Project Tyneside: The Hobbit, Midnight's Children and Quartet

And so, my first week of Project Tyneside, my attempt to see every new film at Newcastle's Tyneside Cinema, began this week, with a varied four films, shown from Thursday 3rd - Monday 7th. In order, here are my thoughts on all four.

Thursday 3 January, 11:10 Midnight's Children

Adapted for the screen by Salman Rushdie from his novel of the same name, Deepa Mehta's Midnight's Children tells the story of two baby boys, one the son of a rich family and the other the child of paupers, switched at birth on the eve of India's liberation from Britain. The scope of the film is impressive, spanning almost thirty years as it charts the rise of an independent India, the creation of Pakistan and the civil war that led to Bangladesh. Much of the film is, as you might expect, very beautiful and full of colour, but suffers from a sprawling, at times directionless narrative, symptomatic of a novel adaptation. Moreover, the film often dispenses with its characters very casually, rarely giving them their due as they abruptly met their fates. The script, too, sometimes lacks polish, and there are some true clangers to be had; one line about people being like flavours in food particularly sticks in the mind, and the ending, with the themes of rebirth and family, felt somewhat glib and shallow, given the intense traumas Saleem has suffered throughout his life. Midnight's Children is an enjoyable watch, but fails at the profundity to which it aspires.

Friday 4 January, 14:15 The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

I tried to like The Hobbit. I really did. It's no secret that I'm not a fan of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but I do try (not always successfully) to go in to new cinema experiences with an open mind. But there's no getting around it: The Hobbit bored the shit out of me. Its main problem is that it is simply far too long: at nearly three hours, and two more films to go, this heavily-embellished adaptation of Tolkien's brisk children's book often feels like more of an endurance test than a well-crafted story. This problem is at its greatest with the interminable and unnecessary padding scenes, such as a subplot about the Necromancer, and po-faced discussions between Gandalf and Sarumon about the possible return of Sauron, all attempts to frame The Hobbit as a prequel trilogy to Lord of the Rings. But as an audience, we know already where things are going, and so these sequences simply clog up what should be a pacy, exciting story, where our characters leap from one perilous escapade to the next. Instead, what we get is endless, endless exposition, occasional and laughable heroic poses struck by Richard Armitage doing what he can in a one-note role as dwarfish prince, Thorin Oakenshield. More positively, Martin Freeman is very good as Bilbo, bringing believability and humanity to the role, and offering a far more compelling protagonist than the whiny little squirt we got in Lord of the Rings' Frodo. Ian McKellen, is predictably, on form as Gandalf, very comfortable in the role and bring warmth to a character that acts alternately as exposition generator and regular deus ex machina. The best part in the film is undoubtedly the Riddles in the Dark sequence, with Andy Serkis returning terrifically to his Gollum. It's simple, creepy and effective, with none of the self-important, portentous bollocks that dogs the exposition scenes, nor the distracting, overcrammed frame that Jackson has become fond of in his action scenes. Compared with the rest of the film, the Gollum scene is oddly well paced, feeling neither rushed nor overlong, and there is a clear and engaging narrative thread to it. Serkis, predictably, gives a fantastic, and scary performance, and the scene, for me at least, was realised just as I imagined it when I read the novel as a child. If only the rest of the film could have been like this.

