1. Happymonk

   9

   The latest entry to the long-running James Bond series has perhaps hit a high note for the series as a whole, which is fitting, considering it was made for the 50th anniversary of the franchise. Pretty much everything feels right about this movie, the acting is superb from all involved, but I think Javier Bardem's turn as the ever famous Bond villain, in this film Silva, steals the show magnificently: he's just the right amount creepy and eerie as he is camp, liking him to Heath Ledger's Joker is perhaps some of the best praise I can give him (shame he does not have an Oscar nomination, although he does have a BAFTA nomination). The film starts in a very exciting fight and chase scene, but the rest of the film is not as high octane as the opening scene, which is good as it really lets you get to see the characters properly. While most of the old Bond films have him going to exotic places to get the bad guy, Skyfall spends most of its run time in England, and the end of the film in Scotland, again, perfect for the 50th anniversary thing they had going, the scenes outside of England are just as good as ever, particularly the scenes in Shanghai, containing some of the best cinematography I have ever seen. This is not found only in Shanghai, for one of the film's crowning glories is how beautifully shot it really is. On the 50th anniversary topic, several nods are made to what happened in the older films: a lot of these, sadly, went over my head, as I have not seen many Bond films at all. It does deal with the timeline as well as it could, showing an old institution, which is changing with the times, but sticking to its roots was a fine indication of where the series is headed in the future. Exciting, beautiful, tense and disturbing can all be used to describe Skyfall, whose only problem in my book is that the final showdown was a little lackluster in places compared to the rest of the film, helped only by Silva's creepy arrival. The best Bond film? Perhaps. 92/100.… Expand

   • Helpful? 2 of 2 users said Yes.
2. AaronKallner

   8

   I thought Skyfall was the best of the Daniel Craig movies. Javier Bardem was a great villain,as always. The plot was very good. great chases and fighting. Although I love Sean Connery more, Skyfall made me a big Daniel Craig fan now too.… Expand

   • Helpful? 16 of 29 users said Yes.
3. Jailhouse_McGee

   7

   Bond simply can't avoid falling back to old cliches if the script doesn't offer smarter opportunities, and the story is rather simple overall. But the cinematography is great, the action breathtaking, the acting fabulous and Javier Bardem gives one of the more original (and personal) villains of any Bond movie. Not as good as "Casino Royal", but one of his better films.… Expand

   • Helpful? 8 of 14 users said Yes.
4. shineonsunfish

   4

   Really disappointed. The first two movies of this rebooted franchise were both excellent. They took place during an understandable time period, with a gritty and realistic Bond who had just been promoted to 007 status. He wasn't chatty, and we didn't care - his steely gaze and quick wit (not to be mistaken for quips - just watch Casino Royale's first scene with Vesper and you'll be able to tell the difference) told us that he was a man with a past. A past that he had no interest in divulging. We were treated to beautiful women (who were given character and personality), dry martinis, perfectly fitted tuxedos, and a sinister Bilderberg type group of powerful people controlling society from within. Flash ahead to Skyfall - Bond looks a good 15 years older, and is in the middle of a random assignment that leaves no resolution to the plot of the first two films. The first two films started with bone-achingly real foot chases through exotic locales. This one had a motorbike jumping onto a moving train. The villains in the first two movies were a terrorist banker and a philanthropist with sinister goals. This one is your typical mincing crazy person with a funny accent (homophobic, xenophobic, AND quite silly all in one, not that it's the actor's fault.) The first films included several types of women (all very beautiful, this is a Bond movie after all), who had varying relationships with Bond. This one had a young 007 agent whose ineptitude at her job ends with her taking the role of a secretary, and an abused sex slave who is questionably seduced and summarily executed and treated like a piece of trash (the horrific "waste of a good scotch" quip is inexcusable). Honestly, "it's a Bond movie, what did you expect" has no place in this conversation - I expected what I was led to expect from the first two movies of the reboot. A gritty, realistic, badass James Bond. Not someone quipping or using silly gadgets or having rapey scenes with random chicks. I am not an original James Bond fan. I don't care what they did in 1962 - that image of the swinging playboy is no longer relevant to this generation. And this movie tried so hard to be relevant, with it's cheap terrorism plot. And the last 30 minutes, while they had great action sequences taken out of context, made no sense to a larger plot, and awkwardly tried to shove in a very stupid and cliched past to Bond's life. The climactic scene left me feeling nothing, because there had been no foundation laid for any emotion regarding that character. And it dragged quite a bit - there's no reason for an action movie to be more than 2 hours long.
   
   That being said, it certainly wasn't all bad. After the initial silliness of the motorbike chase, the fight atop the train was excellent. The entire scene in Shanghai was also done very well, and the actress playing Severine did a very good job with what was ultimately a very stupid role. The lighting was quite remarkable in the whole movie, and Javier Bardem did his best to infuse a traditional silly Bond villain with some pathos. The choice to make Q young was nice (even though he was painfully stupid for being such a computer whiz), and if they hadn't hit the theme quite so hard, it would have been nice to compare the old world vs. the new world through James Bond's eyes. And the courtroom scene was very enjoyable and tense, even though it was a bit silly after all the convoluted planning from Bardem. Unfortunately, this film felt out of context with the other two, putting the time frame oddly late and seeming to be either the end of a series or the beginning of a new one. Some huge gaps of logic in the needlessly silly plot make this definitely the worst Bond movie of the three, and independent of the series it was an extremely mediocre action flick.… Expand

   • Helpful? 9 of 12 users said Yes.

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