Sweeney's Rockin Skyfall Review Thread

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Re: Sweeney's Rockin Skyfall Review Thread

Post by Blowfeld »

Napoleon Solo wrote:
carl stromberg wrote:Some of these reviews are interesting. The Shrophire Star one for example:

http://www.shropshirestar.com/entertain ... lm-review/


The self-deprecating humour, the iconic and slightly pompous 007 traits, the womanising, the playful banter, the classic travelogue backdrops; it’s all there. So, too, is the much publicised product placement which sees 007 drinking Heineken. But it’s subtle, and works in the context of the story.
Let me guess: when Bond renounces being a 00-agent, he drinks Heineken (R). Heineken (R) thus becomes a key element of the Character Development (R). Later, when Bond knows he cannot escape his fate, he resumes drinking martinis.
Hmmmm. Sounds vaguely familiar... :mrgreen:
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Re: Sweeney's Rockin Skyfall Review Thread

Post by Napoleon Solo »

bjmdds wrote:It's over Napolean. Forget trying to figure out this insanity. I hope Nayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyomi Harris's MP is an insatiable deviant with lot's of men and guns in her future. I hope the new Q is shown sucking on lollipops and drinking cocoa. The next film DC is in as Bond I hope he is shaved bald and is in bed with 3 men at once. The franchise is over. It's destroyed. There is no turning back now. DONE :!: George the animal Steele awaits. SIX years of this garbage with Eon and Sony is enough and DC has signed on for 2 more bringing us until 2018 for a possible new Bond :!: :idea: I think not wasting another 6 years on this franchise is smart. It's time for MI:5 news updates and Ant-Man and Avengers and The Man Of Steel discussions, right FBF?
Or The Man From UNCLE if Warner Bros *ever* gets its act together. Ditto, Lew Archer (WB is developing a new movie based on Ross MacDonald's The Galton Case. Or a serious Matt Helm movie (if Paramount ever gets it in gear). Also, control of Daredevil has reverted from 20th Century Fox back to Marvel-Disney, so maybe something will happen there as well.
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Re: Sweeney's Rockin Skyfall Review Thread

Post by The Sweeney »

Skyfall has gone up on RT. It's now showing 98%, with 41 reviews in, only 1 negative.
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Re: Sweeney's Rockin Skyfall Review Thread

Post by Napoleon Solo »

The Sweeney wrote:Skyfall has gone up on RT. It's now showing 98%, with 41 reviews in, only 1 negative.

No question that's extremely unsusual, even rare. And there are some U.S. reviews in there, at least from the likes of Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. AP ran a story yesterday (Oct. 23) about Javier Bardem singing his praises and hyping the movie. That was probably done off the New York press interviews prior to the premier.
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Re: Sweeney's Rockin Skyfall Review Thread

Post by FormerBondFan »

The Sweeney wrote:Skyfall has gone up on RT. It's now showing 98%, with 41 reviews in, only 1 negative.
This is a disgrace to Harry Potter, especially the the last one.
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Re: Sweeney's Rockin Skyfall Review Thread

Post by bjmdds »

Napoleon Solo wrote:
bjmdds wrote:It's over Napolean. Forget trying to figure out this insanity. I hope Nayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyomi Harris's MP is an insatiable deviant with lot's of men and guns in her future. I hope the new Q is shown sucking on lollipops and drinking cocoa. The next film DC is in as Bond I hope he is shaved bald and is in bed with 3 men at once. The franchise is over. It's destroyed. There is no turning back now. DONE :!: George the animal Steele awaits. SIX years of this garbage with Eon and Sony is enough and DC has signed on for 2 more bringing us until 2018 for a possible new Bond :!: :idea: I think not wasting another 6 years on this franchise is smart. It's time for MI:5 news updates and Ant-Man and Avengers and The Man Of Steel discussions, right FBF?
Or The Man From UNCLE if Warner Bros *ever* gets its act together. Ditto, Lew Archer (WB is developing a new movie based on Ross MacDonald's The Galton Case. Or a serious Matt Helm movie (if Paramount ever gets it in gear). Also, control of Daredevil has reverted from 20th Century Fox back to Marvel-Disney, so maybe something will happen there as well.
Matt Helm? I loved the Dean Martin ones. We need that series of films now more than ever. FBF, who should play Matt Helm and should it be similar to the traditional Bond formula?
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Re: Sweeney's Rockin Skyfall Review Thread

Post by The Sweeney »

Napoleon Solo wrote:
The Sweeney wrote:Skyfall has gone up on RT. It's now showing 98%, with 41 reviews in, only 1 negative.