Sunday 6 January, 20:00 Letters to Sofija

Robert Mullan's Letters to Sofija tells the true story of Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis, an early twentieth-century Lithuanian painter and composer who married Sofija Kymantaite, an art critic and political dissident. This is a British production, but filmed entirely in Russian, Polish and Lithuanian, utilising very well Ciurlionis' own extensive catalogue of musical compositions. Lead actors Rokas Zubovas and Marija Korenkaite as Ciurlionis and the eponymous Sofija give understated but terrific performances, with Korenkaite particularly excellent, bringing dimension and pathos in a role that could otherwise have been simply a cipher for the film's central subject to bounce off. The cinematography by Odd-Geir Saether is crisp, and the colours often muted, evoking both a sense of place and time, whilst also complementing Ciurlionis' legacy as a painter. On the negatives, the narrative often lacks a sense of drive, and several plot twists either fizzle out, or at best make little sense, although the movement of the characters through their lives, swept up by chance and circumstance, often works well, and defies our demands as an audience for a structured drama. Here, the film seems to be saying, life rarely plays out it three or five neat little acts. More unforgivable, however, is the piece's villain, the jealous Captain Rostov, who, falling for Sofija, dogs her and her husband's lives as he vies for her affections. It feels as if there should be a more complex character here, with confused motivations and loyalties, but, frustratingly, the script rarely allows Rostov to rise above being a one-note pantomime baddie, appearing genuinely to care for Sofija's well being in one scene, before threatening to rape her in another. Overall, however, this is a passionate, lovingly-crafted account of an artist's life with whom many here will be unfamiliar, and if for no other reason, it is worth tracking down.

Monday 7 January, 13:50 Quartet
Dustin Hoffman, the two time-Oscar winner and star of all time classics such as Marathon Man, The Graduate, and Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, gives us his directorial debut with Quartet, the story of four ageing opera singers who must perform one more time to save their retirement home. Or something. The script never makes it clear why exactly the Quartet, played by Billy Connolly, Pauline Collins, Tom Courtenay and the magnificent Maggie Smith, have to sing - a throwaway line about their home being closed does little to answer questions of exactly how much they're charging for tickets - but no matter, the focus in Quartet is not so much on nail-biting drama, or a serious, Haneke-esque exploration of age and decline, but rather, watching four experienced, well-loved and seasoned actors bounce off each other. And in that respect, Hoffman's film is a success. He directs surprisingly well, and for a subject that threatens to descend into ITV1 miniseries territory, Hoffman's direction, along with John de Borman's pleasing cinematography keeps proceedings just this side of cinematic. Also pleasing (and somewhat of a relief), is the scarcity of goofy, isn't-it-funny-that-they're-old style humour, and trite life lessons that the trailers threatened, instead offering some nice, albeit light, observations on regret, friendship and misunderstanding, though a go-nowhere scene involving some hip-hop kids proves one cliched observation too many. Finally, it's also good to see film makers finally waking up to the fact the older people have stories too, and shock of shocks, money to spend at the box office to see those stories realised. Whilst Quartet offers little in the realm of real drama, it does indicate a change in attitudes towards the older generation and the cinema, and for me, for now, that is most welcome.

Join me later next week for the next update on Project Tyneside, when I'll be looking at Les Miserables, Safety Not Guaranteed and The Sessions.

BFI Friday: Taxi Driver

                                             

 

The thing about Martin Scorsese's 1976 masterpiece is that despite the number of people that say it really is very good, it really is very good. So good, in fact, that almost every other scene has lodged itself in our collective cultural consciousness, not least of which is the infamous 'You talkin' to me?' monologue. But this iconography risks obscuring what is one of the rawest, and disturbingly beautiful films in American cinema, and alongside Raging Bull, is surely Scorsese's greatest work. At number 31 on the BFI's all time greatest films, it's Taxi Driver.

Written by Paul Schrader in a bout of severe depression, the film tells the story of Travis Bickle, a highly disturbed young man and resident of the notorious area of New York known as 'Hell's Kitchen', who is driven to react to his hellish surroundings with extreme violence, spurred on by his romantic obsession with a senator's electoral aide,  and his belief that he can rescue teenage prostitute Iris, played here by a never-better Jodie Foster. Harvey Keitel gives a brilliantly revolting performance as Iris' pimp, but the centrepiece of Taxi Driver is of course Robert De Niro, giving arguably the best performance of his career. Reuniting after 1973's Mean Streets De Niro and Scorsese are at the peak of their game, and with Schrader's script they create one of the most disturbing, yet violently seductive characters in cinema. Michael Chapman's cinematography depicts New York as a place of crime, misery, and profound corruption. Vice seems to seep through the brickwork of the buildings in this place, running down the street and into the gutter. Chapman's night-time photography in particular has the quality of being a dream (more precisely, a nightmare), soaked in neon and disorienting. That sense of disorientation is helped in no small part by Bernard Herrman's masterful, and final, score. A juxtaposition of bitterly ironic, romantically-tinged jazz, and harsh environmental sounds mixed with percussion, the latter of which gradually take over as Bickle descends further into insanity. Aside from perhaps John Schlesinger's 1969 Midnight Cowboy, New York has never more closely resembled Hell. At its centre is Travis Bickle.

