Glass Onion (2022)

Director: Rian Johnson

Cast: Daniel Craig, Edward Norton, Janelle Monáe, Kathryn Hahn

Have I Seen it Before: Sadly, I missed it in the theater, and I feel badly (or perhaps even guilty) about that.

Did I Like It: A viewer goes into Knives Out (2019) knowing that its a whodunit, but even so there’s a certain amount of surprise to the whole affair. Can Johnson pull something like this off? Is Craig able to shake of Bond more than any of his predecessors in the role and slide into character work in his later years?

The answer was yes to both, and the plot of the mystery itself kept one guessing.

There’s no way they could all pull this off again, with a completely different case, no less, right?

Even if Johnson and Craig were able to recapture the charm of the original film, I’m bound to find myself not having any fun at all, as I’m looking around every corner trying to unravel the mystery before Blanc (Craig) can. It’s like I’m sitting in the middle of the fourth season of Sherlock, and I’m into the second hour before I realize I’m not having any fun anymore.

Not so here, I’m happy to report. The larger mystery itself is a misdirect, sure, as some bad faith reviewers are noting with such vehemency that it’s as if the movie stole their lunch money. Honestly, who cares? For my money, that kept things lively, and the comedy that the mayhem and disaster exploding around these characters is entirely self-inflicted so thoroughly encompasses the stupid moment of history we’re all desperately stuck in. Will Glass Onion age as well as Knives Out? Maybe not. A mystery’s shelf life hits a half life pretty quickly after the mystery itself is revealed, so I’m imagining both of these—and any future Blanc adventures—have a better shot than anything else in the genre.

No Time To Die (2021)

Director: Cary Joji Fukunaga

Cast: Daniel Craig, Rami Malek, Léa Seydoux, Lashana Lynch

Have I Seen it Before: Where to even begin with a question like that? The film was originally scheduled to be released in April of 2020. I had even scheduled some time off to make a day of it.

We all know what happened there.

In fact, this is the first new movie* since Birds of Prey (2020) I’ve seen in the theater. This is also the first new movie showing only in theaters that I had any interest in seeing immediately. When it comes to Bond, it feels like the biggest screen possible is the way to go, so I booked a seat on Monday afternoon at the biggest theater I could find…

…and it was nearly abandoned, because the world is still pretty fucked up, right? It’s almost as if the theatrical experience is less about the collective experience** of a film and more about the seeing epic cinematography on the largest palette possible in a room that naturally eschews distractions.

I’m also struck by the little pieces of the theatrical experience. Seeing a melange of trailers, and being thoroughly disinterested in some (Jackass Forever) and being completely entranced by others which had not really been on my radar up until that point (Last Night in Soho). It had also been an astonishingly long time since I sat in a dark room, waiting for things to get started, and the prevailing thought I have racing through my mind is: “Did I forget to lock my car? I’m not going all the way out to the parking lot to check.

It was almost like it was early 2020 again. If only for a moment.

Did I Like It: Whew. After all that, is there anything left to talk about?

Plenty.

I’ve always thought On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) was a throughly underrated entry in the Bond series. It’s scope is top-notch, it’s (relatively) grounded story harkens to the best that Ian Fleming’s books had to offer. The final moment is heartbreaking, and only undercut by the fact that Connery isn’t in the role so we could watch what was left of his heart break. He could have also torn through Diamonds Are Forever (1971) like a wild animal, instead of what we got… Even if Lazenby had either decided or been allowed to stick around in the role, that wrenching pathos might have been there in retrospect. Given that he was a one-off, that moment doesn’t quite reach the heights it could have.

Well, now we’re here.

I might say that this film owes a bit too much to Service, having to create at least part of its context through references to that earlier film’s dialogue and soundtrack. This is ultimately a minor complaint, because Craig’s longevity in role establishes that context in spades. It makes the story of his Bond a complete one, and earns that pathos.

There had always been a disconnect in the series (both in print and on film) where Bond’s more prurient impulses are often written off to an acute sense of mortality, but there’s never a moment where his continuing, perpetual survival is in doubt. That’s no longer the case. The film might be a little on the engorged side, and this only serves to make the climax perhaps an inch too intricate for its own good, but those are minor concerns, especially when we’re less than twenty years away from Die Another Day (2002).

I don’t know where the series may go from here, but I’m delighted by the possibilities. I stayed until the very end of the credits to ensure that, indeed, “James Bond will return.” 

Some might complain about a degree of demasculinization for the character, but I’m not with this line of thinking in the slightest. I’ve been walking a little bit taller and a bit more confidently now, days after I took in the film. Both this film and Craig’s time in the role will be remembered as all-time heights for the series. I’d say the potential complainers need to get over themselves, but I don’t need to tell them that. They’re going to get over it all on their own without my help.

