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I thought I would break down Skyfall into the most important parts to me.
1. Direction - Sam Mendes does a fantastic job at directing Skyfall. He had all the right proportions, intrigue, violence, sex, escapism etc. He also allows the film to breathe, getting the characters to shine, in addition to having the right kind of balance between plot and action.
2. Screenplay - Not too bad, although the screenplay could have done with a bit of tidying up, i.e. Silva's escape.
3. Script - The film's triumph. Although some of Eve's lines came out a little flat; it as if Harris was trying too hard, and some of her and Bond's flirting was a little "clunky". I could see what they were trying to do, back to the sixties in terms of the characters dialogue, but it didn't have the same class and wryness. It reminded me of the exchanges in the Brosnan era.
4. Plot - The film makers put so much into the script, they kinda forgot about the plot. If you go into the plot you can explain a lot, but some of it's tenuous. I.e. why does Silva's prison lead directly into the tube? MI6 were on a war footing, thus they didn't have time to scout the underground bunker out. As Tanner said "we're still discovering tunnels dating to the 18th century..." Flimsy, but workable.
5. Action - Apart from the PTS not a lot, a few fist fights, and the tube chase. But I enjoy Skyfall's lack of action, makes it seem old skool :D
6. Main Villain - Camp, unerring and fun. And quite, quite mad. Silva's Fleming-esque introduction is superb.
7. Main Bond Girl - Pity we didn't get to see much of her. Marlohe is gorgeous, and the character is well written, despite her small role.
8. Bond - In Skyfall's PTS we see Bond at his best, until M loses her nerve. "Take the bloody shot!" indeed. From there we have apathetic Bond, drunk Bond and patriotic Bond. From here we get to see Bond pick himself up, despite Mallory's misgivings, back to his very best. (you know other than him letting M die of course...)
From Casino Royale to Skyfall, I'm pleased with Craig's evolution of Bond; all we need from Craig's Bond is a little more joie de vivre, and gentlemanly conduct and I'll be golden. Although Craig doesn't have the charm of his illustrious predecessors. Which is strange. I suppose Craig is darkly charismatic, but he lacks charm, imo. If he had continued from his performance in CR, i.e. more charm and elegance, I would have been even more enamoured with Craig, because at the end of CR I thought Craig's Bond was the Bond of old. Craig set his target up to high. Still the Craig era has two more films to go, and with his Bond growing all the time, I could be about to eat some humble pie.
9. Sets - From the MI6 underground lair to Skyfall Lodge, via the Macau Floating Places, quite good.
10. Music - I thought the score worked well in the movie, but one can't remember any off it, afterwards. Indeed the soundtrack seems to be a bit generic-action filmy, and in one particular scene, when Bond is hanging off the lift in Shanghai, it reminded me off Zimmer's scores for Batman.
11. Cinematography - Most probably the best looking Bond movie. Deakins cinematography is fantastic, capturing the film moods superbly. I especially like the night time shots of Shanghai, the motorway spaghetti junction, with it's blue and black lighting is quite brilliant.
12. Fleming - The reason I enjoy Skyfall so much, was the fact that Ian Fleming's spirit haunts the film, which is surprising, as they have no Fleming material left to work from. Consider, the opening speech by Silva, like the backstory to Fleming's villains; Bond not on his best form, i.e. FRWL, TB, YOLT, TMWTGG; Bond's apathy; the Komodo Dragons; Skyfall Lodge seems to be something Fleming imagined
13. Supporting Cast - Very good. Harris lines came out a little clunky, but other than that, excellent.
14. Main Titles - Kleinman's best work, imo, even surpassing GE and CR.
15. Plausibility - Other than the plot inconsistency of Silva's plan in London, there wasn't too much; I felt that Bond didn't have to fall down a waterfall in the PTS, (that seemed like overkill to me)
16. Pace - The tricky thing about a Bond film, is its pacing. I felt that Mendes and Baird done a good job. It doesn't feel two hours and fifteen minutes long, put that way.
17. Editing - The dynamic between Mendes and Baird reminds me of Young and Hunt. High praise indeed!
18. Tilt - Bits that I didn't enjoy were the bits where the CGI helicopters show up over Silva's island - a bit too much Austin Powers for me, especially with the music playing on top of it, and finally the punning, in the second half, really dilutes the earnest interpretation that Craig has given us. Still these are musings of a Bond aficionado, and do not really detract from the film. In fact this film has made me proud to be a Bond fan. The direction, main cast, long parts of dialogue and the brilliant cinematography make this a top ten Bond film.
That's not a very good Bond movie at all... ;-)
Even if he didnt say much I'd already heard it was nice to hear Rog speak. It's like listening to your grandfather recall stories and anaecdotes.
