No Time To Die (2021) and mini-reviews of 7 other recent films

No Time To Die (2021). Bond, James Bond. It’s full of amazing scenery, well-choreographed action scenes, great special effects, and James Bond does a lot of James Bondey things like racing in cars, making love to women, sailing boats, shooting guns… all these surface-level elements are either well executed or look expensive. The great problem – which nearly all Craig Bond films share – is the lumpy, overly complicated way in which it tries to connect to previous films and create a mega-story, and in the course retconning earlier films and bringing in tired old tropes about secret family histories. The agile scrum way of tweaking the larger storylines leave me apathetic to the emotional core, no matter how dramatic every plot twist is presented. But, the stellar cast, sheer spectacle and suave Bond elements win me over every time, and the rumours of Bond going “woke” have been greatly exaggerated. The little bit of push and pull with his competition isn’t so bad.

The French Dispatch (2021). The newest Wes Anderson film. A collection of three short films, all set within the fictional French town “Ennui”. The glue between the three stories is a scaffolding narrative about a French magazine, and the three stories are articles from the new magazine edition, presented by the journalists. All three of these short stories are wonderful on their own. Whimsical little tales of love, art, revolution and food, with great twists and humor and in Anderson’s typical quirky style. Pressed together, the way they are in this film, and the result is a bit messy and, I hate to say it, exhausting. 

The three stories are not given enough room to sink in, and with Anderson’s rapid-fire narration and visual communication, it all goes by in a blur, as if the film is in a rush. Anderson also adds narrative frames within the short stories and at times, three or four layers deep inside this layer cake of frames, I lost track of what was going on. At the end, none of it adds up to a whole, and as the end credits rolled I had trouble remembering what even happened in the film. With some rewatches, I am sure that the individual parts will shine more, but I missed a strong narrative frame to give meaning to it all. 

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021). There are only tentative hints that this is set in the Marvel universe, and actually disregarding that whole connection helped me to appreciate the film more. It’s a bit of a hodgepodge of things, really, with a fantasy China and themes about immigrants returning to the old land, and it’s a pretty good homage to multiple styles of martial arts in movies. Some of it resembles Yimou Zhang, some of it Bruce Lee. It takes up all these themes noncommittally, momentarily, one after the other, each time dropping them and moving on to the next, only to end in a fantasy battle. It was all a bit scatterbrained and tropey, set against the kind of bland music that you find in mobile games. The fighting and effects are exciting, though, so there’s that.

Finch (2021). Could’ve been named Love, Death and Robots, the Movie, but it is not connected to that IP. Finch (Tom Hanks) is a sole survivor in a post-apocalyptic landscape. He lives in a factory where he has surrounded himself with robots, including a robot dog, and is creating another robot companion. So, this is like a combination of Cast Away… with Chappie. Leave it up to Tom Hanks to give us a cozy catastrophe with upbeat jazz music and good-natured robots. Scientific credulity is stretched to the limit with the robot slapstick, but since this is a big production, the effects look tactile and the film is visually interesting. There is an emotional heart to the story that involves Hanks trying to educate a robot that acts like a teenager so that it eventually can take over the care of his dog. The film doesn’t offer anything that we haven’t seen in many films already and the sentimental story is a bit simple, but Hanks easily carries the film on his shoulders. It is worth a watch but ultimately not very memorable.

Red Notice (2021). One way to make a popular movie is to gather up the most popular movie stars and just put them together. You don’t even need a story; people will watch it. I did, because I’m cheap that way. It’s a completely harmless two hours of action-comedy nonsense and I chuckled a few times. The story is just an excuse to put these actors together, but taking this stuff seriously is a waste of energy. 

Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes (2020). A fun little crazy Japanese SF film with a small budget, but I highly recommend it. The story is simple: a cafe-owner, who lives above his cafe, discovers that his TV screen shows images from two minutes into the future. The TV monitors the cafe below him. As he shows his colleagues and friends this strange phenomenon, a lot of running back and forth ensues between the cafe and his apartment. As they explore this phenomenon, the film gets crazier and crazier. The low budget gives it a sense of realism and immersion. It’s the kind of material that inspires you to try to create your own film. 

Devs (2020). Devs is an 8-episode miniseries, written and directed by Alex Garland, and if you have seen Garland’s movies Ex Machina (2014) and Annihilation (2018), know that he continues directing in the same vein of slow-paced, thoughtful science fiction about rather abstract ideas. I greatly enjoy seeing a writer tackling slower, abstract science-fictional ideas, but some of his directing choices I find a bit distracting. He relies on striking visual images that do not have a direct relevance to the story and a soundscape that is designed to make you feel uncomfortable, but feels artificial. Villeneuve does this too, but his directorial choices feel more relevant to the stories he tells. 

The story of Devs is interesting and on par with Garland’s previous movies, but I think it would have been better served as a movie, or a mini-series of 4 or 5 episodes instead of 8. The series is padded out with montages, repetition, slow panning shots and long conversations that hurt the pacing and feel like they are there to stretch out the running time. Overall, I’d still give this a recommendation because the concept is interesting and some of the acting – especially Nick Offerman’s – is very good.

Burning (2018). A Korean film, titled Beoning. Looking back at this movie, I appreciate it and I ponder all the ways it could be interpreted, but the experience of watching it is challenging. This is a slow-burning, quiet, lengthy film that only shows its content and secrets piece-meal, stretched-out over its running time. A rather straightforward mystery/thriller story it seems at first, but there is a constant undercurrent of unreality and uncomfortable situations, and hints that not everything you are seeing is in fact real. No final interpretation is given. This is not for people with short attention spans or a desire for unambiguous solutions. I also suspect that there is some social criticism on class differences in Korea that isn’t immediately obvious to Western viewers. Nevertheless, a well-written, solid movie, but needs investment of time and patience.