SPOILER ALERT - Skyfall Media Reviews Thread

CJB wrote:

Scashy is real (and he has a PhD). :shock:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100186617/skyfall-i-dont-want-a-dark-james-bond-film-i-want-snobbery-with-violence/

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I remain a Roger Moore partisan – and I’m convinced that he could still play the part. If anything, Roger looks better now that he did when he was still in work.

Good olde Scash.

Ebert weighs in:

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=REVIEWS05

Roger Ebert wrote:

"Skyfall" triumphantly reinvents 007 in one of the best Bonds ever made. This is a full-blooded, joyous, intelligent celebration of a beloved cultural icon, with Daniel Craig taking full possession of a role he earlier played unconvincingly. The film at last provides a role worthy of Judi Dench, returning as M, who is one of the best actors of her generation. She is all but the co-star, with a lot of screen time, poignant dialogue, and a character who is far more complex and sympathetic than we expect in the series. In this 50th year of James Bond series, with the dismal "Quantum of Solace" (2008) still in our minds, I don't know what I expected in Bond #23, but certainly not an experience this invigorating. If you haven't seen a 007 for years, this is the time to jump back in. Four stars

I expect his full review should be up soon.

That short review sums up exactly what I think of Skyfall. I can't say how much I detest Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace and Ebert's spot on when he states that Skyfall sees 'Daniel Craig taking full possession of a role he earlier played unconvincingly.'

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' I don't know what I expected in Bond #23, but certainly not an experience this invigorating. If you haven't seen a 007 for years, this is the time to jump back in.'

So right.

That is an odd comment though, because he always considered Craig highly in both previous films.

CR 4 star review

Roger Ebert wrote:

Yes, Daniel Craig makes a superb Bond: Leaner, more taciturn, less sex-obsessed, able to be hurt in body and soul, not giving a damn if his martini is shaken or stirred. That doesn't make him the "best" Bond, because I've long since given up playing that pointless ranking game; Sean Connery was first to plant the flag, and that's that. But Daniel Craig is bloody damned great as Bond, in a movie that creates a new reality for the character.

QOS 2 star review

Roger Ebert wrote:

"Daniel Craig remains a splendid Bond, one of the best. He is handsome, agile, muscular, dangerous. Everything but talkative."

Ha, I didn't know that. Maybe Ebert fell for the 'new is best' along with the rest of you.

If I hadn't been dubious about Ebert's continuing value as a reviewer to begin with, this disparity would be enough to invalidate him for me.

This, plus him liking SPACEBALLS.

Then check out Armond White's review.

I've never read White before, but he's been mentioned a number of times here. Can't remember if he is supposed to be the Uwe Boll of reviewers or the new Rex Reed, though.

He's the new Pauline Kael.

Largo's Shark wrote:

He's the new Pauline Kael.

Just keep him away from James Toback and Warren Beatty then, okay?

Negative review by Wesley Morris.

http://www.boston.com/ae/movies/2012/11/06/skyfall/iSQH0WHXEQIczXb2lcF6iJ/story-1.html

I disagree with it vehemently, but it's an interesting read.

Ian Dunross unsurprisingly dislikes it.

http://n007.thegoldeneye.com/film_commentary/skyfall_review.html

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The other downside to this theme is that it unintentionally makes the 50-year old series look very creaky, especially under the guise of Craig, who is astoundingly old in appearance and cannot play the British agent with any credibility. From the moment he appears on screen (oddly, without eyebrows), we have the uncomfortable feeling that he is a rambling performance that needs to be pulled from the stage. We simply cannot ignore the ridiculous discrepancy that the man we see in close-ups is the same agent caught up in the dangerous action. There are attempts to enliven his approach with humor; but his delivery of the quips—hampered by a poor sound mix and by his own voice (effete, light, almost indistinguishable from a female voice)—reminds us that humor is not his forte.

Craig's voice is far from effete and light. That review makes many silly claims, but that one is just flat-out absurd.

I find his use of "we" in his writings rather presumptuous and annoying.

I despise the majestic plural. The lesser spotted plural is alright, though.

