eager to entertain, and for all the ambition driving the film it never forgets to tell a good narrative.

The ambition of the project is only clearer when the cast is considered. Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess, Ben Whishaw, Susan Sarandon, and Hugh Grant are among the main cast, and every one plays at least three parts. Several of the actors, including Tom Hanks, actually play six parts; one role for each section of Cloud Atlas, playing different personalities, different races, and even different genders.

In these six sections the film covers all the major genres and time periods: a dying doctor on a pacific voyage in 1849, letters from a composer to his lover in pre-war Europe, a conspiracy thriller in the 1970s, a modern-day comedy of a publisher committed to a nursing home, the future rebellion of a clone in Korea, and the post-apocalyptic survival story of a tribe living on Hawaii. Taken alone any of these stories would be worthy films, but taken together they become part of a larger work that is offered up to the audience for their interpretation.

Unlike in the book, one of my favorite sections is the earliest, the 1849 travel of Adam Ewing (Jim Sturgess) as he is being cared for by Dr. Henry Goose. The eccentric doctor is brought to life by Tom Hanks, and is one of the best examples in the film of how the casting adds new levels of enjoyment to the stories. Like a blockbuster adaptation of “Where’s Waldo?” it is a lot of fun trying to spot all the famous faces hidden under the make-up. At the end of the film the credits include the answer-key with all the actors’ characters showing up alongside their name, and its likely that several will come as a surprise.

Cloud Atlas is a film like The Avengers in that the people who like it and the people who don’t like it will probably be saying the same thing; “So massive,” and “Too massive,” are reviews from personal taste. I’ve met people who hate Casablanca or The Fighter, but praise Valentine’s Day for its originality, and I think those people are idiots. But that’s my personal opinion. It’s impossible to make a film that everyone likes, and Cloud Atlas is not for everyone. It is 3-hours, after all, and there is violence and romance alongside foul language and futuristic slang. Fans of Hugh Grant may find it difficult to see the rom-com leading man in the same light after seeing him play the warrior chief of a tribe of cannibals. But, for the other side of the audience, this film includes Hugh Grant playing the warrior chief of a tribe of cannibals! Depending on how you approach that line (exclamation point or period) might tell you if Cloud Atlas is a film you will enjoy.

The best I can say is that I enjoyed it. When I wasn’t enjoying the characters and their stories, I enjoyed the filmmaking. When I wasn’t enjoying the filmmaking, I enjoyed the music. There was never a moment where I felt the film was dragging too long, skipping over something important, or failing to hold my attention. It is a sprawling epic in the best way, and I highly recommend giving it the opportunity to surprise you.

SKYFALL

Connery. Lazenby. Moore. Dalton. Brosnan. Now Craig. Casino Royale introduced us to Craig as “The New Bond”. Quantum of Solace may have stumbled, but he was still “A Bond”. Now Skyfall shows us that Craig is “The Bond”. Perhaps it is because Craig is more actor than movie star; perhaps it is because he has, in Sam Mendes, been given a great drama director rather than just a great action director; or maybe it is because Skyfall has combined some of the best Bond story elements with a touch of The Dark Knight. No matter which reason is cited most, it is very clear that Skyfall has left Craig standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Sean Connery as the best James Bond.

Skyfall opens with a breakneck sequence on par with Casino Royale’s parkour foot chase, which sees Bond racing through the markets of Istanbul with fellow agent Eve (Naomie Harris). A decision from M (Judi Dench) leaves 007 missing, presumed dead, and the titles play with the new theme from Adele. The best Bond themes have, with the exception of Live and Let Die, been sung by powerful female vocalists like Shirley Bassey or Tina Turner. Adele fits in better than the previous few singers, and the song is a terrific single with lyrics worth hearing again after seeing the film.

As the story gets going there is the foreboding absence of a villain. We meet the charming new Q (Ben Whishaw), and the mysterious bureaucrat Gareth Mallory (Ralph Fiennes). Bond gets his handprint-identifying gun back from Licence to Kill, and a radio transmitter very similar to one he received in Goldfinger. References to the classic films carry on throughout with a familiar car making an impressive comeback. But nearly half way through the film and still no villain. He is hinted at, he is described, but he is not shown. Like the shark in Jaws, he is held out of sight for as long as possible so that his entrance can be more powerful.

The scene were we are finally introduced to Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem) may be the greatest confrontation of Bond and villain ever put to screen. The dialogue is so tightly woven and beautifully played; it is just short of, “No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die.” The scene, and Bardem’s performance, are comparable to the kitchen confrontation between the Joker and the mob in The Dark Knight.

Echoes of Christopher Nolan’s Batman masterpiece are throughout, and in every way these echoes add to and improve the Bond formula. A major element of the villains plan is lifted directly from the Joker’s plot, and the pitting of an “unstoppable force against an immovable object” drives Skyfall in a powerful way. It seems things have come full circle since Nolan has cited Bond’s films as being formative to his technique.

