Category: Ana de Armas

FROM THE WORLD OF JOHN WICK: BALLERINA

By Marc S. Sanders

Her father gets killed.  She grows up to become a skilled assassin.  She seeks revenge.

There’s your story.

Ana de Armas headlines this extended branch off the John Wick franchise called Ballerina.  She plays Eve.  I like her.  The same way I liked her all too brief appearance in No Time To Die.  

Keanu Reeves’ Mr. Wick makes some scant appearances to escort Eve into the ring where she can use guns, lots and lots and lots of guns, plus a bunch of knives too. Kitchen utensils including stacks of dish ware along with pots and pans.  Grenades to tape inside an goon’s mouth.  There’s also a flame thrower and to counteract against another flame thrower, there’s a fire hose.  

Ballerina takes a break acknowledgment when a flat screen appears behind Eve to quickly show the channels change from the slapstick beatings by The Three Stooges and then over to a Looney Tunes short.  Get the idea?

If there’s a story, it’s not even a full one note.  Gabriel Byrne is the distinguished Chancellor who Eve has a target for.  Despite his armada of endless assassins that come from every corner of the screen, and maybe they leap off from Lilo & Stitch playing in the theater next door, The Chancellor demands that Eve’s controller known as The Director (Anjelica Huston) call off her underling’s agenda.  Clearly though, Eve is under no one’s control.

Ballerina is high stakes action, and you get what you pay for.  However, I’d also pay for the 64 oz porter house and my middle age body will plead with me to slow down my pace before my gastrointestinal system implodes.  Every morsel of this movie is great and terrifically assembled but man is it an overindulging two hours and four minutes of slashing, shooting, exploding, breaking, crunching, pounding, punching, elbowing, kneeing, kicking, choking and strangling.  You drown in the beefy mayhem.

This actioner plays like a combat video game.  Drawn out fight sequences happen in one setting.  Then, Eve traverses to another location and the violence resumes.  It amuses me how Eve will do a number on one bad guy and once he’s permanently put away, only then does the next guy enter.  Wash, rinse, repeat. Whoa!!!! Here’s the next guy and then the next and next thereafter.  No one thug walks in to interrupt a one-on-one fight until Eve’s current opponent is put down with a bullet to the head or a grenade in the mouth or a flame thrower scorching.

It’s fun.  Yes.  However, there is a character that Eve encounters played by Norman Reedus, and I told Miguel later that I could not recall what his final fate was when we last left him in the picture.  I truly forgot that he’s a proud dad to a nine-year-old girl.  I mean, I truly forgot there was a little girl who was seen earlier in the movie.  I don’t even recall Reedus’ pertinence to the film. My mind was so paralyzed of thought process with the action overdose, that the few minute details there are, have escaped my short-term memory. I must have been suffocating in the fast-moving edits of the fight choreography and ballistic weaponry at play.  

After the film ended and considering what I know was left off with last year’s John Wick 4, I inquired of Miguel to piece together when this movie took place.  He looked it up.  I pondered for a millisecond at best, before I finally concluded it makes no difference.  Finally, after the production expended every penny on the last stunt man extra, the movie stops and the credits roll. Time to escape to the peaceful tranquility of my home.

The settings for Ballerina are marvelous and truly worthy of an Art Design Oscar.  I loved running up and down staircases and through underground corridors with Eve leading the way.  A snowy, mountaintop village occupies all of the action in the second part of the film, beginning in the saloon/dining hall, then going upstairs, then out a window, or three, and all over.  Director Len Wiseman cuts in great close ups of Ana de Armas in intense black leather with her hair in a neat ponytail.  Keanu Reeves is granted his own well-placed shots too.  

Wiseman also gets overhead shots to see the twisted stone walkways and stairwells of this area and where they navigate towards.  There are cuts to what comes around the corner and what’s thrust through doorways and windows, or down from the ceilings and rooftops.  It’s maddening and precisely cut.  The editing is superb despite how overstimulating all of the action becomes.  Eventually, you want to say “Oy!  Enough already!”

The script for Ballerina can’t be more than five pages.  It’s short on dialogue and what stands out to me is after Eve has set the whole town on fire and dispatched about three-thousands of The Chancellor’s militia, does his top henchman approach him and request to “Give the order!”  Buddy, after all this, if you have to ask, then this must be your first rodeo.  The Chancellor clearly overpaid for your services.

Ballerina is the female equivalent of the John Wick franchise.  Ana de Armas stands where Keanu Reeves stood for four pictures thus far.  If you’ve seen his four entries in this series, then you’ve seen Ballerina.  