The thing that annoys me about that review is how he tries to bitch about Bond not being an innovator, SkyFall being a rehash and too different from old Bond is that he doesn't seem to realize that those views are all contradictory. Trying to make Bond movies like GF 50 years later is well going to be a bit old fashioned and a rehash. And if you change it to make it more modern then well you are going to be aping modern trends and not being different from modern films. And to be a real innovator Bond would have to totally ditch the formula which is something I don't think many fans actually want.

Oh isn't complaining about SkyFall's lyrics a bit much? It's not like Bond songs have usually had good lyrics.

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Craig's voice is far from effete and light. That review makes many silly claims, but that one is just flat-out absurd.

Oh yeah, what the hell?

Red Letter Media on SKYFALL: http://redlettermedia.com/half-in-the-bag-skyfall/

Ray Pride from Newcity Film:

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Grand Theater: The Stagecraftiness of “Skyfall,” the latest Bond

$287 million and counting: a week before opening in the United States and ten days after opening internationally, “Skyfall” is making one pretty Moneypenny. An admirable virtue of Sam Mendes’ film is that the dialogue in the screenplay by Neal Purvis and Robert Wade and John Logan in Bond’s fiftieth year seldom stoops to that kind of second-rate pun-play, with much of the dialogue winky but not weary, self-conscious but not punny: “Only a bold woman wears a backless dress with a Beretta strapped to her thigh”; and later “I like you better without your Beretta”; the in-jokey “Fifty-year-old Macallan, a favorite of yours, I understand” and the literal (but also figurative) “Storm’s coming.” It’s good money for value, as a Brit might say: moody, broody, and expertly made; as much a good movie as a fine Bond movie.

Logan, a playwright by first trade, wrote screenplays for “Gladiator,” “Hugo,” “Rango,” “Sweeney Todd” and “Any Given Sunday,” among others, but he and Mendes take advantage of their shared theatrical background. Extended tête-à-tête mano-a-manos between British actors of several generations—Daniel Craig, Judi Dench, Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris, Ben Whishaw, Albert Finney—take advantage of their performance skills. But individual setpieces are weighted with visual elements that draw from a theatrical vocabulary, such as Dench’s besorrowed M overlooking gray London at a picture window slashed with billions of cold tears, match-cut to a wounded Bond cascading over a waterfall like a spent package, as well as a martial arts duel in a disused floor of a Shanghai high-rise lit only by sky-high scrim of neon sculpture. High-art allusions bristle gainfully more of the sort of strokes and coups-de-theatre that would be used to extend the space of the stage, such as the bad guy held in a cage that makes him less Hannibal Lecter and more one of Francis Bacon’s screaming popes. In the National Portrait Gallery, Q (Whishaw) meets Bond in front of J. M. W. Turner’s painting of furious battle at sea, “The Fighting Temeraire,” which prompts a knowing, relevant historical aside, but alongside that is the fantastically simple and haunting 1844 painting “Rain, Steam and Speed.” But a glimpse: the nineteenth century offering a phrase that suits its twentieth-century spy, here, now, in the twenty-first.

While Bond’s passage into middle age is dark, it’s not dour, especially when you consider scenes like a chaste but close passage where he allows fellow agent Eve (Harris) to shave him close with his own straight razor, close, down on her knees: fraught, since the last time Bond sat in such a wicker chair, in “Casino Royale,” his testicles were roundly lashed. The most topical element of the modern-world plotting is the bad guy, Silva, the script modeling Bardem’s louche, white-maned murderer after Wikileaks’ Julian Assange with slanderous glee. Silva’s a Malkovichian Cro-Magnon, a lip-smacking jerk, ripely inhabited. The byplay between the two, exploring what the two may have in common, plays out on one of Hong Kong’s many unlisted islands, a deserted city that’s been shot up and weathered like a Srebrenica-by-the-bay. Taunting Bond as he’s tied to a chair, Silva says, “Your knees must be killing you,” a further iteration of the gesture to just coincidentally both receive royal honors and to perform fellatio.

