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DIE ANOTHER DAY By Rachel Deahl Review Film Critic Click for the Official Site Director Lee Tamahori's take on the internationally known super-spy with a penchant for womanizing and martinis gets off to an interesting start as it places James Bond in a rarely-seen scenario: captivity. As "Die Another Day," the 20th entry in the 007 franchise begins, there is a giddy sense that we might get to see a more human incarnation of the unshakable secret agent. Certainly the spy as 'untouchable superhero' image, which James Bond is famous for perpetrating, crumbles a bit as Pierce Brosnan undergoes a fierce beating. Unfortunately, the opening credits which displays Brosnan as a literal whipping post to the beat of Madonna's new theme song, coupled with the overlay of computer generated Bond girls composed of fire and ice gyrating to the beat, is as good as it gets in this tale of international intrigue. Although James is globetrotting in the 21st century these days, you wouldn't know it's not still 1970 from the looks of Tamahori's film. Sure the politics have been slightly re-vamped (James is now fighting terrorists), the gadgets upgraded (the virtual reality training session/shooting gallery is especially fun), with even the Bond girls getting re-vamped (Halle Berry is the first African American woman to appear in the lead female role). But 007 is still the same iconoclastic rogue he's always been. And now watching Brosnan jump in and out of bed with beautiful women, repeatedly escaping death without so much as breaking a sweat, makes it all feel more than a little forced. You can't help but wonder when Mike Meyers is going to crash onto the scene and reveal this somber affair for what it really must be: a joke.
When Vin Diesel snowboarded down the Alps, successfully escaping the clutches of a fast-approaching avalanche in "XXX," it seemed that the spy genre had hit an all-time low. But, after seeing Pierce Brosnan surf to freedom on a piece of sheet metal, beating out a melting polar ice cap, it's clear that no feat is too impossible for our gifted cinematic agents. Spun around a plot which is even more idiotic than the garbage that propelled "XXX," James is in hot pursuit of a malevolent Korean agent who is on the loose as a British playboy (thanks to the wonders of gene therapy) with a dangerous gadget: a satellite rocket of sorts which can generate a rain of fire on any part of the globe. Huh? Exactly. But, in the end, who really cares what James is after -- the whole point is the chase. This time around 007 gets help in the form of Berry's American counterpart, Jinx. And while Berry injects some much-needed life into the stale spy gaming, it isn't enough to keep this wincingly idiotic affair afloat. >From Havana to London to Iceland, "Die Another Day" bites off entirely more than it can chew, assuming that the path to success is the one of greatest excess. If you can endure the melting ice palace, the endless phallic jokes and Madonna's cameo, you'll surely hit rock bottom when you witness James use his invisible car to dupe the enemies. SOLARIS Click for the Official Site Framed in darkness and shot predominantly from behind, George Clooney is every bit the living robot in the opening sequences of Steven Soderbergh's beautiful remake of Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 film. The images are perfect as they set the tone for this fascinating exploration of love, loss and the great divide between memory and projection. Called the Russian "2001" upon its release, Soderbergh rightly evokes two other American films for this skillful sci-fi love story: "Vertigo" and "Blade Runner." In a vaguely futuristic world, Clooney's lonely and isolated shrink, Dr. Kelvin, is reeling from the untimely death of his wife, sleepwalking through his existence in a dark and rainy place known as Earth. When two men suddenly appear at his door, the good doctor is requested to go into space to save the crew aboard the space station that is circling the planet Solaris. In a recorded message from the mission's leader, and Kelvin's good friend, Jabarian, the psychologist is beckoned to Solaris with the cryptic directive that he needs to see what is happening there. Suited up and blasted off, looking every bit like Keir Dullea, Kelvin arrives on the space station to an eerily empty ship. He quickly discovers trails of blood and two dead bodies in the chilly hold of the vessel - one of them being his old friend, Jabarian.
The remaining two crewmembers, a weird young man who talks like he's stoned all the time (Jeremy Davies) and the beleaguered and frightened captain (Viola Davis), provide few details about the bizarre goings-on. Kelvin is told one crewmember disappeared, one committed suicide, and that the ship is somehow infested with another life form, of sorts. As the captain bluntly states, "Until it starts happening to you, there is no point in discussing it." It starts happening to Kelvin after drifting off to sleep one night - he dreams about his wife, Rheya, and, when he wakes, she's lying in his bed, seemingly alive, as if she's materialized from his altered state. Described by the captain as a non-human life form, Kelvin sees this visitation as a second chance with his long lost love. But complicating matters is the crucial distinction that these creatures, be they alien, android or some other form of life, are carbon copies of their originals -- the beings are conscious of their previous life but also aware of their current state. Holding on to the faint hope that if he can discover what is happening on the planet Solaris and why it seems to be reacting to the wishes and desires of the crew by sending creatures to manipulate and possibly destroy them, Kelvin thinks he can bring this vision of his wife back to Earth. Exploring issues of death, religion, hope and love, "Solaris" touches on the quintessential unanswerable philosophical questions of life. But, more interestingly, it focuses on the way in which love and memory are always mediated by perception and imagery. The most devastating and profound element of "Solaris" is the fact that the creature which has boarded the ship and is sleeping in Kelvin's bed, the one who looks and sounds exactly like his wife, is only a reflection of her, a reflection created to mimic his memory of her. Compounding this "Vertigo" theme are questions culled from "Blade Runner" about otherness, related here, as it is in that film, to the form of the android. And, although "Solaris" finally embraces a more hopeful ending than it should, the journey there is an incredibly fruitful one.
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