This is topic Skyfall in forum Film Handlers' Movie Reviews at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.


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Posted by Edward Havens (Member # 4715) on 10-27-2012, 12:38 PM:
 
Yep, it's the best Bond movie in over forty years. Sets the mold for which all future Bond movies will be judged. The formula is simple: Oscar-winning director. Oscar-nominated screenwriter. The best living cinematographer out there, even if he hasn't won an Oscar yet. Throw in as many Oscar-winning and Oscar-nominated actors you can get your hands on. Add Noomu Rapace's creepy ex-husband, a boatload of stunts that prove once and for all there needs to be an Oscar awarded for Best Stunts, and a great Thomas Newman score. Shake, not stir, and it's a classic from the first frame.

Yes, Bond drinks a beer. And guess what, it totally fits, once you've actually seen the scene. And he gets his martini too, shaken just so.

I ain't gonna spoil the movie for anyone, but this Bond fanatic went in with high expectations and Mendes, Craig and everyone on down delivered.

A+.
 
Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 10-30-2012, 01:47 PM:
 
Sounds good. I have a question on this one... how does it rank on the seizure-cam scale? The last one I saw had a car chase that was chopped and cut so quickly and shaken so badly that I could barely make out who was chasing who or what was going on. I gave up after watching that scene, highly disappointed. I love a good action flick. And I enjoy Bond movies generally. But the last one started off shaking me up to the point where I didn't feel like sitting through two hours of it.
 
Posted by Frederick Lanoy (Member # 5416) on 10-30-2012, 02:51 PM:
 
Don't Worry. Like you Sam Mendes does'nt like shaking cam. No school like old school : very few CGI effect, excellent editing, beautiful action scenes. And the open credits is truly amazing.

By the way : 4 K DCP. I think the image looks fantastic.
 
Posted by Kurt Zupin (Member # 2751) on 11-06-2012, 06:39 AM:
 
I posted this on my facebook thread so if your friends with me there then you've seen it already.

I am not a Bond expert, I haven't seen every bond film ever made. I would say I've seen half of them.

Skyfall is the best of the films I have seen, and most likely it is the best of the entire series. Javier Bardem sets the measuring stick for the next 50 years of Bond as what a Bond Villain should be. He is probably in the movie for a total of 30 minutes but when he is on screen you are riveted, you laugh, you gasp. He covers everything a good bad guy should, you even have to question whether you should be cheering him on to succeed in his goal.

I loved the opening Parkour scene in Casino Royale but the opening chase scene is one of the best scenes of this type put on screen. The stunt work on motorcycles is simply put, insane.

Sam Mendes is exactly what this franchise needed, bringing along with him the amazing Roger Deakins we get possibly the best shot film in the Bond series. The fight scenes are well choreographed and shot. You can see who's fighting who, and what they are doing in said fight. With Skyfall they have set up the future of this franchise with the introduction of some old friends, one that was introduced in the trailer. Other's you'll have to wait and see.

Go see this movie, see it in IMAX film if you get the chance as it looks spectacular. I will update after I see it in digital on Wednesday afternoon.

ENJOY!

5/5 [thumbsup]
 
Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 11-09-2012, 11:52 PM:
 
Kurt, you haven't updated! I could count the pixels in the digital IMAX I saw. Lots of aliasing.

But this is indeed a great movie. Bond fans will really enjoy it. Good thing I am a Bond fan but I think I'd enjoy it even if I weren't. There is a bit of shaky cam during a few dialog scenes, but it wasn't used to an overly ridiculous amount. I'm curious why they even used it at all. I did have a bit of trouble discerning who was who in the opening sequence because both Bond and the bad guy had similar colored jackets. Yup, that's as intense as my gripes get on this movie, I think.
 
Posted by Louis Bornwasser (Member # 3063) on 11-10-2012, 06:34 AM:
 
Completely agree with Kurt. Visually stunning.

Best clear, sound in a long time. An additional treat for me; heard it in a Cinema where I installed the sound and where they still care. Usual CP500/Ashly/JBL. 35mm still there, but Christie 2K was used. Could have been louder, but for 1 pm on Friday with the over 65 crowd, it was still good.