 

Violence: An act of redemption, catharsis, or just plain psychosis?

 

The masterstroke in creating Bickle is that as we follow him on his journey, we ourselves are drawn into Bickle's psychosis, led down a path which culminates in mass slaughter. When the camera pans over the destruction in the final scene, fixing on Bickle as, mimicking a gun, he raises his fingers to his temple, we realise our own complicity in the film's violence. Roger Ebert interpreted the epilogue, where Bickle is hailed by the media as a hero for rescuing Iris, as a dream sequence, a fantasy playing out in Bickle's dying moments. This is an interesting reading, but what is important, regardless of whether Bickle really survives the shootout, is that his 'heroism' is predicated on violence and madness. The hero worship of Bickle, as has been pointed out, would have become vilification if he had gone through with assassinating Senator Palantine as he had originally planned. Taxi Driver forces us to look at the ways that we frame and react to violence, and reconsider our artificial constructions of heroism and villainy. 

Happy New Year, and a Special Announcement!

Well, that was 2012, and what a year it was. I hope you all saw the new year in in style, and are geared up to enjoy the next twelve months. Writing 2012's top ten list, I realised that with only two exceptions I saw every film at the Tyneside Cinema. For those of you who don't live in or near Newcastle upon Tyne, the Tyneside is an independent cinema that screens mainstream and art films, hosts loads of interesting events, such as their annual cult film all nighter, which I went to the first time this year. It's a beautiful building, they show really interesting films you wouldn't get to see anywhere else in the North East, and they let you take beer into the screenings. In short, the Tyneside is fucking mint, and I spend a great deal of my time there. So for 2013, I've set myself a challenge. I want to see every new film screened at the Tyneside, from January to December. That doesn't mean every film with a cinematic release - I'm not a madman - just the ones that find their way to the Tyneside, but that's still a lot, working out at about 3 films a week on average. I won't be seeing re-releases, just sticking to brand new films on their first run. Alongside BFI Fridays, Re-views and Friday reviews and my other ephemera, I'm going to keep a running journal of my experience, and post mini-reviews of every film I see. Tomorrow marks the start of my adventure, and what better way to begin than with a film about an epic journey, namely, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, still on its first run from December. On Thursday morning, I'll be going to see Deep Metha's Midnight's Children, and on Friday it's Dustin Hoffman's OAP comedy, Quartet.

Wish me luck, Project Tyneside is a go!

The Year in Review: The Tramp's Top Ten Films of 2012

As the year that saw the Avengers finally Assemble, the Dark Knight Rise, the Sky Fall and Joseph Gordon-Levitt Loop comes to a close, it's time to look back at the best of this year's cinematic offerings. It may surprise you that, try as I might I didn't see every single film this year. I missed out on treats like Rust and Bone and The Raid, and have not yet gotten to see the Oscar-tipped Silver Linings Playbook. Similarly,  I've not seen Tarantino's latest, Django Unchained, which isn't due for release in the UK until next month. Accordingly, this will be a very subjective list of my personal favourite experiences at the cinema this year. Initially, I'd wanted to do a top five, but given that this year has furnished us with some of the most interesting and diverse offerings for some time, I'm going to present a special top ten of the year, which is in chronological, as opposed to preferential, order. Enjoy!

Michael Hazanavicius' tribute to silent cinema was released in most countries late last year, but it took me until January this year to see it, so I'm sticking it in this list. The Artist was simply one of the loveliest films I saw this year, with a fantastic conceit, lovingly executed with extraordinary craftsmanship. A tribute to the joy of film itself, The Artist was a wonderful way to start the year and offered one of the best cinema experiences I've ever had.

