Goldeneye (1995)

I'm not quite sure how I missed this movie. Could it be that the only time I've ever fallen asleep in a movie theater was while watching the opening of Brosnan's 007 in Die Another Day (2002)? I guess that came after this one, but you can understand why I wasn't in a hurry to rent this one. If this wasn't part of my Famke-Film-Extravaganza (FFE) I wouldn't have watched it now. No disrespect meant to Mr. Brosnan whom I actually liked as Bond, but once Daniel Craig came along with Casino Royale, none of teh earlier Bonds did anything for me. To be honest, I don't mind the Brosnan or the Timothy Dalton Bonds now, it is just they are more comic booky than I like in a spy film, which is kind of ironic coming from me. I don't think you could pay me enough money to sit through a Roger Moore Bond film and the only way I would put myself through a Sean Connery Bond flick is if I had the right motivation, like a bunch of martinis and a pretty lady.
Speaking of Sean, Sean Bean is the bad guy in this movie. It's nice to look back and see what he was doing pre-Lord of the Rings, much in the same way it's fun to see what Famke was doing when she wasn't playing Jean Grey. I know I've said this before, but he needs to get his named worked out. It needs to be either pronounced "Shon Bon" (like a bon-bon but more rugged) or as "Seen Bean" as in, "Have you seen my grean bean?" This having it both ways is a little too much to ask.
Famke's character Onatop was, um, interesting. She was pretty much the main bad ass in the film. And if someone is going to kill you, being crushed to death by her thighs would not be the worst way to go. Onatop didn't seem to have the most consistent accent throughout the flick and I'm going to blame that on how much make-up she was wearing. I knew that Fameke was playing Onatop going in, but she was young enough and wearing enough make-up that it was a couple of minutes before I recognized her.
Judi Dench was great as M. I don't think I had realized just how long she had been playing the character. Or, that 20 years ago she looks almost exactly like she does now, perhaps a bit more white where she was grey, but alarmist exactly the same.
This was an okay film. Not a ringing endorsement, I know. But, as far as pre-Craig Bond movies go, it was pretty good. You can actually see that they've taken Bond away from the Mooreian Bond and ahd started the slide towards the Craigsian Bond.

Goldeneye at IMDb

Mirror Mirror (2012)

I have to start this out by saying I was predisposed not to like this film. I am not really very much of a Julia Roberts fan, but I'm not sure that it's entirely her fault. My first exposure to her was in Pretty Woman, which a girl in my dorm owned and played all the time. I can't think of how many times I got stuck watching part of that film. No really, I can't think of it, because it will make me digress or something and I'll go all batshit crazy. Still, maybe that wasn't as bad as our one term RA, one term because the first term RA who coincidentally had the same name as this guy, totally sucked at this job, but now I really am digressing (and you thought I meant regress), but this guy would play the Sound of Music every Friday and Saturday night - for three months straight - to draw in the unsuspecting drunk girls who were wandering around in hopes that he might get lucky. I can not make this shit up. I wish I could. On several occasions I went looking for a particular drunk girl who was affiliated with me and found her there and on at least three other occasions was contacted by my peers to intercede on their behalf and retrieve their drunken, bewildered lady friends. I was a junior still living in a dorm at this point, so was like the old man of the castle so to speak. In those days I literally did not know what fear was - anxiety...humiliation...sure, but not fear. I would march in and retrieve the half dozen or so girls and make sure they all got home. I don't know what this dude would have done if he had ever ended up with one of these drunken girls alone. Part of me says he was such a bumpkin that he wouldn't have done anything, but the other part of me - the part of me that has come into being since those long ago days - thinks that any man who cooks up a way to attract drunk girls to his room so he can fool around (the worst kept secret, at least among the guys, in our dorm) probably doesn't have a lot of scruples. It does help to know that the last time I saw him, the plumpish doofus who was never as smart as he first seemed, was devoting his life to selling business cards for a living and had become outright round and was going bald, all of this only four or five years after graduation.
Anyhoo, that movie strongly influenced me against Julia Roberts. Yet, I have seen her in films and can admit that not only did she not suck, that she was indeed quite good. I particularly her in the Ocean's Eleven franchise and Pret-a-Porter. But not in this movie. Sorry, Julia. If you had that certain je ne sais quois that Nathan Lane possesses, I could have bought a campy, evil queen and actually embraced that as it would have more matched the feeling of other parts of the film. But, she doesn't have it, and even though Lane does, the scenes in which they are together just accentuates her lack of this stuffness. Maybe Joan Cusack has it, or Kristen Wiig. But, Hollywood doesn't think them beautiful enough to pull off the "fairest of them all". Maybe they can't, but if you're going campy with your movie, then go campy.
I also had been told this was not the greatest movie. I know that one should go into these things with as little preconception as possible, right? Or not. I trust my friend's opinion on these matter, particularly concerning fairy tales and fables. But, I wanted to see for myself. It could be good, or at least have some hidden gem moments. I am right, because it totally did. But, she was also right. Not that good of a movie.
There is also a third reason, and until George Lucas did his Star Wars prequels, I would have called this the Scrappy Doo effect. This is a reference to a reboot of the classic Scooby Doo comics in which they changed a lot and added a munchkin by the name of Scrappy Doo. In case you're still wondering, I think he totally sucked. Lucas changed all of this by raising the bar, or should it be lowering the bar on how something can suck by changing a formula that works by taking out some essential, if minor, elements and adding a totally annoying character who is unaware of any faults he may have. Yes, I mean Jar-Jar Binks. These are really just two obvious examples of a phenomenon in popular media endemic to the United States since World War II that is trying to add a touch of comedy to a serious story to take the edge off. This is why there is Orko in He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, or Snarf in the Thundercats, or any of the Witwickys in the Transformers cartoons from the 80s, or most any Eddie Murphy movie where Eddie is both the serious character and the comedic distraction. I hate to say it, but it's Brighton, Nathan Lane's character in this film. Don't get me wrong, I love Nathan Lane, but his character in this film is a comedic distraction to keep the queen from being just detetably evil, hoping to make her tolerantly evil - tolerant enough to sit through the whole film. I thought this every time I saw a trailer for this film. But, I kept hoping that it would be more campy, in which case Brighton would not have been out of place and thus not served the same purpose.
There were two things during the film that I didn't like, and oddly enough one was the special effects. Well, not all of the specail effects. Most of them were quite good. But when the queen goes through the mirror - which was very cool and a cool concept - the huts on the lake look like CGI huts. They can look real, or look cartoony, or look like they're made of plastic, but they can not look like they are CGI. Can not.
The other issue which bothered me were the dwarves on stilts - which are another cool concept and looked cool - there are scenes of them doing their thing and the stunt people do not look like the actors playing the dwarves. Sure, they were dressed up the same, but they were in general thinner and in general possessing arms of a longer proportion to their bodies than the actors. This is one of those little things that I should never notice, just like the CGI.
I did watch it all the way through, though. It does have some things going for it. There was more than a nod to an Alice in Wonderland a la the cartoon version look. Obviously the party that the queen throws is this theme, but the gentry's hair and clothing styles throughout the whole film lived up to this and I thought were quite good. I also like watching the Prince and Princess interact. If they had more screen time, it would have been a better movie - I mean more screen time together with appropriately witty banter of course.
Then comes the ending of the film. I liked the servants on ice skates at the wedding of the queen and the Prince. When I first saw them, I immediately thought of Mel Brooks and Hitler on Ice. And then I thought that this movie likely would have been a whole lot better if it had been a musical. It would ahve solved so many problems. First and foremost would have been a different actress as the queen. It would also pretty much have guaranteed the campiness needed for this film to have succeeded.
As the story resolves, lo and behold if the King ain't really still alive and it's none other than Sean Bean. What a pleasant surprise. The actor, 'cause the King still being alive was not a surprise. I really like Bean who hasn't done me wrong yet. Sure, the films don't always work for me, but he does.
And finally the finale...here's the musical that I wanted. I almost thought it was going to go a Bollywood route, which would have been sweeeeeeet! Instead, we got a Shrek style ending if Shrek had used an original song and been live action. This did keep me from hating this film. Well, this and Sean Bean. And the dwarves.

