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Look pal, anyone who hasn't GF in their top ten belongs to the looney bin :))
GF is one iconic scene after another from the appearance of the dot up to the last words in the end credits!
In that regard, GF is The Perfect Bond movie.
;)
Unless you stick me with a nuclear rod....
:-??
Meanwhile, I'd appreciate other reviews coming in! I am asking Originals who participated in the initial review of all Bond films to use the categories system, but everyone else may choose to do so or not. But please do give us your current review of Spectre! I'm quite interested in reading more, so please spread the word. Thanks! :-bd
I thought Skyfall was deserving, but not this effort. But hey it's Bond! So that is wonderful. EON must be pleased.
https://pbs.twimg.com/tweet_video/CcW0EZXXIAE87_H.mp4
Well, winning an Oscar also depends on the competition. Not sure if Sam deserved it, but as you said, it's a nice win for Bond (again).
:D
http://www.archdaily.com/579737/meet-the-film-industry-s-most-successful-architect-in-deutsche-kinemathek-s-latest-exhibition
My update is only to say that Spectre is NOT yet available to rent yet in Japan. :(( Nope. At least not in my area. And I do not own it. I will be ordering it this month, but other budget concerns come first. Therefore, I will not be able to do my review of Spectre for another 2 to 3 weeks. I have seen the film once, but I feel I must see it fresh, and at least once more, to do my full review. Sigh ...
But I'd still like very much for other Originals to take time, any time this month would be great if you can, to do the review using the traditional rating categories SirHenry set up. Thanks!
Non-Originals: Please give us your thoughts, your own review - long or brief - in your own words. Most of you have seen this film a few times by now. I'd like to see how people's opinions are settling down about it.
Again, civility is the key here, folks. This thread is different from the others, for a very good reason. And keep in mind, though we jest and disagree, we accept that others have differing views. And yes, humor is definitely a plus. :>
Cheers!
While I’m happy to follow the established template in reviewing Spectre, I must point out that this method of grading the Bond films has one major weakness in my eyes: we aren’t able to grade the film’s script as a complete entity. Therefore, any problems that we may have with various aspects of the script have to be dealt with in the category most closely related to that objection. If one is unimpressed by the villain’s master plan, one may choose to downgrade the “Villain” score accordingly -- or, if one really likes the way the actor given the part of the main villain plays his role, then one is either unable to accurately grade the movie, or one must choose to downgrade the score of another category. That caveat stated, on with the show…
BOND 5/5: How may times must one say “Craig has really made this character his own” before the phrase can be retired? In Casino Royale, Craig delivered his lines like Bond, so although he was facially quite dissimilar to the Connery/Dalton/Brosnan template we’d come to expect, we readily accepted Daniel Craig as James Bond. Now, I have to say, Craig MOVES the way I’d imagine Bond should move. I’d seen stills of one particular top-hatted skeleton figure in the Day of the Dead sequence several times during the build-up to the film’s release. Once I actually SAW the film, the skeleton in question had only to start moving in order for me to recognize him: “Oh! That’s Craig’s Bond under the skeleton costume!” Picking his way along the rooftops in Mexico City with rifle in hand…standing in a boat motoring towards Mr. White’s hideout…or shooting his way out of s Spectre installation after suffering what should have been (but evidently WASN’T) a debilitating round of torture, Craig has simply taken over the role in a way that no other actor since Connery has been able to match. If this is his last outing as Bond, Craig’s going out on a high note in terms of his own performance. If he’s got one or two more rounds left in his Walther, then fine: whoever tries on the tuxedo after Craig is going to have a hard time measuring up.