One of two releases by director David Cronenberg this year, Cosmopolis beats A Dangerous Method to the top ten as an often obtuse, inaccessible and frustrating work that is equally fascinating, dark and nihilistic. Robert Pattinson, best known for the risible Twilight Saga films, gives an enigmatic and engaging performance here, announcing himself, somewhat unexpectedly, as a serious and talented actor. The trailer proclaims Cosmopolis as the first film about the new millennium; I'm not sure about that, but it certainly gave me an experience like no other in 2012.

Speaking of unique experiences, Ron Fricke's dialogue-free, staggeringly beautiful documentary presented us with something that literally no other film came close to this year. Made over the course of five years, Samsara has some of the best cinematography I've ever seen in a film, let alone this year. If any film justifies the purchase of an HD television and Blu-ray player, it's this, but to fully appreciate it, it's essential to see it in a cinema.

William Friedkin, director of classics such as The Exorcist and The French Connection gave us one of this year's darkest and most twisted films in the shape of pitch-black comedy Killer Joe. The film told the story of a father and son (played by Thomas Haden Church and Emile Hirsch respectively) who hire a hitman, played by a top-form Matthew McConaughey, to kill Hirsch's estranged mother and collect on a life insurance policy. Killer Joe plays with the tropes of film noir and exhibits some of the most disturbing and nauseatingly comical scenes of violence this side of Blue Velvet, giving us one of the most absurd, unsettling and memorable climaxes of the year.

While we're on the subject of endings, Christopher Nolan's magnificent, bombastic and audacious trilogy capper marvellously concluded his seven-year long Batman saga. While lacking the narrative clarity of its predecessor, and proving more divisive amongst critics that both The Dark Knight and Batman Begins, The Dark Knight Rises was a fantastic third chapter and great movie in its own right, and finally broke the curse of the Terrible Superhero Threequel. For me, it was one of the most enjoyable, thrilling and satisfying movie events of the year.

Andrew Dominik's follow up to The Assasination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, a sprawling epic, was a much smaller affair, in both historic and geographic scope. Garnering mixed reviews, for me Killing Them Softly proved to be one of the most interesting and ambitious crime films of the year, reminding me of the paranoid thrillers of the 1970s, and of the early work of Martin Scorsese. Tying the events of the film to the 2008 Obama / McCain US presidential election didn't work for some, but by the film's final, brutal last line, it damn sure worked for me.

With Looper, Rian Jonson gave us one of the best and most original science fiction outings for years, standing alongside Moon, District 9 and Inception as part of the recent resurgence of intelligent, popular sci fi for grown ups. Despite distracting prosthetics, Jospeph Gordon-Levitt gave a reliably nuanced and engaging performance of Joe, a hitman tasked with killing his future self. He and Bruce Willis, who played Gordon-Levitt's future counterpart, had great chemistry together, and in drawing on films such as Twelve Monkeys, The Terminator and Blade Runner, Johnson crafted a fully realised futurescape for his noir-inflected time travel story.   

Ah, Skyfall, let me count the ways. It's difficult to think of a Bond film that adheres to the formulas and cliches of the 007 franchise while somehow elevating them into a meditation on the series at fifty years old. A meditation with explosions, car chases, and a man in an electronically-sealed glass cage, of course. Skyfall, in the more-than-capable hands of Sam Mendes, was this year's best blockbuster, the best Craig iteration of Bond to date, and dare I say it, the best Bond film ever made (though my personal favourite remains On Her Majesty's Secret Service, your Goldfingers and You Only Live Twices be damned). After the disappointing Quantum of Solace, everything in Skyfall came together effortlessly. Welcome back to work, 007, we missed you.

In 2008, Paul Thomas Anderson gave us There Will Be Blood, a huge, menacing portrait of greed, obsession, and ambition. This year, he gave us The Master, which while lacking the scope of his last, was at least equally as menacing, and twice as unsettling. Jonny Greenwood returns too, providing one of the best scores of the year, perfectly complementing the tension between Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix, who, by the way, as a pair give not simply the best performances I saw this year, but amongst the best performances I've ever seen. While the film, with its lack of an eventful story, was not to everyone's tastes, its difficult to imagine a more finely crafted and expertly executed character study than The Master.

