Betrayed by Vesper, the woman he loved, 007 fights the urge to make his latest mission personal. Pursuing his determination to uncover the truth, Bond and M (JUDI DENCH) interrogate Mr White (JESPER CHRISTENSEN) who reveals the organization which blackmailed Vesper is far more complex and dangerous than anyone had imagined.
Forensic intelligence links an Mi6 traitor to a bank account in Haiti where a case of mistaken identity introduces Bond to the beautiful but feisty Camille (OLGA KURYLENKO), a woman who has her own vendetta. Camille leads Bond straight to Dominic Greene (MATHIEU AMALRIC), a ruthless business man and major force within the mysterious organization.
On a mission that leads him to Austria, Italy and South America, Bond discovers that Greene, conspiring to take total control of one of the world’s most important natural resources, is forging a deal with the exiled General Medrano (JOAQUIN COSIO). Using his associates in the organization, and manipulating his powerful contacts within the CIA and the British government, Greene promises to overthrow the existing regime in a Latin American country, giving the General control of the country in exchange for a seemingly barren piece of land.
In a minefield of treachery, murder and deceit, Bond allies with old friends in a battle to uncover the truth. As he gets closer to finding the man responsible for the betrayal of Vesper, 007 must keep one step ahead of the CIA, the terrorists and even M, to unravel Greene’s sinister plan and stop his organization.
Quarantine is a movie testament to craftsmanship and commitment.
The best Blair Witch knockoff of them all is basically a zombie movie seen through the viewfinder of a TV news camera — the “found footage” conceit of Blair Witch.
But think about what it takes to make that come off — the camera blocking and staging, the choreography that gets the actors, the lights, the mikes and camera from one perfect spot to capture what’s happening to the next perfect spot, with enough jarring, jumpy bumps in the Steadicam to make it all so nauseatingly real.
And the actors are working in long takes. That means pages of script at a time, with no lazy short edits to cover blown lines or players dropping out of character. Jennifer Carpenter — playing the too-thin, too-young, too-flirty TV reporter whose “ride-along” with firefighters turns into a zombie-virus nightmare — gives a performance that harks back to the golden age of Jamie Lee Curtis. Yeah, she’s that good.
No, the script isn’t anything special, and the novelty long ago wore off in this style of moviemaking. But the execution in the film from John Erick Dowdle is amazing; the camerawork and cutting are perfect.
Quarantine is a remake of a Spanish horror thriller about a reporter and cameraman who get more than they bargained for when they do a story on the night shift at a fire station.
An ambulance call takes them to an old apartment building. An old woman is sick, foaming at the mouth and covered in blood. Before they can get her out, she bites others, and the building is quickly sealed off, with SWAT snipers preventing anybody from leaving. One by one, the residents and first responders are picked off.
As Angela, Carpenter (The Exorcism of Emily Rose) avoids shallow, vapid news-babe cliches. She’s just a young woman fighting back hysteria by doing her job and yelling, “Film everything!”
Quarantine is the first clone to rip off Blair Witch without embarrassing those doing the ripping off.
” Body of Lies” is a riddle wrapped in an enigma served with a side of mystery meat. It’s very watchable, with some entertaining action beats, kind of a Syriania as scripted by Tom Clancy, a “The Kingdom” with a little less “CSI” — heavy on the tech, snappy in the dialogue.
But the showy dialogue — and a scenery-chewing turn by Leonardo DiCaprio in the lead — forces Ridley Scott’s latest foray into the morass of the Middle East to straddle that line between “not bad” and “not all that, either.”
DiCaprio is Roger Ferris, an Arabic-speaking C.I.A. field agent, at home in Iraq or Turkey, the United Arab Emirates or Amman, Jordan. He’s chasing this phantom terrorist Al-Saleem. He’s constantly on the phone with his portly, desk-jockey boss, the D.C.-based field chief, played with a cagey drawl by Russell Crowe. Ferris goes undercover, works agents, tries to “turn” terrorists, always with Ed Hoffman (Crowe) watching in, by spy plane, listening in by phone.
They have shouting matches, disagreements over strategy, largely over issues of trust or control. And maybe cell phone bills.