Beyond the story and character details that make Skyfall so engaging, and standing behind Sam Mendes on the creative team, is the film’s cinematographer Roger Deakins. His name might not be familiar, but he has nine Oscar nominations for such films as True Grit, No Country For Old Men, Fargo, and The Shawshank Redemption. His work behind the lights and lenses of Skyfall make it the best-looking Bond film ever. The constantly changing neon world of Shanghai, the foggy highlands of Scotland, and the red haze of a massive fire are brilliantly captured. Combined with Sam Mendes’ sure direction, which avoids the fast and shaky editing of Quantum or the Bourne films, Skyfall has an elegant clarity that has been missed from modern action films.

Returning Bond to the clear film style and classic formula is at the heart of Skyfall’s goal for the franchise. It is, as Empire Magazine put it, as if Daniel Craig was introduced as Bond in Casino Royale and Quantum, and has in the intervening time been through all of his previous adventures. He is older, wiser, and is more like the character we were introduced to fifty years ago. The re-introduction of formula standards like Q make it clear by the end that when Bond returns he will have all the elements that make a Bond film with him.

Unlike Craig’s first three pictures, Bond 24 will, I hope, open with a gun barrel and that classic Monty Norman theme. Skyfall teases the famous theme music, and holds back from using the full riff until well over half way, but by the time the guitar notes hit the film has already stepped into place as one of the greatest Bond films in the franchise’s fifty-year history. With Skyfall achieving 92% on Rotten Tomatoes and leading Quantum of Solace by $60 million to be the most successful of the franchise, further Bond can only be a good thing, and 2014 is eagerly awaited.

State of the Hollywood Rom-Com

Did you see The Back-Up Plan? How about The Five-Year Engagement? The Bounty Hunter? Anything Katherine Heigl did after Knocked Up? You have? Then let me ask, are you ever going to watch any of them again?

In any film genre I can usually find enough solace in the five-star classics to make up for the two-star clones that follow. This is becoming less and less the case with romantic comedies. Crazy, Stupid, Love. was terrific and surprising, and Friends With Benefits had Aaron Sorkin levels of witty dialogue, but there were a dozen films like The Switch in between.

The reason for this is the same reason that Universal made Battleship and Paramount has hired Michael Bay to do a fourth Transformers film. Hollywood executives are dealing with piracy and the threat of HBO and AMC in the only way they know how. Fewer films are being made each year, and the ones that are greenlit are broad-appeal PG-13 films with major star names attached for max marketability. These can make decent money in the US and then sweep up in the lucrative Asian market. I’m not joking when I say that this is why Dreamworks is planning five more Kung Fu Panda sequels.

The rom-com genre evolved out of the melodramas and slapstick comedies of the 1920s and came into mass popularity with screwball comedies like It Happened One Night. To qualify as rom-com a film needs two people to fall in love and for nothing (like death) to separate them at the end. That’s it. Everything else is up for creative interpretation. So why are there so many lousy boyfriends keeping the girl from the right guy until act three? Why does everybody work in advertising or publishing? Why is the right girl always the quirky one who resembles Zooey Deschanel?

This dilution of artistic integrity is obviously not limited to the romantic comedy genre, and independent producers continue to make critically-praised, good films in all genres, which go on to steal all the major awards from the major studios. But as long as major studios keep their advertising budgets on the level of a small country’s GDP, the general audience who doesn’t attend film festivals will be stuck with the movie that opens in four thousand theaters on Friday and is on Blu-ray three months later.

The good news is that change is coming. Hollywood always bounces back, which is why it has lasted over a century. When television stole their audience in the 50s, filmmakers stole it back with Technicolor and bigger screens. When VHS changed the market in the 70s, producers handed creative power to young directors like George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and Martin Scorsese. The digital age has done it again, and Hollywood has already started to shift. Like before, they are fighting back with new technology (3D) and new talent. When Marvel hired Joss Whedon he was widely unknown. He had several cancelled TV shows and an eager, but small, fan base. Then he made The Avengers, which has become the third highest-grossing film of all time ($1.5 billion).

If a filmmaker like Joss Whedon, the man behind the no-budget web series Dr. Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog, can become the toast of Hollywood then there is plenty to hope for. Christopher Nolan is the clearest example of how a filmmaker who makes good films can gain independence, which gives him the freedom to make even better, bigger films. Directors like Nicholas Winding Refn and Duncan Jones are following in Nolan’s steps and gaining the credentials necessary to gain creative independence.

For those of you who suffered through Killers, Did You Hear About the Morgans?, and The Ugly Truth, I offer you this solution: while Hollywood sorts itself out and finds new talent take a look at the past for your romance needs. Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), Sleepless in Seattle (1993), Groundhog Day (1993), Annie Hall (1977), The Apartment (1960), The Philadelphia Story (1940), His Girl Friday (1940), It Happened One Night (1934), and City Lights (1931) are called “classic” for very good reasons. Films like Made of Honor do not keep audiences coming back for eighty years.

This argument for rediscovering the classics is not meant to be just a list of recommendations. The fact is that until films like The Proposal stop making $300 million worldwide the studios will not stop making predictable, hit-and-miss, sometimes-funny films that rely on awkward situations and ad-lib from talented actors who deserve better. Stop picking the films that have all the advertising and 55% on Rotten Tomatoes. The internet is there for you. Use it. Let the critics watch bad films for free so that your ticket revenue can go to real filmmakers. Don’t call everything made before 2010 “old”, try watching a foreign film every once in a while, and don’t expect Katherine Heigl to pick a good script.