Best of all, no stupid "comedians" or werewolves. Louis
 
Posted by Jean-Pierre Gutzeit (Member # 7275) on 11-10-2012, 06:51 AM:
 
Wondering at the german start last week, I detected a consisted unsharpness in the DCPs (compensating retouching faults?). The indoor shots with the Alexa lack in details in the blacks. And the opening in Istanbul is very "foggy" in my old eyes (against the superb look of the classic 35mm anamorphic shots by Fred A. Young in the 60's or in "Goldeneye" in the 90's).
Is that a really improvement of style and grace in the cinematography? So I was very disappointed.
Probably they correct these faults for the US launch, I hope.
 
Posted by Sam Graham (Member # 2889) on 11-11-2012, 09:21 AM:
 
CINEMA: Regal Kansas City 18, Kansas City, KS
AUDITORIUM: 6
PRESENTATION: Sony Digital 4K
PRESENTATION PROBLEMS: The projector could use an RGB alignment. Or maybe it's just shaking.
RATING: Two and one half stars (out of four)

THE PLOT: A disgruntled former employee pees in his boss's coffee, metaphorically speaking. Wackiness ensues.

Great action sequence out of the gate. Then a bunch of stuff happens I don't really remember because Craig's Bond bores the crap out of me. Then there's a big dumb ending at an old house where nearly everything gets blown up. Yay.

All the little (and big) references they put into previous Bond gimmicks just served to annoy me. They have no place in a Daniel Craig Bond movie. He's just not that Bond.
 
Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 11-11-2012, 06:03 PM:
 
Amusing in the way Bond movies are. The big scene in the old house at the end seemed like an episode of Burn Notice without the VO. At two and a half hours not boring but not totally engaging.

Theatre I saw it in (Christie 2k) had soft, mushy uneven focus (pity since I read about how great it is supposed to look)and apparently an out of focus lamp. One quarter of the screen was dim with a very off center hot spot and weird bands of shadows.
 
Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 11-11-2012, 06:56 PM:
 
Martin I'm guessing you saw that on a silver screen?
 
Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 11-11-2012, 08:04 PM:
 
I didn't stick around to see, and I don't go there often enough, but it didn't register to me as silver screen. The hot spot certainly wasn't extremely bright, except when compared to the edges. What it looked like was a 35mm lamp house that had been focused on the upper left middle of the screen and not backed off. Although the bands of shadows in the upper right corner were something I've never seen before projected. They did remind me of the effect you get when focusing a lamp without a lens.
 
Posted by Victor Liorentas (Member # 5272) on 11-11-2012, 08:35 PM:
 
Maybe a high gain screen?
 
Posted by Markus Ito (Member # 6207) on 11-15-2012, 11:32 PM:
 
I saw this IMAX and thought it was amazing. Imagine my surprise after the show when I discovered that the theater I usually go to for IMAX had swapped their 2 film projectors for digital ones! [Eek!] I suppose I should of suspected something when the booth viewing area was roped off and 2 projectors were used.

Aside from that disappointment I thought this movie was one of the best Bond films I have seen. There were plenty of twists in the plot to keep it engaging as well as the usual 007 action and suspense. Anyone who is a fan of 007 should see this, and even if you aren't, it is still a very good movie.

5/5
 
Posted by Stu Jamieson (Member # 4626) on 11-24-2012, 06:07 PM:
 
Celebrating 50 years of Bond films, Skyfall changes tack with a shift towards a smaller scale story with anti-gadget sentiments. For a franchise which practically invented the gadget blockbuster this is a brave twist and not without an element of risk.

Removing the hi-tech aspect has resulted in a hole at the core of the film which remains unfilled and reduces the project as a whole to a generic spy actioner. The reasoning for this move is curious. Perhaps it is to differentiate the franchise from the very successful Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol of last year? But this merely pushes Bond towards the equally successful Bourne series and Bourne's intrigue came from the mystery surrounding his character. After 25 Bond films (including unofficial entries Casino Royale (1967) and Never Say Never Again) there's not a great deal we don't know about Bond. So the gains in pushing the franchise in this direction seem questionable. In any case, Skyfall looks less like a Bond than any previous entry.

Following an opening chase scene which is true to form in its excitement and innovation, the plot regarding the attempted assassination of M is small in scope compared to its predecessors and this typifies another problem: it doesn't aim high enough. The movie lacks grandeur and is almost too small for a Bond film. The climax is all very cute and romantic in a gunfight-at-the-OK-corral kind of way but it doesn't make much sense given the resources MI6 has at its disposable. Admittedly it fits in with the films small scale, lo-tech mantra.