WOMEN 3/5: Monica Bellucci is perfect as the widow Lucia Sciarra; her scenes with Bond sizzle with sexual tension and a multitude of conflicting emotions at her awareness of the danger she is in now that her husband is no longer alive. Watch her flinch when Bond takes out her intended assailants: she thought those bullets were intended for her! Bellucci deserved a substantially increased amount of screen time over what she was given, but this is not an uncommon occurrence for secondary female characters in the Craig Bond films. I only wish the Madeleine Swan character (played luminously by Lea Seydoux) was written as well as Bellucci’s character. While Seydoux is a gorgeous woman and a very talented actress, I fear her character just wasn’t written very plausibly. She’s mad when Bond first introduces himself because the screenwriters find it convenient that she should be upset with him at this point in the storyline, she’s willing to help Bond because that’s the point our script has reached now and she’ll just have to co-operate. She gets drunk and sloppy on one glass of wine because because because…she’s fallen in love now or she can’t go on with this way of life now or she’s ready to ride off into the sunset with Bond now because that’s how these things are SUPPOSED to work. Isn’t it? Well, no, not necessarily. Tracy in OHMSS in a great character because she doesn’t DO what she’s supposed to do -- she does what SHE wants to do and not what her father or Ian Fleming or Richard Maibaum wants her to do. In short, she’s a believable character and that’s why Bond falls in love with her. Dr. Madeleine Swan is wicked smart & knows how to shoot a gun and as the daughter of a professional criminal she is the only woman in the world who might be able to understand Bond -- but she just doesn’t hold together as a compelling character the way Tracy did, and this film is substantially the weaker entry into the Bond canon for trying to pretend that she’s Tracy’s equal.
VILLAINS 2/5: This category is going to have to suffer for many of the script defects that I alluded to above. It’s not fair really: Christoph Waltz plays Blofeld pretty well -- tightly wound and quietly menacing, he has a suitable white cat and acquires his Donald Pleasance scar over one eye during the course of the film. But the whole bad foster-brother angle just doesn’t work for the Bond/Blofeld relationship and I’d much rather that he HADN’T been the author of all Bond’s pain. Additionally, the existence and the very structure of Spectre really needed to have more thought put into it. What exactly was the relationship between Spectre and Quantum? Were they one and the same thing? Was Quantum a separate organization that got taken over by Spectre, and Mr. White simply not evil enough to do Blofeld’s bidding for long? We don’t know because the script-writers frankly couldn’t bother answering the questions that they set up for us when Dominic Greene got left in the desert back in QoS -- he answered all of Bond’s questions off-camera, but the film-makers never got around to showing the audience those answers. We can only assume that they don’t actually think the answers are all that important. Or maybe they don’t really KNOW the answers themselves, and since they don’t care, they think that we shouldn’t either. Here’s another question the movie never actually gets around to answering: what was the name of that scary henchman played by Dave Batista? Let’s pretend for just a moment that we didn’t learn his name was Mr. Hinx in the promotional materials released while the film was being made, and let’s keep in mind that a good portion of the audience doesn’t even stick around for the credits in order to learn that his name was simply, “Hinx.” Was there ever a point in the film itself where anyone goes so far as to state the character’s name? Was there any analog to the scene in Goldfinger where our titular villain introduces his manservant, Oddjob, who is by the way mute and Korean? If there was then I need to return my DVD copy of Spectre, because my copy of the film does not contain any such moment. Pretty careless film-making, I must say! And speaking of careless, let’s talk about one of this film’s main villains (although you wouldn’t know it from the press he doesn’t get)…Max Denbigh aka “C.” Although Bond himself pronounces early in the film, “I think I’ll call you C,” and the rest of the 00 section follows his lead in this regard, we never really learn why Bond chose this particular letter for Denbigh’s alias. Around the end of Max’s presence in our storyline, he and M trade insults: M must stand for “Moronic” while C stands for “Careless.” But we suspect that isn’t actually what Bond really meant. What did his assessment of C really signify? I’m guessing that Bond was utilizing the Roman numeral system to frame his subtle put-down. Under that system M stands for 1000 while C is merely 1/10th of that figure:100. But I’m only guessing, once again the film-makers may have something really special in mind, but they choose not to tell us. Too bad: Denbigh, who has aligned himself (and the intelligence gathering operations of 9 major countries, many of them unspecified) with the ultimate group of bad guys, is really our Largo in this film…but his operations are chiefly opposed by M rather than Bond and in the end, it is M who is present at his death.
