James Bond 007 film-by-film thread

Thank Info appreciated.

 

No it hasn't; it's still scheduled for October/November 2019... nothing has changed in that respect. Danny Boyle will be working post on his latest film whilst prepping Bond at the same time, with principle photography on the latter kicking off on December 3rd.

It's a damn tight schedule, it has to be said, but Boyle will have a huge team around him for Bond, so it'll work out just fine...

We know one thing in advance regarding the new 007 film; it will be shot digitally again - like Skyfall - as Boyle hasn't shot on 35mm film in nearly two decades.

 

Any word on the cinematographer? I know Boyle usually works with Anthony Dod Mantle, but EON may want Deakins after his exemplary work on Skyfall.

 

Hope your right.
I read Rachel Weisz is having a baby and Daniel Craig wants to spend time with child. Also the Boyle/Curtis project is supposed to be happening, expected September 2019. Fitting in a Bond movie for completion for the end of next year is optimistic.

 

Darn, those are some fancy curtains you got there! Do you live in a hotel?

 

Darn, now that's what I call attention to detail!
Can't wait to read your take on Alex's curtains.
Those curtains tell me a lot about Alex's wife and what the rest of his home must look like.
Those are Bond worthy curtains.

 

Maybe the California Couple can stalk this guy now he has the same curtains.

 

Hell with the turntable, look at the wall, it's made out of fabric. I'm impressed!

 

Nobody likes a curtain stalker.

 

Some guys have all the luck.
California Couple, still.

 

Two reviews. The first from when I first saw it and the second from a recent re-watch as part of my Bond marathon.

Skyfall (2012)

James Bond (Daniel Craig) searches for a missing list of British secret agents.

A boring, drab, uninvolving film. I can't see where the large budget went as it only has a few action scenes – the rest of the movie is made up of tiresome dialogue scenes that simply aren't interesting. The bad guy is weak, the scale small and the whole thing just hard going and far from fun. I really struggled to get to the end of it. A weak film.

It only comes alive for brief moments during the action scenes, and even then it's not for the whole sequence, just for certain moments such as the escalator sliding. It might be the best of the Daniel Craig Bond movies, but that's not saying much as they have been terrible so far.

Bad


Skyfall (2012)

James Bond (Daniel Craig) searches for a missing list of British secret agents.

It was better than I remembered it to be but that's not massive praise.

The pre-credit opening sequence might be the second most spectacular of the series (The World is Not Enough (1999) is better). The next forty or so minute are fine and mildly interesting. When the plot really kicks in and Bond goes to Shanghai the film starts to become less interesting. It plods through a few scenes and then we meet Javier Bardem who might be the very worst Bond villain of them all. He's poorly written with awful monologues but the performance by the actor was wretched. I was unengaged by what was happening on screen. Apparently the logic of his scheme is a mess but I've given it zero thought. The pace became noticeably slow. There was too much dialogue and not enough action. I suspect the film slows down in the second half. I was pretty much outright bored during the weak Scotland climax. Overall it's a bit of a bore that got worse the longer it went on.

It started good and ended bad.

Below Average

[Note that Skyfall was probably the second last film I watched so when I say Javier Bardem was crap I’m talking from the point of view of having seen all those other Bond movies recently beforehand.]

Best to worst IMO (films ranked as I watched them so this list has some weight to it)


Live and Let Die (1973)

The Living Daylights (1987)

Diamonds Are Forever (1971)

Licence to Kill (1989)

Goldfinger (1964)

Dr No (1962)

Thunderball (1965)

The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)

Moonraker (1979)

The World is Not Enough (1999)

Goldeneye (1995)

Octopussy (1983)

On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)

Casino Royale (2006)

For Your Eyes Only (1981)

Never Say Never Again (1983)

Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)

Die Another Day (2002)

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

You Only Live Twice (1967)

Skyfall (2012)

Spectre (2015)

Quantum of Solace (2008)

A View to a Kill (1985)

From Russia with Love (1963)

 

Quantum Of Solace when it came out was seen as a disappointment following on from the success of Casino Royale. Of late there are many who now say that this is a much underrated Bond, and champion it's reappraisal. I'm somewhere between the two on this film. I didn't hate it when it came out, and whilst I do think it improves on repeated viewings, I don't feel I want to upgrade it too far.

