Casino Royale (2006)

When discussing which entries should be considered as "the best Bond films," the qualifications can sometimes get a little murky. A film could conceivably be effective and full of suspense and pulse pounding action, but still not really be considered a good Bond movie. For instance, you couldn't slap the name James Bond on a Jason Bourne film and call it a solid 007 outing. It wouldn't fit. It's too serious. At this point there's been enough of a pedigree established in the franchise so that you expect certain campy things, and their absence is occasionally sorely felt when they are not present.

On the other hand, there's also been enough wacky crap in the series that sometimes when a film comes around to smack it down to terra firma, it's such a relief and a refreshing change of pace that it is akin to a religious experience. I'm immediately reminded of "The Living Daylights," "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" and to a lesser extent "Octopussy" after the outrageous antics of "A View To A Kill," "You Only Live Twice" and "Moonraker," respectively. These films took what was too over-the-top and brought the series back to its senses and made it act a bit like a grown up, even if it was only a temporary maturation. But were they good Bond movies? Well, that depends on who you talk to. For me personally I've found that the occasions when the franchise put on its serious face often provided some of the best entries, and crossed the threshold between "good movie" and "good Bond flick" - two things that do not necessarily go hand-in-hand.

With that troublesome balancing act in mind, I shall put forward this hypothesis: Daniel Craig's debut feature "Casino Royale" is not the "Best Bond Movie." It's damn good, though. In fact it's close to the top. But there are other Bond films that do "Bond" better, if that makes any sense. It's not a film I would show to a complete newcomer and say "This is what a James Bond movie is like."

No, seriously. Seldom is the card game they're playing this comprehensible.

That being said, I shall add on to my hypothesis and say that while it's not the best at being Bond, "Casino Royale" is the best movie the franchise has made up to this point. I say that without a doubt in my mind. In terms of being an action packed spy thriller full of intrigue, double crosses and surprisingly deep character development, no film in the franchise did it better than "Casino Royale." They got really close with "Skyfall," and that one is a better "Bond movie," but it's not as well structured as "Casino Royale" is, nor is it quite as effective in terms of characterization. It's really close, and you could probably argue against that viewpoint pretty effectively, but for my money "Casino Royale" is the best movie they've made up to this point.

A reboot of the series after 20 films, "Casino Royale" finds James Bond (Daniel Craig), a newly made 00 agent, earning his stripes. "Rough around the edges" is an applicable term to use for him, as he's not exactly the suave, flawless superhero that he became famous as under the likes of Roger Moore or even Sean Connery (although Connery's Bond was known to make an occasional blunder). Here Bond is a blunt instrument, an impetuous wrecking ball whose ego leads him to consider himself above making mistakes, a viewpoint which is as we see on a number of occasions to be demonstrably incorrect.

Like shooting up an embassy. That situation could have been better handled, really.

It's fascinating to watch Bond be a rookie. We're so used to him being invincible that it's quite the shock to see him screw up. And he screws up quite a bit in "Casino Royale." It's not to the point where he's coming across as some kind of idiot or anything. He is a trained spy, so he's very smart and an incredibly dangerous man, but he's not a superhero. He's still just a guy. It humanizes him and makes him an actual character who makes mistakes, is affected and occasionally deeply scarred by them, and then learns from and changes because of them. There's an actual arc for the character of James Bond in this film - something I would argue we've never gotten before. Yeah, his wife was murdered at the end of "OHMSS," but they barely acknowledged that past the opening 10 minutes of "Diamonds Are Forever" and the occasional vague reference that doesn't amount to anything. Hell, it's somewhat debatable how canon that whole thing even is.

His first mission involves a banker to terrorists by the name of Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen). After gambling with his investor's money and losing a whole hell of a lot of it, Le Chiffre holds a high-stakes poker game with a payoff of $150,000,000, hoping to get his money back and pay off the people who will kill him if he doesn't. Bond is sent to beat Le Chiffre so that he will have nowhere left to run, so that MI6 can offer him asylum in exchange for giving up his clients, eg. The world's biggest terrorists. Assisting him is Vesper Lynd (Eva Green), a treasury agent who functions as our Bond girl, but also as his legitimate love interest as opposed to some dink who throws herself at him just because he's there.

I know poker doesn't sound like the most exciting idea for the main thrust of a plot, but in between the scenes of guys staring intensely at each other whilst flinging chips are scenes of hard hitting action and spy shenanigans of the highest caliber, including vehicle chases, a shockingly hard hitting scene of torture, lots of shootouts and hand to hand combat, and what is arguably the best opening twenty minutes in any Bond film ever. For all the card playing going on during the second act (and really there's only so much time spent with it), it's punctuated and bookended by some explosive goings on. The bits where they're playing cards is almost like the deep breaths before the plunge as the tension mounts - because you know that every time they stop for a break things are going to go down, and usually somebody ends up dead.

