Billy Magnussen – Memphis Flyer

Over the course of 25 films, James Bond movies evolved into their purest form — or maybe the word is “devolved.” Eon Productions, founded 59 years ago to make Dr. No, came to believe that the appeal of the series was based on the flashy cars, expensive watches, and other signifiers of wealth and class surrounding the posh secret agent. Bond became a brand, and the films little more than extended commercials for luxury goods, punctuated by extraordinarily expensive stunt sequences. Ian Fleming’s marquee character ceased to be a hard-boiled hero and became a moving mannequin for expensive suits. The tendency deepened as the Cold War waned, and the international spy game lost its capitalist vs. communist stakes. Bond was a violent solution looking for a problem. Remember 10 films ago, in The Living Daylights, when he went to Afghanistan and fought with the Mujahideen, aka the Taliban? Good times …

And then there’s the misogyny. Commander Bond is a love ’em and leave ’em sailor at heart, but his manly charms, integral to early appearances like From Russia With Love, curdled into something ugly. The exception in the canon is On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, where George Lazenby, in his only outing as Bond, was paired with the great Diana Rigg as Tracy, an underworld princess depicted as his equal. They marry, and when she is killed at the end of the film by a bullet meant for Bond, he cries. The film was a flop, and Lazenby lost the job. In the next film, 1971’s Diamonds Are Forever, Bond can barely hide his contempt for women.

Daniel Craig has played James Bond for 15 years, first appearing as the superspy in 2006’s Casino Royale.

But even as their relevance waned, the movies became more lavish and more expensive, until, in the 21st century, Eon Productions is eating up a significant chunk of British film financing. No Time to Die, the latest installment, is one of the most expensive films ever produced, costing an estimated $250 million to make, and at least another $100 million to market. Daniel Craig, Bond since 2006’s Casino Royale, is retiring, and he and True Detective director Cary Joji Fukunaga seem to have decided to try something different: What if we used all that money to make a good movie?

From the trademark cold opening, it’s clear that this is a different kind of Bond flick. Instead of immediately throwing us into the middle of an action sequence, it’s a gauzy flashback from someone who isn’t even Bond. Madeleine Swann (Leá Seydoux), who eloped with Bond at the end of Spectre, remembers the day an assassin came to kill her father, a capo in Ernst Blofeld (Christoph Waltz)’s criminal syndicate. The revelation of Madeleine’s parentage — which comes in the middle of a spectacular motorcycle chase through the Italian countryside — ruins the couple’s honeymoon.

Five years later, Bond is retired, spending his time drinking on the beach of his home in Jamaica. When an advanced biological weapon is stolen from a secret lab in London, the new 007, Nomi (Lashana Lynch) a Black woman who loves to rock some ’80s Grace Jones sunglasses, is dispatched by M (Ralph Fiennes) to retrieve it on the down-low. When the CIA gets wind of the situation, Bond’s old buddy Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright) knows who to call. When it comes to chasing madmen with WMDs, nobody does it better. He arrives at Bond’s doorstep to recruit him with a Trumpite politico named Ash (Billy Magnussen) in tow. Bond immediately pegs Ash as a bad guy (“He smiles too much.”) but agrees to help out anyway.

James Bond (Daniel Craig) and Paloma (Ana de Armas). Credit: Nicola Dove © 2020 DANJAQ, LLC AND MGM. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Naturally, Blofeld, who is still running SPECTRE from inside his Hannibal Lecter cage, is responsible for the heist. But that’s just the first twist in No Time to Die’s plot. The screenplay, credited to four writers, manages to fit in both character-building scenes and a finale designed around a raid on a secret supervillain lair. Fukunaga plays with expectations by setting up a rookie CIA agent, played by Ana de Armas, as a ditzy female stereotype before revealing her to be a competent operative. Instead of seducing her, Bond toasts her murderous prowess with expensive whiskey. It’s all surprisingly coherent and self-aware for a Bond movie.