Fabric is flung and torn, too: Tom Ford’s trim suits are a special effect in themselves, neatly gussying Craig’s blocky form: one coat, especially, a bespoke pea coat, is whimsical, near risible and just right, pluperfect peacockolatry. Roger Deakins shot “Skyfall” with the same digital capture format he used on “In Time,” but he brings the same cool eye for space as in the more formal compositions of the many Coen brothers movies he’s shot, as well as “Jarhead” and “Revolutionary Road” for Mendes. It’s one gorgeous-looking movie. Brand names, a perennial fixture of the series, are prominent yet discreet: Heineken cases in Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar and bottles downed at leisure on a tropical isle; VW Beetles crushed by the half-dozen; the latest Coca-Cola bottles on any given desk; a dram of Courvoisier with the label cheated to camera just so; a glimpse of a fictional news network, “CNN” with a character called “Wolf” and “Blitzer.” A raft of scenes boasts a fuckload of liquor. (All because all the players want a smoke and no one can have one.) When Bond returns from an unscheduled evaporation, bearing shrapnel from depleted uranium shells, as if on the battlefield in Iraq, M snips, “Ran out of drink where you were, did they,” no question mark, thank you.

In an era of remote-controlled, legally dubious drone warfare, what good, the question is repeatedly asked of the women and men of MI6, are assets in the field, feet on the ground, flesh in the flesh? Not so much that it costs money, mind you, but there’s the possibility of revelations, investigations and loss of sustaining prestige. There’s no real critique of power in “Skyfall,” but there is the sleek, pulse-quickening romance of managing self-image, influence and power as days grow dark and fewer. (Ray Pride)

http://newcityfilm.com/2012/11/07/review-skyfall/

Andrew O'Heir from Salon:

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“Skyfall”: Bi-curious Bond?
Daniel Craig's grittier 007 faces contemporary sexuality and imperial angst in the moody, spectacular "Skyfall"
BY ANDREW O'HEHIR

Reinventing the James Bond franchise to fit the sexual and cultural politics of the 21st century is a dicey proposition at best, and it’s safe to say we’ve seen mixed results so far. If Daniel Craig’s 2006 debut as Bond in “Casino Royale” was a smashing success, bringing a new physicality and cinematic verve to the series along with a touch of real-world anomie, the dour and violent “Quantum of Solace” arguably went too far in the latter direction. (I actually thought it was an interesting experiment, if not an entirely successful one, but fans who complained that it didn’t seem much like a Bond movie were correct.) That $225 million misstep nearly succeeded in killing off the series – which left the world of Ian Fleming’s novels behind long, long ago – but now Bond and Craig are back in “Skyfall,” a rich, impressive, overstuffed and rather chilly spectacle that already looks like the biggest hit in franchise history, even before its American release.

I suppose the obvious thing to say about the Bond series is that it’s a stylized and gendered fantasy universe with almost no connection to the real world. But it’s never been quite that simple. Of course Sean Connery’s iconic 007 of the 1960s was an idealized projection of maleness, an object of narcissistic lust for preadolescent males first of all, and only secondarily for women. He combined classic masculine characteristics of strength, virility and stoicism with more feminine standards like style, grooming and verbal wit; in many respects Connery-as-Bond was the grandfather of the metrosexual. There can be no doubt that he shaped the gender identity of an entire generation of boys; “Goldfinger,” “Dr. No” and “Diamonds Are Forever” (which, inexplicably, my friends and I decided was the best of them all) are closely linked in my memory with my first glimpses of my big brother’s Playboy collection, and the semiotics are about the same.

You can probably explain a lot about the contemporary “crisis of masculinity” by tracing the Bond character through the decadent self-parody of the Roger Moore era, the brief and underappreciated Timothy Dalton interregnum and the semi-renaissance under ironic, imperturbable Pierce Brosnan. Let’s leave that for someone else’s doctoral dissertation and fast-forward to Craig, who presents an earthier, more physical 007 than any of his predecessors. Yes, he’s an actor who possesses unusual and ambiguous sexual power (employed to entertaining effect in “Skyfall”), but I’m actually talking about something more or something different. With his blocky physique, short-cropped hair and tightly tailored clothing, Craig feels connected to the stone and soil of Britain in a way no previous Bond has. Sure, Craig’s 007 can swill frou-frou cocktails with exotic beauties in a high-end Macao casino, but he’s arguably more comfortable on a London rooftop or a Scottish moor.

