MASS

Directing: A-
Acting: A
Writing: A
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+

One of the many amazing things about Mass is among the most surprising, in that is is neither adapted from a play, nor was it shot during any COVID lockdowns—and yet, it would be easy to assume one or the other, or both: a good eighty percent of the film takes place in one room in the back of a small neighborhood church, only four people ever onscreen, having very heavy and difficult conversation, shot in real time.

The only other people ever even seen onscreen are the two employees of the church that is hosting this meeting, and the social worker who has brokered the meeting. This movie has all of seven speaking parts. For most of its 111-minute runtime, there are only four.

This would make a great “secret screening” at film festivals, where people walk in truly and completely blind. I’d love to tell you right now: just go see this movie. Don’t find out anything about it at all, just sit down and watch it. Except that this is a review, and by definition I have to tell you something.

Besides, some people might like some fair warning, because this is some heavy shit. Expertly directed and brilliantly acted, heavy shit. Martha Plimpton and Jason Isaacs are the parents of a teenage son who was killed six years ago in a high school mass shooting incident (hence the title). Ann Dowd and Reed Birney are the parents of the teenage boy who perpetrated the shooting, killing ten others and then himself. The parents of the victim, who have been in regular correspondence over time in spite of other parents filing lawsuits in which these two never wanted to participate, have requested this meeting with the parents of the perpetrator, in hopes of achieving some kind of closure.

Mass, then, is an impressively realized, unique examination of, not just grief, but grief in many forms. There is much to be said about the demonization of the parents of a child murderer, and writer-director Fran Kranz gets deep into it. Kranz is a guy with 74 acting credits, and that Mass is his directorial debut is truly stunning.

He’s also provided a film that is deeply deserving of awards recognition, and I fear it will get none, because of its very difficult subject matter. I can tell you to watch this all I want, but if you don’t want to go through multiple emotional gut punches you’re not going to want to. The young woman welcoming these two couples into her church provides a box of tissue in this nondescript room, and tissues should be provided at every seat in the theater. Okay, so, realistically, the vast majority of the people who actually do watch this movie will do so later in their homes. So, just be sure to keep the Kleenex handy.

Incidentally, I still found the theatrical experience of this film enhanced it. For all intents and purposes, it’s like just watching a play, but miraculously, it’s well presented onscreen, and never feels like the clunky movie most stage adaptations end up being. You’re too absorbed in their conversation to care. And in a movie theater, that’s the only place where complete immersion is possible. Even though it’s several minutes into the movie before the two couples actually meet and sit down at this generic round banquet table, and another several minutes after they begin talking in private that the conversation makes clear how these two couples are connected.

All four of the principal actors are phenomenal, but I only want to single out Ann Dowd in that she so often plays women who walk a fine line between warm and creepy, it’s nice to see her here playing a woman who, but for the fact that her son killed ten people in cold blood, is so . . . normal. She really feels like a nice old lady you might encounter at the church down the road. All of them do, really. All of these characters are ordinary people who extraordinarily terrible circumstances thrust upon them. And, in terms of performance, all four of them get multiple moments to shine. Reed Birney, the least well known of the four actors, is also the least showy, but his restraint and subtlety is just as impressive.

Kranz’s writing is also exquisite. By definition with a presentation like this, there has to be a great deal of exposition—the whole movie is nothing but dialogue. It never feels like exposition, though, and a vast array of details are revealed to the story of how they all got here, just through the organic unfolding of their gut wrenching, yet riveting conversations. There’s no getting around the fact that Mass, as an incisively indirect examination of gun violence in America, is in no way fun, but there’s also no escaping the fact that it’s easily one of the best films of the year. I just hope enough people see it to give it the attention it deserves.

This is literally the entire movie, and it’s still great.

Overall: A-

THE FRENCH DISPATCH

Directing: A-
Acting: B
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

The anthology film as a genre has a storied history—and a varied one as well, which often applies to the several stories within the one film as well. And so it goes with The Fench Dispatch, Wes Anderson’s first foray into the genre, although one could argue that “Wes Anderson” is a genre unto itself, all aesthetics and dioramas, and that element remains at the forefront.

