Cigarettes & Coffee was an early short film by Paul Thomas Anderson made in 1993, a few years before his major breakout Boogie Nights. The film plays like a rough draft of Anderson's debut feature Hard Eight (AKA Sydney) which dealt with a mentor relationship between a wizened gambler and an aimless young man. Phillip Baker Hall virtually plays the same role here. It begins with Hall instructing a man on the ritual of lighting a cigarette and having a cup of coffee. The younger man played by Kirk Baltz (he famously played the cop tormented by Mr. Blonde in Reservoir Dogs) is about to reveal a secret. Then the camera shifts to a man and woman a couple of booths down, we learn they're on their honeymoon and are having an intense argument over a craps game. Meanwhile the camera follows an ominous Miguel Ferrer taking phone calls outside which may be connected to the other characters.
A simmering mood piece for 23 minutes, the diner setting being serves as a place for high drama also used memorably in Pulp Fiction and Heat. The title itself is a direct reference to the Jim Jarmusch film Coffee & Cigarettes, a series of wry vignettes. Anderson uses the format to display understated drama, mere glimpses of relationships with long histories. Imagery focuses on the minor details: money, coffee cups, two shots, and close ups. The tension between the laid back atmosphere and ominous goings in the background create an effective tension. Hard Eight would explore the mentor relationship further, only it plays out with a crime narrative in the background.
007: So, Eric it's time we talk about A View To a Kill.
Eric: Yeah, I was sort of dreading this one. My least favorite Bond film.
007: Be honest, did you actually watch it?
Eric: A few years ago. This time I stuck to youtube clips.
007: How would you sum it up in one word?
Eric: Clunky
007: Let's start with the opening sequence.
Eric: I know some fans love it. "According to Wikipedia" it led to the popularity of snowboarding.
007: Still, it looks like an outtake from a previous movie.
Eric: And they use "California Girls" for no reason. Not even The Beach Boys version!
007: Remember David Lee Roth did a famous remake around that time, an attempt to connect with the MTV generation?
Eric: There's an interview on youtube of Roger Moore promoting the film on MTV, very awkward.
007: Octopussy would've been a suitable finale for Moore. He's noticeably aging in this one.
Eric: As many pointed out in 1985. Moore was appalled when he discovered he was older than the mother of his love interest played by Tanya Roberts!
007: Yeah, there's a creep factor for sure. A more age appropriate actress would've been a wise move. What about the villains?
Eric: Christopher Walken would become known for playing great villains. Here he's not memorable. Not sure why. Perhaps they held back, King of New York remains one of the great performances of all time.
007: Grace Jones makes for an interesting presence, but the script never lets the characters do anything besides fight and spout one liners.
Eric: The action scenes are never too engaging. The movie borders on parody at times, Zucker Brother type stuff. The Zuckers doing a Bond send up - there's an idea.
007: The idea of an aging Bond is an intriguing one.
Eric: Right, a film marketed as Bond's final mission or something like that would be great. Here he still acts like he's still 35.
007: Anything good to say on A View to A Kill.
Eric: The Duran Duran song is pretty good.
007: The music video is better than the movie! Anything on the actual plot.
Eric: Not really, a plot to blow up Silicon Valley. The San Andreas bit was taken from Superman!
007: Yeah, the less said the better on the plot.
Eric: Well, some people love it.
007: That's great, to each their own. It was still a hit by the way, it was one of the top grossing films of 1985.
Eric: A new Bond film is still an event.
007: I'm just waiting for No Time to Die to finally come out!