The last time I saw Mads Mikkelsen was in Casino Royale, weeping blood as he crossed wits and playing cards with Daniel Craig. Here, under the fine direction of Thomas Vinterberg, he finds himself in no more enviable circumstances, as Lucas, a nursery teacher wrongly accused of child molestation. Rather than the central premise being the question of whether or not he did it, Vinterberg makes it explicit that the warm, kind Lucas is most definitely innocent, and allows the story to play out as a sickening, unravelling nightmare as Lucas' friends and colleagues succumb to suspicion, hysteria, and ultimately violence. Very much a modern-day parallel to Arthur Miller's play The Crucible, The Hunt was one of the most intense cinematic experiences I've ever had, and one which I surely shared with the rest of the audience: throughout the film exhalations of discomfort were audible, stoked by the unbearable tension of the film. As an examination of hysteria, paranoia and people's capacity to reason themselves into madness, The Hunt is unparalleled.

So there we have it, my top ten films of the year. As I said, this was a personal list and I make no claims to this being a definitive 'Best of 2012' list. There were many other films I would have liked to have included, and so honourable mentions go to the cleverclogs Cabin in the Woods, the underrated Brave, the strange Beasts of the Southern Wild, the exhilarating Avengers Assemble, and the tender Untouchable. Happy New Year, and I'll see you all on the 1st January for a special Tramp Announcement!

BFI Friday: In The Mood For Love

For the second BFI Friday, we're going to look at Wong Kar-Wai's In the Mood for Love at number 24 on the BFI list. Released in 2000, In the Mood for Love is one of the most recent entries into list. Telling the story of Li-Zhen and Chow, two married people who by chance strike up a friendship together, each realising that their respective spouses are having an affair. Gradually, the pair fall inextricably in love with each other, but circumstances and a misplaced sense of duty to their partners prevent them from consummating their feelings. Much like David Lean's classic tragi-romance Brief Encounter, the film is not so concerned with whether the pair will wind up together, but rather, in the almost imperceptible process of their falling in love. Moreover, it is about the way that passion, romance and infatuation don't always announce their arrival loudly - often, as In the Mood for Love has it, they sneak up on us unawares, and when we are at our most vulnerable. 

The cinematography by Christopher Doyle, Pung-Leung Kwan and Ping Bin Lee is full of warm, rich greens, yellows and reds, and, coupled with its uniformly beautiful compositions, gives the film the sense of being like a painting in motion. Complementing the visuals, the soundtrack, a mixture of Yumeji's Theme from the 1991 film Yumeji, and Aquellos Ojos Verdes sung by Nat King Cole, textures the production with romance, melancholy and quiet, understated passion. The locations are so few that as Li-Zhen and Chow become gradually more familiar with each other, we too become inescapably accustomed to their surroundings; their apartments, the courtyard and the restaurant they eat at become as much a part of their relationship, and by extension, our emotional connection with them.

The inevitability of their separation is foregrounded before Chow and Li-Zhen have even become friends, with the mise en scene constantly throwing up visual barriers between them, be they door frames, windows, or, in one beautifully composed shot, the frame itself, which blocks Chow from our view altogether. Crucially, neither Li-Zhen's husband nor Chow's wife ever directly feature in the film, and are only ever referred to as being away on business. Not only does this reinforce the narrative of adultery, but also, the alienation and loneliness that both Chow and Li-Zhen must endure. Furthermore, the scene in which they realise they are being cheated on does not involve a big reveal, or a dramatic confrontation. Rather, it is the culmination of a suspicion of infidelity confirmed by the discovery, through Chow, that the present her husband bought her when should have been away on business actually came from their small town. Later, Chow becomes an impromptu counsellor for Li-Zhen, allowing her to practise a confrontation with her husband on him. Of course, the real confrontation never comes; the catharsis that we, as witness to Li-Zhen and Chow's lives, yearn for, is withheld from us. In another scene, Chow makes a pass at Li-Zhen, outside their apartment building. She rejects his advances, but throughout the film they return to that spot, as if playing out the same moment over and over, trying to figure out some way to escape their predicament. At time it's frustratingly slow, even unsatisfying. But ultimately, In the Mood for Love is beautiful, deliberate and brutal in its emotional honesty. 