This is Anderson’s ninth feature film as director since his debut with Bottle Rocket in 1996, and in many regards, The French Dispatch is a return to form—in that it’s far more concerned with the exactness of screen presentation than it is with, say, character development. His last film, The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), was entertaining enough to render it Anderson’s greatest box office success to date; prior to that, Moonrise Kingdom (2012) might actually be my favorite of his films.

The odd thing about The French Dispatch—originally slated for release over a year ago, delayed due to COVID—is how much potential it could have had if one of its many stories were simply expanded into its own feature film. My feelings about each of the five stories—three longer ones and two shorter ones—vary, although to be fair, they can’t vary too wildly considering the consistency of visual style. Say what you want about Wes Anderson, you certainly can’t say his films are anything like any other. When it comes to having a unique vision, this guy is the real deal. The issue, I suppose, is how much his singular vision threads so consistently through all of his films. It might not be unfair to say that once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.

But, there are always degrees. Anderson’s films often spend so much time on the theatricality of their screen presentation—and moments of The French Dispatch take theatricality to a quite literal level—they often leave little time or energy to the dimensions of their characters. This was what I liked about Moonrise Kingdom, which allowed for some fleshing out of character. The stories in The French Dispatch are further constrained by their shorter run times.

And: The French Dispatch is seriously stacked with movie stars. This has been happening in Anderson’s films for a while, but none of his previous films hold a candle to this one, which features a separate ensemble cast in five different vignettes, making it basically five times more of an ensemble cast. Who even gets top billing, anyway? No one, apparently: the poster, while featuring an image packed with maybe a hundred people, doesn’t even bother listing actor names in the credits. That said, it does arrange the characters roughly by row, and these ones are up front: Owen Wilson, Tilda Swinton, Benicio Del Toro, Adrien Brody, Bill Murray, Jeffrey Wright, Timothée Chalomet, Frances McDormand. Just behind them include the likes to Lois Smith, French actress Léa Seydoux (who was in Blue Is the Warmest Color as well the last two Bond films), Bob Balaban, and Mathieu Amalric (also from a Bond film, having played the villain in Quantum of Solace—he also appeared in The Grand Budapest Hotel). Other surprisingly famous people you have to struggle to find include Willem Dafoe, Elisabeth Moss, Christoph Waltz, Liev Schreiber, Edward Norton, Henry Winkler, Saoirse Ronan, Jason Schwartzman—the list goes on and on.

It may interest some to note that the full title of this film is The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun, and it is very much Anderson’s homage to The New Yorker. Thus, it’s easy to imagine huge fans of The New Yorker will be potentially delighted by this film. This conceit is what actually connects the separate stories, as they are representative of three earlier stories of said publication, reprinted in a farewell issue after its publisher (Bill Murray) dies. The two shorter “stories” that make up this film are from the point of view of the staff of this publication, first a brief telling of another story, and then a sort of brief memorial. (One of the five “ensemble casts” is of the magazine’s staff; four of them serving as voice-over narrator as tellers of their separate stories: Owen Wilson, Tilda Swinton, Frances McDormand, and Jeffrey Wright.) At least two of the stories are reportedly either inspired by or based on real stories published in The New Yorker.

I always enjoy articles from The New Yorker whenever I get around to reading them, so I guess I like The New Yorker fine—I just don’t have a nuanced knowledge of its style and history. There’s a lot of layered meaning in the presentation here, some of it arguably, if subtly, meta, and a lot of it difficult for me to grasp. I felt like there was a lot of narrative threads connecting in many ways that I was not catching. Wes Anderson is the kind of filmmaker who takes the idea of “no accidents onscreen” to the extreme. Everything about the camera work, the production design, and especially the blocking, is so exact that it borders on losing some of its art.

I did quite enjoy Revisions to a Maifesto, in any case—the one in which Frances McDormand and Timothée Chalamet are revolutionaries who wind up having a brief affair. The Concrete Masterpiece, the first of the three longer stories, about a convicted murderer (Del Toro) selling his paintings of the prison guard (Seydoux) to an overzealous art dealer (Brody), was moderately amusing. The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner, in which the title character (Amalric) has his son kidnapped by criminals (Norton, and others) for ransom, was entertaining but visually convoluted.