“You’ve gotta decide which side’a the cross you’re on,” drawls Ed. “I need nailers. Not hangers.”
Ed’s interference, his running of “side operations” behind Roger’s back, is dangerous. But it turns deadly when he puts Ferris in bed with the deadly-efficient Jordanian secret police, led by the dapper, scary-intense Hani. Mark Strong does a silky, menacing Armand Assante impersonation in playing this master counter-terrorist, a man who insists on human assets, not high-tech, and man who demands that you never, ever, ever lie to him.
The bad guys are fighting, as Hoffman lectures, “men from the future” — that is, us. And by going low-tech, not using computers or cell phones to communicate, for instance, they are staying one step ahead of the C.I.A. But Ferris, despite his differences with Hoffman, envisions a trap.
You’ve guessed that there’s going to be a betrayal, a “side operation,” and a lie. You’ve guessed that since it’s a Leo movie, there’ll be a love interest, here an Iranian-Jordanian nurse (Golshifteh Farahan). And if you’ve noticed that the script was by William “The Departed” Monahan, you know that all this lip service about men from the past avoiding cell phones is just that, lip service. Monahan is Mr. Cell-Phone-as-Plot-Device. They’re a constant here, used to set up meets, set off bombs, bicker with bosses and badger divorce lawyers in the middle of an anti-terror operation.
It’s not exactly a lazy prop, though you would hope Monahan is getting some sort of Sprint kickback for all the cell-plugging he’s doing in his scripts.
DiCaprio’s performance is amped-up in the extreme here, lots of yelling into a phone, chewing out subordinates, bobbing his head or worse, raising his eyebrows with each line. Scott’s choppy editing style means that every shot is a repeat performance, with little flow between cuts. Leo works himself into a tizzy, then “ACTION,” and that’s what we see.
“Body of Lies,” adapted from a David Ignatius novel, plays like a beach book, a decent genre page-turner. We liked “Syriana” and “The Kingdom,” right? We stay with this sand-caked beach novel even if we pretty much know what’s on that last page half-way through.
George Orwell’s preposterous declaration in 1984 has come true: Big Brother is watching me and you and everyone we know, documenting us on surveillance cameras, capturing our cell phone, Internet, and AT M activity, and tracking our whereabouts as we drive hybrid vehicles outfitted with satellite guidance systems. So Eagle Eye, a brain-squandering thriller starring Shia LaBeouf, Michelle Monaghan, and cell phones they insist upon answering, is onto something with its future-is-now premise of ordinary citizens blackmailed by infernal technology. But the movie (which began as a byte of an idea from exec producer Steven Spielberg) is so hysterical in its terrorist subplot and its seizure-inducing action sequences that a pummeled viewer can be excused for texting WTF? to a friend in the middle of the chaos. Especially when the commands come from an unseen female mastermind with the voice of a GPS console reciting driving directions. (Sometimes she flashes additional info via electronic signage — like Steve Martin did for laffs in L.A. Story.)
LaBeouf and Monaghan grimace and run fast as ordinary citizens snared (by ludicrous circumstances) into abetting the enemy; Billy Bob Thornton and Rosario Dawson evince similar mood swings as FBI agents. But none is charismatic enough to override the prattlings of Eagle Eye herself, or to jolt us into realizing that this movie actually means to say serious stuff: We can run but we can’t hide.
Biting satire? Political hatchet job? First draft of history? Call it what you will, Oliver Stone’s shoestring-budget biopic of George W. Bush is bound to be controversial — the first time the lightning-rod director (JFK, Nixon) has aimed his camera at a sitting U.S. president. ”It’s the story of a man you think you know, but don’t know,” Stone told EW on the movie’s Shreveport, La., set last May. ”Who is Bush? How did he get to be who he is? Why did we elect him—twice?”
OUR TWO CENTS Judging by the teaser — a montage of Josh Brolin as the young Bush getting drunk, crashing his car into a front lawn, fighting with George Sr. to the strains of ”What a Wonderful World” — this could be one of the most hilarious (and polarizing) films of the season. 10/17
DEEP DIVE Everything you wanted to know about George W. — and every other President — can be found at Potus.com.