Octopussy is one of the more underrated Bond films. Perhaps it's due to the ridiculous title. Or maybe it's the lack of an awe inducing sequence. Even some of the lesser entries are remembered more if they have at least one great stunt. That's not meant to be a criticism of the film at all, director John Glen crafted a smooth narrative from start to finish, unconventional in a stealth sort of way. Moore's sixth outing as 007, the story makes light of his age, especially in a bittersweet scene with Miss Moneypenny as she's training her protege. A classic and even somewhat realistic Cold War plot involving a rogue Soviet General Orlov played by Steven Berkoff who made a career playing Russian bad guys (also a respected playwright) is scheming to break up N.A.T.O. and thereby cause a geopolitical earthquake in Europe. Bond traces some Faberge Eggs to the plot and discovers that Orlov is working in tandem with Afghan soldier of fortune Kamal Khan (Louis Jordan). Using two villains was a nice touch, changing the dynamic of what's expected in a Bond film. 007 is then led to a mysterious woman known as Octopussy (Maud Adams), an entrepreneur playing both sides. The tangled plot resembles From Russia With Love with its layers of intrigue. Even the stunts and fight scenes display a nice range from the grandiose to the tactile, such as Magda's (Kristina Wayborn) Rapunzel type inspired escape from Bond. A train chase and a climatic fight on an airplane deliver as premium action scenes. On location filming in Berlin and India also provided a scenic travelogue. Octopussy grossed better than the competing Bond film Never Say Never Again. Released in June, it would earn sixth place in U.S. Box Office during the summer when Return of the Jedi dwarfed the competition. The theme by John Barry and performed by Rita Coolidge suited the textured and well worn tapestry of this late stage Moore entry. ***1/2
The landscape of film criticism has changed considerably since the 1970s, which was the heyday of film critic Pauline Kael. She wrote iconoclastic reviews with a unique style, literary and confrontational. The documentary serves as a primer on Kael's life and work, although the best place to go is to read her books. Kael's ability to bring an academic and popular sensibility to criticism remains influential. Kael grew up in California and set out to be a writer early on. A single mother, she raised her daughter while trying to earn a living as a writer, working as a nanny and other service jobs. Eventually by the early 1960s her writing started to gain attention. In 1965 she became the film critic for McCall's magazine, but was fired after she wrote a negative review of the 1965 film The Sound of Music. Kael championed films as popular art. Her reactions were unpredictable, but compelling. She dismissed Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey for being shallow and redundant. Dubious of blockbusters, she panned Raiders of the Lost Ark, but loved Temple of Doom. Many misread Kael as an elitist, probably because she wrote for the New Yorker, but the documentary presents her as more of a proselytizer for cinema. Movies, a transcendent art, function as a portal to making sense of reality. With the platform of the New Yorker which gave her unlimited space, her reviews were widely read and discussed. Her reactions were subjective and unpredictable, glowing praise with razor sharp criticism. Her favorable reviews for Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, Brian De Palma, Robert Altman heralded the rise of New Hollywood. Her review of Bonnie and Clyde was a sort of manifesto for the new American cinema. Those closest to Kael also appear in the film including her daughter who served as caretaker and typist. Filmmakers discuss her influence on their aesthetic, including Quentin Tarantino and David O. Russell. Her feuds and prickly relationships with her peers are also covered, and also how personal bias could also influence her reviews. Neither does the film shy away from her cruel streaks. British director David Lean recalled being shaken after an encounter with her. Kael also demanded complete loyalty in her circle of friends, banishing anyone who disagreed with her. Being a woman in a male dominated field meant one had to be tough and uncompromising at times. The gracefully argues Kael can make you a believer in movies, providing her readers with the courage to have a point of view. ***1/2
In a time when fan reactions have become a corrosive influence on pop culture, it's worth remembering fan responses have always influenced creators, Sherlock Holmes being an example. Fans were aghast at the demise of Holmes in "The Final Problem" so Sir Arthur Conan Doyle resurrected the detective. For Your Eyes Only marked a return to the basics, an attempt to recapture the tone of the early Connery films, and in that regard it was successful. John Glen made his directing debut and would go to direct three more - moving the series away from its more fantastical tendencies. The restrained tone of For Your Eyes Only is film's greatest strength and weakness. The classic approach compensates for the sometimes workmanlike plot which involves a McGuffin, a missile guidance system the British lose during a submarine accident. Bond's assignment is to track down the system and prevent the Soviets from obtaining it, leading him into the European underworld. Screenwriter Richard Maibaum drew upon some Ian Fleming short stories and even used some scenes from the novels, for example the scene when Bond and Melina (Carole Bouquet) are dragged through a coral reef was directly taken from Live and Let Die. So we get a film from the world of Ian Fleming, one often filled with smugglers and gangsters with the Cold War as a backdrop. Most remember the cold open which featured the return of "Blofeld," who once again gets dispatched by Bond. I like how it acknowledges the continuity of the series. It was also there to take a jab at Kevin McClory who tied up the producers in litigation over the creative rights to the SPECTRE concept. The theme performed by Sheena Easton remains memorable, staying faithful to the style of the film. The film also ends with a "cameo" by Margaret Thatcher which was oddly out of tune with the rest of the movie. But everything in between is mostly engaging, a lo-fi entry that dispensed with gadgets and a garish last act, instead we get a realistic confrontation on a mountain with one of Roger Moore's best lines as 007, "That's detente comrade, you don't have it, I don't have it." ***
