Skyfall

Six years ago, 007 was rebooted in a darker, Batmanesque tone. And while its batty neighbors brought their story to a closed trilogy, the team behind the brooding James Bond also joined the continuity of three installments. It's personal here too, and thanks to Javier Bardem's Silva, surprisingly powerful. It's precisely from his appearance onscreen that Skyfall finally picks up speed, while in the first act, it almost goes backwards. The island, the metro, and especially Scotland, however, leave no breathing room and make Daniel Craig's intense physical acting a fitting path to success. In the end, the birthday Bond is rather successful. Better and more tightly knit than the sometimes breathless Quantum of Solace, worse than the deliciously aging Casino Royale, but given my general adoration of the artistic side, I have to shake my head a little due to several plotholes and yet another strangely sluggish opening act. However, this format still works for me, especially since I know it can still go one step further. (14/09/2013)

As an uncritical admirer of QoS, I am quite amazed at how many people there are who are able to bitch about Bond ceasing to be Bond and fading out of the franchise. Yet Sam Mendes has made the most classic entry in the saga, one that fits perfectly into the Sean Connery era in particular, while still being able to work within the confines of the new century. In the opening action, the excavator seems to symbolically break the trend of the previous two films, so that the protagonist then sets out on a new adventure through the path of presumed death. It serves up all the old-school proprieties, starting with a creepy villain that Bardem relishes to no end (the dental exposition will keep me waking from sleep for a long time) while still managing to make fun of them (the conversation with Q) and still managing to get deeper into Bond's head than last time. Everything then culminates in a purely personal final battle, which styles itself as a personal apocalypse (not only because of the helicopter raid). If anything deserves extreme praise, it's Deakins' cinematography and the lighting work (the Shanghai episode rules!), which is crowned by Newman's music, taking a novel route in the style of John Powell. Craig, as usual, is on point. If I have anything to criticize the film for, it is perhaps the persistent effort to remind us that it is "old-school." However, a second screening will certainly fix that. [And it did. A film perfect in every detail. Watching it is pure ecstasy.] (26/10/2012)

Mendes. Sam Mendes. He tries to combine a classic Bond movie and everything that goes with it in the first half, with a total denial of everything Bondian in the second. He tried and succeeded with both. It's a pity, of course, that the two halves don't exactly work together as one coherent whole. They are gorgeous in themselves. Both first and second. The non-Bondian one doubly so. But if you've ever wondered what Bond would look like as directed by Nolan, Mendes will give you a pretty clear answer to that, because this movie is “Nolanesque", completely; as far as plot, characters (there’s even a role for Caine; see Kincade), action, length, the old-fashioned technical side... A special thanks goes to the "invisible" duo Deakins and Newman, because what they bring to this movie is not seen every day in the world of blockbusters. (26/10/2012)

The first half of Skyfall, the only highlight of which is the Shanghai skyscraper, is well crafted but lengthy. Following the obligatory Bond traditions, the pace of the story is slowed down by unnecessary characters (the Bond girl) and brings few surprises (Bond being equipped with technological toys). However, from the scene with a sailboat approaching the island – and the villain’s entrance – it is the best Bond movie until today. Paradoxically, it doesn’t really look like a Bond movie at all. Too bad that the directors of subsequent instalments won’t be able to follow in Mendes’s footsteps. The editing art in the scene involving the imminent court attack and the visual aesthetics in Scotland elevate the Bond brand to the level of a delicate film drama. It is also the first Bond movie in which I enjoyed the relationships between the characters. Javier Bardem, whose performance is somewhere between the Joker and Hannibal, should get an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. (02/11/2012)

I don't know exactly how many Bond movies I've watched so far, but Skyfall is most likely the last one. Sam Mendes and Daniel Craig can't really be blamed for my weak review - I simply got tired of the Bond carousel, and if it hadn't been for its modernization with the arrival of Daniel Craig toward more modern and realistic action films, I might have ended my Bond fandom (which has always represented a marginal part of cinema for me) earlier. Older Bond titles with Sean Connery are, as I have realized during recent reruns, almost unwatchable, and Daniel Craig was the first Bond actor whom I believed in his affiliation with the espionage agency. But no matter how much it is modernized, the foundation remains just as foolish. In the end, all the efforts made to convey fate, tragedy, and greater depth are actually rather bothersome. The film works best in moments when it doesn't take itself seriously and deliberately embraces its trashiness, like in the scene of the cannibalistic iguanas attacking the villains. The behavior of the characters and the main villain's devilish plans are actually similar to a joke, where an inventor explains the mechanism of a brand-new flytrap at the patent office. "It's actually a maze, where the fly wanders through a labyrinth of corridors left, right, left, right..." - "Ah, and at the end...?" the official asks, "another turn?" - "No, at the end, there's a cliff, the fly falls down and breaks its wing."... I appreciate Mendes' sense of visuality, and the beautiful scene with jellyfish in the Chinese metropolis deserves a star all by itself. I also appreciate Craig's ability to play tough guys even at an age when others focus on conversation films, and I appreciate Bardem's ability to play a devilish villain so convincingly that you nod your head in approval, but the rest... there's no use talking about it. Overall impression: 45%. (04/12/2014)