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When I get the SPECTRE bd and watch it back to back with my QOS bd, I suspect QOS will once more move up my list & possibly top SP...
:-?
I just personally prefer the raw energy he brings in QoS, because very few actors can do that like him when he turns it on. I think it's a natural competitive differentiator of his imho.
Yes 110% yes if Forester came back I would be on cloud nine.
As for me the next bond film I will watch will be Goldfinger last weekend in febuary...
Even with Lazenby occasional visible inexperience, the overuse of dubbing Lazenby, and Blofeld not recognising Bond, OHMSS is still a top 3 Bond film.
Random Bond Viewing 2016 (in order of viewing):
January:
1. You Only Live Twice
2. For Your Eyes Only
3. Tomorrow Never Dies
4. The Living Daylights
February:
5. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
5 Bonds, I watched about that many in all of 2015.
Thank you for the advertisement :D
Will never understand how people don't see that Connery has clearly lost a great deal of interest by the time YOLT was filming. It is right there on the screen. He is angry at the producers, and clearly sick of the role, but he's so damn good at Bond that it still manages to be a pretty decent performance.
Also I think Craig is his most "Bond-like" in Skyfall as well. One of the let downs of his tenure was that he's clearly playing a very different Bond in 2012 and it's a shame we didn't get one movie in between to bridge the gap between the reckless, angry, fiercer Bond from 08.
Because of that lack of a movie in between it almost feels like he's playing a totally different character at times.
As with QoS, which I recently watched, I was concerned that the retcon nonsense would affect my impression of this film. Like with QoS, thankfully it did not. In fact, my impression of SF improved tremendously on this watch.
The pretitles are extremely tense and held my attention from start to finish. I rank it as a top 10 pretitles easily just for tension and pacing. I loved the Bond theme usage when Bond did his Bond thing (like smashing the bike into the guard rail in order to catapult onto the moving train, or when he used the crane to hook the forward train car). I also loved the segue into Adele’s superb title song.
I now think that Newman’s score for this film is excellent. In my view, it’s as good as Arnold’s was in QoS, but different. It’s much more subtle, but just as effective creatively, and is actually better for this style of film. I think it’s one of the most suspenseful scores we’ve had since early 70’s Barry & fits each scene like a glove. I only wish he had used Adele’s song more in his score. The bit when he does, when Bond is going to the casino in Macau, is brilliant.
The performances are incredible across the board here. Nobody does a bad job, and some of them are indeed brilliant. Dench, Bardem, Marlohe, Finney, Fiennes, Whishaw. Moreover, they are given robust dialogue to work with. Nearly every scene is rich with excellent back and forth. Marlohe in particular stood out for me this time out. What a woman – mysterious, and perfect for a Bond film. Harris was the weakest for me, but she was pretty good in the shaving scene.
Roger Deakins deserves to join the ranks of Ken Adam, John Barry & others as a superior technician in his field who elevated a Bond film with his genius. Every scene is just pitch perfect and magnificent to behold, right down to the lighting. Even M’s home and Bond’s hotel in Macau look sublime. So does London’s underground tunnels. Bond running with Skyfall Ranch burning in the background is incredibly crisp & beautiful to watch – almost Apocalypse Now-like. The underwater fight is also superb.
My appreciation for this film increased on this watch. It really is an excellent piece of quality work and in my view deserves all the accolades and appreciation it received on release. There are so many fine moments in nearly every scene. This is not an action film. This is a dark thriller, and I believe in terms of its suspense mood setting it is the best one EON has made in that since FRWL (high praise I know, but I think it deserves it). Like that film, it held my attention throughout this viewing with relatively little high octane action. Mendes' direction is tremendous.
Everyone is on the top of their game here - the actors, the sets, the music, the dialogue, and the characterizations. A Job well done.
Now on to SP tomorrow. I hope it impresses me more than it has done to date.
In particular, Deakins made the most average of locations (tunnels for example) look exciting. Interestingly, I did notice a yellow hue in many shots here too, but it was on account of strategically placed lighting, rather than filters. The impact was quite different. More crisp. More defined.
Right then, continuing on with the Bondathon we reach Live and Let Die. The last time I watched this – for Halloween – I didn't particularly enjoy it. Things were going smoothly until Pepper showed up. Last time I watched it was on a big TV, but this time I viewed Live and Let Die on my normal TV. Perhaps that was the reason why. I find the Hamilton movies are better viewed, on a more “intimate” surrounding.
This time I had a blast. The cast, especially the heavies, are top notch, the dialogue is cracking, Martin's score is infectious and the plot is ingenious in it's simplicity.
The film only takes certain cues from the novel, yet I found Yaphet Kotto's Mr Big a fair reflection of his literary counterpart, being calm and collected – the urban veneer belie the ruthless, sadistic man underneath. A most underrated villain. Also taken from Fleming's Live and Let Die is the threat, the aura, of voodoo.