HUMOR 4/5 Humor that never really takes us out of the dangers involved in Bond’s world is one of the many strengths of this movie. Bond falls at least a few stories through a crumbling building in the PTS, only to land safely in a sitting position on a comfy couch. The audience laughs, briefly, before more danger rears it’s head and Bond is chasing his target through the streets in the Day of the Dead parade. Bond is in a high-speed auto chase with Mr. Hinx…he tries to utilize the machine guns in his new Aston Martin DB-10, only to learn that they hadn’t been loaded with bullets before he “borrowed” the car from Q’s lab! He phones Moneypenny late at night to get some desperately needed information, only to find that she has a “social life” quite outside her professional one. If Spectre is indeed more of a “fun” movie than most of Craig’s entries in the Bond canon, it is because of moments like these…and they are a very welcome touch as far as I’m concerned.
ACTION 4/5 Here is where I might have scored my objections to the film’s storyline in some of my other reviews…but the action sequences in this film are just too potent to be downgraded. The PTS at the Day of the Dead is one of my favorites in the whole series…the scenes with Mr. Hinx are the equal of anything done with Oddjob or Jaws…Bond piloting a plane in pursuit of the cars that have abducted Dr Swan is reminiscent of several of the skiing sequences that have occurred in earlier Bond films, and his fight with Hinx progressing through several compartments on the moving train is nearly the equal of his legendary fight with Red Grant in FRWL. I was, however, somewhat less than impressed by Bond’s rapid recovery from his torture-by-dentist-drills at the Spectre headquarters, and his rather by-the-numbers destruction of said facility. Once again I get the feeling that the script-writers have just plugged in a huge explosion at this point in the screenplay because, well that’s the way these things are done, aren’t they? This movie does have that sort of check-the-boxes logic at play in strategic moments, and the film is weaker than it really ought to be when those moments do arrive. By my way of thinking, the first two-thirds of this movie are just brilliant, but it’s all downhill once Bond and Madeleine arrive at Spectre HQ. The finale in London, featuring Blofeld playing cat-and-mouse games with Bond in the ruins of the about-to-be-demolished MI-6 building, is a splendidly-photographed anticlimax.
SADISM 4/5 We start off this section with Hinx gouging the eyes out of a rival executioner at a Spectre board meeting…then move on to meet the author of all Bond’s pain. The torture-by-drills scene is one of the most gruesome moments in the Craig run by my standards, even more so than the knotted rope torture in Casino Royale. Why is it that Bond is able to keep his memories intact through this scene, though, despite Blofeld’s assessment of what the results should be? Oh, let’s just assume that Blofeld is not as skillful with the drill placements as he thought he’d be, and move along…
MUSIC 3/5 Well, Sam Smith’s theme song wasn’t as boring onscreen as it seemed to be on the radio. Credit Daniel Kleinman’s dependably ingenious credits sequence for that little miracle. Otherwise, the score was fairly pedestrian. Nothing we haven’t heard before, nothing that was terribly out of place. Nothing that was the equal of Skyfall in this segment, more's the pity...
LOCATIONS 4/5 Mexico Cty, Rome, Austria, Tangier, Morocco, London, all of it beautifully photographed. What’s not to like? No casino scene? Fine, one point off for the lack of a casino scene.
GADGETS 3/5 A new Aston Martin. Okay, nice. And an exploding Rolex that Madeleine Swan uses even though she has no reason to know that it WILL explode when tossed in Blofeld’s direction. And a plane that Bond turns up in even though we don’t know where he got it. Come ON folks -- SHOW us these things! Don’t say, “It would interrupt the pacing of the film.” And somehow, Q’s laptop is able to scan the ring that Bond grabbed off of Marco Sciarra’s hand during their wild helicopter tussle over Mexico City…and what? Show the fingerprints of everybody Bond has ever known who all touched that same ring years ago just because it was convenient for the scriptwriters? And that’s how Q can deduce that Bond IS onto something? Is THAT the way it all went down? Because the implausibilities of Skyfall have just met their match in this one little quickly-skipped-by plot device. Q IS quite the genius, isn’t he?