In what’s sure to be among the most discussed gender-studies moments of 2012, James Bond finds himself imprisoned on a devastated Chinese island by a nefarious character called Silva, played by Javier Bardem as the first overtly gay villain in Bond history. Now, the character of Silva is likely to be controversial on his own. I think he’s intended to offer a new twist on the long and unfortunate cinematic history of gay male psychopaths – he’s queeny and devious, but also plenty skilled in the male-coded arts of warfare – but I’m not sure that entirely lets Mendes and the writers off the hook. Anyway, whether out of genuine desire or a desire to undercut 007’s masculinity, Silva slides up close to his bound antagonist and caresses his thighs: “There’s a first time for everything – eh, Mr. Bond?” But Bond meets his captor’s gaze with his customary implacability and asks, “What makes you think it’s my first time?”

No, I’m not suggesting that director Sam Mendes or his writing team (John Logan, Neal Purvis and Robert Wade) intend to raise serious questions about James Bond’s sexual orientation or possible level of bi-curiosity. It’s a gag, but a gag with a purpose: The ultimate secret-agent man’s man is familiar with the concept of homosexuality, and doesn’t view it as a matter for snickering or an outright impossibility. Of such baby steps is a new society forged! More seriously, that moment captures the complicated dance the makers of “Skyfall” are trying to pull off: Situating James Bond in a more modern and slightly more realistic (or “realistic”) context, while holding onto his fantasy allure and remaining loyal to the ritualistic and episodic storytelling style that’s integral to this series.

In “Skyfall” as in “Casino Royale,” Craig’s Bond is meant to seem more vulnerable, more prone to human failings, than the character has ever been before. We see him unshaven (with gray in his stubble!), seriously wounded and/or seriously drunk, out of shape and unable to pass a basic target-shooting test. There’s an obvious contradiction here, since 100 percent of the potential audience knows that Bond is in practical terms an immortal character, that he has as much chance of not surviving or not triumphing as Odysseus does of not reaching home at the end of the poem that’s named after him. Yet Odysseus is made to suffer en route to his destination and so is Bond, who faces a number of major losses in between the show-stopping action scenes (which are some of the best in series history).

As hardcore fans already know, Bond’s past is linked to the landowning gentry of Scotland, and his family’s brooding ancestral manse actually becomes the climactic setting for “Skyfall” (featuring a nice cameo from Albert Finney as the crusty gamekeeper). Whether Mendes is really trying to add grit and dimension to Bond’s story or just cramming in another cinematic reference – in this case, to Alfred Hitchcock’s espionage classic “The 39 Steps,” which is also about a Scottish manhunt – is debatable. “Skyfall” is moody, thrilling and for the most part beautifully made, but like so much of contemporary action cinema it’s less like a story than a series of disconnected episodes, drawn from a whole range of plots and genres but employing the same characters.

Mind you, a lot of those episodes are pretty doggone terrific, and from the first seconds Mendes (best known for serious indie drama like “American Beauty” and “Revolutionary Road”) makes clear that he’s sticking closely to Bond formula and not arting up the thing too much. We begin with a dynamite opening chase sequence on the streets and rooftops of Istanbul, and then atop a train into the Turkish countryside, concluding with a surprise twist out of a classic Sherlock Holmes adventure (I won’t say which one). While the plot is the usual MacGuffin-ish search for something or someone – in this case, a hard drive that will reveal the identities of numerous British and American agents – the globetrotting quest packs in more film-school references to other movies than I could count, including several other Bond pictures, “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “Silence of the Lambs” and “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.” (The technical work here is outstanding, especially Roger Deakins’ cinematography.)

There’s a tremendous fight sequence set inside a Shanghai skyscraper, shot entirely in silhouette against a backdrop of “Blade Runner”-scale digital billboards, and another one in the aforementioned ultra-louche Macao casino, involving a pair of giant carnivorous lizards. But “Skyfall” is also among the most conspicuously British of the Bond films, a blend of Empire nostalgia and generational anxiety that features a devastating terrorist attack on the M.I.6 headquarters in London and the prospect that Judi Dench’s M will be forced out by an officious Tory politician (Ralph Fiennes). As a brand-new wonder boy Q (Ben Whishaw) tells 007, the gadgetry of the past has been set aside in favor of ruthless efficiency. Which does not mean – spoiler alert! – that you won’t see that classic Aston Martin at some point.

