SPECTRE reviews (spoilers!)

A place for discussion of all SPECTRE related news and rumours
User avatar
Omega
0010
Posts: 7304
Joined: Mon Mar 05, 2007 9:01 pm
Favorite Bond Movie: TLD LTK GE TND TWINE DAD OHMSS
Favorite Movies: Gladiator
John Wick
Pacific Rim
LOTR trilogy
RED
Kingsman
X-Men First Class
X-Men Days of Futures Past
MI Rogue Nation
Location: the lost city
Contact:

Re: SPECTRE reviews (spoilers!)

Post by Omega »

Daltonite Toothpaste wrote:"The toe curling quips were decreased"

And replaced with toe curling 'dramatic' dialogue. *remembers all that armour guff... shudders*

"as Craig returned to Fleming's original outline of a more complex professional killer."

:lol:

Get's me every time. Craig's Bond.... Fleming's Bond.... between them, is a gap so big, I could park a fleet of Kenworth Tankers in the space.
is there a Craig movie were he does not quit or get bitched out for being incompetent ? And this is Fleming's professional killer? If I had never seen dalton maybe I would believe that crap.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
............ :007:
Veronica
Agent
Posts: 1804
Joined: Sun Feb 22, 2015 9:08 pm
Favorite Bond Movie: From Russia With Love,GoldenEye,The Spy Who Loved Me,Goldfinger,Dr.No
Favorite Movies: After the Sunset,The Devil Wears Prada,The Thomas Crown Affair,To Catch a Thief,Midnight in Paris,North by Northwest, Purple Noon, La piscine.

Re: SPECTRE reviews (spoilers!)

Post by Veronica »

They sold the "Craig is Fleming's Bond" thing becuase that's just so much easier than trying selling him as the charismatic, sophisticated man. While everyone saw at least a few Bond movies much less people read the books.
User avatar
John Drake
Commander
Posts: 340
Joined: Tue Jun 19, 2007 10:22 pm
Location: Watching the first twenty James Bond films somewhere...

Re: SPECTRE reviews (spoilers!)

Post by John Drake »

James wrote:No one seems to have a good word about Christoph Waltz.
That's what happens when you have Purvis & Wade writing your lines rather than Quentin Tarantino.
"He is very good-looking" Vesper Lynd
User avatar
John Drake
Commander
Posts: 340
Joined: Tue Jun 19, 2007 10:22 pm
Location: Watching the first twenty James Bond films somewhere...

Re: SPECTRE reviews (spoilers!)

Post by John Drake »

http://theincrediblesuit.blogspot.co.uk/

James Bond is back, in case you hadn't noticed, and this time his mission is even more impossible than ever: to top Skyfall. Off the back of the most successful, cannily post-modern and downright surprising Bond film ever, Sam Mendes and his crack team of operatives needed to pull something unbelievably amazing out of the Bondbag with Spectre. So does it top Skyfall? Well, no, not quite. Does it top Casino Royale? Er, no. Wait... does it top Quantum Of Solace?

No. It does not.

In actual fact, Mendes didn't need to make a film bigger and better than its predecessor at all; just one that lived up to it, justified our faith in him and rewarded fans with another glorious slice of world-class Bondery. Spectre does none of those things. Where Skyfall was a daringly-structured rolling boulder of excitement, full of knowing winks and arch commentary on the place of the series in modern cinema, Spectre is a paper chase from A to B to C, deviating only to take in M and Q. It's all surface, like most of the pre-Daniel Craig era; given that we've had three films reinventing the character for modern audiences, the temptation to take him back to his 1970s incarnation - as if that's some kind of benchmark - is both understandable and utterly ill-advised. Parts of it work, sure, but so much of it just feels... ordinary. And if there's one thing Bond must never, ever be, it's ordinary.

Things start well - extremely well - with the return of the gunbarrel to its rightful place at the front of the film, Craig finally getting the walk, turn and shoot right on the third time of asking. What follows is a blinding single shot, maybe five minutes in length, following Bond through the Day Of The Dead parade in Mexico City on his way to take down a bad guy for reasons as yet unclear. It's a virtuoso sequence that takes your breath away and promises so much for the two and a bit hours to come. It's no exaggeration, though, to say that things never get this good again. After a great gag involving a sofa and some typically impressive helicopter stunt work (marred slightly by some unconvincing green screen), Sam Smith's pitiful theme song whines in and brings everything back down to earth. Rumour has it Radiohead were strong contenders to perform the song, and in fact they already had the perfect theme for the film: No Surprises.

