James Bond In Skyfall - - Part 11

[PWN3R]

I don't agree with that. She was only in a short amount, but she provided a lot more humanity. I felt for her more than many of the main Bond girls who last the whole movie.

I really think that if they didn't use her character so much in the marketing, people wouldn't have had any expectations for her, and thus wouldn't have felt like she was wasted. They did play her up a lot in the trailers. Her character was solely there to reinforce how ruthless Silva was, and I feel like from that perspective, it works.

 

[Visceral]

After thinking about it, i feel that this film was good but not great.

Bardem could have been far more menacing and was instead just weird. For a man who wanted revenge he never showed an angry face, just joker like flamboyance.

The film spotlights Bond's clouded past but really only comments on the phenomena that the bond films are, not the actual character of bond. This left more questions about bonds past open and unanswered. The references remind me a bit of Superman Returns in that it wants to be new and invigorating but is to fixated on the past.

The bond girls were good, the new Moneypenny is black which is forward thinking, but so is felix leiter who has been underused in the franchise in my opinion.

The new Q is a justin beiber ass. And I supposed that is the point, the idea that being able to do things on your I phone doesn't mean you dont need to be courageous at times.

Dench and Craig are wonderful and Ralph Feinnes will be great in future bonds.

Mendes is still a great director, and his cinematographer really does transport us to wonderful places, I would be very pleased for him to do another bond film, but this time my expectations won't be so damn high. I really want to say this was up there Thunderball, CR, and Goldeneye, but really its a couple notches below.

7/10

An intriguing film, maddening.

 

[THUNDERSTRIKE]

for ME, after seeing it, IMHO, Skyfall rates right up there with two of the absolute BEST Bonds ever: From Russia With Love and Goldfinger...

there have been a few really good ones since then, but none have been "classic" as those two, in MY book...

Skyfall, in MY estimation, comes pretty damn close...

 

[Steyin]

I saw it yesterday. Sure it was great, but I wouldn't say it was the best. It felt rather short/contained and there wasn't much depth to it. I honestly enjoyed Casino Royale more, hell even Quantum more.

Bardem was excellent, but totally underused. It was actually disappointing he wasn't on screen more. I do hope they return to the Quantum organization at some point, especially after M's "in the shadows" speech. I prefer more mystery to Bond plots, and that was lacking quite a bit here.

 

[Doctor Jones]

I'd just prefer if we forgot about Quantum.

 

[Kane52630]

I recently saw Quantum and I don't get why people hate it so much. It's an extension of Casino Royale and it's a revenge Bond film. Sure, it's not as great as CR or Skyfall but it's not terrible.

 

[TheVileOne]

Because Marc Forster isn't that great of an action director.

 

[A Necessary Evil]

I recently saw Quantum and I don't get why people hate it so much. It's an extension of Casino Royale and it's a revenge Bond film. Sure, it's not as great as CR or Skyfall but it's not terrible.

I agree, it's not half as bad as the reputation it gets. Calling Quantum the worst bond (which I've seen many times before) is asinine, especially when Moonraker, D.A.D, Man W/Golden Gun, Diamonds are Forever are out there.

I'd prefer (should Quantum come back), that it just becomes the SPECTRE of the series.

 

[squeekness]

I recently saw Quantum and I don't get why people hate it so much. It's an extension of Casino Royale and it's a revenge Bond film. Sure, it's not as great as CR or Skyfall but it's not terrible.

When I went to see Quantum I was like, meh, but afterwards, I saw it again and wondered just why I had found it so boring. Maybe these things just improve with repeated viewings.

 

[The Englishman]

From what I gathered Kincaid was sweet on M so him calling her Emma was suppossed to be endearing. Not the result of bad hearing.



Could be. At the end Bond calls [BLACKOUT] Mallory M and it could be in short of Mallory so it is possible M got her name as a nickname from Emma.[/BLACKOUT] She may have also been called M because it is short for Ma'am. I 've never thought M was an actual title. Just short for a name. Something those who know her call her by.

It isn't. Remember Casino? "I thought M was a title position. I had no idea your name was-"

Or something along the lines of that.

Well in CR Bond mentions he thought it was simply a randomly assigned letter, but that it was actually short for something. Emma makes sense. [BLACKOUT]Makes sense with Mallory[/BLACKOUT].

Not to scratch any chickens here, but isn't Dench M's real name in the novels meant to be Barbara Mawdsley? And Bernard Lee's M is Miles Mersevy.

M is a title as I understand it, short for something like Minister or something, just like Q is short for Quartermaster.

The real chief of MI6 is known as C. Just thought I'd point that out .

 

[Kane52630]

Because Marc Forster isn't that great of an action director.

I don't know about that, Machine Gun Preacher was superb.

 

[The Englishman]

Something that struck me as bit off perhaps was that Silvia was so obviously [BLACKOUT]not british[/BLACKOUT] and was very obviously spanish i mean with his thick accent and name[BLACKOUT](s)[/BLACKOUT].

How would he have been hired and [BLACKOUT]risen up the ranks of MI6?[/BLACKOUT] I though you had to be a British national?

and therein lies the possibility of Silva (Rodriguez) possibly being somehow related to M who may have put in a good word for him at the start of his career with MI-6 to further him along?...

Guys, we can have soldiers here who have accents and were probably raised or spent parts of their life in another part of the world.

He could've been a British citizen who was born or spent early parts of his youth in Latin America and he still had an accent through most of his life.

This. In the US military not everyone was born in the states. And the CIA has people from all over the world working for them. MI6 is probably the same.