And less than five minutes after the game is over they literally set a world record by rolling a car on screen seven times. Wasn't that nice of them?

While this film isn't as lighthearted as previous entries (in fact it's downright dour on occasion), it still possesses enough of the trademark Bond charm to make it feel familiar. Some of that comes from Craig providing fantastic moments of classic Bond snark and badassery, but more is conveyed through the phenomenally good dialogue between him and Vesper, who have the best chemistry of any two characters we've seen from the series. Vesper is such a real person that I hesitate even calling her a "Bond Girl" since she's so atypical of what we're used to. They completely threw away the mold of what we should expect from that kind of character. And the ultimate fate of Vesper is the most tragic, heartbreaking thing I've seen a Bond film pull off.

That's a...shockingly tender moment.

That's the core of "Casino Royale." It's about a spy who learns to his sorrow that you can't trust anyone, and that to survive in that job, your soul is simply a moot point that you must learn to ignore. And it doesn't flinch away from that aspect. Because the film's script and the direction took a mature stance when conveying that story (while keeping it exciting and full of explosive, well-filmed action), I find it to be the most sophisticated Bond film from a filmmaking and writing perspective.

Bond has always been a hardass, but we've never gotten a handle on why until now. Before, he was simply an action movie hero. Now thanks to Daniel Craig's powerhouse performance and a smart script, when at the climax Bond, with gun in hand, stands over the orchestrator of his sorrow as he slithers away bleeding while croaking "Who are you," we finally hear the immortal words "The name's Bond. James Bond," we can get an extra charge out of it for reasons besides the obvious. Those words mean something now. It's not just a phrase. This is him saying: "I have arrived. I am now who you've known for all these years, and now you know my story. Now come and watch me be awesome."

Isn't it amazing to see a trailer for a Bond flick that looks like an actual movie?

THE BOTTOM LINE - I freaking love "Casino Royale." It's objectively the best movie the franchise has produced, although there are better examples of what a prototypical Bond film is like. It's exciting, it's full of action, intrigue, twists and great repartee, and Craig rocks it all hardcore. Phenomenal movie, and I never get tired of it.

JAMES BOND

WILL RETURN IN

QUANTUM OF SOLACE

Dark Shadows (2012)

Allow me to begin by saying: "Nerts."

Nerts is all I have to say about Tim Burton. I am so done with him. It's gotten to the point that the thought of another Tim Burton movie coming out causes me to become so irritated that whenever a trailer for a new project of his comes out, I want to punch the person sitting next to me in the theater. Repeatedly. One punch for every time I call who is going to be involved in the movie.

Of course it's got Helena Bonham Carter. Of course it's got Danny Elfman doing the same freaking  musical score that he always does. Of course Christopher Lee is going to have a 30 second cameo. And of freaking course we can't have a Tim Burton movie without Johnny Depp, who will once again be playing Hunter S. Thompson, because that's all his brain can process at this point since he's been playing Hunter S. Thompson for about 10 years.

I'm just so tired of every movie Tim Burton makes having a copy/pasted credit list. And it's not that he hasn't collected a bunch of really great talent, because he has. His casts are always really, really good. But he needs moderation with dipping into this same pool of actors, because at this point it's honestly distracting. I have such a difficult time losing myself in a Tim Burton movie because the mere presence of Helena Bonham Carter and Johnny Depp in really heavy makeup is distracting at this point.

Oh look, it's Johnny Depp in...any one of the 214 movies he's done with Tim Burton...

I challenge Tim Burton to make one film without those people. And have it not be a dark fantasy. Direct a Bond movie or something. And while he's at it, hire Hans Zimmer or James Newton Howard.

Just to show that he can.

Obviously it was not without a great deal of apprehension that I watched "Dark Shadows." Seeing Johnny Depp on the cover, once again doing his best to look weird for no reason other than to look weird for weird's sake didn't help. And of course, the fact that it's a movie about vampires was the salt in the wound, because a good vampire movie is rare nowadays. Plus the reception it got had been pretty bad.

But, and maybe this is merely the result of coming at this from the perspective of someone who has never seen the TV show it was based on, I have to say that "Dark Shadows" was not nearly as bad as I had heard it being. In fact I dare say I enjoyed it for a good portion of the film. Now, were there stupid things in it? Oh you bet there were. But it wasn't enough to ruin anything for me. And that's including Johnny Depp, which is quite the achievement because the charm of Depp is running on fumes for me at this point.

