In shouting out To Live and Die in LA, I mentioned Michael Mann’s underated Manhunter - the first screen appearance of Hannibal Lector (played by Brian Cox). Unlike the remake, Manhunter doesn’t take the name of its source material, yet ironically when I watch Red Dragon - a perfectly serviceable thriller - it feels like a remake of the “original” rather than an adaptation, only without Mann’s sometimes excessive panache.
That Hopkins portrayal of Lector dominates the proverbial room and has propelled the character into a sometimes excessive/superfluous spotlight, Manhunter has become somewhat of a forgotten adaptation. IMHO, as a film it works far better than Silence of the Lambs, which feels like an excuse to merely spotlight its two leads (both excellent performances to be fair) to the extent that the story is an afterthought. For all its style and atmosphere, Manhunter never loses the narrative drive that a thriller should have.
What immediately popped into my head was the shot of Bond’s car travelling up the mountain road–going upriver in the patrol boat.
SF and its predecessors in the Orphan Trilogy have psychology and intensity, which retard propulsion, except when they are set aside to allow the film to pick up speed and/or have a set piece.
Have been meaning to re-watch SP, and will now go do so with these thoughts in mind.
Yes exactly that ! The car is the boat, Hinx the Cyclops/ Duvall character. CraigBond enters his own heart of Darkness and comes out the other side no longer a killing robot but someone ultimately able to be human.
Underrated in general I would call the whole oeuvre of John Carpenter.
His remake of „The Thing“ has been re-evaluated as a masterpiece already. But I don’t find any of his films have been appreciated enough. His directorial style is so delightfully unfussy, economical and to the point, and many of his films contain ideas which take the genre and make it interesting again.
I actually appreciated the fact that the boxing scenes were a bit more tame than in IV – they were never going to top the challenge of Drago and I’m therefore glad they didn’t even try, especially as Rocky now had brain damage and hadn’t been training and wouldn’t have been able to handle blows of that magnitude. And I think the intensity of the street fight lay in the emotional core of what was happening rather than in the physical brutality.
I will grant you, though, that the editing was a bit dodgy once or twice during that final fight. But it wasn’t enough to meaningfully detract from my enjoyment of the film.
Want to shout out an underrated Steven Soderbergh thriller “The Underneath” with Peter Gallagher and our very own Joe Don Baker amongst others. It’s a small in scope indie thriller which sits between Sex Lies and then the run of Out of Sight, The Limey and onwards.
All the Soderbergh traits are there - personal identity, jump cuts what-have-you. If you like Soderbergh you’ve seen it, but if it’s not his name that’s got you in to watch Oceans, Erin Brockovich, Traffic etc, then it’s a more than worthwhile look at one of his earliest works. A modern take on noir, a honest film that asks of rather than talks down to the viewer.
Have completed my re-watch, and SPECTRE as a film based on an APOCALYPSE NOW template is evident, and a brilliant insight.
Four times, Bond is seen travelling up screen, similar to the patrol boat going up river. (There is a fifth repetition of the shot when Bond drives away at the end of the film, but the camera is lower/closer to the ground than in the previous four shots).
He is repeatedly referred to as an assassin, which is what Captain Willard is.
“Out of bullets” is the equivalent of “I wasn’t even in their fucking Army anymore.”
Blofeld has his compound as does Kurtz, both of which end up destroyed in fireballs.
Additional new thoughts from this screening:
Does DenchM’s tape signify that she knows that Blofeld is behind Spectre, and, moreover, does she know that Blofeld is Oberhauser?
The blowing up of the compound concludes the conventional Bond plot–evil mastermind’s lair destroyed. But as Bond says: “This isn’t over.” Hence the second ending, where Bond, having done what he was programmed to do, undoes his programming. Like Schrodinger’s cat, Blofeld is both killed (no one/nothing survives the fireball the audience witnesses), and allowed to live. It all depends on which narrative is being looked at in the moment.
The film is a memento mori that begins with the onscreen title: “Day of the Dead.”
I always thought she did not - but then again she held back information she could have given him at Skyfall at the latest (it’s a long drive from London, isn’t it?)
I wonder whether she thought Bond would not believe her or that he would and freak out (RoboRage).
But if she knew why would she have held back that info? She could have immediately told Bond or Mallory in order to prevent everything.
Or did she think C had already infiltrated the Government?
Or was she at some point approached and had made a bargain with the devil in order to keep her secrets from coming out?
So many possibilities left untouched by the films…
I have always suspected that Demch M knew exactly what and who Blofeld was and wants him 'terminated with extreme prejudice " as per Apocalypse.
On a side note, I watched it at the cinema a couple of weeks ago. The Playboy scene is the scene that hit me most as the intoxicated madness is palpable.
The hotel scene in Spectre is the French plantation scene…
Which version–Original, Redux, or Final Cut? Did you bring any children?
Yes–a journey to a prior time of colonization/surveillance.
Basically. The end of SF represents the successful robotization of Bond into Robot Bond, reporting to the new M–punctuated by the gun barrel sequence, which signals that the process is complete, Bond is back, and MI6’s got him (and also allows for SPECTRE to begin with the gun barrel sequence, both indicating the return of our hero-killer, and setting up the departure point for his deprogramming. SPECTRE encapsulates in one film the journey that Fleming took Bond on in his fiction).
I love it as well. I first saw it in 1979 with my father. He especially liked Brando’s monologues.
A potential breakdown spot for me is when Willard gets to Kurtz’s compound–the depiction of the native inhabitants dutifully worshipping a white overlord. I sometimes argue that it is a representation of an American fantasy of colonial omnipotence, and not to be taken literally. But other times, I say that the film just derails at this point. Any new critical approaches would be most welcome. Though, film criticism seems to be a dirty profession nowadays:
