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Very much agreed.
My opinion of Brosnan has sky-rocketed in recent times. GE and TWINE are firmly in my top ten.
Gets thrown at him. Even Daniel would have had a hard time acting
With an invisible car.
Many just blame him for the "supposed" badness of his movies. None of his films are bad. Die Another Day was just mediocre at best.
I think some are just sour that he came along after Dalton quit. Not his fault. Dalton quit on his own.
Also, as some may have noticed I haven't posted a "just watched" Bond film in awhile. This is partially out of my control but I'm gonna' try to watch one or two this weekend and continue with my (paused) Bondathon. I'm almost done!
I think they are cbn. net group of fans.
I don't think that's quite accurate. This has been kicked around before. Dalton techinically quit, but with the 6 year hiatus and the lukewarm performance of LTK, Eon had their sights set on Broz. He was the guy they wanted and he was now available, unlike in 86 when they first went after him.
Dalts saw the writing on the wall or at the very least, Eon was OK with his leaving. If he hadn't quit, its pretty much a lock, that he would have been asked to.
Fixed. ;)
Ken Adam's production design is in top form here. I love the British submarine and how M's office was incorporated into it. Very sleek and cool. Even locations we seen once are iconic. like Tiger's office with the rotating tv's to Blofeld's volcano lair. All wonderful sets. The man defined 60's Art Deco.
The plot is straight forward and similar to Thunderball's with upped stakes. My main problems with the film is it's pace. It feels a lot like a Japanese tour video. While that isn't necessarily bad it does bloat the film a bit. If Blofeld had been introduced 45 minutes to an hour earlier, it would have been a bit better in my opinion.
7/10. Above average.
Licence To Kill
Ok, so it might lack the polish of TLD, but LTK makes up for that with some good performances (Dalton, Davi & Lowell), and some nicely staged action sequences (the opening aerial sequence, Bond's escape from the Wavekest Say what you want about Glen's sombre style, but he know how to film an action set piece.
Kamen isn't held in high regard like Barry, and that's understandable, but I will say this, do like Kamen's score for this one...
... it adds some extra oomph to the action sequences.
The is only one thing doesn't quite sit right with me, and that's the title track. It's a bit too upbeat for this particular Bond film. I think an instrumental might have been better.
The 2014 00Heaven
1. The Living Daylights
***2. Licence To Kill***
3. From Russia With Love
4. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
5. For Your Eyes Only
6. The Spy Who Loved Me
7. Octopussy
8. Dr No
9. Thunderball
10. You Only Live Twice
11. Live And Let Die
12. The Man With The Golden Gun
13. A View To A Kill
14. Goldfinger
15. Moonraker
16. Diamonds Are Forever
OHMSS, CR and LTK.
All great films.
Cool, understated movie. They blow the budget in the final reel. That luxury shower Bond and Honey take would have blown the mind in austerity Britain where an indoor lav was chic itself. Most showers would have been taken place by a mining pit back then, not in the suburban bathroom. It would have made Bond and Honey's incarcaration even more sinister of course.
What is strange is how the colonial Jamaica figures are all very agreeable, pleasant yet each time come as a surprise as they make no real emotional impression on me from the last time round. Spose that means it's all about Bond for the first half of the movie.
The banter between Bond and Dr No is grade A stuff, never bettered. If only it had been this good with Scaramanga over dinner. That said, so was the banter between Bond and Red Grant, and GF was no slouch in the conversation stakes. After that, most Bond villains became a bit generic and didn't have to explain themselves too much. Silva an exception, though I didn't really like his monologue too much, at least it was ambitious writing.
I used to hate Quantum of Solace, but after several recent viewings, it's not as bad as it used to be. It is a (literal) mixed bag of a film for me; for every good thing, there’s an equally bad thing to offset it.
Everyone talks about the shitty editing and the weak villain, so I don’t have anything new to add there. However, I’ll discuss what I think went wrong, and it seems to me is something not many people discuss: the execution.
To use a cooking analogy, Quantum of Solace had a great recipe and ingredients (story and actors were mostly great), and all it needed was a good, or at least competent, chef (director) to bring everything together, and you’d get a great Bond film, or at least a pretty damn good one. The material was there.
Sadly, Marc Forster is not a good director, nor a competent one. What he did with this film was the film-making equivalent of burning water; he fucked up what should have been a simple task, and he fucked it up badly.
There was so much potential for this film; it explored the themes of revenge vs. duty (Was Bond actually out for revenge, or was he merely doing his job? As he said in the end, "I never left."), forgiveness, and the moral ambiguity of the world around us (As the British politician says to M, it's no longer easy to tell right from wrong, and even if we did, we wouldn't last very long if we only worked with the 'good guys'.) It had a villain that was absolutely insane (He killed his own mother for saying something mean about him, and literally goes after Bond with an ax!). It also had a scarred, traumatized Bond Girl to act as a parallel to what Bond himself was going through.
Sadly, Forster screwed it up. If only Martin Campbell had directed this one, or at least some other competent director.
I give It a 6/10.
Many viewings ( and going back and reading the books) I came to appreciate
It. Yes it has its problems, ( already listed) but it has so much energy and drive.
Greene is also wasted, in that he doesn't get much screen time, and I think he
Could have been much more "badass" :)
Exactly atleast Craig gives a good performance and it is never boring.
Does have some good moments, but I do blame the writers
Strike for most of its problems. Although I do agree a director
With more experience in action movies would have helped.
So to use the cooking analogy; Quantum had the perfect ingredients, but they weren't properly prepared due to the su chef striking, adding to the chefs uncertainty with the recepy. I still think the final dish is reasonably tasty though. It's unrefined, but spicy... like an Indian stew. ;)
Join the TWINE club!
