Tag Archive: 007


SPECTRE directed by Sam Mendes (UK, 2015)

This movie is two and a half hours of pure Bond bunkum which starts promisingly but, unlike the superior Skyfall, is content to fall back on style over substance.

Daniel Craig with steely blue eyes and tight muscular body makes a good 007 and is as indestructible and unflappable as ever.

Realism is not the keynote of course but you would expect him to accrue a few designer scars or at least to get a few stains or rips in his clothes.

As it is, you cut him and he does not bleed, beat him and he does not bruise and he always gets the girl. Another unfathomable trick he pulls off is to be able to find an immaculate range of suits or elegant casual wear despite never carrying more than hand luggage.

His maverick mission is to crack Spectre (note the English spelling), a criminal organization which has infiltrated the heart of the British establishment with a cunning plan of using global surveillance via the Internet and wiretapping – sound familiar? Continue reading

SLUMDOG FANTASY

Salman Rushdie criticised Danny Boyle’s Oscar winning movie ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ on the grounds that it lacked plausibility. He’s obviously sensitive to the fact that the poverty in India is used as a convenient backdrop rather than attempting to carry any overt social or political message. But I think he’s underestimating the fact that the movie presents the sinister and squalid aspects of life in the slums of India when it would have been quite easy to prettify these scenes. Continue reading