Category: Sam Mendes

AMERICAN BEAUTY

By Marc S. Sanders

Lester Burnham declares in less than a year he’ll be dead.  When we meet him, he’s masturbating in the shower, sleeping in the back of the family vehicle on the way to work, and declaring that his wife Carolyn used to be lovely.  Heck, he’s acting like he’s dead already.  His life has nothing new or exciting to pursue.  His daughter, Jane, doesn’t give him the time of day.  He’s threatened with being laid off from his magazine call center job that he’s held on to for nearly twenty-five years.  What’s to live for anymore? 

I guess what’s complimentary about poor Lester is that at least he’s honest with himself.  All the other neighbors, except for the gay couple known as Jim & Jim, are just as unhappy it seems and might as well be dead too.  A common theme running through the suburban landscape of American Beauty centers on a sense of mental awakening. Who revives sad, lost folks like Lester and Carolyn?  Perhaps it’s the generation sneaking up behind them, who are on the cusp of taking their place in young adulthood. 

Lester is played by Kevin Spacey, in his second Oscar winning performance.  Carolyn is portrayed by Annette Bening who is way overdue for a trophy.  Jane the daughter is played by Thora Birch.  The headliners of this cast are outstanding in how different and disagreeable they portray a broken family that is forced to live in an unstimulating home while trudging through a lifeless marriage.  Look at the set designs within this film.  There’s an endless amount of blank walls within the interiors of the homes.  Almost no artwork or pictures are to be found. 

Lester pines and fantasizes about Jane’s best friend Angela (Mena Suvari) getting rained on with red rose petals while she lies naked in a pure white bathtub.  Carolyn, the real estate agent who can’t make a sale, sidles up to the dashing Buddy Kane (Peter Gallagher), her competition. Next door is Chris Cooper in a hospital cornered role as retired Marine Colonel Frank Fitts, with his near comatose wife Barbara played by Allison Janey, and their eighteen-year-old resourceful drug dealing son, Ricky (Wes Bentley). He takes advantage of his camcorder at any opportunity to collect the beautiful images found within the world he occupies and observes.  That could mean he’s capturing Jane in her bedroom window which faces his own.  Later, he’ll show you the freedom of a plastic shopping bag dancing within an autumn breeze.  An old shopping bag has more life among a breeze and brown leaves than Lester, Carolyn, Frank or Barbara.

There is a mystery to American Beauty that seems quite odd.  We know that Lester will die soon, but how and why? Maybe there’s a twist, because that outcome seems more and more impossible as we see Lester discover a spirited mindset to go after what he wants, when he wants and declare that he’s not going to allow himself to take shit from anyone particularly in his boring dead end job or from his unaffectionate wife.  Ricky, the kid with tons of money and electronics equipment, has nothing to lose because he’s not committed to anything at age eighteen and he can just quit an ordinary table-waiting job at any given moment.  Why didn’t Lester have the gumption to ever be like Ricky?   It seems so simple.

There’s a blink and miss it sign hidden in plain sight.  Pinned to the wall of Lester’s work cubicle is the message “Look Closer.”  Director Sam Mendes and writer Alan Ball gives the audience a subtle wink to dig within the cracks of suburban life sidewalks.  These homes may appear perfect on the outside, with neighborly neighbors, but if you watch with a more critical eye you’ll find an emptiness that has been unfilled for too long.  The filmmakers make it easy for you to uncover what eats away at the upper middle-class way of living.  Dinner with Lawrence Welk playing in the background is anything but uplifting.  It’s imprisoning.

When one member of this community opts to seize his moment, no matter if he’s motivated by a kid’s rebelliousness and the drugs he buys off of him, or the fact that he thinks a beautiful teenage blonde has the hots for him, he sets out to change.  He exercises and builds up his body, buys the dream sports car he’s always wanted, quits his job and grows to not caring how this may disturb his unloving wife. 

American Beauty seems to remind us how alive we can be when we are younger and not as restrained by the commitments it takes to live like adults with debts and parenthood and jobs and marriage.  Look closer though because couldn’t we live as well or more aggressively when middle age arrives?

The irony of Alan Ball’s script is that a boring guy like Lester Burnham discovers exciting things about himself just as the end of his life is approaching.  All he needed was stimulation.  He never saw his death coming, and you might forget he told you he will soon be dead, but American Beauty works to show how necessary it is to live each day to the fullest. 