There isn't much plot or character development here (thanks to the writers strike) and instead we get a stylised rush through a series of action set pieces. It kind of encapsulates Bond's ongoing drive for revenge. The editing is far too fast paced early on. It does dissipate later so the plane sequence is back to normal. But the early scenes in particular are too much. The car chase is actually great once you've seen it five or six times, but at the cinema first time it was impossible to keep up with a big screen of rapid choppily cut images. I don't think you should have to keep viewing a movie to make sense of the action. The next scene is worse. An MI6 mole shoots at M, it looks like she is hit, but apparently he hits something just in front of her. You can only tell when someone posts a video still of it. Daniel Craig jumps from one roof to another - great stunt, but cut so that you can't see it is him doing it.

The Bond villain is portrayed as a middle man. It makes perfect sense as Bond works his way up the "Quantum" hierarchy, except that next movie they ditch Quantum, rendering Greene as just a faceless office worker. The Bond girls are both ok. Mathis returns for no real reason. Why would he back Bond? His reward is to be dumped in a skip by Bond. Lord knows why.

I don't rate the idea of making this a sequel to Casino. It could have been his pursuit of Quantum later on when he isn't taking it all personally.

Beyond these gripes it isn't all bad. Craig is suitably grumpy (Vesper has just died, he has a right to be offish). There is plenty of high octane action which is stylish when you get past the initial editor's frenzy. It is at least being original in it's ideas and presentation rather than just regurgitating previous Bond triumphs (which would have been the soft option with no script available - Goldfinger remake again chaps?). It's blunt instrument approach matches our hero.

I like how Bond disposes of Greene, the plane battle, the hotel finale, the henchman's wig flying off as he is hit by a fire blast, and most of all the Hitchcockian opera scene. I don't like M globetrotting after Bond, M doubting his motives, the obvious nod to the "golden girl" in oil, gunbarrel at the end, Bond going rogue, and this time it's personal.

Another Way To Die is a generic Bond song title. Jack White steps in at the last minute. It starts well enough with Bondian guitar sounds. But the lyrics are non-Bond. Slick trigger fingers, no thanks. Worst of all is the scat breakdown that is the battle between White and Alicia Keys. They're singing in two different songs by this time. Horrible to the ears at that point.

David Arnold's score is a continuation of the sound of Casino Royale. It features some fine tracks again including the car chase, the rooftop chase, opera, Bond and Mathis drinking, end credits and possibly one of my favourite action tracks of any movie - plane battle (which features the strident decending notes theme Arnold uses several time in Quantum). Another fine effort.

This one isn't so much like a fine wine as a fine Pimms. Fruity, not too deep and worth a quick blast through. Mid table.

 

Disagree about Jarvier Bardem being the worst villian, there's been loads worse imo.

 

Olga factor helped the medicine go down.A wtf score but at least original.

 

Best Bond villains.
Charlie Bronson cousin Oddjob
Goldfinger
Le Chiffre

 

I agree with you there. This to me is the worst Bond film. I have not seen Spectre yet, and so many say it is worse, that I can only wonder how it could be?

 

Worst DC Bond film?
Easy..... Spectre!!!!!

 

Skyfall sees a director try to give a spy movie an introspective, serious tone and a rebuild. It was a massive success with critics and the cinema audience worldwide. I think it makes a few mistakes along the way.

Right at the beginning of the movie there is a problem. The gunbarrel isn't there again (it'll be at the end again). I did like a movie series that announced itself each time from second one, but that's not the problem. The issue is hearing Sam Mendes talk in such serious tones about the very first shot of Bond walking down a corridor and how that would clash with the gunbarrel. Straight away he strikes me as worrying far too much about things that aren't that important, and being intransigent about his vision. This is his film, not a Bond film.

Anyway, the PTS is pacy and enjoyable, even if it revolves again around a Macguffin (that'll be forgotten about mid-movie) and again around Bond "dying". Adele's song is pretty good. We could do worse (next time).

The thrust of Skyfall is that Bond is past it. If they'd stressed his injury rather than hinting at his malaise and age, than that would have been better. It's just bizarre that our new Bond from Casino Royale and Quantum is already worn out.

Mendes plays with our expectations. There are 3 Bond girls, one of whom is M and another is Moneypenny. M is also contemplating enforced retirement and Moneypenny is quitting out of her job too. I like the remaining Bond girl, but she is sorely underused. Bond gets a bit creepy round her right after hearing her sordid past.