Fukunaga gives the supporting cast great moments, like Wright imbuing Felix and Bond with genuine friendship, and Fiennes as the conflicted, alcoholic spymaster. Craig, who has shown his chops in Logan Lucky and Knives Out, delivers the best performance of his career. Sure, the old hero coming out of retirement for one last job is a cliché, but when the execution is this good, it doesn’t matter. You can take a guy out of MI6, but you can’t take the spy out of the guy.

When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone in January 2007, no one really understood the enormous cultural change about to happen. The foundation of the new world was already in place — the internet was 15 years old, and cell phones, many of them with built-in cameras, had been ubiquitous since the turn of the century. But the iPhone — and the smartphones it inspired — brought everything together in a powerful, versatile, easy-to-use package that fit in your pocket.

As the saying goes, a good science-fiction writer could have predicted the automobile, but it takes a great one to predict the traffic jam. Instant, fully portable, audio, video, and data communication had been predicted since the 1930s. The iPhone’s front-facing camera, meant to be used for video conferencing, had comics fans giddy at the thought of finally having their own, working Dick Tracy two-way wrist radio. What almost no one saw coming was the selfie.

Smartphones not only changed our culture, but also the kinds of stories we tell. Plot points that rely on missed communication, for example, are no longer believable. Romeo and Juliet would have ended very differently if the two lovers could have just exchanged text messages before they decided to kill themselves. Horror movies now have a mandatory scene where they establish that the soon-to-be-murdered person is out of cell range.

Elizabeth Olsen (left) and Aubrey Plaza star in director Matt Spicer and writer David Branson Smith’s social media satire.

There have been attempts to grapple with the side effects of this new cultural paradigm, but few have hit the mark harder than Ingrid Goes West. It’s a carefully observed dark comedy, equal parts Sunset Boulevard, Heathers, and The Social Network, about how our emotional needs and self image are shaped by people we’ve never even met.

At the heart of the picture is a penetrating, sharp performance by Aubrey Plaza. The actress gained fame with her flat deadpan in Parks and Recreation, and she’s made a career of being a dependable comedic player, but nothing I’ve seen her in has hinted at the depth she achieves here. When we first meet Ingrid, she is crying bitter tears while flipping through the Instagram feed of a bride-to-be. It’s only when she jumps out of her car and maces the bride that we realize the wedding is in progress.

Once Ingrid gets out of the mental hospital, the roots of her dysfunction are revealed. Her mother has just died after a long, painful illness. She is alone in the world, except for people she follows on Instagram. Tired of watching glamorous Californians eat avocado toast while she munches on hot pockets in front of the TV, she takes her modest inheritance, moves to Los Angeles, and starts a new Instagram account under the name Ingridgoeswest. Her goal is to befriend Taylor Sloane (Elizabeth Olsen), a professional social media influencer who, judging from her photo feed, seems to drift through upscale boutiques, vegan restaurants, and party houses in the high desert.

Ingrid’s inheritance-funded transformation from provincial loser into the image of the perfect California girl is a quintessential American story, from The Great Gatsby to Chicago. Plaza, director Matt Spicer, and writer David Branson Smith turn Ingrid’s desires and methods just a notch above socially acceptable levels and put in her hands the greatest tool for stalking ever invented. Is it even really stalking if the subject does all the surveillance work for you?

O’Shea Jackson Jr. does stellar work as Ingrid’s Batman-loving landlord who gets slowly pulled into her web of lies. Wyatt Russell takes what could have been a throwaway part as Taylor’s ineffectual artist husband and makes it memorable. The only actual villain in this conflicted cast is Billy Magnussen as Nicky, Taylor’s cokehead brother who is, like everyone else in this world, a ruthless social media grifter.

The dynamic between Plaza and Olsen is an intricate deconstruction of the way we build our identities in the social media age. As Ingrid learns once she worms her way into Taylor’s life, social media stars put a lot of work into creating a seamless illusion of happiness and connection with an audience who lives vicariously through them. Ingrid’s biggest fault is that she believes the lie too deeply.