Honestly, the convoluted plot surrounding Bardem’s dyed and spackled villain and the vague mood of “Homeland”-style paranoia feel as incidental as Bond’s come-and-go heterosexual liaisons. (Naomie Harris and French actress Bérénice Marlohe offer the non-Craig eye candy.) “Skyfall” is a push-pull between the past and the present, an effort to drag a symbol of maleness as iconic as the Union Jack bulldog on M’s desk into a world of approximate gender equality and approximate acceptance of sexual difference. I’m not sure how sustainable that is over the long term; this is a smashing entertainment, but also one that feels over-engineered and constrained by its origins. But if James Bond’s definitely not going to get it on with a supervillain – especially not one with such execrable taste in shirts – he doesn’t feel embarrassed about that thing that happened at Oxford that time.

http://www.salon.com/2012/11/08/skyfall_bi_curious_bond/

Ed Champion at Reluctant Habits:

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Review: Skyfall (2012)
November 6, 2012 · by Edward Champion ·

The James Bond film series has experienced growing pains during its five decades: the awkward political correctness in the Pierce Brosnan era (Tomorrow Never Dies‘s “Filthy habit!”), Sean Connery’s dubious high-priced return to Diamonds Are Forever for a very silly moon buggy chase scene, the preposterous gadgets in Die Another Day, and the failure to figure out what to do with Timothy Dalton. Quantum of Solace, with its return to convention and its ridiculous title, threatened to attenuate the good will established by the series reboot, Casino Royale.

But I’m pleased to report that Skyfall is a sharp, thrilling, classy, and rich-looking installment announcing a confident trajectory for the Daniel Craig iteration of James Bond. While it’s somewhat alarming to see Craig transform from the new double circle on the block to aging agent in six mere years, he remains an enjoyably chilly and crisp Bond, preferring to unleash his quiet fury when his car is destroyed rather than when the people around him die. He’s good enough to ask about agents who have been killed, but this is more of a functional than a empathic query. He’s willing to rip shards of depleted uranium from his chest to ID a sniper. When given little more than a radio transmitter and a pistol responding to his thumbprint from Q or the family hunting rifle for a final showdown, he’ll make do with the Spartan setup. He’s the James Bond for the “too big to fail” age. If he wasn’t busy strangling henchmen with his legs in icy water, he’d have a bustling career as a corporate efficiency expert.

You could say that Craig’s Bond is the closest to Richard Stark’s Parker. Like Parker, Craig’s Bond is focused and economical, even when he’s holding onto the bottom of an elevator to pursue a sniper. Yet Bond’s commitment to professionalism extends beyond money. He isn’t against vacation. But his duty to his country, perhaps anchored by his reliance on pills and alcohol, hinders him from becoming a full-fledged sociopath. “Orphans make the best recruits,” says M to Bond. And the price for being a double agent is extirpating your need for family. It’s a distinction that former MI6 agent Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem, playing the baddie here), fails to understand, which may be one of the reasons Silva insists on calling M “Mommy.”

We’re informed early on that not everybody can make it out in the field. But while a lesser action film would drop this idea after the handsome actors deliver the details to advance the story, Skyfall actually follows up on this idea throughout its fast-moving two and a half hours. Aside from the many literal missed shots informing the narrative, Skyfall is smart enough to show us M’s poor pistol marksmanship when away from the office. We also see an injured Bond lose his aim after a serious injury (with Silva taking advantage of this later on an island in a very gripping William Tell moment).

Here is a Bond entry in which the best people don’t always make the best decisions on the job. But in Skyfall, there’s the suggestion that real world know-how is no match against technology. It isn’t just the service door that refuses to open in the Underground when there’s an oncoming train. The creative team here understands that Bond has always been steeped in an old world approach. By pitting MI6 against a vengeful hacker who would throw an Ugandan election just for kicks, the human intelligence — the way Bond has worked and seduced a room — that has always buttressed the series is given an intriguing trial. But if being a double agent is “a young man’s game,” there’s surprising adaptability for the old dogs in need of a shave. As Bond tells a man who attempts to seduce him, “What makes you think this is my first time?”