No question that's extremely unsusual, even rare. And there are some U.S. reviews in there, at least from the likes of Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. AP ran a story yesterday (Oct. 23) about Javier Bardem singing his praises and hyping the movie. That was probably done off the New York press interviews prior to the premier.
I think its fair to say now that Skyfall is critically acclaimed. Will this help push BO sales? Let's wait and see.....
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Re: Sweeney's Rockin Skyfall Review Thread

Post by Dr. No »

The Sweeney wrote:
Napoleon Solo wrote:
The Sweeney wrote:Skyfall has gone up on RT. It's now showing 98%, with 41 reviews in, only 1 negative.

No question that's extremely unsusual, even rare. And there are some U.S. reviews in there, at least from the likes of Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. AP ran a story yesterday (Oct. 23) about Javier Bardem singing his praises and hyping the movie. That was probably done off the New York press interviews prior to the premier.
I think its fair to say now that Skyfall is critically acclaimed. Will this help push BO sales? Let's wait and see.....
Except for 1989 Bond has always had a built in audience. Reviews didn't hurt any Bond movie in 10 years maybe more, do they help? I think that is a question we don't know the answer to. Other concerns may trump movie fun this year, bad economy being at the top.
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Re: Sweeney's Rockin Skyfall Review Thread

Post by John Drake »

I think everyone has gone mad. That's the only explanation for the tolerance of Daniel Craig's comical tenure as Bond.
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Re: Sweeney's Rockin Skyfall Review Thread

Post by bjmdds »

Agree. The Drake knows his onions. Even Ale has left the building due this mess by Eon.
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Re: Sweeney's Rockin Skyfall Review Thread

Post by Blowfeld »

Ale left without saying goodbye :shock:
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Re: Sweeney's Rockin Skyfall Review Thread

Post by carl stromberg »

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/a1a00f38-1e8d ... z2ALxk4WSc

In Skyfall, the idea that Bond equals Batman-plus-Bourne is put to the test and found wanting. Last time around, in Quantum of Solace, the attempt to suggest that Bond was just Bourne-plus-an-English-accent resulted, once the editors had filleted the footage, in the shortest Bond film ever. New director Sam Mendes wants to combine a Bourne-like lack of quips and frippery with Christopher Nolan-ish solemnity and gigantism – as manifested in scenes of a well-bred orphan brooding, the presence of a 1960s star (Albert Finney) playing a wise and wrinkled servant, a stop-start, seven-act structure, and a climactic sequence in which a villain with facial scarring, psychological damage and badly treated hair raises hell in a densely populated city centre.

Skyfall may be the second-longest film in the series – Casino Royale beats it by a minute – but it’s the one with least evidence of traditional Bondage: no vodka martinis, no double entendres, no gadgets, hardly even any theme tune. The new formula – lager, tonal austerity, walkie-talkies, indistinct percussion – is not exactly insufferable, but if it weren’t for borrowings from You Only Live Twice and The World is Not Enough, and a performance by Javier Bardem that owes something to Christopher Lee in The Man with the Golden Gun, the film would be indistinguishable from the majority of swelling-fireball thrillers in which an athletic hero trots the globe in pursuit of a computer chip, violating traffic laws and damaging market stalls as he goes. Daniel Craig returns in the main role, looking more than ever like a garden gnome who, having overdone it a little in the 1990s, spent the following decade in the gym by way of compensation. Meanwhile Bérénice Marlohe fills the role of Bond girl or woman.