BFI Friday: Singin' in the Rain

All the way back in August, the British Film Institute, through Sight and Sound, published their new list of 50 top films. You may remember that after fifty years at the top, Citizen Kane gave way to Vertigo as the BFI's greatest film ever made. You may further remember that to mark the occasion, I wrote a retrospective review on Vertigo here. Given that I've only seen eighteen out of the top fifty films, it's high time that I made an effort to get through the lot. Accordingly, from today, every other week I'm going to write a review of every film on the list.

Since we've already seen top dog Vertigo, we're going to kick off BFI Friday in style, the all singing, all talking, all dancing classic, Singin' in the Rain at number 20. Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly's 1952 classic tells the story of Don Lockwood, a Hollywood stuntman-turned-actor making his way to the Big Time. Set in the late 1920s, the film's characters must negotiate the challenges posed by the close of the silent era and the dawn of sound. They do this of course, by singing and dancing through elaborate routines on lavish sets, all in gloriously rich, intense technicolour. Even in the non-musical sequences, the camera is almost always in motion, swishing and zooming around the actors, and giving the whole affair a lightness of touch. The film, in short, is an unparalleled joy to watch. Where last year's The Artist, functioning as an extended and rather lovely homage to Singin' in the Rain, used black and white to depict its silent-era setting, Singin' in the Rain's cinematographer Harold Rosson saturates the picture in colour, joining films like The Wizard of Oz (also by Rosson), A Matter of Life and Death, and Vertigo as the one of the most accomplished uses of colour in cinema. The reds are deep and rich, the blues are iridescent, and the yellows glow with warmth. The visuals, like a rich chocolate cake after a meal, are sweet, profoundly satisfying and simply full of life. For a film that is about sound, it looks unspeakably gorgeous.

All singin', all dancin', pure joy

That's not to say the music is secondary to visuals, mind. All of the song and dance routines are beautifully choreographed by star Kelly, with the film's title song providing unadulterated joy, wit and charm. Other standouts include Gotta Dance, the movie's most elaborate set piece, featuring the vampish Cyd Charisse, the tongue twisting Moses Supposes and the delightful Good Morning. I could describe in depth these sequences but really, there's nothing like watching them for yourself. There are so many movies that try for what Singin' achieves, but so often fall into the categories of saccharine, overcooked, or simply irritating. But here, there's something utterly infectious about the whole affair; just as Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves draws us into the tragic lives of its two main characters, or Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity invites us down a path to destruction, Singin' in the Rain perfectly lifts us up, unquestioning, into colour, music, and vibrancy. Few films, except perhaps for the aforementioned The Wizard of Oz, are capable of having such an effect. But more than that, it's a film that transcends genre; I defy anyone who says they don't like musicals not to enjoy Singin' in the Rain.

Who could resist a dance with Cyd Charisse?

