As always it's desperately hard to tell whether the movie is on the right track from trailers, but I do get a strong sense of classic Bond. Good stuff. The song is great too for the same reason. Craig's Bond won my heart then lost it with QoS. I'm absolutely ready to be seduced again. You know, metaphorically. Yes.
Best Bond song in a long time; the fact that it evokes the two greatest Bond themes - "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" and of course, "James Bond Theme".
That theme is odd, it's strangely compelling yet the mispronunciation of the words gets under my skin. Someone described the way they're pronounced as "mushy" and I think that sounds about right. Also not sure about the backing singer and I think it should have built to a bit more of a finish than it did. Still like it though.
I'm really not a fan of Adele's style at all. It feels way too overwrought and stylized. Almost makes me wish for Amy Winehouse or Christina Aguilera who had similarly "forced" styles, just not turned up to 11. So basically I hate the song. I also don't really like Daniel Craig. Too gritty. I preferred the slightly campier bond films. Also: get off my lawn.
Personally, I think the Bond themes of the 90s onwards have been stronger, on average, than those that came before. Might need to remove Die Another Day as an outlier.
I think they've run the line from pretty forgettable (Alicia Keys & Jack Black, Chris Cornell, Cheryl Crow, Garbage) through campy (Duran Duran, A-Ha) and into outright awful (Madonna). Prior to the 90s, you've got 'Diamonds are Forever', 'Nobody Does it Better', 'Live and Let Die', 'Goldfinger', 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service', 'We Have All the Time in the World', 'You Only Live Twice' and 'For Your Eyes Only'.
While a Bond theme by Tenacious D is long overdue, I think you might mean Jack White here. Also, while this may be a controversial statement, I consider Live and Let Die to be on the list of my least favorite songs ever.
I want McCartney to go back in time and tell that damn Linda to just shut the hell up. As it turns out, they were really getting into Reggae music at the time, and while he took the commission to write the next Bond song, she interjected with: "Hey, lets make the bridge Reggae. That'll be great!" and then he responded with "Rum tim tiggly, Linda, that's right fine!" (or whatever stupid thing Paul says at that moment). Viola! The stupidest bridge in the history of music.
Just back. Loved it. Absolutely loved it. I think it may actually be better than 'Casino Royale'. ETA: no, fuck it: it IS better than 'Casino Royale' - I love that film, but it could do with losing about 15 minutes. 'Skyfall', on the other hand, never feels like it's dragging. It looks beautiful as well - Roger Deakins did some amazing work on this.
Thanks for the impressions! How does it compare to Quantum of Solace? CR is one of my all-time favourite popcorn movies, but I was disappointed by QoS' shakycam (which defeats the whole point of action scenes in a 007 movie -- I want to see Bond pulverise the bad guy) and by its veer back towards over-the-top supervillain territory. If this is back into solid CR territory, then I'm off to the cinema as soon as I can. :)
It's really hard to say without spoiling the fuck out of it; normally I think people who are sensitive about spoilers are dingbats but I think that this is one of those films that really deserves to be seen without knowing much about it. That's bearing in mind that it's a Bond film, of course. What I can say is that I don't remember there being any shaky-cam and the fact that it's shot by Roger Deakins means that there probably wasn't much. It is better than 'Quantum of Solace', which I thought was pretty inconsequential and actually quite disappointing given the set-up that was established at the end of 'Casino Royale'. I think that if you liked 'Casino Royale' then you won't be disappointed by 'Skyfall'.
Saw it. I'm not a Bond fan by my measure. The Brosnan bonds were cinematic trifles when they weren't mind bogglingly silly. I watched older Bond films as a film student, so my appreciation for their appeal was non existent. I liked Casino Royale, but understood that it wasn't really a Bond film in the same mold as previously in the franchise and Quantum of Solace was a mess. A sad soggy, bloated mess. Skyfall is the best Bond. Probably one of the best spy films to grace the genre. It helps that Roger Deakin is a cinematographic God. There is no wasted shot in this film and everything looked so beautiful. A scene in Shanghai is particularly standout in its artful craftsmanship, action and framing. Than he blows it all away at the ending location. Beautiful. It's going to be hard to top the cinematography of this film with other films this year, let alone any other Bond film. Craig's and Dench's performance are also top notch since this Bond takes an incredibly personal look at these characters. The story serves them well, since aside from a few ludicrous plot holes and contrivances, it's engaging and has more than a few surprises in store. Some twists you don't expect alongside the usual entertaining tropes. Javier Bardem is fantastically creepy as the big bad so that's a win too. But back to Roger Deakin. Wow, this film is beautiful.
When Casino Royale was first announced I wrote it off as a silly reboot that didn't need to happen. I somehow never ended up seeing it or Quantum of Solace. Earlier this year, though, knowing that Skyfall was coming to theatres, I decided to finally see them both together. Well, I am glad to admit that I was wrong, because I thought both films were quite good - Casino Royale being the better of the two overall. So then I went to see Skyfall last weekend and came away really impressed. Bond has never been better. The usual Bond formula is successfully subverted enough to keep things fresh, and that last act... wow.
This was fun. I think the only let down is the tenuous plot, only because the rest of the movie raised the bar so much over other Bond flicks.
That's incredibly convoluted. George Smiley levels of convoluted. The obvious and only question a film with such a plot has to answer is: does the rest of the film keep you otherwise occupied/entertained enough to not notice? You seem to be saying yes, and so does everyone else. Not a fan of Craig's other two Bond films, though that is certainly not due to any fault on his part. This one I'm rather excited for.
I'm saying yes. There's only one thing that is irksome while watching it, which I didn't mention, and it has a semi-plausible explanation given the rest. The only real complaint I've heard (from my mother no less - brother and I took her to this today) is that there wasn't enough sex for a Bond film.
When you lay it out the way bloo does then yeah, it's really contrived. But you don't really notice that stuff when it's happening because the pacing is good, action is great, performances are excellent and so on. I don't think it needs to be defended, but if you were so inclined you could argue that Silva's plans didn't necessarily hinge on all of those things happening. I'm not sure that the movie would support that argument though.
The plot was silly. At least stupid supervillains in the past used their silly schemes to try and rule the World or stealing all the gold... But the acting was gold, the action sequences excellent, the call back to Bonds past fun and everything was brilliantly directed. So I enjoyed it. And apart from his motivation and planning, Bardem was one of he coolest Bond villains in ages.