We even get to see M reciting Tennyson’s “Ulysses” during a public inquiry. Beyond this unexpected literary reading (not without precedent, given Simon Raven’s contributions to On Her Majesty’s Secret Service), there’s also an unexpected cameo from an obnoxious CNN anchor. The priapic qualities of the old world may gave us James Bond, but it also saddles us with Wolf Blitzer.

I suspect these sly nuances — which have much to do with John Logan working with the established Neal Purvis and Robert Wade screenwriting team this time around — may cause Skyfall to hold up slightly better than Casino Royale‘s darker edge and Guantanamo Bay-inspired torture scene. While it’s tempting to compare the three Daniel Craig films with Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, Skyfall allows us more room to settle in. It’s possible that the delay in production caused Skyfall‘s creative team to tighten what they had. Because the exciting opening train chase, Silva’s indelible parable of the two rats, and the new Q trying to hide his sneaky work from Gareth Mallory are the types of moments that emerge from artful and well-considered entertainment.

It was also a brilliant move to get Roger Deakins on board as cinematographer. His ambers and umbers give this film the glow of fifty year scotch. There’s one especially coruscating scene in a Shanghai high rise, where Bond dukes it out with a sniper against the dazzling backdrop of endless glass and projected lights from the outside rolling slowly into the dark.

While Adele’s theme song is marvelous, Thomas Newman’s pulsating score is a major disappointment. Newman’s music here seems more at home in a forgettable action movie playing on HBO at three in the morning. I don’t know if John Barry can ever be replaced, but if the Bond films are going to step it up with installments like Casino Royale and Skyfall, then the Broccoli-Wilson team needs a composer to match.

At times, Skyfall is a little too reliant upon Silva’s theatrics, which threaten to overshadow the film’s mild efforts to deepen the relationship between Bond and M. This may be because Silva is one of the best Bond villains in years. When Silva tells Bond about what he did to get where he is today (with director Sam Mendes wise enough to hold this performance in a long take), Bardem instantly commands your attention. But the film flags a bit just before his first appearance, even after it has gone to the trouble to destroy a pivotal base in a gas explosion. We all know that the James Bond films tend to require the bad guys to inform us of their vile plans in person.

But these are pedantic beefs. I enjoyed Skyfall a great deal. I even found myself blurting out “Awesome!” during a particularly sinister exchange between Bond and Silva. And if that is the measure of whether you should see this movie, Skyfall more than lives up.

http://www.edrants.com/review-skyfall-2012/

Vadim Rizov at GreenCine:

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About halfway through Skyfall, James Bond (Daniel Craig) finally meets this installment's villain, Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem). Per usual, there's plenty of time for 007 and his prey to chat, so Raoul explains his cyberterrorism operations in detail. "Everybody needs a hobby," Bond smirks. "What's yours?" asks Silva. "Resurrection," says Bond, speaking on behalf of an ever-anachronistic series perpetually plagued by production delays.

...In a word association test, Bond doesn't hesitate to answer "country" with "England." The good old British bulldog spirit that built empires lives on M's desk, in the form of a porcelain canine with the Union Jack on its rump. Skyfall asks viewers to accept reactionary sentiments as eternal verities. M defends MI6's mission asserting that what looks silly and quaint is vital, which extends to limitless counter-terrorist shoot-to-kill activities for the good of all, never subject to review from nattering prime ministers who don't understand what's at stake. Bond's always been a rogue MI6 representative, but the implications of his contempt for authority cut deeper in a time of barely disclosed drone attacks and shadowy international law enforcement. Wrapping this kind of plea for unlimited authority in the British flag makes this plea even more old-school: taken to its logical limit, Skyfall would extend to an argument for recolonizing the Empire in the name of the greater good. (cf. Eldridge Cleaver: "The 'paper tiger' hero, James Bond, offering whites a triumphant image of themselves, is saying what many whites want desperately want to hear reaffirmed: I am still the White Man, lord of the land, licensed to kill, and the world is still an empire at my feet.") The finale finds Bond as lord of the Scottish manor, defending his territory from maniacal foreigners.