The choice of Sam Mendes as director is an odd one. He doesn’t bring nearly enough gravitas or elegance or painterly precision to make up for his lack of experience, glaringly evident in the mundane opening sequence, as a director of car chases and fire fights. His Road to Perdition constantly sacrificed cheap thrills to rich tableaux, Jarhead was all about soldiers not seeing action, and the revolution in Revolutionary Road was conspicuous in its absence. If Mendes’s touch can be felt anywhere, it’s in the counterintuitive casting: at one point, no fewer than three former Hamlets – Ralph Fiennes, Ben Whishaw and Rory Kinnear – are seen standing in front of a large computer screen.

In line with its other pretensions, the film has a visual motif – burrowing or descent – and even a theme: the value of tradition in a period of change. Bond and M (Judi Dench) are repeatedly dismissed as relics, altogether ill-suited to the age of cyberterrorism and health-and-safety directives. We are invited to cheer for the good old ways and also to see Bond as a modern man suffering from “trauma”. Only Bardem and Adele, who is responsible for the title song, succeed in ignoring, as all effective franchise participants must, the old/new distinction, resolving instead to inject a familiar exercise with a fresh dose of energy.
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Re: Sweeney's Rockin Skyfall Review Thread

Post by Kristatos »

A less than complimentary review from the Wokingham Times. Not sure I'd chalk it up as one to us, though, as the reviewer's reasons for not liking the film are not ones that I suspect most of us would agree with (it doesn't "move the franchise on", for example).
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Re: Sweeney's Rockin Skyfall Review Thread

Post by Mazer Rackham »

Kristatos wrote:A less than complimentary review from the Wokingham Times. Not sure I'd chalk it up as one to us, though, as the reviewer's reasons for not liking the film are not ones that I suspect most of us would agree with (it doesn't "move the franchise on", for example).
Blimey, the final conclusion opens the door to remake Dr. No through Living Daylights!

Do they count this one counted as negative?
Sadly, the story and characters let it down. There is little to make you warm to any of the primary characters – most are bland and dry, including Bond, making it difficult to care, even though the film asks you to.

The only time the screen seems to come alive in terms of characterisation is when Ben Whishaw appears, as Q. He’s quirky and sweetly geeky; the most human of all the characters. Javier Bardem as villain Raoul Silva is, by contrast, a two-dimensional damp squib, although Bardem, being the actor he is, manages to inject plenty of colour.

Skyfall has the feel of an episode of BBC drama Sherlock or similar – not only in its interweaving of characteristic Bondian quips and lightheartedness into the high octane action and easy-to-grasp story, but also in its pantomime villain, tone and pacing. In this way, it feels like it’s been heavily influenced by what’s current – as if Mendes et al aren’t brave enough to let it speak with its own voice.
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Re: Sweeney's Rockin Skyfall Review Thread

Post by bjmdds »

In Eon's terms now, NO films existed prior to CR. They want the future generations to rethink a new Bond formula and they could care less what traditionalists think.
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Re: Sweeney's Rockin Skyfall Review Thread

Post by JackWade CIA »

But on top of its flaws, you’ll also find yourself wondering if it’s actually just setting the scene for a slew of Bond remakes – starting, perhaps, with Dr No..
This is why Daniel Craig will bow out after Skyfall. It completes the circle of new agent to experienced agent ending it with a cliff hanger which could mean the beginning of Dr No with Sean Connery taking over. Perfect way to end the reboot, I know the stories about him getting ready for Bond 24 I still think this is the movie to end his time on.
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Re: Sweeney's Rockin Skyfall Review Thread

Post by The Sweeney »

JackWade CIA wrote:
But on top of its flaws, you’ll also find yourself wondering if it’s actually just setting the scene for a slew of Bond remakes – starting, perhaps, with Dr No..
This is why Daniel Craig will bow out after Skyfall. It completes the circle of new agent to experienced agent ending it with a cliff hanger which could mean the beginning of Dr No with Sean Connery taking over. Perfect way to end the reboot, I know the stories about him getting ready for Bond 24 I still think this is the movie to end his time on.
Craig will be on for 2 more movies, then he may bow out after that (if Babs let's him).
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Re: Sweeney's Rockin Skyfall Review Thread

Post by Goldeneye »

Goldeneye wrote:Oh, noes!! Another bad review when will it ever stop! :wink: (Sorry Sweeney :wink: :lol: )

http://tonymacklin.net/content.php?cID=501
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Content written by Tony Macklin. Originally published on October 26, 2012 on tonymacklin.net.