Mirror Mirror on IMDB

Troy (2004)

I remember when this movie hit the theaters, the reviews were so bad that I didn't see it on the big screen. It was years later before I saw it. I remember thinking that while I wasn't terribly impressed, neither was I displeased, but really what they should have done was cast Sean Bean as Odysseus in the Odyssey - they could have called it "Ithaca" since apparently they thought using the place name was cooler than what Homer used. But, then they probably would have changed it as drastically as they did this story.
Actually what would have been really cool is if they did a trilogy based on the Iliad and the Odyssey and have it be more phenomenological than this "historical" approach, but way toned down from the likes of Clash of the Titans. Naturally they should have some genius like Peter Jackson direct. Naturally.
And the star power of Brad Pitt aside, I would have gone with an all American, or all English cast or at least picked actors that could the accent of the world. Why would Achilles have a different accent from everybody else? Why would Priam's general sound like a Scotsman? So many of the actors in this movie I really enjoy, so of course recognize, "oh look there's that elf and the fallen hero, oh over there is that mutant supervillain and the dastardly government official. hey, don't make him mad, he'll super-size and go all green on your ass, and look, he's talking to the Scotsman who's heart is brave. The main problem with this movie is that I never stop seeing Brad Pitt and start seeing Achilles. I never stop seeing Orlando Bloom and start seeing Paris. And why is Helen blond?
Because they called it Troy, I'll let them get by with "loosely" basing their film on the Iliad. If they had called it the Iliad, I would be crucifying them for the inaccuracies, you know small things like the war taking only two to three weeks instead of the ten years. Or characters who are alive (if not well) in the Odyssey getting killed off. No, I won't mention those.
What did this film have going for it? Bana, Bean, O'Toole, Cox. It was pretty. There were hardly any spots where I could tell that certain characters were computer animated. It wasn't done in 3D.
What didn't this film have going for it? Bloom, Kruger. I mean come on - making Paris an archer that so closely resembles his Legolas, except for the part where Paris is a coward. There were scenes that were computer animated. I knew this before I saw the film, and I certainly knew this when I watched the armada approach Troy and when the Greeks finally breech the walls of Troy. And, as much as I love Brad Pitt, this story should not have been about Achilles.
Now, who would I cast in my trilogy of the Iliad and the Odyssey...