"They sometimes had to double me for the dangerous stuff like the love scenes".
As for the film itself, pretty weak from what I saw. The direction is bland, the action feels fairly routine, the editing is often poor and Stacey can at times be very annoying. There are a few entertaining scenes but its a sleepy, limp entry. Shame as when I was younger it was one of my favourites - now I consider it one of the poorest.
I did notice though that despite being trapped in intense heat Stacey still had perfect eye shadow and make-up outside City Hall, as did Grace Jones after being swept away by the water :))
=)) Didn't realise I put it in the wrong movie thread! That's how disturbing it had an effect on me! ;)
I wish the producers had done OHMSS before YOLT, because after watching OHMSS last week and YOLT today, I've noticed that it makes much better sense in continuity to do it in reverse of what was really done. When watching YOLT after OHMSS, you eliminate the goof of Blofeld not recognizing Bond at Piz Gloria; additionally, Bond's fake death at the start of YOLT is more justified. I never understood why he would bother to fake his death following the events of Thunderball, because Blofeld never saw him in TB- for that matter, Bond doesn't even know who Blofeld is in TB! He also killed off every SPECTRE agent that had seen him in TB, so it's not like he's in dire need of going underground for any length of time. When watching YOLT after OHMSS, his fake death actually makes sense, since Blofeld would have already seen him and would be on the loose after killing Tracy. Another plus of watching them in this order is that Connery's dull, "I don't want to be here" performance in YOLT seems like Bond's way of displacing his anger from the events at the end of OHMSS. This way, you can take Connery's lame performance in YOLT and assume that he's portraying Bond's moody, depressive state in the wake of Tracy's death; then, if you were to watch DAF after this, Connery's seemingly light-hearted attitude wouldn't seem as strange, since he would have already "gotten his anger out" in YOLT. I enjoy watching them this way- it might seem like a stretch, but it is certainly far more sensible than the continuity errors found in both OHMSS and DAF!
As for YOLT, my current standing has returned to its original position from when I first watched it- I highly enjoyed it! There are some aspects that aren't easy to pass off, such as Connery's weak performance, numerous plot holes, and the awful supporting cast, but YOLT is a lot of fun, which is something that every Bond movie should be, frankly. The plot is highly engaging, the action is top notch, the soundtrack is glorious in many places, and the locations are stunning. The greatest aspect of the movie is, undoubtedly, the finale- man, it's one of the best movie battles ever created! What a magnificent pay-off! As stated before, the supporting cast and Connery's lame acting make for a difficult time enjoying any of the dialogue, so the screenplay and script suffer as a result, and the direction suffers greatly for all the foolish plot holes. Still though, if you look at the movie strictly from the perspective of SPECTRE brewing up a war between the USA and the USSR for large sums of Chinese money, then the plot holes can be somewhat overlooked, though you'll still trip in a few along the way, such as Helga Brandt's remark to Blofeld about Bond being dead because she saw it in the newspaper- if that was the case, then why was she not surprised to see Bond as "Mr. Fisher" in Osato's office? It's errors like these that hurt YOLT greatly in its direction and plot, but thankfully, there is the whole glamor side of things to distract us from those otherwise blinding plot holes. All things considered, I have changed my mind about YOLT being dull and uninteresting- that's certainly not its drawback by any means. I'll be moving it up in the rankings!
Spring 2014 Bondathon Ranking
1. GoldenEye
2. License to Kill
3. SkyFall
4. The Man with the Golden Gun
5. You Only Live Twice
6. Thunderball
7. The Living Daylights
8. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
9. Moonraker
Didnt fancy AVTAK on itv partly because I had listened to the commentary a few days ago and partly because I just wanted something better.
Tried going with OHMSS but I realised about 20 mins in I wasn't in the mood for that either. George just wasnt doing it for me...and I genuinely consider OHMSS as one of the best films.
In the end I went with an old favourite - GE.
I TURNED OFF OHMSS MID WATCH FOR A PIERCE BROSNAN BOND FILM.
To the likes of @Thunderfinger I'm a lost cause.
I can understand why some find it a poor entry in the franchise, but it's 80s charm, along with strong villains, a beautiful score, a bloody fantastic song and that superb climax makes it one of my favourites.
Stacey Sutton was actually better than I remembered, no way as bad as some people make her out to be. "What's this thing loaded with?", "Rocksalt", "Oh, now you tell me!".
San Francisco looks as beautiful as ever, as does Zorin's stud in France.
This release is very entertaining and Rog gives a performance as good as ever (his age really does not bother me).