The whole thing is deliriously entertaining, a gigantic sweet shop for the eyes and ears, but what elevates Singin' in the Rain further is the story and characters, who epitomising the allure of Hollywood, take us on a romantic, thrilling journey through the ups and downs of golden-era stardom. Kelly and the delightful Debbie Reynolds provide incredibly likeable leads, in a beautiful-people-doing-wonderful-things heightened reality. Jean Hagen plays Lina Lamont, a Monroe-esque dumb blonde character who turns out to have a cripplingly annoying voice when the movies become talkies. Deluded and manipulative, she convinces the studio to let her remain a star, while Reynolds' character dubs her voice over the top. Intriguingly, it was actually Hagen who dubbed her voice over for Reynolds during post production. For a film about film-making, this lends another delightful layer of subtext. And indeed, much of Singin' in the Rain is about the inherent falsity of cinema: voice over, the exaggerated performances in silent films, and the deliberately fake-looking sets all acknowledge the manufacturedness of big studio productions. And yet, out of that surface deception springs genuine, authentic emotion: it's difficult, for example, not to feel sorry for Lina when she gets her just desserts at the film's close, but you're rooting so much for Kelly and Debbie to make it through that it hardly matters. In fairness, there's never any real sense of peril: we all know where this is going, but that doesn't diminish the climax's sense of triumph or warmth one bit. Instead, Singin' in the Rain gives us Great Big Emotions, served up with astonishing technical skill and passion; a lovely, rich dessert of a movie that never slips into the saccharine. It's an overused phrase, but they really don't make pictures like this anymore. A sparkling, magnificent treat.

The Friday Tramp Review: Skyfall

Skyfall, directed by Sam Mendes, screenplay by John Logan, Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, starring Daniel Craig, Judi Dench, Javier Bardem, Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris.

On the fiftieth anniversary of Agent 007 on film, Bond 23 arrives like a thunderclap, with an effortless confidence, style and charm that has been absent from the series for years. Yes, Skyfall utterly erases the disappointment of 2008's Quantum of Solace, not only challenging Casino Royale for Daniel Craig's best outing to date as the eponymous spy, but also as one of the best instalments in the entire series. There is no question that along with Casino Royale, Skyfall is the best Bond film since the days of Connery, and in certain respects it is the most complex, emotionally satisfying and thrilling of the lot.

Where the emotional core in Casino Royale came from the relationship between Bond and Vesper, Skyfall not simply expands on the relationship between 007 and M: it uses their fraught alliance as the central plot mechanic. Indeed, Judi Dench's has always brought depth and ambiguity to the character: Goldeneye saw her bollock Bond for his recklessness and assure him that she was quite prepared to send him to his death, before warmly telling him to come back alive. In the otherwise risible Die Another Day (sharing more similarities than you might expect with Skyfall - more on that in a moment), Dench leaves Bond to rot in a North Korean prison until it's strategically sensible to reacquire him. In contrast, Quantum of Solace sees one character mistakes M for Bond's mother, with Bond quipping that 'she'd like to think' that she is. In Skyfall, she, well you'll have to see for yourself, but suffice to say M's responsibility for Bond hangs heavily over the entire film. After seven films Dench is second only to the original M, Bernard Lee, as the longest-serving actor in the role, giving a series-best performance here, and being given almost as much screen time as Craig himself. Several critics have already described her as the true Bond girl of the series, and it's not hard to see why. More to the point, Dench assures her position as by far the best of the three actors to have officially played Bond's boss. 

Judging the situation dispassionately: Judi Dench in a tough moment.

So what of those similarities with Die Another Day, roundly viewed as one of the lowest points for the franchise? As Skyfall is released on the fifty-year anniversary, so Brosnan's swansong, released ten years ago, fell on Bond's fortieth birthday. But where DAD, like a squawking teenager, insisted on reminding the audience it was the newest and bestest Bond film yet, featuring invisible cars and very visible CGI, and cramming scenes with embarrassing and obvious references to 007's better adventures, Skyfall looks back at the series with affection, wit and charm. There are probably more nods and homages in Skyfall than in DAD, but they never feel hackneyed or shoehorned in. Skyfall is aware of its heritage without being in thrall to it, reintroducing familiar tropes that were largely absent in Casino and Quantum, but doing so without feeling regressive. Moreover, the nods to other entries (I counted allusions to Goldfinger, You Only Live Twice, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Live and Let Die, The Man With the Golden Gun and Licence to Kill, and I suspect that there are more), rather than providing shallow, fan-boy pleasing distraction, actually help to augment the themes of the film: those of legacy, relevance and mortality. And it's here that Skyfall provides a wonderful counterpoint to the convention-breaking Casino Royale: where that film openly distanced itself from the other films, rebooting the franchise and jettisoning almost all the conventions and clichés of Bond, Skyfall rehabilitates the best parts of the classic series without jeopardising the good work done by Casino Royale. There is a conscious stylistic move away from the Bourne-esque trappings of Craig's previous films, which is entirely welcome. After all, how long could the grittiness have continued without becoming a cliché itself? Bourne managed three instalments before Legacy became a victim of its own formula, and so Mendes skirts that pitfall by changing things up with a sense of fun hitherto absent from Casino and Quantum. Much of Mendes' stylistic success comes from the stellar work by cinematographer Roger Deakins, who has collaborating both with Mendes and the Coen brothers numerous times. Deakins provides some of the best cinematography this side of The Dark Knight; shooting on digital he makes the scenes in Shanghai pulse with light and colour, with neon lights swirling behind silhouetted figures. Shadows hide killers who, stepping into the light, reveal cold, ice blue eyes, and in London, the reds and blues of the union flag, draped over half a dozen coffins in a row, have never been more vibrant.