If you've followed any of the film's build-up, even just the officially-sanctioned synopsis, trailers and so on, you'll know exactly what happens in Spectre. And what they haven't told you, you can probably guess. Bond was sent to find his Mexico target by a "message from his past", which turns out to be a nice touch but makes zero sense when you think about it. Acting against orders (for a change), he jets off to Rome, where the much-trumpeted "Bond woman" Monica Bellucci is wasted in a staggeringly Moore-esque scene that won't do anything to help the argument that Bond girls women females are treated better by writers these days. He also meets Dave Bautista's Mr Hinx, a henchman whose classically bizarre (but frankly silly) USP is introduced in shocking style, and then NEVER REFERRED TO AGAIN. Imagine if Jaws had come on at the beginning of The Spy Who Loved Me, smiled to show his metallic teeth, then never actually used them. That's what we're dealing with here.

A semi-spectacular car chase is hobbled by the film's decision to dollop jokes throughout, which grate more often than not; Daniel Craig has a wicked sense of humour, and showed it in Casino Royale and Quantum Of Solace, but he can't do the cheesy stuff that Moore and Brosnan effortlessly pulled off. It just looks out of place. And it's carried through the film in the decision to have Bond treat everything with levity - again, we're going back to the "golden age" of 007 here, but it removes all the threat and menace we've come to appreciate from the Craig era. Sometimes the humour lands - the word "stay" is put to excellent use - but only when it's not trying too hard.

Before long we're in Austria, where previous über-villain Mr White is hunkered down in his cellar, tossing himself off to rolling news channels. This is where we expect to find out the connection between Quantum and the mysterious new organisation, but it's inadequately explained. You'll know from the trailers that Spectre, and its boss man Franz Oberhauser, are responsible for all Bond's pain, but my god does that involve some clumsy ret-conning. "It's always been me", says Oberhauser in his later, inevitable monologue, but frankly we've only got his word for it. The facts don't really add up and nobody can be bothered to show their working out.

It's nice to see Q pop up in Austria, although how he got there is a mystery: remember in Skyfall when Moneypenny said he was afraid of flying? No, neither do the writers. Still, it's fun to see Ben Whishaw - along with MI6 engine roomers Ralph Fiennes, Rory Kinnear and Naomie Harris - get involved in a bit of the action; Fiennes, especially, teases out his M's military background in some of the film's classier dialogue. It's just a shame he has to keep arguing with Andrew Scott's government wonk about how vital the Double-0 section is, given that he spent most of Skyfall disagreeing with Judi Dench's M, who said exactly the same things he says here but with added Tennyson.

If it's Act III, it must be Tangier, and a decent stretch of good stuff plays out in a hotel room between Bond and Léa Seydoux's Madeleine Swann, which is then undone by a conversation on a train which draws inevitable and unfavourable comparisons with Casino Royale's superior Bond / Vesper train-based chinwag. Possibly the film's best action sequence follows, and it owes a huge debt to From Russia With Love, but even that is immediately dampened by an unnecessary coda.

And then, after about a hundred minutes, Christoph Waltz finally shows his face. Was it worth the wait? You guessed it. Waltz is wasted here, trying desperately to add some idiosyncracies to his two-dimensional villain but never being allowed to explore the character like we know he can. His scheme is depressingly low-key, and his personal beef with Bond means nothing and goes nowhere. He will, however, make you even more terrified of going to the dentist. Fortunately the final act picks up considerably, and contains a neat in-joke for hardcore Bond fans (hello, I understood that reference), but by then it's too late to save the film. Nothing we've seen has been especially new, exciting or unexpected, and in a post-Skyfall world that seems like a huge missed opportunity.

If you've made it this far, then I'm sorry for your loss, but let me just add one more personal thing: special mention must go to Spectre's chief villain, Thomas Newman, for whom a sauna in hell is reserved for his score. I found his work in Skyfall brilliantly up to date and innovative, different enough from David Arnold's preceding work but recognisably Bondian even without much of the James Bond Theme. It appears Newman felt the same way, because around half of Spectre's score consists of cues lifted directly from Skyfall. Almost every set-piece is scored by music I instantly recognised, and it repeatedly pulled me out of the film, making me more and more furious. That's unforgivable enough, but he also chooses to ignore the Bond Theme again, when it would have lifted so much of Spectre's action. God only knows what John Barry - who knocked out eleven distinct but connected Bond scores, all brilliant, and one of them in just three weeks - would make of it.