I also prefer Moore in OP. In View he seems a bit too sleazy. Look at his face when he's massaging Fiona Fulliton in the tub. I don't think he 'feels' like Bond in View (he still did in OP).
I watched it too with my partner. He didn't care for it much. I've now put on my TLD DVD. From what he's seen much more, he's liking it much more.
He prefers the grittier films to the camp ones. Who knew he would be a Daltonite! ;-)
I like a both campy and gritty Bond films. Both TLD and LTK are in my top ten.
I love Dalton's dark portrayal, but then I also love Moore's more lighthearted portrayal.
That's what I love about Bond, every films different!
I suppose some people will see AVTAK as a but of an anomaly in my top ten!
The more camp/silly films can sometimes go far but I think they're easier to watch than the more serious ones (which you need to be in a certain frame of mind for).
I think you could put Bond films into three categories- Camp, gritty and mixed.
Camp
YOLT
DAF
LALD
TMWTGG
TSWLM
MR
OP
AVTAK
DAD
Gritty
DN
FRWL
OHMSS
TLD
LTK
CR
QOS
SF
Mixed
GF
TB
FYEO
GE
TND
TWINE
Perfection.
End of review!
It's not perfect by any means but it is a lot of fun and has always been one of my favourites.
It really stinks getting older- four years ago, I wouldn't have cared whether or not Die Another Day held any kind of consistency or plausibility, just as long as the action was entertaining. Now, I'm finding problems all over the place with this one. Ughh...the passage of time, right? Oh to be 14 again, where all that mattered was explosion and gunfire!
I don't hate DAD by any means, and it's certainly not the worst Bond movie ever, but there are a whole lot of glaring issues that keep it from going very high at all in the rankings. First of all, Lee Tamahori's focus on explosive action sequences really detracts from the main plot of the movie- it's as if the plot is supposed to revolve around the action, which should never happen. I LOVE action in movies, whether it be a gunfight, a fistfight, a car chase, whatever- but I can't stand action scenes with no purpose, or action scenes that are merely for the sheer spectacle, and not plot advancement. Those are the ones that come across the laziest, in my opinion. Even so, I don't think DAD has the greatest action scenes to begin with- the only ones of notability are the Cuban clinic battle, the fight between Bond and Mr. Kil, and the car chase with Zao. Everything else is mediocre, in my opinion. That being said, the action doesn't really do much to advance the movie's plot, and therefore, is more in the way than anything else.
Obviously, there are the more obvious negatives, such as the entire character of Jinx, the cheesy dialogue (mostly with her and Gustav Graves, who is equally awful), and the pathetic henchmen like Zao and Mr. Kil. There's also that super-annoying NSA leader Falco (is that his name?) who is a completely unrealistic and, frankly, insulting interpretation of American military strategists. Why are Americans always portrayed so negatively in Bond movies? It gets on my last nerve.
Overall, there are few factors here that do DAD much good; Brosnan's performance, on the whole, as well as the location work, the attempt at an interesting plot (though the movie deviates from it as it goes), and some portions of the soundtrack provide a little insurance that we'll make it through the 2+ hours time without rolling our eyes too much. The movie sets itself up well and then slowly begins to deteriorate after getting lost in forgettable 40th anniversary throwbacks, directionless action sequences, cartoonish, overly corny characters, and awful CGI graphics. It's still entertaining, to a degree, but it's tough to overlook such negatives.
Spring 2014 Bondathon Ranking
1. GoldenEye
2. License to Kill
3. SkyFall
4. The Man with the Golden Gun
5. You Only Live Twice
6. Thunderball
7. The Living Daylights
8. Die Another Day
9. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
10. Moonraker
You have my deepest sympathies. ;-)
It has my second favorite female lead in the series. Jonathan Pryce is great as always.
No, am jushht looking!! Classic..
So last one is saw was Dr No again.. today on BluRay..amazing how they done it without any flaws.. pure colors and amazingly detailed..
Jonathan Pryce is great and I really love Mr Stamper and Dr Kaufman! And Wai Lin is a great Bondgirl.
TND is somehow a classic builded Bond film, the villain is good (expect on german dubs - hes almost a little over the top, as he almosts cums when he speaks - in generally the german dubbed versions are great since dr.no), the girls are also very nice, good locations, a lot of ideas in action scenes, good directed - but i dont know, its somehow to generic. But doesnt mean i didnt enjoy it watching.
So yesterday i watched FRWL again on BluRay.. one word: fantastic! Kerim, the gypsies and Klebb.. just classic. I liked the last scene alot in this boat when Connery destroys the tape.. just great 60s cinema..
Good lord, 9/10 and at #11? What's your #1 score, 15/10?!
:-))