I sound hokey.  I know.  Yet, that’s the direction of this film’s trajectory.  On the side, you observe those people who do not pursue what will fulfill their own lives and desperately need a modification.  Lester was limited to branch out. So is Colonel Fitts and his very sad wife.  So is Carolyn, and Jane and Angela, and maybe so is Ricky.  All of these people uphold facades about themselves to preserve a happiness on the outside when they really feel worse within. 

Sam Mendes is brilliant at drawing upon the subtle messages and insecurities of Alan Ball’s neighborhood characters.   About the only people that Sam and Alan do not dig deeper with is the gay couple.  I guess since they are happily out of the closet, what is left for them to conceal?

I could not help but compare Mendes’ Oscar winning film to Robert Redford’s.  American Beauty is more forthright than Ordinary People. Redford’s film draws out the ugly honesty of the family nucleus when an unexpected tragedy interferes.  Then it takes the entire film before the spouses take off their masks and truly declare how they regard each other.  It’s crushing to realize a sad truth. 

American Beauty rips off the layer right at the beginning, though.  A tragedy does not awaken these people to the natures that embarrass them.  Simply a hellbent, fed up mindset gets one guy going, and if that one member opens his eyes, then so will others because a simple disruption in ordinary life is next to impossible to live with.  Both films are so wise in how they criticize the very people these films were likely catered for.

What do these two Oscar winners say?  They tell the middle class, middle age American to simply look closer.

SPECTRE

By Marc S. Sanders

It’s fortunate that the success of Mike Myers’ Austin Powers franchise did not wash out the best features of the James Bond series. Had it done so, we wouldn’t have been treated to the outstanding production of Daniel Craig’s film, Spectre, with an opportunity to face off against a reinvented Ernst Stavro Blofeld played perfectly by Christoph Waltz. One of my few complaints however, is that we didn’t get enough material for the two-time Oscar winner.

Director Sam Mendes returns following Skyfall to reinvigorate the original traditions and blueprints that attracted audiences to 007 in 1962 with Dr. No. Blofeld lays in wait in his secret fortress of a lair housed within a desert crater (an upgrade from the volcano in You Only Live Twice), ready to offer exquisite hospitality to Bond and his love interest before providing an unrequested guided tour of his technology and hideous plots. No, he never had to show Bond anything. Yet Blofeld was never bashful, with or without his cat. Waltz is the right choice for this 21st century iteration of the staple villain. Gone is most of the camp presented in the character during the later Connery films. Most of the camp actually. He does still have the white cat after all.

Craig remains a great 007. The role is not a mimic of past Bonds. Craig is everything of the “blunt instrument” that author Ian Fleming described. Thanks to his physique and some great fight choreography, a marvelous fisticuffs scene occurs between him and brutish Dave Bautista aboard a moving train. Craig always looking great in the white dinner jacket tux, even while he’s getting pushed around.

Lea Seydoux is serviceable as the Bond girl, Madeline Swann, daughter of an old enemy of Bond with information necessary in the pursuit. Seydoux is not the best Bond girl. Others have offered more intellect beyond the beauty. Still, that might only be due to the limits of the script. She’s a good actor nonetheless.

Ben Whishaw and Naomie Harris are great as Q and Moneypenny. The roles have stepped up in frankness and skills that stretch out more than a traditional one scene cameo. Whishaw as Q is more of a know it all and Harris as Moneypenny reminds the audience that she has a life outside the office.

Ralph Fiennes is good too as M. Though I do wish his storyline was better here where he is dealing with an over abundant policy in complete government surveillance. The antagonist against Fiennes is nothing special and as quick as this storyline started, you knew how it was going to end. Still, I like watching Fiennes in the role.

Spectre has great scenes, most especially the signature opening taking place on the Day of the Dead in Mexico City that culminates in the destruction of a city block before Bond disables two bad guys aboard a spiraling helicopter. Steady cam and very clear edits make this a knockout.

I also appreciate the gag that not all things work accordingly for Bond. He orders his signature Vodka Martini, shaken not stirred, and is denied as he is at a bar located in an isolated strict health retreat. As well, his Aston Martin is not as reliable thanks to empty hidden machine guns hidden behind the logo in the trunk. Not everything comes as easy for Craig’s Bond, and that allows for some tongue in cheek humor.

I liked Spectre more on a repeat viewing. Mendes shot a gorgeous looking globetrotting picture of Mexico City, Rome, Austria, Tangiers and clear evening London.

Considering the next installment is likely to be Craig’s last film is disheartening. With Spectre, a summation of all the prior Craig films is assembled leading to what has been a great miniseries within the storied franchise. I’ve liked following this James Bond. There are revelations about the character including his orphan history, his faults and his coldness that only serves to protect the Queen’s country. The Daniel Craig Bond is the best following the very different albeit wry interpretation of Sean Connery.