SUPPORTING CAST 4/5 Raph Fiennes gets a thorough work-out as M, opposing the Nine Eyes Initiative more directly than Bond himself does throughout most of the picture. Some might be inclined to kvetch about this aspect of the film, wanting instead to see Bond as the lone hero in his own film series. I’ve got no real problem with the Scooby Gang (as some have taken to calling this incarnation of the MI-6 crew) taking a big role in one film every now and then, but I wouldn’t want to see them this fully involved in every adventure. Q continues to shine in his every moment onscreen with Bond -- they’ve developed the relationship in a very different direction from that shown with Demond Llewellyn in the gadget master’s role, and rightly so to my mind. Similarly, Naomi Harris is a very different Moneypenny than that established by Lois Maxwell (and largely mis-written ever since her departure.) Rory Kinnear hasn’t really established himself fully as Bond’s good friend Bill Tanner, but the film series hasn’t really had a need for Tanner to be the same as Fleming's version, and the character flounders because the writers haven’t actually found a voice for him yet. Jesper Christensen is a welcome face returning as Mr. White, and Dame Judi Dench’s brief cameo was a fine surprise here…one that enabled a bit of narrative misdirection I’d really have rather not seen included in this film. When EXACTLY did Dench’s M have the time and inclination to produce this video? She went from thinking Bond was dead, to dealing pretty exclusively with the existential threat that Silva posed to her tenure at MI-6, to her hearing with the Cabinet…to being whisked away to Skyfall by Bond, and then finally her death. Even if she HAD been investigating Sciarra’s activities behind the scenes, without knowing exactly who he was working for…when did she get the chance to leave behind these instructions for Bond, to be used in the event of her untimely demise? Oh, never mind…it’s just another dangling plot line in a storyline that already has too many of them…
SUMMARY 36/50: Instead, let’s consider the larger implications of this storyline. And I’m not talking about whether or not the newly-established prior connection between Bond and Blofeld weakens the characters in the Craig incarnation (it does) or whether or not this new iteration of Spectre measures up to the same organization during the tenure of Connery (it doesn’t.) I’m talking about the overarching storyline for much of Daniel Craig’s James Bond: should We The People trust what we are told is duly-constituted authority in this modern world, and is The Secret Service a good or a very bad thing? Should there even BE agents roaming the world with Licenses to Kill, using up black budgets on tricked out Aston Martins and Rolexes that explode under provocation? We are led to be very suspicious of these folks by much of what we have seen in the last 4 Bond films. Well-positioned individuals are secretly involved in plots to steal all the water in South America and control the intelligence gathering of (at last count) nine major countries with perhaps more to be added to the framework of the new world’s secret order. The internet can be a tool to (bip!) control the economies or (bip!) overthrow the governments of whoever most annoys the behind-the-scenes Major Players almost at their whims. Is the 00 section indeed an archaic relic, or is the sex-obsessed, martini-swilling white knight that is James Bond truly our last best hope in these perilous times? All I know is, we generally get the hero that our times most urgently require…and no matter who dons the tux next time around, James Bond WILL return. Let’s hope that next time he’s got some better script-writers in tow. Cue the theme music and fade to black...
You put much thought and effort into this excellent review, and we do appreciate it. I know I'm far from being the only one who enjoys your reviews of Bond films. I also appreciate you are an Original and used the categories as we always have done.
You bring a good point about the script. I cannot add or take away from the categories because this film will get put into the same mix as all the previously ranked films in this thread. But very good point indeed.
I'm going to mix a nice martini for myself and re-read your review again. You have given us some good talking points. Oh pour one for yourself, too, you deserve it!
Cheers! :-bd
Again, thanks!
Also, 'C' is for a nasty word that was fairly obvious to foul-mouthed persons such as myself.
:))
Apart from the rude possibility, aren't M and C designated letters used by the real MI6? Were we ever told what M stood for?
I think that's true. But is the audience seriously expected to know this??
Bond says 'I suppose that means you should be called C?'
Why exactly do you suppose it James? What reason is there to pick the letter C over the other 25? Because then it sets up the big laugh with M later?
I thought calling Cleese R was pretty lame but this line is almost as nonsensical as 'delicatessen in stainless steel'!