Worst Bit – Pepper's gurning.
Best Bit – The voodoo element. And the taxi driver's sideburns.
7.5/10
Royale's Ranking
Casino Royale
Live and Let Die
CR
LALD
MR
DAD
DAF
FRWL
DN
GF
AVTAK
FYEO
QoS
GE
LTK
SP
OP
TLD
TSWLM
TND
TB
OHMSS
YOLT
TMWTGG
TWINE
SF
Next up Moonraker
Well, hello jim! You like my sideburns baby ? :D
So many people hate him and I'll never understand it. Every line and every facial expression has me in stitches. Even down to how he says "Boaayy!"
Just some thoughts. Most of these will be issues I have with the film, so, as a rule of thumb, if I don't mention it I probably enjoyed that aspect or thought it was well done.
- The writing is the weakest link here. You can tell 40,000 writers (or whatever the number was) worked on this thing. It hurts the film a lot. I really admire what they were aiming for in terms of tone, but not only did they not "go all in" with it (there are still annoying threads lingering from Craig's early films, particularly the psycho analyzing of Bond's character as well as the "is Bond relevant" question that was just explored, much more successfully, in the previous film) but they often fall flat on their faces when they do go for it. For every moment of levity, silliness, or humor that works there is at least one moment that's full on cringeworthy ("No, I think I'll call you C" is not only the sort of humor I don't associate with Bond, it just isn't funny. That said, after Denbigh goes into his ramble about taking Mi6 into the future and Bond says "that all sounds marvelous" that moment really works). So it's a true mixed bag in terms of the writing, the dialogue, and the humor. As for the overall writing and dialogue I'd say it's often more than it is strong, particularly in the second half. The humor is, as mentioned, hit and miss. It also seems to be evoking less the "James Bond brand of humor" and more the "Marvel Cinematic Universe brand of humor." And there is quite a difference. When he punches that guy in the clinic and does the "no! don't!" I cringed. It just didn't feel Bond at all to me.
- I maintain that Craig is still really good. I like the laid back cool that he brings here, but there are moments where I'm not sure if he's really in it anymore. After Skyfall showed him perhaps at his absolute best, and most Fleming, something feels slightly off about Craig's performance here. It's almost like he's veering off into Pierce Brosnan territory, i.e. he seems too aware that he's playing James Bond instead of just being James Bond - one moment, which I do smile at and enjoy, is the ejector sequence. Instead of just accepting the absurdity of it and being Bond in the moment, we see Craig smirking and walking with an over exaggerated swagger as if to say, "Yeah, that's totally something James Bond would do, isn't it?!" The whole film has this air that hangs over it that feels like "So Bond, am I right?"
- Going off of that, I'd say Spectre, despite its effort (which I admire) often feels "off." Something doesn't quite feel Bond. When in doubt, blame the writing I suppose. I can't put my finger on why, so thank God I'm not writing a critical analysis or review.
- Uninspired/fatigued are two words that kept creeping into my mind on this third viewing. From Mendes to Craig to Hoytema to Waltz - there's just no energy, spark, excitement, or life here, contrasted with Skyfall which, despite having perhaps fewer "tips of the cap" to the franchise (funny considering it was the 50th anniversary) was bursting with that Bond feel and exuberance and color. I'm not angry at Mendes - he threw everything he had at Skyfall - in hindsight I just wish he hadn't signed on to return. It seemed like he had nothing new to offer, realized it halfway into production, and just "finished the damn thing." Craig is still good, but no longer amazing. You can feel that there's something missing, much like Connery in YOLT.
- Hoytema's work is intermittently brilliant here (Blofeld's lair, particularly that sequence where Blofeld puts the suicide video on all of the screens, looks fantastic - thank the production design in part). The torture room has a surreal glow to it that I think is gorgeous. Same for the SPECTRE meeting. I hate what they did with the pre-titles sequence. It is shot beautifully, but that filter that they decided to use threatens to ruin all of those wonderful shots and compositions at every turn. Overall it's a good looking movie, just didn't live up to what I expected after his work on Interstellar. It pales in comparison to Deakins' work on Skyfall.
- The action ranges from brilliant but frustrating (the way they edited the helicopter sequence, and the awful projection(?) used when we actually see Craig and not his stunt double - regardless, it's an astounding stunt and achievement, and is quite thrilling) to just plain frustrating (I hate the way the Rome car chase is interrupted by that "Oh look! We like Roger Moore's Bond movies see!" moment. I hate even more than that the plot exposition call with Moneypenny. Both of these things completely disrupt the flow of the action and the chase. Nighttime car chase between two beautiful vehicles in ROME of all places is very hard to render not amazing, and they managed to do it. Then there's the Austrian alps snow plane sequence. It's good, and that's all I can say. Then we get the train fight...