We're not dealing with Die Another Day levels of dreadful here, and there's plenty in Spectre to please casual Bond fans and unfussy cinemagoers. But I'm writing this review as someone who cares so much about these films it's embarrassing. I don't expect perfection and I can forgive a lot in Bond; I mean, I actually really like Quantum Of Solace. But Bond is at its best when it ignores what's going on around it and reaches further and pushes harder to be its own thing, to surprise and excite, and to tell audiences what they want to see rather than react to what it thinks they want to see. Spectre doesn't do that, but, you know, maybe Bond 25 will. James Bond will always return.
"He is very good-looking" Vesper Lynd
User avatar
John Drake
Commander
Posts: 340
Joined: Tue Jun 19, 2007 10:22 pm
Location: Watching the first twenty James Bond films somewhere...

Re: SPECTRE reviews (spoilers!)

Post by John Drake »

Veronica wrote:They sold the "Craig is Fleming's Bond" thing becuase that's just so much easier than trying selling him as the charismatic, sophisticated man. While everyone saw at least a few Bond movies much less people read the books.
That's true. The fact that most people have never read the books or have a foggy memory of them helps a lot. Ian Fleming would not have approved of Daniel Craig.
"He is very good-looking" Vesper Lynd
Veronica
Agent
Posts: 1804
Joined: Sun Feb 22, 2015 9:08 pm
Favorite Bond Movie: From Russia With Love,GoldenEye,The Spy Who Loved Me,Goldfinger,Dr.No
Favorite Movies: After the Sunset,The Devil Wears Prada,The Thomas Crown Affair,To Catch a Thief,Midnight in Paris,North by Northwest, Purple Noon, La piscine.

Re: SPECTRE reviews (spoilers!)

Post by Veronica »

John Drake wrote:
Veronica wrote:They sold the "Craig is Fleming's Bond" thing becuase that's just so much easier than trying selling him as the charismatic, sophisticated man. While everyone saw at least a few Bond movies much less people read the books.
That's true. The fact that most people have never read the books or have a foggy memory of them helps a lot. Ian Fleming would not have approved of Daniel Craig.
While Bond from the movies and the one from the books are not the same exactly the BASICS ARE THE SAME. People who claim he is Fleming's Bond obviously think Bond is a completely other person in the books.
And this quasi pyschoanalising doesn't make Fleming's Bond either. The truth is there is not much you can say about what kind of a person Bond is. He was always a bit of a mystery. Enigma.
Shaken posted a very good article that explains things. "The more you try to paint Bond as a real person the more you put him in the corner. You should try to make an interesting story around him and let him be one-dimensional." Or sth along those lines.
User avatar
Daltonite Toothpaste
Single O
Posts: 883
Joined: Tue May 22, 2012 2:35 pm
Favorite Bond Movie: The Living Daylights, Licence To Kill, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, From Russia With Love, Tomorrow Never Dies & For Your Eyes Only.
Favorite Movies: American Mary, Deadlier Than The Male, Dracula, Saved, The Big Sleep, The French Connection, Under The Sand

Re: SPECTRE reviews (spoilers!)

Post by Daltonite Toothpaste »

Omega wrote:
Daltonite Toothpaste wrote:"The toe curling quips were decreased"

And replaced with toe curling 'dramatic' dialogue. *remembers all that armour guff... shudders*

"as Craig returned to Fleming's original outline of a more complex professional killer."

:lol:

Get's me every time. Craig's Bond.... Fleming's Bond.... between them, is a gap so big, I could park a fleet of Kenworth Tankers in the space.
is there a Craig movie were he does not quit or get bitched out for being incompetent ? And this is Fleming's professional killer? If I had never seen dalton maybe I would believe that crap.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I think it's supposed to be a cool/rebellious... thing. His Bond, despite having a forces back round, has a massive chip on his shoulder. Quite how he not only managed to reach the rank of Commander, but also be drafted into MI6, while at the same time having no respect for authority, boggles the mind.
Image
User avatar
James
OO Moderator
OO Moderator
Posts: 1593
Joined: Sun Feb 11, 2007 5:14 pm
Favorite Bond Movie: On Her Majesty's Secret Service
Favorite Movies: George A Romero's Dawn Of The Dead
Silent Running
Harold and Maude
Location: Europe and Outer Space

Re: SPECTRE reviews (spoilers!)