*Since getting my full round of vaccinations, I have been to anniversary screenings of Fargo (1996) and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986).

**Come to think of it, more often than not, the majority of other people are a thing to endure in a movie theater. In this instance, all I needed was one person to blurt out something along the lines of “This kinda crap would never have happened when Roger Moore was around!” to bring down the whole experience.

Spectre (2015)

Director: Sam Mendes

Cast: Daniel Craig, Christoph Waltz, Léa Seydoux, Ben Whishaw

Have I Seen it Before: Sure.

Did I Like It: Does the plot of a Bond movie really matter? If they do, then this one suffers a bit. It tries to ape the “greatest villain reimagined” motif that The Dark Knight (2008) made de rigueur and movies like Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) drove into the ground. The story of the resurgence of Blofeld (Waltz) feels like it has come too late to the party to be anything other than lame. Bond movies are no stranger to feebly chasing after the current moviegoing trends, with equally shaky results. I refer the jury to Moonraker (1979).

Really, truly, the film is actually too late for two separate parties. The Spectre aspects of the Bond mythology had spent decades tied into endless copyright disputes by the time Roger Moore had taken over the tux and martini. Corporate mergers collided with the death of intransigent rights holders so that every possible atom of the Bond property could once again be wielded by EON Productions. Did they try to bring us a new version of Spectre and Blofeld, re-combining the parts we knew into something new? No, they tried to retcon the man and the organization as the mastermind of every event in the Daniel Craig era. The results, as I have said, are still somewhat awkward.

And yet, I may be beyond complaining about Bond movies at this point. Maybe its that No Time To Die feels further and further away the more it is delayed. Maybe I’m just—like Craig—mellowing in my old age. Maybe its that at its core, all I need from a Bond is some gadgets, a couple of set pieces, and a man at the center of it all that exudes such confidence and swagger forging the fantasy that a human could walk the Earth completely divorced from the notions of angst or klutzyness. It’s an enduring—if admittedly toxic—fantasy in machismo. Each of the actors in the role had that ineffable quality, and Craig has had it in spades throughout his tenure, and in great supply here. It can keep a Bond movie afloat, and this one manages.

Cowboys & Aliens (2011)

Director: Jon Favreau

Cast: Harrison Ford, Daniel Craig, Olivia Wilde, Sam Rockwell

Have I Seen it Before: Yep.

Did I Like It: On spec, this a movie I’d be there for opening weekend, which I was. Harnessing the best parts of John Ford and Sergio Leone to tell a hybrid tale incorporating the quintessence of Spilebergian awe and wonder? The film practically makes itself.

Except, it didn’t. For the years since the film’s release and lukewarm reception, that failure seemed like a mystery to me. Were people so bothered by the mere existence of a post-modern western that they couldn’t wrap their heads around the idea of having fun with the prospect? Is the same thing that causes people to bafflingly look down on Back to the Future Part III (1990) still unfairly affecting the moviegoing public twenty years later?

On this viewing, I don’t think so. At the very least, I don’t think that reflexive boredom with cowboys doomed this film to be instantly forgotten. That sense in the movie watching public may yet exist, but the movie’s problems exist beyond. For two out of three acts, the film is a good homage to those classic westerns and is well on its way to be one of those brilliant genre mashups that—like the Cornetto films of Edgar Wright—stand the test of time. And then the conclusion is a mishmash of cliches not of every movie it is trying to emulate, but every frozen TV dinner action movie released around the same time. Many of those films were written by the same writers who wrote this film, and that is a pretty good reason why most of them don’t write feature films anymore*.

The film has good performances. Daniel Craig cuts a convincing mysterious cowboy figure, especially when one considers that Robert Downey Jr. was originally cast in the role. While charming, he would have been completely wrong for the role as it was eventually presented, and even for the genre, now that I think about it. Even Harrison Ford looks like he’s mostly awake through the film, in an era of his performances where that was pretty rare. Had the film tried just a little bit harder and reached for a little bit more in its conclusion, it could have been something really great. Then again, Favreau certainly has proven his adeptness with similar material with The Mandalorian. Maybe if the focus had been on the aliens, and the cowboys were secondary, we’d be having a different discussion now.

*Granted, Lindelof was always better at TV and returned where he could unfurl his true skills. Kurtzman is a better producer than he ever was a writer, although many current viewers of Star Trek might take great pains to disagree that he’s worth anything. Roberto Orci can’t seem to get projects off the ground anymore, which feels like something approaching justice.

Skyfall (2012)

Director: Sam Mendes

Cast: Daniel Craig, Judi Dench, Javier Bardem, Ralph Fiennes

Have I Seen It Before?: It’s actually the only Bond film that I managed to talk my wife into seeing in the theater. I can report that she thought it was “okay.”

Did I like it?: As I continued to read through Nobody Does It Better: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of James Bond, I was mystified that somehow this film has reduced in estimation by the viewing community at large.

