Quantum of Solace

Quantum of Solace (2008) is the 22nd James Bond film by EON Productions and is the direct sequel to the 2006 film Casino Royale. Directed by Marc Forster, it features Daniel Craig's second performance as James Bond. In the film, Bond battles Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric), a member of the Quantum organisation posing as an environmentalist who intends to stage a coup d'état in Bolivia to take control of the nation's water supply. Bond seeks revenge for the death of his lover, Vesper Lynd (Eva Green), and is assisted by Camille Montes (Olga Kurylenko), who is also seeking revenge.

Producer Michael G. Wilson developed the film's plot while Casino Royale was being shot. Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, Paul Haggis, and Joshua Zetumer contributed to the script. The title was chosen from a 1960 short story in Ian Fleming's For Your Eyes Only, though the film does not contain any elements of the original story. Location filming took place in Panama, Chile, Italy, and Austria while interior sets were built and watched at Pinewood Studios. Forster aimed to make a modern film that also featured classic cinema motifs: a vintage aeroplane was used for a dogfight sequence, and Dennis Gassner's set designs are reminiscent of Ken Adam's work on several early Bond films. Taking a course away from the usual Bond villains, Forster rejected any grotesque appearance for the character Dominic Greene to emphasise the hidden and secret nature of the film's contemporary villains.

The film premiered at the Odeon Leicester Square on 29 October 2008, gathering mixed reviews which mainly praised Craig's gritty performance and the film's action sequences while feeling that Quantum of Solace was not as impressive as the predecessor Casino Royale. It is also the second highest grossing James Bond film, without adjusting for inflation, making $586,090,727 worldwide, while becoming the higher grossing Bond film domestically.

Daniel Craig returns as 007 in this electrifying follow-up to the critically acclaimed CASINO ROYALE. The film opens with two gripping, back-to-back chases, as James Bond (Daniel Craig) tries to heed the orders of M (Judi Dench) and, at the same time, track down the people who blackmailed his love, Vesper. Bond is still struggling with Vesper's death, displaying a new, ferocious violence in his work, and a recklessness that M would very much like to get under control.

When Bond discovers a massive, secret organization called Quantum, he believes it might have been a part of the scheme that killed Vesper. He follows the clues to Haiti, where he meets Camille (Olga Kurylenko), a mysterious, driven woman, whose motives seem unclear. Camille leads Bond to Dominic Greene (Mathieu Almalric), a cold-blooded businessman who appears to be working within Quantum. Greene wants control of a valuable piece of land in Latin America, and is part of a massive plan to overthrow the government. Bond knifes, shoots, and kick-boxes his way to the center of the sinister scheme, and discovers that the plot reaches even higher than he imagined, forcing him to abandon M's orders and step out on his own.

Director Marc Forster (STRANGER THAN FICTION) has crafted some truly memorable fight scenes, setting them in the most elegant of locales. Everything is beautifully shot, from Bond racing across the rooftops of Italy, to his showdown at an Austrian opera house. As for Craig, he is once again all cold precision and steely blue eyes. His 007 is positively riveting. He struts determinedly into every scene, ready to display his near superhuman fight moves, or bed a bombshell with merely a glance. Yet, just as in CASINO ROYALE, Craig never lets us forget Bond's humanity. He may fight like a ninja and smirk like Steve McQueen, but beneath his impeccable Tom Ford wardrobe, Bond is still but an ordinary man, wearily battling his own inner demons.

The film was nominated for Best Original Score, Best Original Song, Visual Effects, Film and Sound Editing at the 2008 Satellite Awards, winning Best Song. It was nominated for Best Action Movie at the 2009 Critics' Choice Awards, and at the Empire Awards, which is voted for by the public, it was shortlisted for Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Newcomer, Best Thriller and Best Soundtrack. It was nominated for the Saturn Award for Best Action/Adventure/Thriller Film, while Kurylenko and Dench were both nominated for the Best Supporting Actress award. An editorial by The Times also listed the film's pre-titles sequence as the tenth greatest car chase in film history.

Source Links:

• http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0830515/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_of_Solace
• http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/quantum_of_solace/

Memento

Memento is a 2000 psychological thriller film written and directed by Christopher Nolan, adapted from his brother Jonathan's short story "Memento Mori". It stars Guy Pearce as Leonard Shelby, a former insurance fraud investigator searching for the man he believes raped and killed his wife during a burglary. Leonard suffers from anterograde amnesia, which he contracted from severe head trauma during the attack on his wife. This renders his brain unable to store new memories. To cope with his condition, he maintains a system of notes, photographs, and tattoos to record information about himself and others, including his wife's killer. He is aided in his investigation by Teddy (Joe Pantoliano) and Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss), neither of whom he can trust.

This feature is often used to show the distinction between plot and story. The film's events unfold in two separate, alternating narratives—one in color, and the other in black and white. The black and white sections are told in chronological order, showing Leonard conversing with an anonymous phone caller in a motel room. Leonard's investigation is depicted in five-minute color sequences that are in reverse chronological order. As each scene begins, Leonard has just lost his recent memories, leaving him unaware of where he is or what he was doing. The scene ends just after its events fade from his memory. By reversing the order, the spectator is unaware of the preceding events, just like Leonard. By the film's end, the two narratives converge in a single sequence that begins as black and white and fades into color.

Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce) wears expensive, European tailored suits, drives a late model Jaguar sedan, but lives in cheap, anonymous motels, paying his way with thick wads of cash. Although he looks like a successful businessman, his only work is the pursuit of vengeance: tracking and punishing the man who raped and murdered his wife. His suspicions dismissed by the police, Leonard's life has become an all-consuming quest for justice.
The difficulty, however, of locating his wife's killer is compounded by the fact that Leonard suffers from a rare, untreatable form of memory loss. Although he can recall details of life before his "accident", Leonard can't remember what happened fifteen minutes ago, where he is, where he's going or why. A former insurance investigator, Leonard is keenly aware of his handicap. Moreover, he's got the discipline to compensate as well as the motivation-the cruel memory of his beloved wife's last moments. Haunted by what he's lost, he's re-built his life out of index cards, photographs, file folders, charts, tattoos and obsessive habits that stand in for memory, fixing him in space and time and connecting him to his mission.
Out of necessity, Leonard must rely on others despite being thoroughly ill-equipped to assess either their motives or basic decency. Leonard remembers his past-up to a point. But just who has Leonard become since losing the ability to hold together the fragments of himself? "Memento" mines this psychological terrain, using non-linear film narrative to mirror Leonard's own effort to interpret the random pieces of evidence he hoards. The murder, rewound in the opening frames, we discover, is logically the endpoint of Leonard's story. What we learn comes from a point earlier in time, a few moments and a few sentences prior to what we've already been shown. As Leonard's story unfolds, the meaning of events changes. Allies, enemies, victims, victimizers swap place almost kaleidoscopically.

Memento premiered on September 5, 2000 at the Venice Film Festival to critical acclaim and received a similar response when it was released in theaters on December 15, 2000. Critics especially praised its unique, nonlinear narrative structure and themes of memory, perception, grief, self-deception, and revenge. The film was successful at the box office and received numerous accolades, including Academy Award nominations for Original Screenplay and Editing.