Sometimes the old toys are the best.

Come to think of it, with Deakins, Mendes and John Logan, Neal Purvis and Robert Wade on scriptwriting duty, that's something else that Skyfall gives us: the sense of a large, incredibly skilled team in front of and behind the camera, working towards a singular end. Director Mendes has spoken of the influence The Dark Knight had on Skyfall, but to refer to another superhero mega-hit, this is the first entry into the series where it feels is as if, Avengers-like, Bond is playing as one part of a highly skilled and professional unit. Without question, we have the best supporting cast in a Bond flick yet, with the aforementioned Dench playing alongside a terrific Naomie Harris as field agent Eve, and Ralph Fiennes portraying meddling committee chairman Mallory with relish. Not to mention Ben Whishaw, who does a wonderful job as the new Q, brilliantly reimagined as a spotty twenty-something. And let's not forget the magnificent, malevolent and very naughty Javier Bardem as the villain, Silva. With his weird, Christopher Walken-esque blond locks and powerful, effeminate voice, Bardem creates a character with all of the idiosyncrasies of a classic Bond foe, while somehow making him consistent the film's heightened realism. Mads Mikkelsen impressed in Casino Royale as Le Chiffre, but in years to come Silva will be ranked amongst Auric Goldfinger and Blofeld as one of the most iconic adversaries Bond has faced. The supporting cast, along with the surprisingly simple plot, all work like clockwork, with none of the main characters ever feeling extraneous or unneeded, while at the same time giving them just enough development to feel like real people, rather than narrative cogs driving Bond's story. In that respect, Skyfall's lavish visuals are countered by an incredibly lean, focussed narrative that is all the more refreshing following the twisty-turny-selling-water-at-over-the-odds nonsense of Quantum of Solace.

When Casino Royale was released in 2006, a friend commented to me that it felt like the first Bond film to really feel like a good film in its own right. What Skyfall achieves may be greater even than that: to give us not only a terrific movie in its own right, in contention with The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises for this year's best blockbuster, but also, arguably the definitive Bond film. Those are big words, but Skyfall takes the best elements of the series while ditching its worst excesses. Moreover, instead of merely electing to thrill us (and, boy oh boy, thrill us it does), Skyfall actually has something meaningful to say about its characters and the rapidly-changing world they inhabit, tying those concerns into a surprisingly nuanced, honest and emotive reflection on the series itself as it turns fifty. Skyfall shows us not just that an old dog can learn new tricks, but that the old tricks still have the capacity to delight. Finally, on his third go around, Craig has finally, inarguably, wonderfully, grown fully into the role of 007. He gives us the confidence and comic timing of Sean, the one liners (minus the cheese) of Roger, the damaged menace of Timothy, and even a little of the schoolboy swagger of Pierce. But Craig does more than merely imitate his predecessors; his performance is studied, yes, but Craig has brought his own qualities to the fore, and gives one of his best performances in any film to date. I've often said that the only actor to truly embody, rather than merely play, Bond, was Connery, but from now on there will always be two Agents 007. Daniel Craig is James Bond, and I can't wait for him to return.