- Best fight scene in the series. I love it. I love the way the score is turned off and the two just go at it. I love how Craig grunts and howls. I love Bautista's pure physical menace and presence (seriously, just watch the way he bursts through the doors after flinging Craig through - it's great physical acting). It is brutal, filmed with precision, inventive (a word I rarely use to describe anything in Spectre) and truly thrilling. This fight, along with Bond vs. Grant, was the only time I have ever thought, "Jesus, is Bond going to make it out of this one?" I love how the set just gets torn to pieces, props are used, etc etc. Brilliantly choreographed and realized fight scene.
- I love everything on the train. The dialogue, for the most part, works. Craig and Seydoux manage to get a bit of chemistry going (although not nearly enough for what the movie demands - blame the script again) and it's atmospheric. Pure escapism.
- I love Blofeld's lair, and the explosion is awesome.
- The third act is terrible. The whole damn thing. The reveal means NOTHING to anyone in the film, Swann loves Bond? Really? (for the record, there are many of these instances throughout the franchise, but none that have as much weight as this, because we are supposed to believe Bond quits his job for this girl), The wandering through old Mi6 is back in "early Craig Bond dark n gritty" territory which would be fine if the preceding 2 hours wasn't trying its damnedest to be largely light, escapist spectacle. Seriously, those pictures of past characters in the shooting range? COME ON.
- It's been well documented, but I'll mention again that I hate the "personal" element of the plot. The surrogate brother etc etc. Hate it.
- Waltz is the worst Blofeld by a mile. Poorly written, yes, but poorly acted. He brings none of his trademark charisma, and even leaves much of that gleeful, smiling sliminess behind also. I'm not a big Waltz fan, but I thought that was a good bit of casting. Not anymore. There isn't an ounce of intimidation in anything he says (save for what I mention below in the "love it" section).
- I hate that "Cuckoo" shit.
- The title song sucks.
- As I believe @Birdleson mentioned, and I'm stealing his phrase, I am sick and tired of "Scooby-Doo and the Gang" Bond movies. This applies mostly to the final act, for which my hatred is now well documented.
Some things I truly, truly love:
- Seydoux. She does everything she can with that paper thin role.
- Seydoux's dress while they're at Blofeld's lair. It's little things like that I really enjoy about bond films, and that dress is fantastic, and looks fantastic on her.
- Most of the wardrobe. Craig's suit that he wears out in the desert is my particular favorite.
- The easy cock of the gun, the easy placing of it behind his back as he lazily walks over to see what Madelaine has noticed is perhaps my favorite moment of the film. SO Bond.
- Love how the Rolls Royce is reflected in those sunglasses.
- White Tuxedo.
- "I won't be long."
- "Bottoms up." LOVE that bit.
- Thomas Newman's score is really, really good. I won't say I love it, but it deserves a mention here.
- The "love" scene.
- The way the camera stays focused in on Belucci as Bond shoots the two would-be killers and saunters up next to her. Stunning and pure fun.
- The bit with the mouse in Tangier. It's a bit of fun that I think successfully peers into the character of Bond a bit without bashing us over the head with it like many moments do.
- "He dies not knowing who you are." One of the few moments where Waltz's Blofeld successfully chilled me and intimidated me. That line is pure malice.
- "Don't let me interrupt you" (or whatever the exact line is). Everything about that is really good. It's funny while still managing to be spooky in a campy sort of way. I like how he just cocks his head a bit and a helper comes up to adjust the microphone.
Sorry for so much. Just wanted to get my feelings out. I'm sure I coudl think of more, especially moments that I liked etc.
I've yet to see it again (waiting on a deal on the blu) but having watched SF yesterday, I am speculating that another weak link for me in SP could be Seydoux. Sure, she did all she could with the dialogue they gave her, but I think something about her character didn't click with me. Perhaps it was a lack of visible chemistry with Craig (vigorous out of the blue 'inserted' train sex notwithstanding). Not sure. I'll see what I think when I watch it again.
Also, the SPECTRE meeting was quite dull for me. I was waiting for them to just get a move on already. It was neatly lensed, but the tension they were trying to create with Waltz in shadows did nothing for me. The only part I found even slightly interesting was the Hinx entrance and kill.
@Birdleson Yeah, I can see where you're coming from. It is lacking some of the charm. I think some of it works, when it's lighter, or more deadpan a-la Connery ("that all sounds marvelous" works quite well). But yeah, some of it just doesn't work. Due, in part, to the writing for sure. "It was that or the priesthood" just isn't funny, exacerbated by Madelaine's laugh in replace of the audience's.