Basically, the same could be said of The French Dispatch as could be said of virtually any Wes Anderson film: if you like his other movies, you’ll like this one. As a rule, I like them fine.

Quick, name all these actors!

Overall: B

DUNE

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: A-
Editing: B+
Special Effects: A

It goes without saying that there’s a lot riding on Denis Villeneuve’s Dune, the latest literary adaptation of a novel beloved for decades. Frank Herbert’s original novel, the first in a series of six (not counting a further sixteen co-written by Herbert’s son Brian and Kevin J. Anderson, with still more to come), was published in 1965. Previous attempts at screen adaptations include a notorious feature film flop by David Lynch in 1984, and a Syfy miniseries in 2000. Legions of nerds love this property. No fewer than three people I spoke with earlier today were excited just to hear that I was going to see this movie.

And here’s the thing. I have never read the novel, descriptions of which make it honestly sound tedious. Nor have I seen the 1984 film, descriptions of which make it sound horrible. I didn’t even know a miniseries ever existed until this week. Thus, as always, I can only speak to how the 2021 Dune stands on its own merits, which of course is how I believe it should be judged anyway. I still had great interest in this Dune, simply because of its director, who has proven time and again (Prisoners, Sicario, Arrival, Blade Runner 2049) that his films are not to be missed.

I just can’t decide the degree to which I feel the same way about Dune. It depends, ironically, on your knowledge of and affection for the property itself. I have a feeling people who already love the Dune story and mythology will be pleased. It should be noted that this adaptation of the first novel only covers half of it; all the marketing materials just call it Dune, but the title card makes it explicit: Dune - Part One. Villeneuve is in pre-production for Part Two and only agreed to make the film if he could do it in two parts.

I’m glad he did. This is a completely different universe from ours, and fully realized—the run time of this film is two hours and 35 minutes, which never drags. There’s a lot to pack in here, but it never feels packed; allowing this adaptation to be of only the first half, and giving it that run time, simply allows the world it presents to breathe. “Epic” is a wildly overused word anymore, but this movie is an epic in every sense of the word. Every frame elicits a sense of grandeur.

I have to admit, though, that Dune just didn’t speak to me the way I wanted it to—certainly not the way Villeneuve’s previous films have (with the notably odd and incoherent exception of Enemy). It clearly does speak the way I wanted it to, to others; my husband loved it and immediately said he wants to read the novel. It’s also arguably nonsensical to assess this movie as a complete entity at all—because it isn’t complete, by definition. It even ends fairly abruptly, as though right in the middle of the story, because that’s indeed exactly where it is. My feelings about this film may differ significantly once Part Two is released. As it is, this very review is rather like reviewing any other movie after only watching the first hour. On the other hand, there was a similar experience with Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill films, and in that case I had been much more enthralled with Volume I than I had been with Volume II. Still, I did not know that until I had seen both films.

And besides, Dune takes its time, letting the story unfold gradually, in ways I constantly wish other movies would. There are indeed very thrilling set pieces, but this film is comparatively meditative in its first half. It’s all story establishment and world building, as we meet Paul (Timothée Chalamet) and his parents (Oscar Isaac and Rebecca Ferguson), rulers of their home world. And we are taken to other worlds and introduced to a stunning array of other key characters from across their universe, played by countless A-list actors (Josh Brolin, Jason Momoa, Javier Bardem, Stellan Skarsgård, Dave Bautista, Charlotte Rampling, Zendaya, Chen Chang). More often than not, a movie this packed with star power crushes under the weight of it and deflates into the realm of mediocrity. Dune is far from mediocre, however.

It’s certainly a technical marvel. A whole lot of it is set in desert landscapes (consider the title), in light of which it’s remarkable how stunning it is to look at most of the time. Otherworldly creatures and vehicles, notably gargantuan sand worms, are seen sparingly and thus very effectively. There’s also a fun mode of transportation that is basically a helicopter designed like a dragonfly. The effects are seamlessly blended into practical sets, and never call attention to themselves, instead always existing in service of the story.