Still, I’ll take what I can get, and once again happily look down the target scope aimed right for 007 before the blood comes pouring down.

SKYFALL

By Marc S. Sanders

Skyfall is a great James Bond film. One of the best. However, …it has one major shortcoming that always gnaws at me. Regrettably, it has a contrived middle section that steals some of the magic away from the film. Yes, for a moment, my suspension of disbelief is robbed from me.

Daniel Craig’s third outing as 007 has become a favorite among fans and movie goers. Craig is magnificent in a primarily dramatic turn in the part. Following a fantastic action packed opening where Bond pursues an assassin through the streets of Istanbul, Turkey (widely known as a favorite locale of Ian Fleming), the chase involves cars, motorcycles, rooftops, fruit stands and trains for well edited shootouts and fist fights. Alas, the assassin gets away and Bond is left for dead.

Following an attempt on the life of M (Judi Dench in her absolute best portrayal in the role), Bond returns for active duty. However, he’s not what he used to be. His aim is off and his body is worn. The question remains if Bond is ready to be back in the field.

The plot centers on a bitter former MI6 agent named Silva (Javier Bardem in a potentially Oscar worthy performance) out to seek revenge on M for the sins he believes she’s committed.

It’s funny. The Austin Powers films, and even film critic Roger Ebert, would always draw attention to the fact the villain would just longingly speechify when they have all the time in the world to just shoot Bond dead and move on with their devious plot. Silva is a response to that issue. He has a mutual respect for Bond, and you can see he’d rather keep him alive for the time being to allow the game to keep running. It’s not said outright, mind you. Yet that’s what I took away from the character. A superbly written monologue to introduce Silva at the midway point of the film compares him and Bond to the last of two rats surviving a trap. Which rat will win out?

It’s also quite special that Bardem shapes his villainous role with a homosexual tendency. Silva is fashionable and proudly dons a bleach blonde hairstyle. He gleefully rubs Bond’s legs and opens his shirt to examine his scarred chest, pronouncing that Bond must ponder his “training” at the moment. Silva is beyond the typical femme fatale. It’s different and it’s time the Bond franchise acknowledges the differences in people. A welcome trait for a major character.

The plot set up of Skyfall‘s devices are ingenious in simplicity with a basic revenge tale but also with broadening the legacy and responsibilities of the M character. What Casino Royale did for a story arc for James Bond, Skyfall does for M, and with Dench in the role it works beautifully. She must answer to superiors, like a very welcome Ralph Fiennes, for the death of several agents and a bombing of MI6 headquarters. She must resist the pressure of early retirement. This is the most that M has ever had to contend with personally, and it’s here at last.

My one reservation with the film occurs just after the midway point. Silva somehow arranged to get apprehended and then managed to escape, don a police uniform, travel through London’s tube, and time an explosion on a runaway train ready to crash into James Bond who is on his trail. Thereafter, he’s able to locate the interrogation session where M is making a public statement in her defense and try to kill her. There are way too many factors at play that work too conveniently to Silva’s advantage. It’s a tension filled sequence. It looks great. It has great action and effects, but it’s overly contrived. I wish the script from Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and John Logan made this middle section a little more believable.

Sam Mendes (American Beauty) directs a terrific, action-packed film filled with more drama and minimal tongue in cheek that the series is primarily known for. I was grateful for the more serious Bond. Like the other Craig installments as well as the Dalton films, Skyfall offers a different and fresher approach.

Granted the ending plays more like an Arnold Schwarzenegger action piece from the 1980/90s, but it’s highly entertaining, well edited and well shot, nonetheless.

I highly recommend Skyfall for its outstanding cast that also includes Ben Whishaw as a nerdy variation of Q, the gadget man, and Naomie Harris in a secret role that has a satisfying payoff. As well, the standard revenge story works quite well here when you have Bardem, Fiennes, Craig and most especially Dench doing some really top notch acting with terrific dialogue. Mendes is a stage director first, and it shows quite admirably here.

Again, Skyfall is not the best Bond film but it’s at least one of the best.

1917 (2019)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Sam Mendes
Cast: Dean-Charles Chapman, George MacKay, Colin Firth, Mark Strong, Benedict Cumberbatch
My Rating: 10/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 89% Certified Fresh

PLOT: Two British soldiers during the First World War are given an impossible mission: deliver a message deep into enemy territory that will stop 1,600 men, including one of the two soldiers’ brothers, from walking straight into a deadly trap.