Post by James »

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film ... leman.html

James Bond today is a security guard, not a gentleman

Daniel Craig plays Bond as a burly lout with a chip on his shoulder - which is why the films have lost their Establishment charm

Part of the essence of James Bond, as created by Ian Fleming, is that he is an English gentleman (in preposterous form). In a brilliant review of Dr No in 1958, the great Paul Johnson (who is still with us) complained of “what is without a doubt the nastiest book I have ever read”. The novel contained, he said, three basic ingredients:

...the sadism of a schoolboy bully, the mechanical two-dimensional sex longings of a frustrated adolescent, and the crude snob-cravings of a suburban adult."

In short, Fleming was on to a winner.

Bond films today have kept the sadism and sex but jettisoned the third element of Fleming’s recipe, the snobbery, thus impairing the balance of the dish. Daniel Craig, as Bond, looks like a security guard, not a man who moves easily at the highest levels of society. This spoils part of the point that Johnson identified, which is that Bond, for all his bad behaviour, is a member of the Establishment, a fact that adds to his aura of power. I am sure this is why David Cameron enjoys Fleming’s books so much, collecting valuable first editions.

In the latest film, Spectre, “M” (Ralph Fiennes) and Bond find themselves threatened by the power of “C” (Andrew Scott), who is trying to merge different services into one monstrous organ of mass surveillance, with sinister consequences which I shall not reveal. C has won his power, we learn, because he went to school with the Home Secretary.

Instead of resembling an idealised version of Mr Cameron, Craig’s Bond has a chip on his shoulder and more closely resembles Mr Cameron’s defeated rival David Davis. Morally superior, perhaps, but less glamorous than Fleming’s triple S formula.
"I can't do that superhero stuff" Daniel Craig
Veronica
Agent
Posts: 1804
Joined: Sun Feb 22, 2015 9:08 pm
Favorite Bond Movie: From Russia With Love,GoldenEye,The Spy Who Loved Me,Goldfinger,Dr.No
Favorite Movies: After the Sunset,The Devil Wears Prada,The Thomas Crown Affair,To Catch a Thief,Midnight in Paris,North by Northwest, Purple Noon, La piscine.

Re: SPECTRE reviews (spoilers!)

Post by Veronica »

It took them 10 years to see Craig's Bond is a charmless,classless thug?
User avatar
ml94
Single O
Posts: 830
Joined: Sat Feb 14, 2015 9:32 am
Favorite Bond Movie: GOLDFINGER, FOR YOUR EYES ONLY, THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS, GOLDENEYE.
Favorite Movies: T2 & THE DARK KNIGHT.

Re: SPECTRE reviews (spoilers!)

Post by ml94 »

Veronica wrote:It took them 10 years to see Craig's Bond is a charmless,classless thug?
Yes...
User avatar
Omega
0010
Posts: 7304
Joined: Mon Mar 05, 2007 9:01 pm
Favorite Bond Movie: TLD LTK GE TND TWINE DAD OHMSS
Favorite Movies: Gladiator
John Wick
Pacific Rim
LOTR trilogy
RED
Kingsman
X-Men First Class
X-Men Days of Futures Past
MI Rogue Nation
Location: the lost city
Contact:

Re: SPECTRE reviews (spoilers!)

Post by Omega »

sorry if its a double post.
Film Review: Spectre
Posted on: October 27th, 2015 byEd Whitfield
Spectre
- See more at http://www.theoohtray.com/2015/10/27/fi ... w-spectre/
Directed by: Sam Mendes

Country: UK/US

Year: 2015

Running Time: 148 mins

Certificate: 12A for workmanlike action, lazy writing, easily escapable situations, and Judi Dench's M withholding information from Bond in life that, had she shared it, might have prevented her death - but is revealed posthumously just to get the plot moving.



[spoil]The Last Waltz?

Warning: This review discusses the plot, including the ending.

Right, let’s put a bullet in the head of that elephant that’s been clomping around the room for three years, a beast that’s done irreparable damage to your bedroom set: Skyfall was an earnest but dull Bond movie with a fallow second act and an illogical finale. Sure, it was manna for the eyes but the brain and heart were unmoved. Yet you loved it, didn’t you? A billion dollars at the global box office says you loved it. A gross Dr Evil would have approved of. Yes, God save us from Bond tourists and their appreciation for Sam Mendes’ introspective, slow burn approach, punctuated by contractually stipulated pyrotechnics. But a billion bucks, adjusted for inflation, the most since Connery’s Thunderball, told EON and the hereditary Broccoli that they’d hit pay dirt. They wanted their talismanic duo back – Sam and Daniel, even if the former couldn’t direct action for the world’s longest action franchise and the latter was po-faced and uncomfortable exuding the very charisma and flippancy associated with one of cinema’s most enduring characters.