The story, incidentally, is pretty typical for fantasy epics: Paul is identified as a messiah, a fate he predictably resists, until—spoiler alert!—he begins to accept his destiny. It remains unclear to me exactly what he’s meant to deliver to this universe as a messiah, and related details were consistently difficult for me to follow, but such considerations are secondary. What Villeneuve truly succeeds at here is establishment of a unique tone, in a broadly realized alternate universe, unlike any other, except perhaps the source material. It may not have been quite what I wanted it to be, but I can still see it as something it needed to be, and appreciate it for what it is. I will certainly be right back to see Part Two once it finally comes out.

Rebecca Ferguson, Zendaya, Javier Bardem, and Timothée Chalamet, striking a pose on a desert rock.

Overall: B+

THE RESCUE

Directing: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+

There’s a clip in The Rescue of a European newscaster saying, “You’d have to have a heart of stone not to be moved by this.” He might as well be talking about this movie itself, which is a bit of an emotional roller coaster—far more than most documentaries. I can think of a couple of other documentaries that were as tense or as suspenseful, rare qualities on their own for the genre, but I’m hard pressed to think of another one that combines those with anxiety, occasional terror, and compassion and relief.

In other words, The Rescue kind of freaked me out. Its co-directors, Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, are no strangers to documenting extremes: they also co-directed the 2018 film Free Solo, about a guy climbing 3,000 feet up El Capitan with no gear. The Rescue is a better movie, though, because there’s a key difference: the guy in Free Solo was putting his life at risk for the thrill of it. The Rescue tells the story of dozens of people putting their lives at risk to rescue a young soccer team and their coach stranded in mostly flooded caves in northern Thailand.

If you paid any attention to the news at all, you likely heard about this story. The ordeal lasted 18 days, and the 12 young boys and their coach weren’t even found, confirmed still alive, until nine days into that stretch. It was another week before they came up with a horrifying plan, which itself lasted three days, to get them all out of there. In the end, what they were faced a terrible choice: either risk some of their lives, or guarantee that within days they would all drown and die.

I’m not particularly claustrophobic, but . . . damn. So much of this story involves cave divers maneuvering through incredibly tight, water-filled caves, in scenarios I have a hard time imagining I could ever deal with. This is the kind of thing that could make anyone panic. And if you don’t vividly recall the way the story ended in the news, this film quite effectively keeps you on the edge of your seat, sometimes with your heart in your throat.

There has been some criticism of The Rescue because some of the diving footage was reenacted by the actual divers who were there. Why this matters escapes me, and the footage they get from this is used well—it seems logical that they would not have had a camera going in the middle of desperate swimming and crawling through tight underwater spaces with zero visibility. This footage effectively illuminates the big picture, and gives a visual sense of the spaces they were navigating. The Rescue also makes use of rare footage actually taken at the scene, but it makes sense that there would not be enough of it to flesh out a visual representation of these harrowing eighteen days.

The rescue was a truly international effort, fully acknowledging the hundreds of people involved in the rescue. That said, the Chinese get a passing acknowledgment, and The Rescue as a film gives particular focus to the group of cave diving hobbyists, all of them British, Australian or otherwise European, who just happened to have the skills needed in this one instance that no one else had. At least, that’s the way this movie presents the story. I’m a little unsure of the necessity of featuring three or four of the recreational cave divers talking about being bullied as kids, but, whatever.

There’s a ton of detail to this story, with many twists and turns, over an increasingly hopeless amount of time, with an astonishing conclusion. There are also many angles from which to approach this story, and The Rescue covers a lot of them, weaving them together with its own assured skill. There’s not much more you could ask of a film of this sort.

This is one of the more open spaces.

Overall: B+

THE LAST DUEL

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: B
Editing: A-

If you watch The Last Duel, it may become clear how easy it becomes to debate “what it’s about.” There’s a line from the film that really sticks with me, in which Ben Affleck’s supporting character, Pierre d'Alençon, says, “Simple minds don’t understand such nuances.” Such will be the case, no doubt, with many people who watch this movie—which is layered with nuance, much of which will be lost on certain audiences.

It’s the three-act structure which provides the solid ground on which the narrative stands, each one telling “the truth” according to each of the three main players: Sir Jean de Carrouges (Matt Damon); Lady Marguerite (Jodie Comer), husband to Sir Jean; and Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver), friend and then enemy to Jean, and accused of rape by Lady Marguerite. Being 14th century France, this becomes a case of Sir Jean’s word against Jacques’s, because of course, the word of the woman means nothing.