Bear with me for a second…I promise I’ll actually get to the movie in a second.

I’m not a professional movie critic.  I write reviews simply because it amuses me to do so, and because one of my friends made it possible for him and I to post our reviews in an online forum.  For about two months, though, I haven’t written a single review.  I pondered this with Marc a little while ago, and the only reason I could come up with was that I didn’t feel INSPIRED to write something.

Not that I haven’t seen good movies in those two months. Waves, Uncut Gems, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Jumanji: The Next Level, Frozen 2, Little Women, Bombshell, maybe one or two others – they were all good, even great.  (In the case of Uncut Gems and Waves, I’d even call them “must-see” events.)  But I never felt compelled to run home and put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard.  I simply felt that I had nothing to contribute where those movies were concerned.

Well, tonight I saw 1917, and now I have to say, this is a different case altogether.

For anyone who’s not quite aware of why this movie is so special, aside from it just being really good, 1917 was hyped as being told in one single shot with a camera that follows two soldiers through battlefields and countrysides as they attempt to deliver an important message to a distant company of English soldiers.  No cuts to different angles, no cuts at all, in fact.  (Actually, there IS a single cut, but more on that later.)

While I originally felt it was a bit of a stunt to get it noticed at Oscar time (remember Birdman [2014]?), after seeing the movie it was abundantly clear that this was no mere trick to dazzle an audience with.  This specific story is particularly suited to this specific method of filming.  It forces the audience to empathize with these two soldiers immediately, and only them.  I was reminded for some reason of Saving Private Ryan, and a line spoken by Tom Sizemore: “This time the mission is a man.”  Well, this time, the men are the mission, and the mission is paramount.  The single-take strategy has the uncanny ability to put us in the shoes of these soldiers more so than many other war films.  You feel like you’re right there in the mud with the empty artillery shells and the corpses and the rats.

And that’s the supreme achievement of the movie: its ability to put us there and KEEP us there for two hours without ever calling attention to the fact that, “Hey, we haven’t cut yet and it’s been over a half hour!”  A lot of that has to do with camera placement and movement and, of course, the actors’ ability to keep us engaged.

But one thing that I kept noticing throughout the movie was the small details.  I’m not going to remember them all, but they included:

  • At one point, the British soldiers walk through an abandoned German bunker.  In a throwaway detail, the name “KLARA” is seen scrawled on one of the walls.  The camera doesn’t focus on it, but it just passes by.
  • We encounter a group of British soldiers, and of them is a Sikh.  The other soldiers are doing bad impressions of their superior officers, but the Indian’s impression is clearly better than the other Englishmen, with proper diction, upper-class accent, everything.
  • In the British trenches, various sections have unique names.  The one I remember most clearly is “Paradise Alley.”
  • As they walk, one of our two heroes notices cherry trees, and he quickly rattles off several different varieties of cherries.  He knows them because his family has an orchard back home.
  • An intense scene where someone has to literally wade through dozens of corpses.
  • In one remarkable scene, the movie pauses to listen to a song. Fighting is imminent, death may arrive at any moment, but for a brief moment, everything stops. It’s a brilliant moment…almost holy.

Little things like that.  The reason I bring them up is because some of them seemed unnecessary to the story, but they colored the story so that it felt more real than most.  And the closing credits reveal that this movie is based on stories told to director Sam Mendes by his grandfather, who served in World War One.  So many, if not all, of those little details were probably one hundred percent REAL details, the kind of details that could only be remembered by someone who was there.

Another reason the movie is so suspenseful is because we’ve become subtly programmed to believe that, in a war movie, the ending can’t be too Hollywood; otherwise, it’s not real enough.  The soldiers must deliver a message.  Will they even survive long enough to deliver the message?  Assuming they do, will the officers receiving the message even follow the order?  A civilian appears at one point…will they live?  They engage in combat…who will live and who will die?  I was on edge the whole movie because I never really felt “safe”, which was EXACTLY the kind of feeling you want when you’re watching a war movie.  In my opinion.

Now, about that whole single-shot thing.  There actually IS one cut, a SINGLE cut, during the whole movie.  You’ll know it when it happens.  But when you’ve seen as many movies as I have, you’ll also notice “invisible wipes”, where the camera passes by something in the foreground – a pillar, or a rock, or a tree – that comes in between the camera and the person/object being filmed.  Using clever editing and lighting, you can cut two shots together using that pillar/rock/tree as the splicing point.  And there is a LOT of that going on in this movie.