... "Sometimes the old ways are the best," Bond asserts in one of many pointed arguments for the series' eternal (ir)relevance. Later, M will recite Tennyson, Lord Alfred's "Ulysses" to a committee questioning her MI6 stewardship: "We are not that strength which in old days moved heaven and earth." Then Bond comes in and shoots some people, administering peace through strength.

The post-Empire angst is of greater interest than the series' attempt to deepen Bond by assigning him a tragic childhood backstory that "explains" why he has an "alcohol and substance abuse" problem. (Do cartoons need backstories?) The script goes cod-Freudian, with M's deferential "mam" becoming a surrogate "Mummy" for Bond and Silva. Attempts at psychological gravity or no, there's never a "new Bond," only some distracting feints in that direction until the time is right to reintroduce the old standbys and the unkillable super-spy makes all right with impossible timing and unwavering aim. The new Q (Ben Whishaw) refuses to give Bond the usual fancy gadgets, but fret not: the Aston Martin with machine guns in its headlights from Goldfinger will be along eventually, complete with a Bond brass blurt.

Director Sam Mendes and cinematographer Roger Deakins' shared job is to give old thrills fresh forms. Ever since his cinematic debut with American Beauty, Mendes tends for starchy, heavy-handed drama. Skyfall finds a fleet use for his technical acumen, and Deakins renders the film gorgeous. (One familiar image from their past collaboration on Jarhead: a nighttime field lit only by orange flames, only this time the background for running-and-gunning instead of contemplative staring.) The ostensibly moody touches are but window dressing for the most-muscled Bond on record (who, in 2006's Casino Royale emerged from the ocean like Ursula Andress in Dr. No) to give the audience what they came for. Nearly every Bond film coasts on franchise goodwill while delivering mediocre delights. Skyfall is the unreconstructed ideal, mixing preposterousness and expert stuntwork in perfect proportion.

http://daily.greencine.com/archives/008327.html

The New Statesman's Ryan Gilbey:

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If the first two films in Daniel Craig’s tenure as James Bond adopted a new broom approach, the mood of Skyfall is very much “out with the old, in with the old”. Nostalgia permeates the movie. “I like to do things the old-fashioned way,” says Bond, while several characters deliver the film’s mission statement: “Sometimes the old ways are the best.” Humour makes a comeback, which is good news for anyone who rightly cherishes Bond’s use of alligators as stepping stones in Live and Let Die, as do familiar figures including Q (Ben Whishaw), the gadgets expert reborn as a boyish computer whizz. Q boasts of the upset he can cause sitting at his laptop in his pyjamas, which may or may not be a Chatroulette joke.

Craig has relaxed into Bond without losing any steeliness. He still looks like a dented bullet with bat ears: appearing at the home of his MI6 boss, M (Judi Dench), he is as recognisable in silhouette as Mickey Mouse. M is being plagued by a terrorist who has access to the identities of MI6’s undercover operatives and is taunting her about past sins. It looks like Bond is in for the shock experienced by any child upon discovering that their mother had a life predating parenthood.

M turns out to be rather like the heroine of a Victorian melodrama who has put up her baby for adoption: while stationed in Hong Kong before the handover, she surrendered to China an agent of hers, Silva (Javier Bardem), who had antagonised the Chinese government. His new family gave him enough material for an entire shelf of misery memoirs and now he is determined to make Mummy face up to her mistakes. He destroys buildings and derails trains, which is an extreme way of handling abandonment issues. At least Bond now has a long-lost brother, sort of. He and Silva have a lot of catching up to do and obviously it would be nicer if this could take place without Bond being tied to a chair, but then no family is perfect.

Bond can certainly feel secure in the knowledge that he is M’s golden boy. Even Silva’s name is obscurely reassuring: silver, secondbest, second place on the podium. But Bond knows that what happened to Silva could happen to him too. No wonder he pulls out the stops to dazzle M. The final third of the film is taken up with Bond organising what anyone with siblings will know is a luxury beyond compare: quality time alone with Mum. Bond even wheels out the Aston Martin DB5 in her honour. She’s his special girl.