Spectre’s the encore you demanded, but it’s not quite more of the same. Mendes may be coming off a monster hit but he’s seen Skyfall and he knows, even if he can’t say it openly, that the anniversary movie lacked a certain joyousness; it was, dare we say, moribund in places. So his second Bond shifts tone and attempts to reintroduce some vim and irreverence into the mix. Daniel Craig, a man whose smile has to be computer generated at absurd expense, looks more relaxed – comfortable even. He’s not going to ham it up for the likes of you but he permits himself a certain amount of old school brio.

For close to two hours that’s symptomatic of the entire enterprise, a movie content to take its time, unfolding at leisure, though you may have anticipated a narrative with greater pace, more kineticism. But if the film moved like a freight train, with action to tense the muscles and engorge the genitals, there’d be no time to drink in Hoyte Van Hoytema’s luscious cinematography or Mendes’ meticulous composition. This is the Bond movie as high art you see; shot to recall Gordon Willis’s work on The Godfather. If you miss a Bond movie with impetus and well-orchestrated mayhem, you’ve missed the point. It’s all about mood these days, idiot.

But the suspicion grows that Mendes only read the screenplay up to a point – to the end of Act Two to be precise. Thereafter, and indeed once again, the script by Star Trek franchise killer John Logan and serial Bond plagiarists Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, becomes a stockpile of Bond and broad action clichés, as the disaster artists desperately attempt to integrate Kevin McClory’s classic villains, spearheaded by ‘60’s relic Ernst Stavro Blofeld, into the more sober, pseudo-realist world of Daniel Craig’s 007. The result is a largely imbecilic last thirty minutes in which we’re subjected to a straight-faced reprise of cartoon excesses from another era, right down to the villain’s lair that mystifyingly (and indeed comically) explodes in its entirety despite a little local fire damage.

If the film’s final section makes a nonsense of its more grounded beginnings and the promise of an espionage plot centred on the perils of electronic surveillance and global intelligence gathering, balls are well and truly dropped when the quartet of scribes (Jez Butterworth being the forth guilty man) succumb to the bane of our age, child obesity aside, the compulsion to establish a personal connection between the hero and his nemesis.

The news that Blofeld, an iconic Bond villain, is our hero’s step brother, motivated to kill him because of a jealous sibling complex, should be enough to tempt even the most committed fan of Ian Fleming’s super spy to put a gun to their gullet. But still the troupe responsible for vandalising the Bond series aren’t finished. Peripheral characters connected to Bond being active in the plot and its resolution, functioning like a family unit, as everyone must have something to do these days, may be loathsome and intrusive, but nothing quite beats our hero giving up his licence to kill to start a relationship with Lea Seydoux’s Bond girl. Sure, his experience with her has been no more intense or intimate than with any other woman met on a mission, and it’s the mawkish opposite of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’s sucker punch finale, but no matter. James Bond has a girlfriend, kids – and if you don’t like the finality that comes with that, then perhaps you should find yourself another franchise to revere.

So Daniel Craig’s four Bonds have now been firmly established as a self-contained quartet with a potentially awful sequel waiting in the wings; a fifth in which an escaped Blofeld seeks further revenge on Bond and his life of blissful, belated domesticity. If such a movie awaits us, if Daniel Craig can be coaxed back to finally, unequivocally quash the promise of his classic debut, then fans of the series must hope that Mendes and his coterie of screenwriters are unavailable. What Bond needs now is a director who can stage action with finesse, working from a script containing at least one original idea, not just a repackaging of material from the series’ illustrious past. What hope?
- See more at: http://www.theoohtray.com/2015/10/27/fi ... w-spectre/[/spoil]
............ :007:
User avatar
Omega
0010
Posts: 7304
Joined: Mon Mar 05, 2007 9:01 pm
Favorite Bond Movie: TLD LTK GE TND TWINE DAD OHMSS
Favorite Movies: Gladiator
John Wick
Pacific Rim
LOTR trilogy
RED
Kingsman
X-Men First Class
X-Men Days of Futures Past
MI Rogue Nation
Location: the lost city
Contact:

Re: SPECTRE reviews (spoilers!)