I’m not taking anything away from the achievement of the film, it’s spectacular.  It’s just something I noticed that I could not UN-notice for the duration of the film.  A minor quibble, nothing more.

1917 is definitely a top contender for Best Picture of 2019.  I have only seen a handful of World War I movies, but this is certainly one of the very best.  I’d rank it up there with Kubrick’s Paths of Glory any day.

QUICK TAKE: Jarhead (2005)

By Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Sam Mendes
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard, Jamie Foxx, Chris Cooper
My Rating: 10/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 61%

PLOT: A newly minted Marine sniper is sent to Iraq as part of Operation Desert Shield, only to find himself slowly losing his mind as he waits for a chance to make his first kill.


If Three Kings was the Gulf War version of Kelly’s Heroes, then Jarhead is the Gulf War Full Metal Jacket.  It’s a glorious paradox: a war film where it looks like the hero may never get to fire his weapon.

Jake Gyllenhaal is phenomenal in the lead role of Swofford, but Jamie Foxx steals every scene he’s in, as Staff Sergeant Sykes.

There’s beautiful imagery in the film, from the oil fires in the desert, to an arresting dream sequence where sand makes an appearance from a very surprising place.

I don’t know why, but I empathized a LOT with the Swofford role.  He learns how to use his sniper rifle with deadly force, he finally gets shipped out to where the fighting is…and air power nearly makes him obsolete.  What are they even doing there if airplanes can end the battle in minutes instead of hours?

There’s a great line when someone hears a helicopter flying overhead, blaring The Doors from loudspeakers.  A soldier looks up with exasperation: “That’s Vietnam music…can’t we get our own music?”  These guys wanted to fight, to carve their place into the history books with honor, and blood.  They wanted to distinguish themselves from their fathers or grandfathers who fought in other faraway countries.  The soldiers in the Gulf War of this movie wanted to “do it right.”

Jarhead offers searing insight disguised by a simple story.  It puts me into the head of a soldier who wants to do the right thing, the honorable thing – hell, ANYTHING – and who finds himself frustrated.  It struck me, and still does strike me, on a level I never expected.  I don’t know if I’ve clearly elaborated that with this review.  But there it is.

1917

By Marc S. Sanders

Sam Mendes’ World War I drama 1917 is a cinematic achievement in film artistry. Watching the picture, which I highly recommend in a Dolby theatre, is exhilarating, leaving me to ponder how this type of filmmaking was ever accomplished.

Mendes, along with legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins (Blade Runner) primarily shot the film in one long-real time-take with no breakaway until about two thirds of the film is complete. Then, it resumes into another long take for its final act.

We accompany two British soldiers assigned to trek across the front line into enemy territory and warn a unit of 1600 fellow soldiers that a planned attack has been set up as an ambush against them by the German army.

Mendes is also credited as screenwriter with Krysty Wilson-Cairns and the story and characterizations remain pretty basic. Almost too basic, actually. Because the film is shot in close to real time, 1917 doesn’t allow for much complexity or dimension beyond the now of the mission at hand, and that’s where it suffers slightly. There are moments where we are just walking the countryside and are expected to look at the splendor of war torn Europe. We wind a corner and suddenly we are entering a bunker where a rat hanging from a ceiling enters the frame. We climb a ladder out of a trench, and we immediately come face to face with the aftermath of a violent battle that leaves behind torn up bodies and piles of shell casings.

The achievement with camera work is impossible not to admire and become in awe of it. Eventually, however the novelty wears a little thin. There’s little emotional connection to the two soldiers played by Dean Charles Chapman and George Mackay. Brief appearances by Benedict Cumberbatch, Colin Firth and Mark Strong are fleeting for but a second.

I was highly impressed with 1917, but I was never moved by the film, even when an emotional confrontation comes up near the end. I never got to know these characters beyond the urgent sojourn they take. So much of the conversations didn’t matter much to me.

Again, this is a master class in filmmaking. Mendes will likely win a directing Oscar because I am dumbfounded with his accomplishment. His steady camera could not have been mounted on a ground track against the rough terrain. So how did he do it?

Oscar recognition must also go to Mendes’ team of 6 art directors. The battlefields are strewn about with corpses, barb wire, deep trenches, underground bunkers, dirt, mud, dust, blood, and so on. War is hell is what we’ve all heard. 1917 brings that mantra to life in sickening, shuddering detail.

I recommend the film while it remains in theaters, but I won’t say it is the best picture of the year because for each great feat of technical work, there’s a lack in the emotional punch that other war films have provided.