"Die Another Day"

...is the 20th James Bond movie in a series that now stretches back nearly forty years. It's one of the stronger entries in these later years, and if it doesn't solve the problem of what to do with the series, it still manages to make itself an entertaining two hours. It does have a problem though that's a little unusual for a Bond movie - it actually has a decent storyline and doesn't quite know what to do with it.
"Die Another Day" harkens back to the early Bond of "Dr. No" and "From Russia with Love". On a mission into North Korea, Bond finds his mission has been betrayed. He's captured, tortured for fourteen months, and released only because the Koreans want to trade him for an agent named Yao. Bond wants to go after Yao and find out who betrayed him, but he's coldly told his spying days are over. Bond accepts this as well as he's accepted any order he doesn't like and promptly breaks out of British custody. Here the movie gets a little grittier than it's been in awhile. Bond heads for a Chinese communist connection and bluntly offers his services. Yao killed some Chinese agents as well as British and Bond says if the Chinese help him find out where Yao is and get him there, he'll kill him and even the score for both their countries. The Chinese are only too happy to help Bond knock off a mutual enemy and send him on his way with money and a Chinese passport.
Although there are some clever nods to earlier films (and even a very quick reference to "The Ipcress File"), the film's story actually stands pretty well on its own. The only problem is that instead of really digging into the characters, the film is still on autopilot and seems to think if they don't throw in a big action sequence every ten minutes or so we'll get bored, so just when things are getting interesting in the story, everyone's got to hop in a car or something and go tear around the landscape or spectacular sets. While this is nice for a bit, I got bored with the action scenes and wanted more of Toby Stephens as the world's most obnoxious English gazillionaire ( loosely modeled on Richard Branson ). Critics are right that Brosnan's swordfight with Stephens is actually the most exciting thing in the film because it brings back the human element to a battle. Rick Yun as Zao is good too even with the goofy bit about diamonds embedded in his skin. ( What? They can't pull them out with tweezers? ) Halle Berry certainly fills out her bikini well but is pretty disposable while Rosamund Pike's character, Miranda Frost, could have been made much more interesting but wasn't. The only thing that's a complete botch of "Die" is the theme song. This is the first theme song in twenty movies that I can't remember a single note of. I remember some tinny disco music and a tinny Madonna vocal noise, and that's it. I don't remember the music or the beat or anything about it. Let's hope that, music aside, the producers will take the success of "Die" to get rid of some of the excesses of the series and take it back to story and character, and leave some of the stunts for Bond's imitators.

While "Die Another Day" is doing good business, another warhorse, "Treasure Planet" is not, and has the dubious distinction of being one of the lowest opening Disney animated features and points up the continuing problems Disney is having with its animated feature division.
It's a bit of a shame really. While TP is nothing more than "Treasure Island" in outer space drag, it's really a handsome production with some knockout computer animation. The problem with TP is the same one that's infected Disney Animation for several years now. With the exception of "Lilo & Stitch", which was shepherded specifically outside the studio system to avoid these problems, Disney seems terrified of doing anything original or uncute. Their last few movies have been rehashes of earlier stories and they seem unable to produce any animated film that doesn't have several annoyingly cute sidekicks. TP has some good character design, but Long John Silver is given a morphing pile of pink goo for a parrot and the ever-annoying Martin Short lends his twitchy voice to a twitchy robot that makes C-3PO sound as terse as the Terminator. Despite this, the original story still makes for a good movie. I have no problems recommending the film to animation buffs, but I sure wish Disney would realize the well is running dry and start letting its animators be creators instead of copyists.