Post by Omega »

best line so far:
God save us from Bond tourists
runner up:
But still the troupe responsible for vandalising the Bond series aren’t finished.
............ :007:
User avatar
shaken not stirred
Agent
Posts: 721
Joined: Sun Sep 12, 2010 7:23 pm
Favorite Bond Movie: Goldeneye, the spy who loved Me, the world is not enough, goldfinger, live and let die.
Favorite Movies: Iron man,Iron man 2, avengers, goldeneye, dark city, back to the future, live and let die.

Re: SPECTRE reviews (spoilers!)

Post by shaken not stirred »

Man this is a funny review (especially the line at the end about wasting money :lol:
Bond....James bond....Rest in peace (1964-2002)
Atticus
Lieutenant
Posts: 178
Joined: Thu Dec 04, 2014 3:56 pm

Re: SPECTRE reviews (spoilers!)

Post by Atticus »

The bad reviews reflect the fact that they went out of the gates without a finished script, and it shows. Eon, Mendes, Craig, and all the screenwriters obviously had no idea what they were doing.

This review has a sample of the lousy dialogue.

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/entert ... 56856.html

Daniel Craig in ‘Spectre’: Bored, James Bored

Highlights:
  • Bond series a ghost of itself in a movie that looks like a contractual obligation
  • Christoph Waltz’s tedious, smarmy villain has a laughable motive for his crimes
By Lawrence Toppman

The James Bond films celebrate a strange kind of 50th anniversary this year: “Thunderball,” which came out in 1965, marked the last time three good Bonds were released in a row. (It followed “From Russia With Love” and “Goldfinger.”)

Ever since, they’ve veered all over the map, often following a daring high with a depressing low. But no combination of George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton or Pierce Brosnan has given us three top-rate outings in a row.

Daniel Craig debuted in the gripping “Casino Royale,” stumbled through the gibberish of “Quantum of Solace,” then topped himself with the terrific “Skyfall.” Now, in “Spectre,” he presides impassively over 2 1/2 hours of mediocrity. He and almost everyone else seem to be fulfilling an obligation so they can make films they care about.

After the dull opening chase in Mexico, highlighted by a helicopter battle in which Craig’s stuntman is all too evident, the movie plods on with dull chases, dull escapes, a dull race against a clock to save a kidnap victim, a dull bureaucrat trying to replace double-O agents with drones and computers, a dull madman out to dominate the world, a dull hulking assassin who never speaks, a dull love interest 20 years younger than Bond and a dull torture scene in which the bad guy pets – wait for it – a white Persian cat! Bond fans will know what that has meant in films that put this one to shame.

My fingers itch to explain the absurd motive behind the villain’s malevolence. Suffice to say it ties up all of Craig’s Bond films with an explanation none of the others prepared us for, a revelation no doubt conceived at the end of some sleepless, bong-fueled night by the four credited writers and uncredited counterparts. (Though the quartet was never conceived as a unit, this picture pretends it was.)

Did I say the dialogue was dull? Try these samples:

Bond girl: “You shouldn’t stare.”

Bond: “You shouldn’t look like that.”

Bond girl: “Why should I trust you?”

Bond: “Because right now, I’m your best chance of staying alive.”

The film awakens occasionally in London, when the new M (Ralph Fiennes) teams with computer whiz Q (Ben Whishaw) and alert Moneypenny (Naomie Harris) to guard the home front. They oppose C, who wants to dismantle British intelligence, a role in which Andrew Scott displays the conniving menace of a doodlebug.

The story slumbers when we’re left with Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux), the daughter of a Bond nemesis and a doctor who falls in love with him because the script says to. It goes into a coma when Christoph Waltz turns up as the ruthless criminal madman, a man so deranged he never wears socks.

At the center of the film, like a man trying to pull a donkey out of a peat bog, stands Craig: inexpressive, uninflected and obviously tired. Perhaps he’s trying to play a chap who never allows himself access to his emotions, for fear loved ones may be snatched away, but he just looks like an actor who wishes he could quit his job.

By the way, Sam Smith croons a title song with the ominously prophetic name “Writing on the Wall.” It’s dull.
User avatar
Gary Seven
Lieutenant-Commander
Posts: 225
Joined: Sat Jun 16, 2007 5:50 pm

Re: SPECTRE reviews (spoilers!)