Much can be discussed about the very choice of subject matter here, the spreading characterization of The Last Duel as a “14th century #MeToo movie,” but there’s much more at play here than that. There’s also the perfectly fair criticism that two thirds of this movie whose story hinges around the rape of a woman still centers the points of view of men. To me, though, that misses the point: this isn’t a movie about rape so much as it is a movie about the insidiousness of literally centuries of patriarchy, and how men have long been culturally conditioned to delude themselves in regards to their relationships with women. Many people lose sight of the fact that misogyny harms men as well as women, and in a very subtle way, that is the point this movie is making.

Indeed, whether or not Lady Marguerite was raped is never presented as any mystery. The answer to that question is clear—not just from her own point of view, but even from that of Jacques, all while he still sincerely believes their sex was consensual. The man went to his death truly believing that. But, having a “sincerely held belief” does not mean you aren’t still wrong.

The second and third acts—or “chapters” as they are called in title cards—each build upon the last, including several scenes already seen, just presented from a different point of view. Subtle things change, such as whether Lady Marguerite kicks off her shoes as a signal of desire as she goes ahead of Jacques up a staircase, or her shoes merely falls off as she scrambles up the stairs away from him in terror. There’s even the idea of exactly how “noble” Sir Jean is, whether his moral conviction is about defending the honor of his wife, or defending his own pride and standing in society. He’s a lot nicer to Lady Marguerite in his “truth” than in hers, wherein his is much rougher about getting assurances that she’s telling the truth.

It gets tricky, the idea of recommending a movie whose entire plot hinges on the act of rape, particularly to women. I’m not sure I could, in good conscience, recommend this movie to women. The “revelations” about how men have been for centuries aren’t exactly going to be news to any woman; they’re not going to learn anything new from this movie. But, there are some men who might. The Last Duel is surprisingly insightful about the male point of view, and it takes no pains to be flattering about it. That, if nothing else, is refreshing.

Beyond that, The Last Duel is compulsively watchable, in a way that surprises. It’s also worth noting that it was co-written not just by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck—their first such collaboration since Good Will Hunting—but also Can You Ever Forgive Me? co-writer Nicole Holofcener, specifically for an authentic female perspective. Which is to say, this movie gives equal time to the male perspectives, but it is clearly on the woman’s side.

There’s a point in the movie at which Sir Jean’s mother (Harriet Walter, well cast) says to Lady Marguerite, “The truth does not matter!” Ironically, even as it illustrates how “truth” is manipulated depending on who is telling it, The Last Duel makes clear how much the truth really does matter. Then again, there’s that pesky 14th-century notion that whoever wins the duel to the death, challenged by Sir Jean against Jacques, it is “ordained by god” and thus proves that person was the one telling the truth. This movie is based on real events, so you can easily look up who wins, but still: what if Jacques wins? In that case, society would have just accepted that he was the one telling the truth. (And, as a relevant reminder, given that Jacques believes what he is saying, from his perspective, he is telling the truth.) This is a society, after all, who believes conception is only possible if sex is pleasurable, and thus a rape cannot produce a pregnancy.

If nothing else, The Last Duel provides a lot to unpack. It’s a movie ripe for discussion, which certainly has its appeal for many. I enjoyed it more than much of the media coverage might have led me to expect, but it would seem that’s because this is one of those rare movies so easily misinterpreted, or at least interpreted in countless different ways. There’s no harm in healthy debate, and that may very well have been the intent behind this movie.

Straddling that fine line between serious discussion and pop entertainment.

Overall: B+

LAMB

Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: B-
Cinematography: A-
Editing: B-
Special Effects: C+

Nobody in Lamb, the Icelandic horror-drama out this weekend, seems to react appropriate to whatever the hell is going on. There’s a moment when “Uncle Pétur,” the third of only three people in this movie with speaking parts, asks his brother and his sister-in-law, “What the fuck is this?” It’s the one moment in the movie when any of the characters comes even halfway close to reacting sensibly to what is before their eyes, and the question might have better served as the film’s title.