Is it entertaining? Yes.  Is it mind numbing? After fifteen minutes? Definitely!  Do the filmmakers serve the product that was promised? Absolutely!  However, how does that ginormous porter house steak feel when it’s still lodged in your gut two hours later, and on until sunrise?

NO TIME TO DIE

By Marc S. Sanders

Any die-hard James Bond fan should absolutely love Daniel Craig’s final outing in No Time To Die.  Not only does the film work as a salute to the more serious aspects of past Bond films (not just Craig’s installments), but it is working with its tongue placed firmly in its cheek.  That is not to say that I still did take issue with a few narrative choices the film steers into.

Years have gone by for Craig’s interpretation of the famed secret agent.  He’s comfortably in love with Madeleine Swann (Lea Seydoux) from the prior film Spectre, and known daughter of Mr. White, one of Bond’s prior adversaries.  Suddenly though, Spectre seems to be back with a vengeance.  The imprisoned Blofeld (Christoph Waltz) somehow seems to be involved and 007 puts his guard back on opting not to trust Madeleine or anyone ever again.  The story jumps to five years later and Bond’s CIA friend, Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright) has convinced him to come out of seclusion and assist with recovering a kidnapped scientist who holds the formula to a deadly nanobot virus manufactured through plant life.  Bond travels to Jamaica to complete the mission.  From there, the story gets more complicated and more interesting.  Though I dare not spoil what comes next.  This film has a lot to tell in the near three hour running time.

Daniel Craig always had some sort of challenge with the general public while playing James Bond.  First, how dare he be blond?  James Bond is not blond.  He survived that ordeal to continue to make more films.  His second film suffered in storytelling due to a writer’s strike.  During press junkets for his fourth film, Craig was quoted out of context noting that he’d rather “slit his wrists” than play the character again.  As well, his films broke convention in the long running EON Production series, as each film served as a continuing story with much more serious, dramatic and sorrowful undertones than was ever presented before.  None of these challenges seemed fair to me.  After 25 films, you gotta stir the pot a little bit on a character that has been on screen for nearly 60 years.  It’s not enough that his gadgets change with the times of technology. 

I divert into this observation because No Time To Die offers some shocking developments for the Bond character, but when you return back to Craig’s first film, Casino Royale, you really start to understand why this latest picture goes in this wildly off direction.  In other words, the four films Craig performed in prior to this 2021 installment seemingly spell out the inevitable conclusion of his tenure as James Bond.  So, reader, when you go to see this last film from arguably the most controversial actor to play 007 to date, give some thought to what has already been covered before and maybe you’ll agree it beautifully makes a lot of sense.

As an action film, No Time To Die works solidly.  There’s amazing stunts and vehicles with car chases galore and nail biting shootouts.  I think this film has the longest pre-credit sequence of all the films and it’s amazing where one of the feature attractions is the famed Aston Martin DB5 against a slew of Range Rovers and motorcycles.

Rami Malek fills in as the lead villain eerily known as Safin, complete with the signature facial deformity, a shattered kabuki mask and a hell bent determination to destroy the world by means of turning people’s DNA against themselves.  Just go with it.  There’s not much weight to this dastardly mission.  It’s Malek’s performance that works. 

A new agent is also in the works and what’s this?  She is identified as 007????  Again, the newer films bravely go against convention to keep it interesting. Lashana Lynch plays Nomi.  This character was angled extensively in trailers and press junkets but honestly doesn’t live up to the hype enough.  The actor is fine.  She’s just not given much to make any kind of impact.  Ana de Armas is the actor who really makes a splash in a brief moment dressed in a gorgeous evening gown while giving high kicks to bad guys and armed with an adorable naivety about her and a killer machine gun.  Her character is reminiscent of the Bond girls who elevated the tongue and cheek elements of the series.  In a three hour film, more room should have been left for de Armas to play.

Moneypenny (Naomie Harris), Q (Ben Whishaw), Tanner (Rory Kinnear) and M (Ralph Fiennes) all return making for a solid support team for Bond.  It needs to be noted how well cast the Craig films always remained. During the five film series, each one of the characters had their memorable moments for sure.

The regrettable ingredients in No Time To Die lie in the lacking treatments of Lashana Lynch and Ana de Armas for sure.  Forgivable for the most part however.  Still, the story steers into one angle that I wish it didn’t when a young child is brought into the fold.  Children in serious peril was never part of the Bond formula.  So, while this is another new convention for the long running series, I think it was a poor choice.  I see the necessity of the young character to the story, but was it ever really necessary to put a child amid massive gun play, car wrecks and explosions.  There was something a little unsettling about that aspect of the film and the imminent danger to the girl really isn’t needed to heighten any kind of suspense.  Rather than play dramatically, it moves a little too disturbing.  Early on in the film, another child is placed in disturbing peril as well.  The story options here just don’t seem altogether appropriate.

