Film Review: Spectre (2015)

There are few franchises as reactive as the James Bond series. Over twenty-four films and fifty-three years, it has had to adapt and change in order to survive, often taking on the qualities of the trend du jour in order to remain relevant. When blaxploitation cinema was at its height, Bond went to Harlem and fought against Voodoo gangsters. After Star Wars became one of the most popular movies of all time, Bond went to space. As Hollywood became obsessed with hard-nosed crime dramas focused on the drug trade, Bond dismantled a cartel and fed Benicio del Toro through a shredder.

A Man out of Time: Timothy Dalton as James Bond

When Dr. No opened in October of 1962, few could have imagined that the series would still be a going concern fifty years later. Fewer still could have foreseen that the series would still be in robust financial health. Within three weeks of its release, Skyfall overtook Quantum of Solace to become the highest-grossing film in the series, far surpassing what the two previous Daniel Craig-fronted outings accrued, both worldwide and domestically. Though there is always the caveat of inflation to be considered - Skyfall has still got a long way to go to match the talliess of the top grossing Bond films when accounting for the rising ticket costs - that Skyfall is even getting close (at the time of writing it has taken a staggering $800 million worldwide) is nothing short of astonishing. It seems that the Bond franchise is stronger than it's ever been.

Film Review: Skyfall (2012)

One of the key images in Skyfall, the twenty-third James Bond film and the third to star Daniel Craig as the super-spy, is of Bond standing on a London rooftop. As he gazes out over the city, he is framed alongside such indelible symbols of Britishness as The Houses of Parliament and the Union Jack. It's a quiet and contemplative moment, particularly in comparison to the percussive, rollicking juggernaut that surrounds it, but it's one that underscores one of the underlying ideas behind the film. Seeing as its release coincides with the fiftieth anniversary of the series, Skyfall has to pay due diligence as a celebration of the legacy of EON and Cubby Broccoli, who helped to make James Bond as much an icon of British culture as the aforementioned building and flag.

Film Review: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011)

Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy has proven to be that rarest of things, a literary blockbuster in an age when book sales seem to be perpetually in an irreversible tailspin. Not only that, but they have succeeded despite incredibly dark and violent subject matter, particularly aimed against women, which seems like it might render the stories unpalatable to a mainstream audience. Yet the success of the books - no doubt driven in part by the mystique cultivated around Larsson's death from a heart attack at the age of 50 - speaks for itself, as does the staggering success of the trilogy of Swedish television films based on the books which were released worldwide in 2010, to considerable acclaim. (For the record, I thought they were pretty unspectacular, though I liked the books well enough.)

Film Review: The Adventures of Tintin - The Secret of the Unicorn (2011)

This can only end well.

When it was announced that Steven Spielberg was going to finally fulfil his long held dream of bringing Hergé's iconic boy journalist/adventurer to the big screen, it seemed like such a natural fit that it was amazing that it hadn't happened sooner. The Tintin comics have delighted countless children and adults for decades with their mix of adventure, mystery and derring do, and when he is at his best, no film-maker can rival Spielberg when it comes to imbuing works with a sense of awestruck wonder and excitement. Then, it turned out that the film would be motion-capture, rather than live action, and you could almost sense the shudder across the Internet as people contemplated a Tintin movie full of uncanny valley faces and awkward animation. Could Spielberg succeed where countless others had failed and make a film that overcame the limitations of motion-capture technology?