Setting aside the glacial pacing, relatively early on in the narrative, married couple Maria (Noomi Rapace) and Ingvar (Hilmir Snær Guðnason) have already assisted in the delivery of two lambs from a pregnant sheep, and are now on the third. We don’t see what they see plop onto the floor of the barn, only the bizarrely subtle shock on Maria and Ingvar’s faces. One would think the first question Maria would have is, “Have you been fucking our sheep?” Instead, they come to an unspoken but immediate agreement to raise this lamb child as their own child, clearly as a replacement for a child they lost. They even give it the same name, Ada.

In any realistic scenario, all of this would be met with shock and horror. Instead, after Ingvar’s brother Pétur (Björn Hlynur Haraldsson) shows up and waits about a day to ask that million-dollar question, “What the fuck is this?” the answer he gets is: “Happiness.” Well all right then, thanks for clearing that up!

For part of Lamb, I wondered if the lamb child was meant to be symbolic rather than literal. Maybe Maria and Ingvar have simply taken in a regular, literal lamb and just decided to treat it like a new baby, and we’re seeing some version of what they’ve created in their minds—kind of like Lars and the Real Girl but with a sheep instead of a blow-up doll. The couple of scenes in which Pétur angrily tells them “It’s not a child, it’s an animal!” seems to support this theory. It had to be either that, or Ingvar was indeed fucking the sheep, and Maria simply couldn’t be bothered to care. Maybe they’re just the most open minded couple on the planet? Hashtag couples goals!

Side note, the special effects in this movie are decidedly low budget. The lamb’s head is only ever fully a regular lamb’s head, never even animated (Babe, this is not), superimposed crudely onto the body of a human child. In only one shot to we get a good look at the entire body, and we see that the lamb child has one two human legs, one human arm and hand, and one lamb leg and hoof for the other arm. There are moments that are just too goofy for words, such as when Maria dances to pop music with Ada in the living room, or when Ada sits at the kitchen table with the house cat on her lap. On the upside, a whole lot of the scenes are shot outside, with beautiful cinematography of stunning vistas, by far the best part of the movie.

It would be a fascinating experience to have gone into this movie having no clue whatsoever was coming, to just sit and see this movie completely blind to its content. If I had not seen the trailer first, the shocks would have been a lot more effective. I don’t know that it would have made the overall experience any better, mind you, so I don’t feel particularly bad about what I have revealed here. Besides, this is all incidental to the turn the story takes at the end anyway. It turns out, all the questions about how the hell this lamb child exists at all do get answers in the end, and they don’t come anywhere close to what you might expect. And, as a matter of fact, the one scene to which I refer here is where the makeup and special effects are actually relatively impressive.

Bottom line: Lamb is a movie you are meant to expect to be weird . . . and you still leave thinking, Jesus, that was fucking weird. There are some critical reactions to this movie that ascribe it a level of emotional depth that I just did not see. This movie just wants to be strange for its own sake, and in that endeavor it’s a smashing success. I’m still over here wondering why both Maria and Ingvar are so chill about the discovery that Iceland is apparently The Island of Doctor Moreau.

When she said she wanted a kid, maybe she should have been more specific.

Overall: B-

NO TIME TO DIE

Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B-

It’s been interesting seeing the evolution of Daniel Craig’s run as James Bond—the longest-running Bond in the official Eon Productions franchise films, at 15 years, albeit far from the highest number of times he appeared as Bond. There were only five films released in that time: Casino Royale (2006); Quantum of Solace (2008); Skyfall (2012); Spectre (2015) and, now, No Time to Die (2021). This one would have made Craig’s run a total of 14 years had it been released in 2020 as originally planned, but, we all know how that went.

Daniel Craig was 38 years old when he started these movies. Not super young, but young enough to be perfectly plausible—and hot—in the role of a newbie British spy in this reboot of a then-44-year-old franchise. Hitting the reset button in this way, in a way different from the four other times the role had been recast, revitalized the character in a way not done in decades.