Is it quite as good as Casino Royale (2006)? That’s one of those classic comparisons that is in equal measures resoundingly unfair and completely unavoidable. Royale is the first legitimate interpretation of a Fleming novel since probably Goldfinger (1964) but really, truly From Russia With Love (1963). This movie doesn’t bother to do what every other Bond film does and try to synthesize the most time-worn wisps of a story around the barest elements of the Fleming canon. This one somehow re-examines the modern Bond and the literary Bond and manages to create something that Fleming would have been proud of. Or at least, something Fleming would have gotten embroiled into a decades long copyright that would make many of the subsequent films worse for the effort. Some might complain that we jumped from Bond’s earliest missions to the period in time when he desperately wants to hang up his Walther forever, but if I understand the realities of the 00-unit in the Fleming books, the limited shelf life fits.

Notice how I didn’t really answer the question? I don’t want to pick between these two. They’re the best (so far) in a run for Craig where the weak links in the chain would be the best film another Bond could ever hope to do.

So, let’s dwell on what the film does astonishingly well. The theme song from Adele is the greatest Bond opener since at least the brief experiment with New Wave during the bridge between Roger Moore and Timothy Dalton, and really, truly since Shirley Bassey last graced us with her presence in Moonraker (1979). I mean, it may be my favorite Bond theme ever, and that is some rarified company.

And then there is that ending. No, not the extended sequence borrowing heavily from Home Alone (1990) that some people seem bent out of shape about, although I have a feeling people would be more bothered by it if the original long-shot plan of having Sean Connery play the groundskeeper, Kincade (Albert Finney)*. I speak more of that final sequence where Craig abandons the prequel elements of his films up until that point and goes through the gauntlet of M’s (Ralph Fiennes) leather door to be finally a fully-formed Bond.

“Are you ready to get back to work?”

“With pleasure.”

Sure beats the hell out of “I thought Christmas only comes once a year” as far as last lines in Bond films is concerned.

Now if only that next film had capitalized on the promise laid here a little better. That would’ve been great.

*The notion that Connery would somehow skip out on Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) but instead come out of retirement for an EON production is mystifying beyond my previous capacity for understanding. By all accounts—and the oral history mentioned above makes no reference to the notion—the Broccoli’s abandoned the notion before even approaching Connery. But what if they had gone completely crazy on the idea. They could have absolutely unified the continuity of the entire series if they slapped Pierce Brosnan in the Javier Bardem role? Yes, the movie would be an astonishing mess, and most of the 90s Bond movies would somehow mean even less, but we’d probably still be talking about it.

Quantum Of Solace (2008)

Director: Mark Forster

Cast: Daniel Craig, Olga Kurylenko, Mathieu Amalric, Judi Dench

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: But I only think I’ve seen it once in the theater, and then again when I acquired the DVD*. That’s telling. It is a step down from the absolute transcendence that was Casino Royale, and it’s storyline is all afterthought material from that preceding film. The Bond films have quite rightly not needed to feed into material from the previous film, and even only occasionally tried to have any kind of continuity at all. The best Bond films are so fully themselves that the confidence of the filmmakers and the confidence of the main character fuse into one entity. 

Also, the successor to Royale may have always been doomed to be a letdown simply because it follows what might very well be the best films of their series, see Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), The Dark Knight Rises(2012), or Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (1983) for other examples.

But, as with all of those perfectly fine films above, this film probably gets an objectively bad rap. The direction from Mark Forester, then most famous for Stranger Than Fiction (2006), brings a precise visual scheme to the proceedings makes this look like no other Bond film before or since. Also, while the story is beholden to another movie, it definitely taps into that pure Fleming essence that Craig has tapped into so thoroughly. And I love the opening titles and theme song. That alone can go a long way towards leading me to feel more favorable about a particular Bond outing.

Were this an entry in any other Bond actor tenure (including Sean Connery) it would have been one of the best Bond films of all time. Sadly, it must become Craig’s weak link. One movie would have to be, and if this is the nadir, Craig’s status as the greatest since Connery will stand for all time.

*You can tell (minus the weird exception of Diamonds are Forever (1971)) which Bond films I enjoy the most by which I own on blu-ray. Casino Royale (2006), Skyfall (2012), From Russia With Love (1963), A View To A Kill (1985). This one I only have on DVD.

Casino Royale (2006)

Director: Martin Campbell

Cast: Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Mads Mikkelsen, Jeffrey Wright

Have I Seen It Before?: I had been aching for a proper adaptation of Fleming’s first novel ever since reading it. The multi-director comedy-adjacent Casino Royale (1967) need not be mentioned here.