It would not be a very good Spy agency if it only used British nationals. MI6 will have foreign assets all over the world.
The British Army have an entire regiment The Royal Gurkha Rifles of soldiers who are from Nepal, which has nothing to do with the UK.

 

[PWN3R]

I recently saw Quantum and I don't get why people hate it so much. It's an extension of Casino Royale and it's a revenge Bond film. Sure, it's not as great as CR or Skyfall but it's not terrible.

I re-watched it last week and I have to say it's no where near as bad as I remembered. The biggest problem I have with it is its editing style. The average shot length within the action scenes is less than a second. It's like a seizure in every fight scene. So not Bondian. I do love the scene with Bond spying on Quantum, and the scene toward the end with Bond facing Vesper's lover. It's sure a hell of a lot better than most of the Bond duds, i.e., Diamonds, View to a Kill, DAD, etc,.

 

[The Englishman]

Yes there are a lot worse Bond films out there then QOS. Out of the 23 films its somewhere in the middle, probably about 11 or 12 in my rankings. I find it more enjoyable then Most of Moores films and most of Brosnans films.

 

[PWN3R]

Peter Travers ranked Quantum as the very worst Bond film. He also has DAD as the 10th best.

Critics... t:.

 

[A Necessary Evil]

Yeah, I'm not sure what kind of pot he was smoking to say that.

 

[Liam_H]

Peter Travers seems like a fun guy to watch but I don't take him seriously a lot of the times.

 

[I SEE SPIDEY]

I'm not working from a computer so it would take too long to write the long review I want to at this point and time.

Mini Review:

The Great:

Javier Bardem creates an intruguing and magnetic performance. I loved every second he was on screen, it was a perfectly odd, hammy yet human performance. Dare I say he was brilliant?

I don't care for Daniel Craig as an actor but he is perfect for this bitter version of Bond.

Judi Dench is a freakin international treasure, that is all that needs to be said.

Sam Mendes direction is just ****ing beautiful. You can actually see the action scenes in this film and they are spectacular.

The cinematography is gorgeous. This movie looks astounding.

The Good:

The script is very well done. The characters feel real and like they have their own motivations and things are rarely handled in a black and white manner. I also like a good revenge motivation for a villain, it's simple but works well when it's carefully done. But it borrows too much from The Dark Knight and I have to dock points for that. It's lucky they copied a great film and that the humor is better handled and there is more of it.

Nommie Harris does a good job with what she has to work with and so does the other actress. I think that Harris could have been great if she'd been in the film more but I understand why she wasn't.

The new Q was fun and Winshaw did a good job and so did Ralph Finnes.

The Not So Good:

The tone seemed a little scattered sometimes.

The simularites to The Dark Knight made me uncomfortable. No need for Nolan to direct Bond now to be honest.

The pacing wasn't bad but something seemed off. I suspect I'm wrong on this one and I'm open to changing my opinion on futher viewings of the film.

Conclusion:

A strong villian, story, performances and top notch direction and cinematography overshadow the feeling that you've seen this film before in 2008. It also redeems the series from the scriptless, directionless and witless previous entry in the series.

 

[Figs]

But it borrows too much from The Dark Knight and I have to dock points for that. It's lucky they copied a great film and that the humor is better handled and there is more of it.

Not arguing with you at all ISS. I was just curious as to what it borrowed from TDK, other than the scene with Bardem being captured and escaping I couldn't remember any others.

 

[Kane52630]

[BLACKOUT]When he dressed up as cop trying to assassinate M and everyone else. They played it in the same beats as TDK and even TDKR.[/BLACKOUT] Not saying it's a bad thing because I actually liked it.

 

[A Necessary Evil]

[BLACKOUT]When he dressed up as cop trying to assassinate M and everyone else. They played it in the same beats as TDK and even TDKR.[/BLACKOUT] Not saying it's a bad thing because I actually liked it.

Let's be fair, that's happened before, even in the Bond franchise. (Though in CR it was to set off a bomb, but still).

The circle of life.

 

[matrix_ghost]

LoL, let's not pretend like this movie being delayed for so long had anything to do with artistic integrity. The only reason the movie wasn't rushed out was because of MGM's behind the scenes problems.

Oh i'm not going to deny that. However even with the problems at MGM , the principal people were working on the script. It worked as a boon IMO.
For example Mendes was offered to direct Avengers. He declined because just one thing was set :the release date.
NO cast , no script ..nothing was set. JUst Avengers needs to be out May 2012.
He declined because he just couldn't handle working under that kind of pressure.
With Bond though he basically had 4 years to develop the story.

 

[terry78]

The Dark Bond Rises?

 

[Still Wynning]

The cinematography in this film was just framed and shot beautifully. I can even recall certain shots from the film because of it.

One of my favorites was probably Silva's introduction scene. He just monologues and walks toward the screen in just one long take, without any cuts whatsoever. Just from that one shot, combined with his dialogue, we get a perfect sense of who this character is. The framing of the shot is simple, straight to the point, and yet slightly off center, as if something is amiss. It fit Silva's character to a tee.

My mantra on excellent cinematography: if you can frame it, then it's perfect. There were so many examples of this in this film that I can't even begin to list all of them.

Roger Deakins absolutely needs to be on the next Bond film.

 

[747]

My new rating and ranking of the Bond-movie after Skyfall!

1. Casino Royale – 10/10
2. From Russia With Love – 10/10
3. Thunderball – 9/10
4. On Her Majesty's Secret Service – 9/10
5. Skyfall – 8/10
6. GoldenEye – 8/10
7. Goldfinger – 8/10
8. The Spy Who Loved Me – 8/10
9. Dr. No – 7/10
10. The Living Daylights – 7/10