And then, as Daniel Craig’s Bond went on, the movies gradually shifted back to many of the typical characteristics of the “Bond brand.” With the introduction of Q (Ben Wishaw) in Skyfall, we once again began to see high-tech gadgets thrown in as fun plot devices. By the time we got to Spectre, ironically the worst of the Craig films right after the best (Skyfall), both of them directed by Sam Mendes, we even found ourselves re-inroduced to Ernst Blofeld (Christoph Waltz), the villain who appeared so many times in the original Sean Connery Bond films that he grew truly tiresome.

Waltz as Blofeld returns again here, albeit as a secondary villain this time—someone just as threatened by the new villain as Bond himself. Something Blofeld and this new villain, Lyutsifer Safin (Rami Malek), have in common though, is a calm but cold and sinister demeanor, someone more calculating than violent, allowing their many henchmen to carry out the physical attacks (and, of course, in most cases get quickly dispatched). No Time to Die brings with it another throwback to old-school Bond henchmen, with a gimmicky villainous characteristic: here one of them, referred to as “Cyclops” (Dali Benssalah), has an artifical eye. The eye evidently also serves as his boss’s spycam.

All this is to say, No Time to Die is a quintessential James Bond film, with all the expected trappings. To its credit, a key difference from early films is that the women serve as more than window dressing and are given agency—and this installment features no fewer than three key women characters meant to be vital to the plot (with varying degrees of success). My favorite would have to be Lashana Lynch, whose casting as Nomi, the 007 agent hired to replace Bon in the five years he’s been retired, could be considered a bit of a troll. After all the speculation about the next James Bond being a Black man, it’s a bit delicious to see a Black woman cast as 007 before Daniel Craig is even officially out the door.

We also get a great sequence with Ana de Armas as Paloma, a rookie but very capable agent assisting Bond in one elaborate sequence in which we get to see her and Bond kicking a whole lot of ass together. The sequence is far from vital to the story overall, and cutting it completely would have tightened up this movie’s truly bloated, record-length 163-minute run time, But, it’s a hell of a lot of fun to watch, so I guess I can’t complain.

The third woman is Bond’s love interest, Madeleine, played by Léa Seydoux, as she had also done in Spectre. It’s a bit disappointing that the “Spectre organization” plays so significantly into the plot yet again here, as it made for the dumbest premise of all the Daniel Craig films once already. The premise of No Time to Die isn’t quite as silly, but it’s silly enough. The villainous Lyutsifer Safin is out for revenge against the man who killed his entire family, a Spectre member who happens to be Madeline’s father. As part of this revenge, he’s manufacturing “nanobots” to be deployed around the world and trigger deadly viruses by programming them for specific genetic makeups. Once again, the plot is needlessly convoluted.

Ultimately, among the five Daniel Craig films, I would say No Time to Die ranks right in the center, after Skyfall and Casino Royale. It fulfills its service to fans, but it’s hardly essential viewing to casual moviegoers, even if it still qualifies as a fitting sendoff to this version of Bond, who is visibly older, less capable, and more tired. Daniel Craig is 53 years old now. Granted, that’s six years younger than Tom Cruise, who still shows no signs of slowing down in the Mission: Impossible franchise. But, Tom Cruise is not normal. He’s probably an alien.

I will say that No Time to Die features an end for Bond’s story in this iteration that is genuinely surprising, if not outright shocking. It’s a compelling choice, if nothing else. As is the seemingly throwaway line that seems to suggest Ben Wishaw’s Q is actually gay, which did not go unappreciated, although it would still have been nice for the clarity there to be more overt.

All that aside, No Time to Die takes its time, something I usually appreciate, but here it was often more than necessary. The film is decent but not good enough to justify its excessive length. It still has its fun moments, such as when Bond suddenly needs to shoot his gun toward the camera in a tub-shaped subterranean tunnel, directly mirroring the classic shot that has long started all of these movies, with him in a tuxedo with a white background. Much of No Time to Die is very nicely shot, its cinematography being easily its best element. Otherwise, it’s a serviceable last hurrah for arguably the best James Bond actor since Sean Connery, and honestly my own favorite of them all. But, all good things must end, and 15 years were more than enough. Inevitably, a few years down the line, yet another Bond will get cast, and I for one do hope it’s not just another white guy. Either way, I’ll be curious to see how the franchise is reset once again.

Seeing double: double-o sevens.