Here I go again.

Wanting better and unwilling to settle for less. It's a curse. Why can't I just sit on the edge of my seat or stand up and cheer?

At the end of the screening of Skyfall for critics and reviewers, there was applause. But not by me.

There are two basic criteria I ask of a movie. 1.) Did it deliver on what it tried to do? 2.) Was it worth doing?

I think Skyfall was absolutely worth doing, but it failed to deliver on what it could have been and should have been.

I think what chafes me the most is that it could have been so much better than the Bondian schlock it is.

Skyfall is a mixed bag of 50 years of Bonds and product placement.

Where have you gone, 007? Skyfall has transformed you from the human, vulnerable, mysterious, skillful spy into a Superhero Bond.

In Skyfall, James Bond is part Aquaman and part Road Runner, with some familial angst pilfered from Bruce Wayne. He's become an action toy.

In Skyfall, James Bond and one old woman and one old man destroy two attacking armies. He's now a walking -leaping, flying. plunging - video game. Say it isn't so, James.

As 2012's James Bond has accelerated his motion, he has decelerated his libido. Where are the vivacious beauties of yesteryear? In Skyfall, he has sex perfunctorily with two forgettable partners.

One presumed sexual encounter, cuts to a sky full of fireworks. That's a blast from the past. Is a cliche still a cliche if it's retro? You bet your contrivance it is.

Yes, Bond does shower with a female, but it doesn't wash the dustiness off the scene.

He says, "I like you better without your Beretta." She responds, "I feel naked without it." And without good dialogue. Scintillating foreplay it's not.

Skyfall is the gamy story of Bond (Daniel Craig) being shot, an enemy stealing a hard drive with a list of NATO operatives on it, the enemy being a former MI-6 agent (Javier Bardem) seeking revenge on M (Judi Dench), and Bond trying to come to her rescue as the terrorist former agent wreaks his lethal havoc.

But have no fear, SuperBond is here. He supposedly is damaged, but we don't for a second believe he won't overcome whatever ails him.

I don't have anything against superheroes, but James Bond isn't one of them. The best film I've seen so far in 2012 is The Dark Knight Rises. But I don't want The Dark Pawn Skyfalls.

Skyfall's director Sam Mendes is no Chris Nolan.

The cast does its able best with the floppy plot. But the writing by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, and John Logan doesn't give them a human core or any subtlety to work with.

I argued vehemently that Daniel Craig would make a terrific James Bond when he was making Casino Royale (2006). A lot of people were dismissing him. His human steely resolve was palpable. But much of it has been discarded in favor of mayhem and conflagration. And Craig's gift for subtlety is gone.

Judi Dench, as always, is a stalwart M. Circa 80 minutes into Skyfall the villain appears and struts his stuff. Finally an interesting character. Javier Bardem plays Raoul Silva, a tormented villain who is prone to laughing. He is blond and deadly, which harkens back to Robert Shaw in From Russia with Love (1963).

The casting director dips into the Bourne franchise to get Albert Finney, who plays an aging caretaker in Scotland.

Naomie Harris - Thandie Newton would have been ten times better - is Eve, an MI-6 operative, who is only a match for Bond in the writers' minds. One of the credits of Ms. Harris is as a voice on a video game. This seems appropriate.

Berenice Marlohe as Severine has all the impact of an extra.

Ralph Finnes is agreeable as an agency honcho.

Roger Deakins, who also photographed Bardem's villainy in No Country for Old Men (2007) is artful. But the musical score by Thomas Newman is as intrusive as a bad laugh track.

The late Ian Fleming who created the original James Bond almost certainly is not Skyfalling.

He's probably spinning.

But JB is still human and alive. Unfortunately it's not James Bond.

