In the pantheon of Bond, James Bond, there are shots that strike from a golden gun and others that leave one neither shaken nor stirred. One film often regarded as being among the latter is 1969’s “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service,” infamously featuring George Lazenby as 007 who never returned to don the tuxedo. Despite…
Xavier Dolan opens It’s Only the End of the World with the caption: “Somewhere a while ago, already.” The comma is extremely important, as it plays with the past tense of a while ago and the present tense of the already, almost as a physical presence, already there. It was a while ago since I…
A long time ago in a business meeting far far away, Clint Eastwood was offered the role of James Bond. He turned it down because he believed that Bond should only be played by an Englishman (Albert Broccoli obviously thought an Australian would do as George Lazenby was ultimately chosen as Sean Connery’s replacement). Eastwood,…
Driving is an androgynous slob. Could be a woman, a man or a mime — she actually looks like Marcel Marceau without makeup. It’s raining, drizzling over her windshield, drops that produce a mud the wipers intermittently splatter onto her sight. When she arrives where she was going to, we watch her leaving her car,…
I’ve said it before, I like Christoph Waltz as a bad guy. His smooth cadence and deliberate actions make all he does that more ominous. I also like Daniel Craig as Bond. So together they should make, Spectre, the 24th installment in the James Bond series something special. And from this latest trailer, I’d say…
Bond is back. And just in time it seems to uncover a secret that threatens his future but is unlockable from his past. In the 24th installment the infamous secret agent must go on the offensive to root out a powerful organization looking to flex its muscles as MI6 regroups from its near destruction in…
Though Blue is the Warmest Color, winner of the Palme d’Or at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, contains graphic depictions of sex, it is not a voyeuristic exercise but a complex, deeply intense film that elevates one young woman’s personal struggle into a drama of universal relevance. Adapted by Kechiche and Ghalia Lacroix from the…