Post by Gary Seven »

At the center of the film, like a man trying to pull a donkey out of a peat bog, stands Craig: inexpressive, uninflected and obviously tired. Perhaps he’s trying to play a chap who never allows himself access to his emotions, for fear loved ones may be snatched away, but he just looks like an actor who wishes he could quit his job.
Let's be honest, Craig has looked that way in all his Bond films.
Atticus
Lieutenant
Posts: 178
Joined: Thu Dec 04, 2014 3:56 pm

Re: SPECTRE reviews (spoilers!)

Post by Atticus »

Debbie Schlussel's review:

http://www.debbieschlussel.com/80194/we ... uts-movie/

Among the new movies in theaters today, at least the kids’ movie [The Peanuts] is good. Great, actually. Can’t say as much for James Bond:

* “Spectre” – Rated PG-13: I was neither shaken nor stirred by the latest silver screen incarnation of James Bond. This is possibly the WORST Bond movie ever (though “Quantum of Solace” was pretty bad–read my review). It is slow, boring, nonsensical, and silly. The first 10 to 15 minutes were classic Bond and very exciting and cool. And I thought it was going to be a great movie. But after that, it devolves into a ridiculous mess. The villain was stupid and unintentionally a parody of himself more suitable for “Austin Powers.” And it has instances of torture porn that are disgusting to watch.

Also, per usual in the Daniel Craig Bond era, it is missing all of the usual elements that make people (usually guys) want to go see a Bond movie, especially the gadgets and hot women. The only “gadget” was a watch that is a bomb. I felt like we’d seen that a zillion times before. The women are old. They average 40 years old, which is senior citizenship in Bond horse years. And, by “they,” I only mean three women–only two of which Bond sleeps with (the other is Moneypenny–now Naomie Harris, age 39, who was in the last Bond flick, “Skyfall” – read my review). First, Bond sleeps with 51-year-old Monica Bellucci, who looks at least 55 in this (they managed to make her look much older than she does in real life). You can literally see the bags under her eyes. Ugh. Nobody wants to see James Bond with that. And Bond’s main squeeze in the film, Lea Seydoux–age 30–is pretty, but she’s not drop-dead gorgeous. She’s just okay . . . with a pug nose.

Then, there’s Bond, James Craig himself. He looks old, tired, and haggard, well beyond his 47 years. And on his very thin, blond visage, it looks even worse. (As I always say, Bond is NOT blond! No, he’s not Black, either. But he’s definitely not blond.) Even Bond’s souped-up and malfunctioning Aston Martin (made special for the movie–the model doesn’t exist in real life) looks more Prius than cool sports car. And it’s meant for Agent 009, not Bond’s 007, who is on the outs.

That brings us to the story, which is a giant, “Oy!” I know that Bond movies aren’t known for their believable plots or stunts. I get that. But this was just absurd, and it played like a soap opera. Plus it’s confusing and a lot of it doesn’t get explained. It just magically happens. The chief villain in this movie, Franz Oberhauser (Christoph Waltz), announces that, “through the blood on my mother’s side, Elsa Blofeld,” he is Bond Villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld. HUH?! Who the heck is Elsa Blofeld? And why would I care? I felt like I was watching “Delirious” about a ridiculous soap opera created by a comatose John Candy or the scene in “Tootsie” where Dustin Hoffman comes out to the world as a man, blathering on about his convoluted lineage as a soap opera character who is a man posing as a woman.

Bond gets a video from the now-deceased M (Judi Dench) telling him to kill a particular assassin in Mexico City, which he does. Then, she tells him to go to the dude’s funeral in Rome, which he does (and then beds the guy’s widow, Ms. Bellucci). While in Rome, Bond discovers that the hitman he killed is in a sinister group of criminals called “SPECTRE,” and he tries to find the head of it, Oberhauser (Waltz), so he can dismantle it. One dying member of SPECTRE tells him to find “L’Americain” (“Rick’s American Cafe” was taken?) and that the member’s daughter (Seydoux) knows where it is. Bond goes to see the daughter, and eventually, they end up at a hotel in Tangier, where they magically find a secret room detailing all kinds of plans. Next thing you know, they’re on a train and get off at an abandoned station in the middle of the North African desert, where they are magically picked up by a chauffeur-driven antique Rolls Royce and taken to Oberhauser’s compound in the middle of a meteor-created crater. Bond soon learns that his adopted father and brother were, respectively, Oberhauser’s father and Oberhauser, himself, who says he is Blofeld. And he is the worst Blofeld ever, a caricature of Blofeld but not funny. Just stupid. (My fave Blofelds are Telly Savalas and Donald Pleasence.)