Overall: B

TITANE

Directing: C
Acting: B-
Writing: C-
Cinematography: B
Editing: C+

The one question running through my mind through the entirety of Titane was: why? I’ve had some time to think about it, and I have yet to come up with an answer to that question.

It’s certainly not boring, I’ll give it that much. It’s about all I’m willing to give it. Well, except that the acting is adequate, I suppose. The editing is slightly better. The director is a woman, at least; that’s something I am always prone to support. Julia Ducournau’s previous feature film effort as both writer and director, Raw (2016), was a film I did enjoy. It had a cleverly bent premise, in which a vegetarian gets a taste for blood and then becomes a murderous cannibal. Judging by Titane, “body horror” as a genre is apparently Ducanau’s thing.

With Titane, however, I struggle to find a point or a purpose, other than that genre for the sake of itself. I mean, I can just imagine the intellectuals finding all the “deeper meaning” in this film that supposedly flew over my head, but I have officially lost my patience. If I can’t easily find an answer to why this particular story is being told to me, I am just left annoyed.

How much can I tell about this movie without spoiling it? How many of you will watch it anyway? This is a relatively obscure French film, albeit one with apparently the “biggest US debut by a Palme d’Or winner in 17 years.” That is evidently a pretty low bar, though. The movie has made about half a million dollars. I’m still left wondering how much it matters.

I’ll tell you this: the first half of the movie features an exotic dancer, Alexia (Agathe Rousselle) straight up murdering people, often with the metal stick she uses to keep her hair up. She is quickly identified as a wanted suspect, literally referred to as a serial killer. Many of these murders are rather graphic. In the second half of the film, she disguises herself as the long missing son of a firefighter (Vincent Lindon), and develops a familial bond with him, although there are moments that are borderline incestuous. From his perspective, anyway.

Through all of this, Alexia experience a rapidly developing pregnancy from . . . a car. I mean, fuck it, I’ll spoil it: Alexia fucks a car. We basically already saw Cameron Diaz fuck a car in The Counselor (2013), but this movie ups the ante with a subsequent pregnancy—with what appears to be motor oil as the amniotic fluid.

Julie Ducaournau effectively, one might even say amazingly, makes the pregnancy the “B plot,” as Vincent deludes himself into believing Alexia really is his son, while the young firefighters who work under him plainly see that Alexia is not who she’s pretending to be. She spends a lot of time binding her breasts, and over time even her expanding belly, and it gets into vaguely uncomfortable territory when it comes to movies featuring characters crossdressing for nefarious reasons.

Such considerations are vasty overshadowed, of course, by the wild shit happening in the movie otherwise. What the hell is this baby going to look like? Alexia has a titanium plate in her head, the result of a terrible car accident she could easily be blamed for as a young girl, irritating her dad from the backseat in the opening sequence of the film. Even as a little girl Alexia is definitively creepy, a little shit, and when she leaves the hospital after her surgery we see her kiss and hug the car. Cut to her dancing in a club amongst exotic dancers who gyrate against and on cars inside a giant warehouse. I suppose we’re meant to understand Alexia has a lifelong car fetish, although Titane doesn’t ever make that idea particularly explicit. Except when she’s somehow literally impregnated by one, I suppose. I’m pretty sure we even see the car reach sexual climax, which was new.

The effect of the titanium plate is never given true clarity, either. Is that what makes her psychotic? And why does she pause and actually find herself caring for an unwilling to slaughter Vincent? I really don’t understand any of it. We do eventually find out what her baby looks like, which winds up somehow being simultaneously bizarre and somewhat disappointing.

it would sure be interesting to be privy to some psychoanalysis of Julie Ducournau. I suspect it would be more satisfying than watching this movie was. Raw at least succeeded in the evident purpose of grossing us out. All I really got out of Titane was an hour and forty-five minutes of thinking, What the fuck? We never see Alexia bleed, although we regularly see her leaking motor oil, out of tears in the skin of her belly revealing more shiny metal underneath, or even leaking out of her nipples. Her body goes through a lot of abuses, much of it self-inflicted in her attempt to make herself look like Vincent’s missing son. I had to turn away from the screen a lot.

I was just relieved when I could turn away one last time and leave the building.

Apparently they don’t make automotive condoms.

Overall: C