'No Time To Die' Bears the Weight of Blockbusterdom
#148: "No Time To Die," "Mass," "Clear and Present Danger," "Atonement"
Edition 148:
Hey movie lovers!
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In this week’s newsletter: James Bond says goodbye…for now. We’ll discuss the marathon blockbuster No Time To Die and where the series can go from here. Also out this week in theaters is one of my favorite movies of the year, Mass, which will make you feel every emotion possible. Then it’s some Bond-adjacent streaming suggestions for your weekend, and in this week’s “Trailer Watch,” it’s a four-minute preview of the potentially revelatory and undeniably electric Peter Jackson documentary about The Beatles.
No Time To Die
(Theaters)
Daniel Craig is the best James Bond. We must start there on all discussions of No Time To Die, his fifth and final installment as the British superspy. He is the first Bond to embody the character with, well, a real character.
It bears mentioning that in Ian Fleming’s original novels he imagined Bond as “an extremely dull, uninteresting man to whom things happened,” a sentiment which, for all the swaggering masculinity of Sean Connery’s original film portrayal, holds up across the first few decades of movies. Bond is the same omnipotent Lothario in each fantastical adventure no matter what absurd villains and plots to destroy the world come his way. They’re kind of schlocky B-movies, to be honest, which takes nothing away from their undeniable charm.
Craig made Bond into someone who could feel things, hurt his knee, get shot, get his heart broken, regret choices he’d made and reckon with a lifestyle of alcoholism, murder and womanizing. That sorta makes him sound like the Bond who ruined all the fun, except that he drank, killed and made love with just as much machismo as any of his predecessors.
All the pieces came together in Skyfall, a legitimate prestige movie that’s so far and away the best Bond movie it should instead find competition amongst the best movies of the 21st Century (PSA: It’s now streaming on Hulu).
The critical and commercial success of Skyfall raised the stakes of what Bond movies were expected to be moving forward: world-conquering blockbusters that also had real emotional weight and, importantly, serialized storytelling. The Daniel Craig Bond series was now one big story. Which led to the tie-it-all-together disaster Spectre, an experience so bad Craig said he’d rather slash his wrists than play Bond again.
He got lured back for one final ride, thanks to a giant bag of cash and a chance to go out with a bang.
Frankly, MGM Studios couldn’t afford not to try. The box office earning potential of No Time To Die literally held the entire studio hostage during the pandemic, and some say the year-long delay of this movie is what forced the MGM sale to Amazon earlier this year.
All of that is meant to establish the incredible weight of expectation thrust upon this movie. And ultimately, the laundry list of boxes it needed to check stretched the run time (2 hr 45 min) and crippled any storytelling potential.
Modern blockbusters bury audiences under a mountain of plot. In order to make sense of the convoluted nonsense in any long-running franchise these days, you practically need a graduate degree in the mythology of that universe — in one scene for instance, Bond visits the grave of a former lover who last appeared on screen with him in a movie that came out in 2006.
Unfortunately movie fans, these overstuffed blockbusters are here to stay. Each one of these things now has to tie up loose ends from the previous movie, introduce new characters, establish the stakes for our existing characters, give them all a MacGuffin to chase (a briefcase or a hard drive or something), add adventure and comedy and romance along the way, slide in some product placement, create breathtaking action set pieces, nail a finale and then set up the next sequel.
For any given Bond movie, you must add to that car chases, Bond girls, a musical title sequence, a vodka martini shaken not stirred, a “Bond, James Bond,” gadgets with Q, arguments with M, banter with Moneypenny, and at least one dramatic villain monologue.
This paint-by-numbers approach leaves little room for strong storytelling, but that’s not necessarily a requirement for a blockbuster action movie as long as you execute the flashy stuff well. The action sequences here are stunning, even if they are a bit overbearing, and director Cary Joji Fukunaga’s combination of cinematography and production design leads to some truly breathtaking images.
So if we can’t get Prestige Bond, at least we can have fun.
No Time To Die works best when it leans into that fun ethos, as in a Cuba sequence with Craig and a scene stealing Ana de Armas. The pair dances and fights and banters with an electricity that’s sorely lacking when Bond is discussing the global threat of blood cell nanobots (which can be said to do anything a movie needs them to do these days).
There’s just so much movie here, good mixing with bad until before long you forget which is which. Not that it matters, because all anyone will talk about or get mad about is the ending of this movie, which I won’t spoil but creates a lot of questions about the future of the franchise.
My desperate hope is that the series doesn’t pivot to full-on brand maintenance mode like so many blockbuster sequels before it. Making the loudest, dumbest, safest version of these movies will keep the money spigot flowing for years to come, no matter who is in the lead role, but the promise of Skyfall (and to a lesser extent Casino Royale) will live on in the memories of true movie fans everywhere.