Silva can’t match that. He dyed his hair platinum, presumably to advertise kinship with his white-haired matriarch, but M would have seen through that even if his exotic, florid Spanish accent hadn’t given him away. Judi Dench has already been seen this year in J . Edgar as a matriarch disapproving of her gay son, and something of that feeds into M. Perhaps Silva’s mistake was expecting Mother to love him, whatever his preferences. In sanctioning at the start of the film a shot that almost kills Bond, M proves that her allegiance is to the family (ie Britain), rather than to its individual components. Anyone is disposable so long as the family endures. Even Bond has to learn that. In a psychological examination, he responds to the word “country” with “England”, but redeems himself partially by choosing Scotland as the site of a showdown with Silva.

Sam Mendes has not yet distinguished himself as a film-maker, but he brings to Skyfall some visual touches to support the theory that it could have been called All About My Mother (if Pedro Almodóvar, another exotic, florid Spaniard, hadn’t got there first). Bond’s crumbling family home in the Scottish highlands has a Bates Motel eeriness to it, while the first shot from the foot of its staircase mirrors Hitchcock’s camera in Psycho. It’s significant, in that context, that Bond’s only love scene involves him creeping unannounced into a shower. His only love scene with a woman, that is. Like Norman Bates, Bond has a side to him to which Mother is oblivious. Could it really be true, as he suggests to Silva in the film’s most highly-charged scene, that he has known the heat of another man’s weapon? Mum’s the word.

http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/film/2012/10/skyfall-review

http://theincrediblesuit.blogspot.ca/2012/11/blogalongabond-skyfall-review.html

http://www.metro.co.uk/film/918890-steven-spielberg-reveals-james-bond-rejection-as-he-praises-skyfall

Steven Spielberg wrote:

I've seen it once and I'll see it a second time.

Triviachamp wrote:

The thing that annoys me about that review is how he tries to bitch about Bond not being an innovator, SkyFall being a rehash and too different from old Bond is that he doesn't seem to realize that those views are all contradictory. Trying to make Bond movies like GF 50 years later is well going to be a bit old fashioned and a rehash. And if you change it to make it more modern then well you are going to be aping modern trends and not being different from modern films. And to be a real innovator Bond would have to totally ditch the formula which is something I don't think many fans actually want.

Oh isn't complaining about SkyFall's lyrics a bit much? It's not like Bond songs have usually had good lyrics.

Quote :

Craig's voice is far from effete and light. That review makes many silly claims, but that one is just flat-out absurd.

Oh yeah, what the hell?

When Bond is talking with M outside the DB5 after entering Scotland, there is a moment when his voice goes way up and/or weakens like he is trying to sound like a little kid. I assumed it was something along the lines of a more subtle take from Nimoy playing Spock as a teen in a cut scene from TREK 5. Perhaps this is the moment the writer fixates on. I don't like Craig's voice for Bond either, but it isn't something I lose sleep over.

For the most part, I find this review superb -- not just because I agree with most of it, but because of the level of commitment he has invested in the piece. It isn't JUST a case of looking down his nose at the film or those who like it IMO ... it almost seems to me like Dalton's Bond telling Saunders about all the violins having names in TLD, just an acknowledgement of reality from where he stands, precisely where he stands.

trevanian wrote:

When Bond is talking with M outside the DB5 after entering Scotland, there is a moment when his voice goes way up and/or weakens like he is trying to sound like a little kid. I assumed it was something along the lines of a more subtle take from Nimoy playing Spock as a teen in a cut scene from TREK 5. Perhaps this is the moment the writer fixates on. I don't like Craig's voice for Bond either, but it isn't something I lose sleep over.

Yeah, I didn't care for Craig's delivery of "You know the whole story." He sounded like a dead set toddler.

http://www.cinemablend.com/new/How-Skyfall-Proves-James-Bond-British-Batman-34112.html

Another Bond/Wayne comparison.

CJB wrote:

trevanian wrote:

When Bond is talking with M outside the DB5 after entering Scotland, there is a moment when his voice goes way up and/or weakens like he is trying to sound like a little kid. I assumed it was something along the lines of a more subtle take from Nimoy playing Spock as a teen in a cut scene from TREK 5. Perhaps this is the moment the writer fixates on. I don't like Craig's voice for Bond either, but it isn't something I lose sleep over.

Yeah, I didn't care for Craig's delivery of "You know the whole story." He sounded like a dead set toddler.

HAHA! Yes!!