The idea of "Dark Shadows" is that Johnny Depp is playing Barnabas Collins, a rich nobleman who is cursed by a witch to be a vampire, since that's how vampires work in this movie. Kind of. More on that later. The witch is played by Eva Green, who looks lovely as she does her best blonde Anne Hathaway impression. She and Barnabas have a fairly complicated relationship. Long story short, they had a fling, he was honest and said he liked her but wasn't in love with her, so she kills his girlfriend, turns him into a vampire and locks him in a coffin till the end of time.

Fast forward to 200 years later, it's the 1970's, and Barnabas is freed from his prison by unwitting and ill fated construction workers. Making his way back home, he finds that what remains of the Collins family is now rather pathetic and pretty much ruined, with the only thing of value they have being the ancient mansion they live in, which is as dilapidated as their bank accounts. Seeing this, Barnabas decides to return the Collins family to their former glory.

He also has to deal with that little problem of that witch who locked him in a box for 200 years. She's still around.

"Oh don't be so dramatic. It was 198 years."

A lot of fuss was made about "Dark Shadows" being a comedy. Honestly, it really wasn't that overt. Yes, there were silly parts in it, and some admittedly funny lines, but the tone never solidified on "comedy" for me. The whole movie was dark enough to stay a drama, in my opinion. I mean, yes, the scene where Johnny Depp and Eva Green are banging on the ceiling was a bit ridiculous, but to be perfectly honest, it kind of made sense to me. And who am I to say that supernatural beings can't have more unique sex than normal people?

Honestly, the funniest character for me was Carolyn, played by my girl Chloë Grace Moretz. Her job is to be the rebellious teen who listens to rock and hangs out with hippies, and her deadpan, disinterested delivery was oddly 90's in a lot of ways, almost like a proto-hipster. Her lines aren't fall-down funny, in fact none of the jokes in "Dark Shadows" are, but it's the tone of her voice when she says stuff to Barnabas like "You're weird" that gave me a chuckle.

Okay, her line "I'm pretty sure he called me a hooker" was actually pretty damn funny.

Of course, there's a really really stupid part involving her at the end, which I won't spoil, but suffice to say it's pretty much the definition of "right the crap out of nowhere." And it has to be from the show. There's no way it couldn't be. The twist they give her character is so out there and without any lead in whatsoever nor resolution or explanation, that it has got to be referencing the TV show. Otherwise they're literally just screwing with stuff.

Something else that bugged me was that the vampire lore in "Dark Shadows" seems a bit...inconsistent. I'm talking about whether or not Barnabas can make other vampires, because it really goes all over the place. At first it would appear that people he bites just die, then later people he bites eventually, much later, come back to life as vampires, but then later a person can *instantly* become immortal the second he bites them. It was all thoroughly confusing, but I suppose in a movie where vampirism is due to a witch's curse, any kind of established lore is out the window.

Little known fact: Vampires love waffles.

That last thing came into play at the end of the film, which was really the only part of the movie that I legitimately thought wasn't very good. I did not like the ending, not so much because it was bad, but it seemed really rushed and somewhat at odds with the rest of the story, all in an effort to end it on an upbeat. Maybe not every story needs a happy ending.

Honestly though, it's not really that much to get mad about. I still found "Dark Shadows" to be decently entertaining, despite some annoying stuff like that. A lot of that has to do with the cast, which I found to be quite good. And that's including Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, who I was not expecting to like. There was also Michelle Pfeiffer, and it's nice to see her again. And of course having Chloë Grace Moretz in it was awesome, but I was also jazzed to see Jackie Earl Haley is in it too, and having just those two is frankly enough to make me watch it alone. Oh and Alice Cooper makes an appearance. He plays himself. And yes it is silly.

And no, I don't know why it's the 70's and he looks to be a senior citizen. Don't mind that.

So I guess "Dark Shadows" gets a pass from me. In much the same way as "The Raven" got a pass, I think. It's not that it was necessarily good, but it was so much better than the reception had lead one to believe it to be. Hooray for lowered standards, I guess?

THE BOTTOM LINE - "Dark Shadows" surprised me by being a recent Tim Burton movie I liked, mostly because it really doesn't feel like a Tim Burton movie. While not an outstanding achievement in film making by any stretch, in terms of a drama/comedy it's actually reasonably entertaining. As long as you're not a huge fan of the TV show, I'd expect, considering its reception.