barfly99

So Bond is back. Except this is Bond Year Zero. Bond Rebooted. Bond: The Beginning.

In this loose adaptation of Ian Fleming's 1953 novel - the first to feature James Bond - Daniel Craig stars as 007 just as he has gained 'Double-0' status by chalking up two kills (and we see the kills in oddly film noir style black-and-white). After a debut mission in Madagascar goes awry, Bond is assigned to play a high stakes poker game with terrorist financier Le Chiffre, knowing that winning the game will bankrupt Le Chiffre, and losing it will mean Her Majesty's government directly funding terrorism...

The bloody and breathless chase in Madagascar immediately informs us that this is not Bond as we've known him before, but a raw and uncompromising version. Craig doesn't even look remotely like any other Bond, with his dirty blonde hair, rugged features, and rippling, hairless muscles (which the film-makers' deem it necessary to show off at every opportunity). Emotionally he is completely different too. This Bond is not indestructible and cool under pressure, but volatile and vulnerable, even falling rather quickly in love with Eva Green's Vesper Lynd, who is sent to the Casino Royale with Bond to keep an eye on the money he is gambling.

The action is relentlessly exciting, with several brutal fist-fights, a truly spectacular car crash, and eventually a collapsing Venetian house. The performances are also universally very good. Judi Dench is rather incongruously brought back to play the morose M, Eva Green is an enigmatic Bond girl, and Mads Mikkelson does as much as he can with a thin role as Le Chiffre. As for Craig, he can definitely play the back-to-basics, street-fighting man this Bond is apparently supposed to be - certainly at least as well as you would have expected any other actor to have played him.

The trouble is that this film never really looks or feels like a Bond film. There is no Moneypenny, no Q, and there are no gadgets. The theme tune is entirely forgettable, and John Barry's famous Bond music is shunned until the final credits. Le Chiffre, an asthmatic banker, makes for a rather pathetic super-villain, and there are no colourful henchman for Bond to duel. Bond himself is dismissed by M as just a "thug" early in the film, and he proves her right throughout, with little charm or wit to complement his undoubted talent for beating people up without the slightest concern for civilians and innocent parties who get in the way. He doesn't even "give a damn" if his vodka martini is shaken or stirred.

In fact the film appears more closely modelled on the Jason Bourne franchise than previous Bond films. Whilst I appreciate the need to renew and reinvent 007, I question the need to rob from Bond almost every single ingredient that made him such a success in the first place. If we want a series of films about an MI6 hooligan that's fine, but why not create a new character altogether? Interestingly 007 does by the close of the film utter the famous words, "The name's Bond. James Bond." Perhaps this is to signify that this film is just an introduction to the all-new Bond, and that the panache will re-appear in future films.

In the meantime CASINO ROYALE makes for a thrilling preamble. But be warned that it doesn't have much more in common with the official 20 Bond movies that preceded it than the farcical 1967 adaptation with Peter Sellers and Woody Allen.

Loosely based on Tolstoy's 'The Death of Ivan Ilych' this searing indictment of Hollywood must be one of the most under-appreciated films of the last ten years.

Danny Huston plays Ivan Beckman, a typically sleazy, coke-snorting Tinseltown agent who is forced to confront the emptiness of his life when he learns that he is dying of cancer. Amongst the many people with whom he is surrounded but cannot confide in are hotshot director Danny McTeague (James Merendino), gun-toting homophobic mega-star Don West (Peter Weller), and Ivan's girlfriend, Charlotte (Lisa Enos), who may or may not be using him to further her own ambitions.

IVANS XTC. actually begins with the news of Ivan's death, and apart from the first 15 minutes or so the story is told in flashback. This works superbly because we immediately discover just how meaningless Ivan's life and career really were. Nobody really gave a damn about him (nor does anyone believe for a minute that he died of cancer rather than a cocaine OD), and his death merely serves as an inconvenience to those involved in the film project he was trying to get started (West and McTeague even have the insensitivity to confront each other in the middle of Ivan's funeral service!).

When Ivan learns of his cancer he tries to binge his way to redemption through drink, drugs, and women, but there is none to be found. Nothing can ease his physical or emotional pain. He can't even find an image of beauty or happiness in his head - everything he can think of is "shit". Ivan was already a victim even before the cancer took hold.

Many films have successfully attacked the excessive yet soulless Hollywood machine in recent years e.g THE PLAYER and SWIMMING WITH SHARKS, but IVAN's XTC. is perhaps even better (British writer-director Bernard Rose drew from many of his own bitter experiences). The film is shot entirely on DV (with oddly effective use of Wagner as musical accompaniment!) and this gives it a documentary-style realism (you really feel you're in the back of that limo with West as he snorts coke off Charlotte's leg). It is also to the film-makers' credit that no punches are pulled when it comes to conveying exactly what Ivan's cancer is doing to him (the visceral last reel is not for the squeamish).

The performances are first-rate all round, but Huston is especially brilliant and should have had an Oscar nomination. Although Ivan is an unpleasant individual - and Rose never dresses him up to be anything but - Huston manages to elicit the viewer's sympathy simply by demonstrating Ivan's ever more desperate need for something to fill the complete void that is his quickly fading life. As far as the 'terminal illness' genre goes this film is ultimately far more moving than blatantly manipulative stuff like TERMS OF ENDEARMENT and MY LIFE precisely because there is absolutely no on-screen sentimentality whatsoever. Ivan's one moment of true tenderness comes not with Charlotte or with any of his friends or family... but with a nurse he doesn't even know. The glorious closing shot is surely one the best in recent film-making history.

This is a disturbing film that is at times difficult to watch. Yet at the same time it is so perceptive and involving that one feels it actually deserves several viewings. Highly recommended.

I find it absolutely astonishing that anyone would regard this film as anything other than categorically abysmal.

Normally I wouldn't bother commenting on this level of celluloid excrement, but I find it rather disturbing that people make a case for it being anything other than atrocious on every level (incidentally, being "better than the first" - and I'm less than certain it is - does not constitute high praise).

I luckily managed to avoid this film until now, but having just seen it can I just assure any doubters that this is a truly pitiful movie - although I was, kind of, mesmerized by its utter awfulness.