Did I like it?: And so one might normally be unable to get over what the film could have been. An EON-produced version in the 60s starring Sean Connery, with Audrey Hepburn as Vesper Lynd and Orson Welles as Le Chiffre (the 1967 did get one thing right) would have been glorious. The rumored efforts of Quentin Tarantino trying to launch an all black-and-white version with Pierce Brosnan (and presumably Uma Thurman as Lynd, with maybe Samuel L. Jackson as Le Chiffre?) would have been bananas and also one of my favorite films of all time. 

So, it is a testament to the glories of this film that I like it so much despite what it could have been. The book is surprisingly faithful to the source material. One might scratch their head at the notion of turning The Big Game from Baccarat to Texas Hold’em Poker, but if anyone watching any of the previous Bond pictures claims they understood how the game of Baccarat works, they’re lying. After years of steeping myself in Bondanalia, all I’ve been able to absorb is the fact that it merges the most frustrating elements of both Craps and Blackjack. How hard is it to hit the number nine?

And yet it keeps enough of the Bond movie trappings to be that particular cinematic flavor one can only find in the Bond series. David Arnold’s score is resurrecting the best of John Barry, the extension to the plot make the adventure not nearly as claustrophobic as Fleming’s story kept matters. One might miss the initial gun-barrel sequence, before one realizes that the entire pre-credit sequence is the origin of the gun barrel itself. The film series has been notorious for playing things safe, but here, every risk pays off. I just don’t understand anyone who thinks things have changed too much or that Bond has become too much like the Bourne series.

As with the initial outing for all of the Bonds, one must take a moment to ascertain the qualities of the man himself. Every Bond with the possible exception of Connery make their strongest outing their first. There was a lot of skepticism from the public about Craig, mostly having to do with his flaxen hair. Here, he is more than equal to the task of taking on the 007 mantle, and with a quality far closer to the Fleming original in ways that were accepted by the public, when only twenty years earlier were scoffed at when brought to life by Timothy Dalton. As I write this review we are—depending on the behavior of a pandemic or two—approaching the end of Craig’s tenure, it’s sort of amazing that the weak links in the chain of his time at the wheel of the Aston Martin would have been considered the best films of many of the other Bonds. He is the second coming of Connery for which many Bond fans were always hoping, and I sit here anxiously awaiting No Time To Die (2020) and wondering how the series will recover from his loss.

Knives Out (2019)

Director: Rian Johnson

Cast: Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, Jamie Lee Curtis

Have I Seen It Before?: Nope. As I write this, it feels like ages since I’ve been able to pull away from work in the middle of the day to catch a matinee. So many movies missed. Wither thou, Jojo Rabbit (2019)?

Did I like it?: It is such a singular pleasure to walk into a movie with almost no knowledge of what is about to unfold, aside from cast, genre, and director. I trust Rian Johnson implicitly. Looper (2012) looked so blissfully stupid when I saw the trailer and became one of the more satisfying time travel stories ever.

Johnson hasn’t steered me wrong, and I’m now convinced he can bring something fresh to any genre that he decides to tackle. He is certainly one of the most exciting filmmakers working today. Directors who take on the daunting task of churning out product in one of the largest franchises in the world might fall into doing so repeatedly. Directors with the level of taste necessary to bring a litany of original properties to the movie-watching public might turn up their noses at the idea of making the part 8 of anything. Johnson does both with aplomb.

Yes, The Last Jedi (2017) is a terrific film. Eat me. You think it’s a good film, too, but you’ve got some shit to work through. You know who you are.

Ahem. Anyway, about this movie…

And with that trust firmly in place, I could just sit back and let the mystery unfold around me. I wasn’t already writing a review in my head before the opening vanity cards unfurled. That is a luxury that the movie-theater-amenity-industrial-complex can’t touch. The cast is wall-to-wall stars, which is such a critical feature in a mystery. While watching any number of TV serials, I’ve had about an 85% success rating at figuring whodunit by just picking the actor who has a slightly higher profile than the other guest stars.

Here, the tagline really turned out to be true. Any of them could have done it. There was a solid stretch of the film where I even thought the victim (Christopher Plummer) was the mastermind. To illuminate any other element of the plot would take away the experience of watching the cast at work.

And what a cast it is. Everyone is doing eclectic work that is still somehow attached to their image as movie stars. Ana de Armas—the only performer with whom I had been unware—becomes a force to be reckoned with in films to come, while Daniel Craig proves that he might be the best pure actor to have ever donned the tuxedo of 007. Sean Connery and to some degree Pierce Brosnan went on to different roles after hanging up the Walther PPK, but never managed to step out of their screen persona in any real way. Craig steps out of anything suave to give us an eccentric that the other Bonds may have found unseemly. If Johnson makes good on his hints that this is not the last we’ve seen of Benoit Blanc, then I’m on board for a whole 9-movie saga about which people won’t be able to help complaining.

I will only be content with Johnson not directing Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019) because in doing so he might have deprived us of the unique alchemy on display here.