Skyfall

James Bond dies!!! He’s dead! No, not really. But yeah. He’s dead. Psych!! But yeah. That’s part of the plot. He dies...maybe.
 If Skyfall had a drinking game, and the rules were to drink whenever you see Daniel Craig’s lovely barrel chest, you would be under the table shortly after the opening credits. Of course, then you’d have still caught the theme song and the opening scene, with its diving under tunnels and zooming along rooftops on motorcycles and a whole ton of fruit flying through the air. What I’m trying to say is, this movie is a lot of fun. It’s a joy just to be able to write that, since the last one was such a mind-numbing wreck. But we’ve got Sam Mendes flying the plane now, and he knows what’s up.
Craig has only been Bond for six years. Doesn’t it feel like longer? He still walks with his legs as far apart as he can get them without making us chuckle, and I’m pretty sure that his suits have gotten progressively tighter. I’ll take it. Each time I watch a Bond movie, I’m surprised by how little screen time the Bond Girls actually get. They get all sorts of silly names, and they’re generally beyond the call of duty attractive, but you better not take a bathroom break, because you just missed her scene. You shouldn’t be taking bathroom breaks during movies anyway. Anyhow, one of the Girls here is the lovely Naomie Harris, who, to me, will always be the girl from 28 Days Later, hacking her friend to death. She doesn’t do that here. Here she’s lithe and graceful, with an interest in straight razors and flutes of champagne. The other BG is played by Bérénice Lim Marlohe, who(m?) I’m fairly certain is from another planet. Her face is...out of control. Anyway, she’s in maybe three scenes, all of which are much appreciated.
Let’s talk villains. Bond movie villains are always completely over the top, and this one does not disappoint. Javier Bardem has a knack for playing whackadoos with terrible hair. Now he gets to play one with the added bonus of feeling up Daniel Craig. The two guys have a more sexually charged scene than Bond gets with either of the girls, so if that rings your chimes, get thee to a theater. Remember, though, Bardem has REALLY bad hair. And his weird mommy issues means he wants to hurt M, so, no thanks, bro, back away from Dame Judi.
 Ralph (RAFE) Fiennes shows up as the new MI6 boss, and it’s nice to see him with a nose. Voldemort joke! And we get Ben Wishaw, all 90 pounds of him, as an extremely young Q with his head firmly up his own ass.
 What? The plot? OK, there’s a list of names of MI6 agents and it’s going to be released to the public, which is really unfortunate, so Bond has to get it back from the bad guy with the really bad hair. And he gets a back story. James Bond was a kid once. I’ve never considered that as a possibility, and you’re lying if you say that you have.
 Here’s the deal: it’s big, it’s loud, there are guns guns guns guns guns and trains and cars cars cars and gadgets and Shanghai and Turkey and PG13 sexytime and Daniel Craig and pretty girls and good reasons not to swallow cyanide. And of course, an Adele song to get stuck in your head for DAYS. Like I said, fun. Do it.

Last Night

I watched this movie in two parts over two days. The first time, I made it through about 30 minutes and then I had to turn it off and flip out for a while, since it had induced a sincere panic attack. That probably doesn’t sound terrific, but honestly what it told me was that this movie did a great job telling the truth.
On its surface, Last Night, which is written and directed by Massy Tadjedin, is a film about a couple who might cheat on each other. At its core, though, it’s about trust, faith, sense of self, and love. Most importantly, it questions whether love trumps the other themes.
 The plot is simple. Sam Worthington and Keira Knightley play Michael and Joanna, a New York couple who married young. Eva Mendes plays Laura, Michael’s co-worker, and Guillaume Canet is Alex, Joanna’s ex. Michael and Laura go to Philly on a business trip. The same day, Joanna bumps into Alex. The rest is conversation and choices.
 I think that everyone has had the experience of being attracted to, or having a deep connection with, someone they’re “not supposed to,” and it’s easy for many people to write off even the idea of cheating as evil. The fact is, though, life is complicated and messy, and if everything, especially love and lust and connection, were that simple to fathom, there would be far fewer divorces and the psychiatry industry would go bust. Is it possible to be in love with more than one person at a time? I bet it is, but I bet it hurts like hell, and that’s not something this movie shies away from. Is cheating always about being unhappy in your relationship? Nope. Sorry, haters.
 Keira Knightley gets a lot of flack from a lot of people, and I cannot figure out why. She’s got a big jaw, yeah. Maybe she’s a pain in the ass to work with, and that’s a shame, but let me tell you, girl gets it done. Guillaume Canet, besides being ridiculously handsome and JESUS CHRIST that accent, does a pretty stunning job here. He could wear a surgical mask and speak nonsense words and we’d know exactly what was going on just by his eyes. The Joanna/Alex storyline is more engaging than the Michael/Laura one, partly just because of the dialogue, but mostly because they are out-acted. Michael and Laura don’t have the history of the other two, so their story is more in-your-face, fireworks, right now right now right now, while Joanna and Alex are a slow-burning flame.
 What made me have a panic attack? I’m not entirely sure. Maybe I recognized myself. Maybe I recognized other people. Maybe I recognized some of the dialogue, or the situations, or some other thing that I have not come to grips with. Or maybe I was just having a bad night. In any case, I’m glad that I finished the movie, since it was great and it made me want to write. And these days, that’s all I can ask for .