The living, breathing JB is Jason Bourne. May he never Skyfall.
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Re: Sweeney's Rockin Skyfall Review Thread

Post by Blowfeld »

By October 23, 2012 by James Rocchi boxoffice.com
With its beautiful camerawork, tight editing and propulsive plot, Skyfall, the latest in the 50-year-old series of Bond films, seems like a guaranteed moneymaker and a good thing. Still, while director Sam Mendes, aided and abetted by a crack technical team, delivers big-screen action with panache and style, something about this Bond feels a little off. Mendes himself has said that his template for this movie was Nolan's Batman films—and while that makes for a dark and diverting film, it also makes for one that, at times, feels a little too closely-cribbed from the psychodrama and themes of Gotham. Squint at Skyfall and you'll swear you're watching Bruce Wayne. Audiences, already appreciative of Daniel Craig's stand as the new Bond, will endorse Skyfall with rising ticket sales, even if Mendes seems to move the franchise more towards the herd than in its own direction.
[spoil]The globe-trotting action opens with Bond seriously wounded on a botched retrieval mission against an assassin who has stolen a list of undercover NATO agents as part of an elaborate—in fact, too elaborate—plan to strike at British Intelligence. Bond goes after the mystery actor behind it all, hampered by his own exhaustion, bureaucratic in-fighting at MI6, a villainous genius played by Javier Bardem with majestically bizarre hair, an omnisexual arrogance and enough vengeful insanity to cover up the gaping plot holes. Bardem's Mr. Silva doesn't just want to hurt MI-6—he wants to hurt M, (Judi Dench), his old boss and Bond's current one.

With a script by long-time Bond stewards Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, who've been on the series since 2002's Die Another Day—and credit also given to Gladiator scribe John Logan—Skyfall recycles old Bond elements and adds new elements that, for lack of a less clumsy phrase, feel non-Bond. In The World is Not Enough, Brosnan's Bond also had to do derring-do while slowed-down by a separated shoulder; Sean Bean in Goldeneye was another ex-MI-6 spy with an agenda. There are also knowing nods to the older Bonds from Ben Wishaw's new gadget-man Q ("Were you expecting an exploding pen? We don't really do that sort of thing anymore.") and the return of an old four-wheeled friend.

But the climax, which finds Bond holed up in his old Bond family estate on the blasted heath of Scotland, feels—like the motivations—a little small. Bond is who you send when the world, not the workplace, is in peril, and watching Bond booby-trap his manor feels like a mash-up of Batman and Home Alone.

Shot on digital with dark and lustrous beauty by Roger Deakins, and edited by action ace Stuart Baird, Skyfall is gorgeous and fleet. Craig maintains a nice tone—he's always gotten to the crux of Bond as Her Majesty's Legbreaker—and Bardem's flickering between homicidal rage and loopy annoyance is amusing. But while I don't demand shark-pits and cat-stroking, I do hope for a little more ambition in my Bond baddies, and his plan—and the film's plot—forces audiences to accept that he is both insanely competent and completely insane. Part invigorating shot in the arm and part midlife identity crisis, Skyfall is less a great Bond film than a generically good big bold blockbuster.[/spoil]
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Re: Sweeney's Rockin Skyfall Review Thread

Post by Kristatos »

David Mitchell gets medieval on Skyfall's ass (in a column aobut Star Wars!)
The latest release from the 50-year-old 007 franchise is being showered with critical praise and box-office cash. Having seen Skyfall, I can't say I understand why. I mean, it's fine. It's probably an above-average Bond movie but then it benefits from both budgetary and technological possibilities that most of its predecessors lacked. It certainly isn't the "best Bond ever" as many are claiming. It is very nearly the longest Bond ever, narrowly beaten by Daniel Craig's first appearance in the role, Casino Royale. Maybe Craig has ambitions to be the longest-serving Bond but wants to get there in the fewest possible films.

There's a lot wrong with it. It takes itself far too seriously, the suavity of the character is lost; the heartless charmer, the well-dressed psychopath who will unhesitatingly deploy violence to get what he wants – but who wants nothing more, due to an accident of his nature, than the furtherance of British national interests – has been replaced by a gnarled potato-headed bruiser haunted by his own past. Batman without the gear. I miss the jammy sod in the bow-tie whose toast always lands butter side up. Yet, for all this self-importance, the plot is still as daft as in the campest days of Roger Moore. I won't spoil the end for you – the writers have already done that – except to say: have courage, the film does, eventually, end.
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