As for Craig, don’t feel bad. He’s already shot a Knives Out sequel and is about to play Macbeth on Broadway, dining out on the fat stacks of Bond cash while he digs into more artistically challenging roles for years to come. Bravo, 007. You’ve earned it.
Something New
Mass (Theaters):
Simply put, Mass is one of the best movies released this year (I have it No. 4).
On its face, there’s nothing especially cinematic about this movie. It’s four people talking in a bland, uninteresting room. The story unfolds entirely through dialogue, in a way that’s almost impossible to believe the material was not adapted from a stage play (and even harder to believe the movie was conceived and shot before the pandemic, when such constrictions would become commonplace).
Yet unlike last week’s The Guilty — which I discounted for its lack of visual interest — the storytelling here is so exceptional that one gets completely immersed in the world of the story. It’s an instance where scarcity produced genius, and plays into the larger theme of the movie, that the room is something the characters cannot escape from.
The room in question is an activities room in a church basement (rendered to perfection, from my experience), the setting for a meeting between the parents of a school shooter and the parents of one of the victims. If that sounds heavy, you’re not wrong. This is a candidate for the most I’ve ever cried in a movie (which is saying something, because I saw this movie at the virtual Sundance at like 11 a.m. on a sunny Saturday, not exactly optimal crying conditions).
But interestingly, quite a bit of that crying came as a result of the overwhelmingly hopeful empathy that the movie produces. The souls of these four characters are exposed down to their rawest form, and any semblance of clean resolution is discarded in favor of a messy, complicated grappling with emotions. It’s intense.
The minimalist production and abundant use of close-ups creates an absolute acting showcase from the four leads (who I’d name but you likely only recognize as “oh that person!”). Each of them are brilliant in their own way, and swing the power dynamic of the group in their favor with each new monologue. Though they’re unlikely to get recognized by The Academy, these are four of the best acting performances all year.
It’s a surprising writing and directing debut from Fran Kranz, another “that guy” actor who has here created an enduring document of our times. It’s a movie that provides a visceral experience in the moment and a lingering feeling that will have you thinking and talking about it for days afterwards. I truly cannot recommend it highly enough.
Something Old
Clear and Present Danger (1994, Netflix): It would be impossible to talk James Bond without mentioning his American film counterpart, Jack Ryan. This movie holds a special place in my heart because back in the Blockbuster video days, my brother would rent it seemingly every week and I must’ve watched it at least a dozen times. Harrison Ford stars as Ryan, here as a CIA Deputy Director who gets unwittingly caught up in a Colombian drug cartel war. It’s plot-dense and shares an overly long run time with Bond (2 hr. 20 mins), but that makes time for both awesome action sequences and government espionage talk, with a tall glass of patriotism to wash it all down.
Something to Stream
Atonement (Amazon Prime): One under-considered aspect of the James Bond franchise (on this side of the pond) is just how specifically British it is. With that in mind, I finally got around to watching what is possibly the most British movie ever made.
It checks all the boxes: a movie about duty to country and, well, repression of passion. Keira Knightley, James McAvoy and Benedict Cumberbatch form a sort of stiff-upper-lipped Hall of Fame, plus we get an Oscar-nominated performance from a 13-year-old Saoirse Ronan — one of seven total nominations for this WWII-set love story. And the whole thing is directed by Joe Wright, who did Pride and Prejudice, Anna Karenina, and Darkest Hour.
But it’s a very non-British quality that elevates this movie to a higher level of excellence: Wright’s audacity to play with cinematic form (something he also did in Anna Karenina, which I liked even more). The timelines of different characters aren’t synched, causing moments to be seen from different perspectives, and a jarring third act plot twist launches the movie in a totally new direction. This movie packs an emotional punch!
Trailer Watch: The Beatles: Get Back
It seems incredibly coincidental, perhaps even suspicious, that after Michael Jordan’s “The Last Dance” we just so happen to find out that more of the most famous people in human history happened to be sitting on a treasure trove of behind-the-scenes footage that’s been locked away for decades?
Regardless, Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings movies) got his hands on hundreds of hours of intimate video of John, Paul, George and Ringo during a crucial moment of their careers. Initially, the plan was a feature film, but when his first cut came in at over four hours, Disney pivoted into a three-part mini-series. Normally I’d criticize this movie-to-TV transition, but here all we really want is as much of the footage as possible. Even the moments in this trailer where they’re casually brainstorming what is to become some of the biggest pop songs of all time are incredible to see. Can’t wait!