Shame

Michael Fassbender has a large penis. Surprise! Here’s the deal: if you read that sentence and blushed or giggled even a little, you may not watch this movie, as you will run screaming or hide under the couch within the first minute and a half. Are you with me? Great, let’s keep going.
The large penis in question is attached to one of the greatest Irish imports since Jameson, and I cannot find a non-sexually-explicit way to compare the two. This appendage is the cause of the NC-17 rating this film received, since everyone knows penises are scary and unacceptable for younger viewers, but vulvas and explosions and knife-rape (hi, L&O:SVU) are totally fine. That was a joke.
Fassbender, to me, will always sort of be the warlock he played on Hex, a good and dark, if silly, British TV program. But here, he is Brandon, a very human man with a very real addiction to sex. Everyone who laughed at David Duchovny last year and called him just a cheating scumbag, look out. Sex addiction is real, it’s gross, and it’s destructive. I’m not talking about the potential for disease, as, frankly, that’s pretty low on the list in terms of the ways it can ruin your life. The director, amazingly named Steve McQueen (opposite in every way from the action hero), shows us in great detail how sex addiction lays waste to Brandon’s life. It gets him knocked out, unable to perform when he actually cares for someone, his computer at work taken in for repair due to all the porn he’s put on it, and with an almost complete lack of actual friends, save for his dickhead boss.
The thing that Brandon has going for him is that he’s handsome. Very handsome. And very charming. With a soft Irish brogue. So, in several instances, he is handed what he wants (needs, really) without having to ask. What he certainly doesn’t ask for is his younger sister Sissy, an emotional time bomb and human tornado, to turn up in his apartment without asking first. But that is exactly what he gets, in the form of Carey Mulligan, who is terrific in a very grown-up role. Sissy and Brandon have what can loosely be termed a strange relationship. Not a sexual one, really, but an overly close and at the same time, completely separated one. They see each other naked, hear each other having sex, but can barely be in the same room together without tearing each other apart. They are both terribly unhappy people, as is made clear in a heart-wrenching scene where Sissy, in a beautiful Marilyn-style gown, sings a slowed-down, tear-inducing (in Brandon) version of New York, New York.
Two unhappy people living together is good for no one, and the weight of the siblings’ unhappiness is heavy on them both. They both clearly need help, but are each too self-centered to notice the other’s pain. Brandon has a day job that pays him loads of money, enough to live in a sterile white penthouse apartment in Chelsea, order high-class hookers like pizza, and book pricy hotel rooms in the middle of the day. He cannot, however, purchase love, as you may have heard. Sex is his form of communication. Try to have a conversation with the man and you’re out of luck. He’d rather go home to his gadgets that all bring him closer to women he doesn’t know who will do what he asks as long as they get paid. This is a movie about a man. There is sex aplenty here, of all sorts and not lacking in detail. There are boobs and butts and various crotch areas all over the place. All that said, though, this is one of the least sexy movies I have ever seen, and that is on purpose. See it for the acting. See it for the script and the directing. See it for the views of NYC. Do not see it to get off.