Among the torture porn we are forced to endure in this thing: a man gets his eyes smushed out by one of Blofeld’s henchmen, and we are shown the blood and the man squirming. Eeeuuww. Later, Blofeld uses a computer to drill rods straight into a tied up Bond’s head/face and neck to torture and kill him. Um, this is supposed to be escapist fun? No thanks.

Throughout all of this, there is a second plot going on, which attempts to be relevant to current events and is decidedly pronounced against surveillance tactics to stop terrorism. Yes, Rand and his Paulistinians will love it! The new M (an unusually old-looking and pudgy Ralph Fiennes) is upset with Bond for embarrassing the government when Bond’s destructive exploits are all over the media. On top of that, a new government bureaucrat, “C,” wants to eliminate the “00” spy program, including the job of 007 a/k/a Bond, and merge what remains into MI6. He says drones can do the job and replace humans (that will never happen – drones cannot replace human intelligence). Also, C wants to implement a government surveillance program in which every telephone call and video feed is watched by the British government. Um, here’s a tip: the national security surveillance programs utilized by the Brits and the U.S. do not listen in to every phone call or monitor every closed circuit camera feed. But this movie wants you to think so and think that the people and governments using that surveillance and those feeds are evil and working with villains. Hint, hint.

A couple of other things about the movie: when I saw it, I was forced to endure Sam Smith’s theme song, “Writing’s on the Wall,” twice. First, I endured his wimpy video for the song. I’m not sure if they show that in theaters. And, then, the song played a second time with the opening credits. The credits were another thing moviegoers are forced to endure twice with this movie–at the beginning and the end. Smith’s theme song is silly and effeminate–a lot like Bond has become. It’s the worst Bond theme song I can remember and one of the few that doesn’t bear the same title as the Bond movie for which it was made. His high falsetto voice and the uber-wimpy nature of the song are very appropriate to this Bond. Sheena Easton (“For Your Eyes Only”) is more of a man than this guy, Smith. Please, make it stop.

Incredibly, the movie cost $650 million to make, and it will probably make all of that back and more. Bond movies do well, these days, just like most superhero movies, whether they are good or bad. The masses go and pay their ten-plus bucks and spend their two hours without a critical second thought. And that will happen with this one. It doesn’t matter what I say about this snore-fest. It’ll be a box office success.

That’s okay. I’ve seen worse. But I’ve seen plenty that are much better. Even on the absurd level of unbelievable Bond stunts and action, this doesn’t cut it.
User avatar
bjmdds
001
Posts: 14300
Joined: Sat Mar 17, 2007 10:14 pm
Favorite Bond Movie: Any without CR-egg in it.

Re: SPECTRE reviews (spoilers!)

Post by bjmdds »

She knows her stuff Atticus :!: How any Bond fan can enjoy this retooled moronic history of Fleming's character is beyond belief :!: It truly now is the WORST Bond movie ever made :!:
User avatar
The Saint 007
0013
Posts: 3716
Joined: Thu Aug 02, 2012 11:16 am
Favorite Bond Movie: The Spy Who Loved Me, A View To A Kill, Goldfinger, GoldenEye, For Your Eyes Only, Moonraker, Octopussy, Thunderball

Re: SPECTRE reviews (spoilers!)

Post by The Saint 007 »

I've been noticing more people using the term "soap opera" to describe the lame storyline in Craig's Bond films. It's what I've been saying for years now, and it's about time that people are realizing this.
Image
User avatar
bjmdds
001
Posts: 14300
Joined: Sat Mar 17, 2007 10:14 pm
Favorite Bond Movie: Any without CR-egg in it.

Re: SPECTRE reviews (spoilers!)

Post by bjmdds »

We have nailed it all along here Saint for 10 years now :!:
User avatar
Kristatos
OO Moderator
OO Moderator
Posts: 12525
Joined: Tue Feb 20, 2007 9:26 pm
Location: St. Cyril's

Re: SPECTRE reviews (spoilers!)

Post by Kristatos »

bjmdds wrote:We have nailed it all along here Saint for 10 years now :!:
Yep, we were ahead of the curve. We'll know the others have finally caught up when they start admitting that all the Craig films are soap opera, not just SPECTRE.
"He's the one that doesn't smile" - Queen Elizabeth II on Daniel Craig
Post Reply