No Time To Die is an appreciated conclusion to Daniel Craig’s version of the character.  There are great puns for Bond to deliver.  His interactions with Q and M are biting and fun.  His love story portrayal with Madeleine works more solidly here than in the last film they shared together, and his tete a tete with the villains, Blofeld and Safin, are equally strong.  These different relationships broaden the dimensions of Bond.  He’s no longer a cookie cutter character.  There’s a motivation to the guy. 

Having seen the film twice, I have an even further appreciation for this new film.  Hans Zimmer comes in to do the original score and particularly salutes the unexpected favorite among fans, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service with select notes and rhythms from that film.  Granted the script for No Time To Die makes obvious references as well.  I also appreciated the wink and nods to Bond’s very first adventure, Dr. No.  There was just a lot of smart, subtle honors presented here. 

Still, the best reference is left for one of the best lines in the film.  When Bond meets Felix’ partner ahead of a mission, Daniel Craig as 007 has to ask “Who’s the popular blond?”  After five hugely successful films, over a fifteen-year span, any one of us better know that the only blond that matters is “Bond.  James Bond.”

KNIVES OUT

By Marc S. Sanders

Rian Johnson’s new film Knives Out is an attempt to reinvent the Agatha Christie blueprint of The Who Done It? Murder Mystery. It primarily succeeds even if it is a little cookie cutter in its screenplay.

Famed best selling mystery writer Harlan Thrombley (Christopher Plummer) is discovered by his maid in his reading room to have slit his throat. All evidence points to suicide. Police follow through with simple procedural questioning of his next of kin, and yet a private detective (Daniel Craig) with an outstanding puzzle solving reputation is hired with a delivered envelope of cash from an unknown source. If it’s suicide, then why a detective, and who had reason to hire him?

Craig as Detective Benoit Blanc (great name) adopts a hilarious Kentucky southern drawl to rattle the cages of possible suspects, assuming that perhaps this wasn’t suicide. Could it have been…MURDER?

The suspects consist of family members and each is well exaggerated in their physical descriptions. Johnson wrote these connivers with possible motives to set them apart from one another-first by casting well known actors and then giving most of them a garish appearance or unusual trait. Jamie Lee Curtis as Linda with a short white as snow haircut and black circled glasses looks like no one else I can recall. Michael Shannon as Walt with a cane and exaggerated limp, not too bright but also quite discomforting. Don Johnson as Richard only with a goatee, Toni Collette as Joni putting on a bug eyed expression with ditzy delivery. Chris Evans as Ransom, with clean shaven good looks and a toothy smile in preppy, yet snobbish looking sweaters. Finally, Ana de Armas as Marta, Harlan’s nurse, who seems to be the only one devastated by what has transpired, and somehow inadvertently ends up being more involved than she ever expected. She can’t lie. If she does, she can’t help but vomit. A disadvantage perhaps but maybe a convenient advantage at times as well.

Early on, interviews are shown and it appears everyone has reason to maintain a grudge against Harlan. So if Harlan was in fact murdered, well then it’s fair to presume one of these people might have reason to commit the crime. A will is eventually read and then even more twists present themselves. Someone definitely wanted Harlan out.

Rian Johnson spells it out easily for the viewer. Each suspect has his/her own place in the film to toy around with. While I didn’t find it too challenging to predict a likely suspect that has orchestrated what’s occurred, it was more fun for me to watch how it was all pieced together. I kept asking myself what’s so important about the dogs or the baseball or the silent “Great Nana” (K Callan) who sits around the house but surely must have something to contribute.

Agatha Christie or Dashiell Hammet still hold as the much more clever writers. Still, Daniel Craig is having a blast in his role, conceived by Johnson. I’d like to see another mystery with this character. He’s funny at appearing unconcerned with new developments that could be occurring while he’s really just waiting for the inevitable fact that reveals the absolute truth.

Following leaving the scene of an arson a potential suspect makes an unexpected stop. Craig as Detective Blanc opts to wait in the car and put his ear buds on to sing show tunes. Who would do that? Yet, that’s what’s hilariously fun about this picture. A man has died but the shallowness of his surviving family and the disconnect of the detective are the entertainment factor.

Rian Johnson knows how to keep Knives Out amusingly interesting with a curiosity that does not stop.