Tag: pierce brosnan

Virtually Speaking: An Interview with Brett Leonard by Kent Hill

by Kent Hill, posted in Interviews

 

My Grandmother was the avid cinema-goer in our family. She passed her love of movies down to my Mother who in turn, passed it on to me. Another little boy who learned about the wonders of the movies from his Mother was Brett Leonard.

This love would grow, forging a filmmaker whose career that has been eclectic, but always on the cutting edge. The man who was once a killer clown from outer space, has in many ways been one the pioneers in the eventually, all-compassing integration of the digital age into the celluloid art form. With his ground-breaking work in The Lawnmower Man, Leonard has since been blazing a trail  throughout the industry. His early concepts of combining virtual reality with the cinematic experience are still expanding, and his vision of where it is all going to go, is far from complete.

Yet I was fascinated with the journey this humble gentleman has taken. He has worked both independently and with the studios, he has directed some of the finest actors to grace the screen, he has bore the brunt of the dark politics that whirls below surface of the filmmaking process. Still, he manages to laugh it off and move on to the next project with an energy and optimism that has served him well.

I thrilled at the revelations Brett shared with me about his movies, which I admire greatly, but also about his personal adventures including something I was, I admit, grossly unaware of: he a spent a significant period of his life living and working here in Australia. To such an extent he even was labelled an Australian filmmaker by the local media. He said, in the great Down Under, he learned not only the true value of mateship, but also spent some of his most glorious days.

He was a pleasure to interview, a true gentleman, a fabulous filmmaker – ladies and gentlemen, I give you, Brett Leonard…

John Moore’s I.T.

by Frank Mengarelli, posted in Film Review

​I.T. is that hard R thriller that has dark twists and turns, creating a rewarding moviegoing experience in a genre of film that has been sorely lacking.   The film packs a punch and takes itself places that are as shocking as they are refreshing in an era of oversaturated gloss and CGI.

Clocking in at a lean 95 minutes from filmmaker John Moore and screenwriters William Wisher and Dan Kay, the film doesn’t overstay it’s welcome, and tautly finishes to a mysterious, yet rewarding ending. 

Pierce Brosnan has gone through an interesting period post Bond.  He’s dabbled a little in the spy/action genre, but he’s also stepped back and played many anti-Bond roles, and this film is certainly one of them.  Brosnan takes on the role, in a such a restrained and psychical way, he throws enough shade that leaves us questioning the integrity behind that dashing and dapper businessman.

The narrative wraps itself in the culturally relevant world of cyber attacks and lack of personal privacy and security in our post 9/11 world.  Brosnan plays a self-made aviation tycoon who in personal financial strain, opts to make his business public, launching a new app that is essentially Uber for the ultra rich seeking quick travel via private jets.

His business and personal life are flipped, as he becomes victim to a sociopathic intern who turns any and all smart devices that Brosnan and his family use against them.  It’s a slick story, that knows the terminology and world it lives in, without ever running the gambit of ever over explaining anything.  

Perhaps the strongest suit of the film is an airtight screenplay, and a Tangerine Dream esque score by Tim Williams that creates an atmosphere of digital age threat and paranoia.  I.T. is a very good adult oriented thriller crafted so well, with such attention to detail, that it’s a film that stands incredibly high on its own originality.

I.T. is currently streaming on Netflix.

GoldenEye: A Review by Nate Hill

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

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GoldenEye is the very finest hour that Pierce Brosnan had as James Bond, both as a film and in terms of what he gets to do as the character. It’s my third favourite Bond film of all time and stands as one of the most exciting ventures the series has seen to this day. It definitely falls into a campy style, but one that’s removed from that of the original Bond films from way back when, one that’s all its own and decidedly 90’s. It’s also got one of the strongest and classiest villains of the series, a man who is in fact an ex agent himself which was a neat switch up. Brosnan is so photogenic it’s ridiculous,  whether dolled up in the tux or careening through a valley in a fighter jet. He just looks so damn good as Bond, and I sometimes wish he’d gotten a fifth crack at the character. Here we join up with 007 on a mission gone wrong, where he is ambushed and his partner Agent Alec Trevelyan a.k.a. 006 (Sean Bean) is killed, or so he thinks. 006 is in fact alive and well, with a few gnarly facial scars and a new nasty attitude. He puts Bond through a wringer with a diabolical scheme to hijack a Russian nuclear space weapon and do all kinds of lovely things with it. Bond teams up with the survivor of a decimated Russian research centre, a beautiful scientist named Natalya  (Isabella Scorupco) who inevitably ends up in his bed. It’s slick, it’s stylish, it’s sexy and everything a Bond flick needs to be. 006 has a dangerous asset in Xenia Onatopp (Famke Janssen), a lethal assassin whose weapon of choice are her thighs which she employs with the crushing power of two Amazonian pythons. Janssen plays the role with ferocious relish and the kind of enthusiasm that hadn’t been seen in a Bond villainess since Barbara Carrera in Never Say Never Again. Bean plays it ice cold, letting restraint and calculated malice steal the scenes as opposed to flagrant mustache twirling. I always thought he would have made a cracking good 007 as he has so much residual danger to his vibe from playing many heartless bastards in his career, but perhaps in another life. One of my favourite characters to ever hang out in a Bond flick shows up here, a cranky but lovable russian general named Valentin Zukofsky, played by the awesome Robbie Coltrane, an actor who really, really needs to be in more stuff. His few short scenes are the stuff that makes a piece timeless, and I wish we’d gotten to see more Valentin and more Hagrid elsewhere in the franchise. There’s the usual suspects like Judi Dench as M and Desmond Llewellyn as a crusty Q, and a host of other actors including Joe Don Baker, Tchecky Karyo, Minnie Driver and the irritating Alan Cumming who singlehandedly ruins scenes with his hammy preening. The film thunders along with furious energy and nicely paced action sequences, including a chaotic tank chase through the streets of Moscow and a stunner of a climax set atop a giant satellite dish. As Bond films go, you can never go wrong with this one.