Daniel Craig remains one of the best Bonds, sacrificing suave for rugged thuggishness and Casino Royale remains his best Bond movie by far. (Indeed an argument could perhaps be made that the best bond movies generally were the debuts of each actor.) The re-introduction of Bond's Aston Martin is cheesy as hell, replete with the equally cheesy replaying of the old-style Bond theme but, again, it is consistent with the films push towards no-tech. The look on Bond's face after witnessing the classic cars ultimate fate, however, is downright hilarious.

Skyfall is not a bad film, it's just ordinary, and with the resources and legacy at a Bond films disposal, we're entitled to a little more.

6.5 out of 10.
 
Posted by Louis Bornwasser (Member # 3063) on 11-24-2012, 06:59 PM:
 
Stu: you are missing yourcalling; a damn good review. Very well done!
 
Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 11-25-2012, 12:28 AM:
 
My guess on Martin's experience as a combination of gain screen with either mirror or integrator misalignment. A misaligned fold/cold mirror will cause a shifted hotspot. A misaligned integrator will also cause uneven light, possible cut off image and off color near the edges. A damaged integrator will give bizarre colored artifacts in the image.
 
Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 11-25-2012, 05:19 AM:
 
It was good fun, but the in-your-face product placement (especially that dialogue exchange about the watches) drove me up the wall. It's bad enough having to pay £11 for a ticket and then sit through half an hour of ads, but then for the ads to continue during the movie itself...

OK, there's always been a certain amount of it in the Bond franchise, but this one set a new low IMHO.
 
Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 11-25-2012, 04:48 PM:
 
Anti-gadget?
Spoiler Alert - Click to Toggle

 
Posted by Stu Jamieson (Member # 4626) on 11-25-2012, 06:04 PM:
 
^ That's untrue. Remember the device which revived him from a cardiac infarction and had him back in a card game in 5 minutes?

But, I take your point. I can't actually remember much in the way of gadgets from the previous Craigs. Casino Royale because it was so long ago and Quantum of Solace because, well, I don't remember anything about that except that stupid scene where he seat-belted himself in the truck and then promptly jumped out. I know he's 007 an' all but he ain't Harry frikkin Houdini.

My "anti-gadget" comment was rather referencing the franchise as a whole.
 
Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 11-26-2012, 03:27 PM:
 
You're right, I forgot about that! And I agree, they were trying to take Bond in a different direction for whatever reason.
 
Posted by Stu Jamieson (Member # 4626) on 11-26-2012, 04:00 PM:
 
I watched Casino Royale for only the second time last night and that silly truck scene is actually in that movie (and it was the terrorist who jumped out fully seat belted, not Bond), in which case, I remember nothing from QoS whatsoever.

Watching CR again I'm reminded what a great film it could have been but it's ruined by an ever-increasing string of annoyances like said truck scene and why the hell was there a defibrillator in his car anyway? It's almost as if Q knew he'd be poisoned by that particular toxin. And don't get me started on the Bond luvs Vesper plot!
 
Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 11-26-2012, 09:46 PM:
 
Q always knows exactly what Bond will need. He uses everything once and no more. And it's always just what the doctor ordered.
 
Posted by Jonathan Goeldner (Member # 4854) on 12-01-2012, 10:40 PM:
 
well at least it wasn't as dumb as the Bond film with the invisible car - now that was a real 'low' in the franchise.
 
Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 12-02-2012, 12:18 AM:
 
Why does the guy in China shoot the other chap who's looking at the painting across the street? Other than providing a nifty looking background for a fight, I somehow missed the point.

The movie is certainly anything but boring, though the best moment is actually in the trailer -- where he jumps into the the train car after tearing the back off of it and then straightens his shirt cuffs before doing anything else.

Unfortunately, the attendance here has been next-to-nothing this weekend due to icy conditions that are preventing almost everything from moving. Oh well.
 
Posted by Kurt Zupin (Member # 2751) on 12-02-2012, 11:23 AM:
 
Frank, we are never told why. My assumption is that it's just a hit. Everyone in the room was expecting it and didn't act shocked. Just like you said though, just something to make the location of the fight cool.
 
Posted by Stu Jamieson (Member # 4626) on 12-02-2012, 01:22 PM:
 
....and introduce him to Chinese sex slave chick.
 
Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 12-12-2012, 09:05 AM:
 
I quite liked Casino Royale, the more serious, emotionally troubled Bond. Well, it wasn't really Bond, but still it was quite good for once.

Then we had Quantum of Solace... Whatever, let's just forget about that.

But now, I want the old Bond back please. I couldn't handle the emotionally troubled Bond any longer. Bond is about action, screwing any hot chick around, wacky technology, super-villains in their hidden lair and not taking yourself too serious please.

Plot? Ex superspy and uberhacker gets dumped by his former employer and now wants everybody dead...

Ex-uberhacker super-vilain gets captured on his dystopian deserted Japanese island and gets locked in an overly complex glass containment. We're just waiting for the power to go out...

The ending was a bad mix of Home Alone, The A-Team, McGyver in a Lord of the Rings setting... It dragged on forever.

Even worse, they gave Bond a family, papa and mama Bond... I always thought Bond was just a code name that came with your employee number as double-oh-seven. That concept worked beautifully for me. If the current Bond was still the same Bond, he must be like 80 years old now?
 
Posted by Stu Jamieson (Member # 4626) on 12-12-2012, 03:59 PM:
 
^ You know, I agree with everything you said there, Marcel.
 
Posted by Edward Havens (Member # 4715) on 12-12-2012, 10:33 PM:
 
quote: Marcel Birgelen
Even worse, they gave Bond a family, papa and mama Bond
Then I'm guessing you've never read any of the original novels, because that's something Fleming did almost fifty years, in You Only Live Twice. You can read the relevant section of the novel online.
 
Posted by Hillary Charles (Member # 769) on 12-12-2012, 10:54 PM:
 
quote: Marcel Birgelen
I always thought Bond was just a code name that came with your employee number as double-oh-seven. That concept worked beautifully for me. If the current Bond was still the same Bond, he must be like 80 years old now?
That's the concept from the 1967 Casino Royale. [Big Grin]
 
Posted by Jonathan Goeldner (Member # 4854) on 12-12-2012, 11:47 PM:
 
I also agree with you Stu - the filmmakers also seemed to miss the boat in terms of the classic genre 'Bond girls' aspect, but this installment being so bleak and stark, it might have been too obvious (and distracting)... but still, this one didn't impress me as much as I had hoped.
 
Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 12-13-2012, 09:12 PM:
 
quote: Marcel Birgelen
Even worse, they gave Bond a family, papa and mama Bond... I always thought Bond was just a code name that came with your employee number as double-oh-seven. That concept worked beautifully for me. If the current Bond was still the same Bond, he must be like 80 years old now?
I thought that too, but no. Bond's last name is actually Bond.

Having Judy Dench as M in the current always confused me, though. It was clearly a reboot to the franchise yet she was still the exact same M as she was in the Remington Steele Bond movies. She should not have returned as M as it's just confusing.
 
Posted by Stu Jamieson (Member # 4626) on 12-13-2012, 09:23 PM:
 
Good to see Fiennes putting an end to all this female M nonsense. I was sure we were heading towards a Mr Moneypenny. [Wink]
 
Posted by Lyle Romer (Member # 1266) on 12-25-2012, 12:19 PM:
 
I say 3 out of 5 stars. It was a good action movie but like others have said, outside of the opening, not very "Bond".

Being the first time I have seen a movie (in Sony 4K projection) filmed with the Arri Alexa, I will say that it looked good. Other than the one scene on the boat going to the deserted island which looked aweful I didn't really notice that it was shot digitally. That scene didn't look like video, it just looked bad.
 
Posted by David Buckley (Member # 2600) on 01-04-2013, 05:35 AM:
 
Best Bond movie (of those I have seen) by far.

Have I seen the only showing anywhere on 35mm?

Was interesting seeing this after Hobbit: I've spent time in Scotland, and the expansive vistas around Skyfall should have been as gobsmackingly impressive as the vistas in the Hobbit, and they just weren't.
 
Posted by Jonathan M. Crist (Member # 413) on 01-05-2013, 12:41 PM:
 
I am really surprised that author Gordon Williams has not sued for copyright infringement.

The last 40 minutes at Skyfall bears more than a passing resemblence to the denoument of his novel "The Seige at Trencher's Farm" - which most of us know by its more popular film title: "Straw Dogs".
 




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