While the teaser at the conclusion of The Spy Who Loved Me stated For Your Eyes Only would be the next Bond film, the project was put on hold in favor of Moonraker. With Star Wars igniting a renaissance in Sci-Fi, the Bond series decided it was time to send 007 off to outer space, at least for the last act of the film. For the first 2/3 of Moonraker remains fairly conventional outing with Bond on the trail of a Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale), a private entrepreneur who wants to send human to space (Elon Musk prototype). Of course not! Drax is a maniacal eugenicist who wants to create a super race of humans in space. Maybe the most droll villain in any Bond film. He's creating his own space force as well, and apparently NASA also had one of their own in 1979! The prologue is a knockout featuring sky diving and an aerial battle over a parachute. Bond's investigation of Drax sends him all over the world from California to Venice to Rio de Janeiro. A highlight includes Bond escaping from a speeding centrifuge and there's an impressive cable car sequence. He teams up with CIA agent Holly Goodhead (Lois Chiles) in their quest to stop Drax. Jaws also returns, but the character's already becoming tiresome by this point. It's fair to say Moonraker is when the series jumped the shark. Not only is Bond a masterful astronaut with no training, he can also pilot a space shuttle. Moonraker is actually a lot of fun if you're in the right mood. Not unsurprisingly the franchise would reboot themselves for the 1980s, staying with Moore for three more films, but keeping the adventures tactile and earthbound. Bernard Lee made his final appearance as M who unfortunately never got a proper farewell in the film. ***
One of the best Cold War films ever made, The Hunt For Red October is about a renegade Soviet sub commander heading towards the American coast. Neither side knows of his intentions: Has he gone mad and decided to launch an attack? Or, as CIA analyst Jack Ryan believes, does he intend to defect? Based on the Tom Clancy bestseller, which was more of a technical manual on modern submarine warfare, the film managed to create an incisive character study about two kindred souls on opposite sides of the Cold War. Sean Connery plays Captain Marko Ramius, a highly respected Soviet officer in command of the new submarine Red October, which has the ability to go stealth and elude U.S. radar systems, making it a possible first strike weapon. To further alarm U.S. intelligence, he's heading directly for the East Coast. Alec Baldwin plays Jack Ryan, a naval historian turned CIA analyst who believes Ramius intends to defect. Ryan had compiled a dossier on Ramius and believes he has valuable insight about his intentions. Ryan's main task is to convince his superiors in the CIA and the military Ramius isn't trying to start a war. It's the classic scenario of the man of books trying to persuade the men of action. Although we learn later Ryan was a former marine who opted for the academic life. Red October is full of great supporting roles. James Earl Jones as Admiral Greer, Ryan's mentor at the CIA. Fred Dalton Thompson as an admiral, Sam Neill as Ramius's executive officer, Joss Ackland as the cagey Soviet ambassador, Richard Jordan as the shrewd National Security Advisor, Courtney B. Vance as a brilliant sonar operator, Tim Curry as a Soviet doctor, and Scott Glenn as an American sub commander who decides to trust Ryan. John McTiernan's direction is masterful here as well, taking a complex plot and making it engaging and suspenseful. There's a realistic look to the film, never a nationalistic "look what our toys can do" type approach, but a sober minded look at the role of submarines in international relations. The film avoids all the bad Cold War cliches for the most part, except for the driven Soviet commander Tupolev (Stellan Skarsgard) pursuing Ramius. Soviet officers are humanized, while the Americans are portrayed as wise professionals doing their best to avoid a war. Dare I say it's a movie liberals and conservatives can both appreciate. Those on the right will admire the heroic portrayal of the U.S. Navy and its respect for tradition, while those on the left will respect a movie not glorifying militarism (like many of the era), but championing decent characters employing rationality and courage to navigate themselves through a crisis.
Released in 1990 at the height of glasnost perestroika and the imminent fall of the Berlin Wall, it was a hopeful time in international politics. With liberal democracy spreading throughout Europe, the film manages to channel the euphoria that a more peaceful era could be on the way, as Ryan says to Ramius at the end, "Welcome to the New World, Sir." Such sentiments sound beyond naive in 2020, but at the very least Red October does a superb job of portraying characters putting their lives and reputations on the line for peace - and a better world. ****