I really feel like some people are overly critical of Skyfall because of how commercially and critically successful it was. I absolutely loved the film, it's one of the few movies in general that I can watch over and over and enjoy every time. It's still relatively 'new' in the Bond canon.
One of the aspects of the film that really worked for me is the character arc we see Bond go through. He has the dramatic downfall in the beginning, followed by an emotionally bleak period of existential crisis on the random island (presumably somewhere in or around Turkey). He returns from 'death' after he sees that Mi6 is in crisis and will likely have to fight for its survival. The scene in M's flat is interesting in that we see the ragged remains of Bond confronting M and being met with the grim reality that what happened to him was largely just a result of the nature of his profession, and holding a personal grudge against M is neither reasonable nor worth the effort. This is in contrast to Silva, who suffered a similar downfall during his career in the secret service, and his grudge with M manifests itself over time into a full-blown revenge plot. Bond's struggle to get back in shape physically and mentally offered an interesting window into his professional world, and he spends the rest of the film actually getting back to his top form. I noticed minor details in the film that touch on all this such as when he runs out of the priest tunnel after the mansion is destroyed, he trips and is momentarily held up. It's just a small little thing representing that he is on the right path but is still troubled along the way. Another more obvious example is when he drops Patrice out of the window in Shanghai without getting any info out of him. He's 'shaky' in his job, but he's strong enough not to get discouraged. When Mallory sternly warms him not to 'cock it up' before heading out on assignment for the first time since returning, he brushes it off and isn't intimidated. Ultimately he is able to kill Silva and the line about being the 'last rat standing' ties his arc together well as he has finally proved himself to be the superior agent. M dies, though her final words are 'at least I got one thing right' in reference to trusting Bond to go back into the field despite failing his trials at the 'new' Mi6. Judi Dench's M sort of had to die in order for the series to move on, so yes Bond failed to protect her, but he also trapped Silva and took him out (along with his crew of minions).
A lot of the alleged plot-holes that some people bring up are really no worse than any other Bond film, or most films in general. I will admit that Silva's grand scheme regarding Mi6 and killing M could be difficult to follow. He obviously had a well thought out contingency plan (likely multiple plans) for getting captured and subsequently escaping. I do wish the script had expanded a bit on the network of people he had working for him, which would have helped make certain scenes less questionable/ambiguous such as when he gets the police outfit handed to him or when he blows up the portion of tube track. I think we were just supposed to assume his vast/powerful network explains all this and it's a weak spot in the story.
But ultimately Skyfall is the kind of movie where I can really just forgive the weaknesses and allow myself to be immersed in the abundant positive elements. The beautiful look of the film, the acting, the Bond character-arc, his fantastic outfits, the music (good lord it has a fantastic score), etc. I could go on and on. I love Casino Royale just as much and in fact view them as equal in my mind. They're so different as films that I don't think direct comparisons are really fair nor worth the time IMHO. I appreciate variety, especially in a film franchise that has been around for 50 years and has at times struggled with overly-formulaic film-making efforts. Because it has been referred to as the 'greatest' Bond film ever by some, that opens it up to criticism. I really don't believe in the validity of claiming that any Bond film objectively stands out above all the rest, so I don't take such claims seriously. Everyone has their own favourite and that's perfectly fine.
I give It a 10/10.
+ Realized that Eve Moneypenny has far better one liners than James and she does deliver them better too. Somebody kick the scriptwriter. Especially with the line "you did not use it anyhow" which sounded a bit like a women unfriendly remark towards female driving (which is really below 007's standard imho) and she smashes the other mirror off too and says I was not using that one either..... She did trump Jimbo there.
+ The whole unknown period of what happened to 007 after his fall could have been solved with two small scenes which would not add more than 20 seconds to the movie. Firstly when Bond has seen MI6 explode on CNN, pick up the phone, dial a number and say: "Columbo we are even, but I need a favor as in travelling papers and a ticket to London. Duty calls." And when M asks where he was all that time he could add :"Enjoying the hospitality of an old Greek friend." Whereon M replies " So how is his smuggling business going?" thereby acknowledging that she now knows that Milos Columbo was the one who saved 007. It would have taken away any questions from the fans and acknowledge the 50 year history of the franchise at the same time.
+ the scene with Silva and Bond in the underground when Bond asks him after the explosion which misses him "was that meant for me?" Silva should have replied, "No James that was part of a distraction". Bond replies "now that did not work that well, did it now?" Silva could have replied: "You really believe that the distraction was meant for you James." And then the train comes in. Both 007 and the audience realise that the underground accident was aimed at pulling police away from Westminster and the hearing and thereby leaving M vulnerable. Another small scripting solution that would have made the train thing more logical.
+ They should have used Mallory's background as part of the SAS in having him bring in the SAS only perhaps to late in fighting a background fight with surviving fella's from Silva's troup. And have them silently appear when 007 crouches over his former boss. Thus showing that best laid plans can go wrong and they were simply too late to stop a madman.
I am so disappointed that such easy fixes could have made SF a flipping better and logical movie. ANd Mendes never noticed the huge plotholes, and the Columbo touch would have shown Mendes love and knowledge of the franchise.
That's a rather intriguing idea. I must admit that i would have gotten a kick out of that. However, after a time I would have found myself questioning what possible connection Columbo could have had to the Craig era. I suppose that after they threw the DB5 in there that anything was fair game but I doubt that the majority of the audience would have even recognized the name. We didn't need a repeat of all the tributes from the 40th anniversary...