The wordless henchman at the start is very good. No need for over the top gimmicks to make him a real threat. Good fight with him later on. Tanner seems to have become Basil Exposition here. I'm sure he didn't do that last time out.

I like that the movie isn't awash with action as we get more time for character moments and some actual spying. This is a spy series not an "action franchise". The Bond/Q introduction is a nice example of where they get it right. Q messing up his computer security is not.

The villain is kooky and hammy. He is entertaining and I like his opening monologue. His ability to know where everyone and everything will be in the future to build his plans around is nonsensical.

When his plan to publicly execute M fails (nice shootout scene) Bond comes up with his own plan to use M as bait. People go on about Home Alone here (I'm sure the idea had been done countless times before that) but the important thing is that Bond's plan is a total failure. I don't want to see Bond cruise to a pointless easy victory every time, but this is a real lash up. He puts her in danger, goes to his house without thinking if the guns will still be there and basically loses everything. It is an enjoyable conclusion in itself and I like the twist that we end at Bond's hideout rather than the villains, but it surprises me that new M doesn't hand Bond his cards at the end.

Mendes is going for style and he often gets it right. The Shanghai scenes look glorious as does that casino scene opening, the scenes on the yacht, running up the London roads to the shootout, the roads to Skyfall, and standing on MI6's rooftop at the end. You can see where he is spending the budget, and it isn't on repetitive action explosions.

Thomas Newman goes down the current Zimmer road with his eerie often atonal score. I like his thumping music for the pre titles chase. But after that you get a run of tracks for M's retirement, Tanner's exposition and the psychological review that are all a bit samey and just seem to be background. Maybe in old school movies those scenes would have had no score. He does better with his music for Bond following and then fighting the henchman, the enquiry shootout and Silva's arrival at Skyfall. Not really my cup of tea as a score. He hits home a few times, but it generally washes over me rather than driving the action or drama forwards. There is a track called "The Moors" when Bond runs away from the burning lodge which is a driving repetitive 2 minute track. Fairly harmless stuff, but I mention it now so that I don't forget to mention it next movie.

So, this isn't perfect, but it is a step away from competing with Die Hard or Fast & Furious, and that's a good thing. Top 10.

 

I’m probably in the minority when it comes to Skyfall, in that it seems to be regarded as a high water mark of the series, and yet I don’t really rate it particularly highly. I see more merit in it now, but I was particularly disappointed with it on its initial release. Here are some comments I from an e-mail I sent to a friend at the time, October 2012:

I thought elements of Skyfall were absolutely excellent, and the action sequences were very well executed (even "simple" things like the chase through the underground, and sliding down the escalator were impressive), but it was too flawed overall to get my vote. Javier Bardem needed to rein it in at times. I know he was supposed to be played that way, but at the screening I was at, there were people laughing at certain moments that were unintentionally hilarious, as opposed to some of his deliberately camp lines. Sévérine was so anonymous that I didn't even miss her when she was killed off.
I'd also agree with one critic who remarked that the final act was a bizarre hybrid of Withnail & I and Home Alone, and was clearly modelled on Christopher Nolan's Batman, that whole "going to back to the spooky family mansion". Maybe I went in with higher expectations on account of the predominantly glowing reviews it was getting, but while it is certainly much, much better than Quantum of Solace and all the Brosnan films (bar GoldenEye), that in itself is kind of faint praise.

Watching it again, I'd agree with a lot of that, though I think I have appreciated it more on repeated viewings. I also feel the finale owes more to the siege in Straw Dogs than struck me at the time. I just feel it needs substantial trimming. It's superbly shot by the great Roger Deakins, especially a lot of the Shanghai scenes, although the London exteriors seem to be constantly lit with blue gel. Raoul's entrance scene is excellent; the long take and the long walk to the foreground. I know the reinvention of the role is contentious to some, but I like Ben Whishaw as Q; combating cyberterrorism feels more apt as a young man's game, and it's arguably the route they should have taken with the character in Brosnan's era, i.e., "the geeks have inherited Q Division." However, the idea that he'd casually hook up Raoul's laptop to MI6's network (essential to the plot) is ludicrous.

The pre-title sequence is great (creating an intriguing "downer" opening that succeeds where Die Another Day failed), but again, the absence of a gun barrel is annoying, not least since it was the 50th anniversary of the series. The producers unconvincingly defended the end gun barrel in Quantum of Solace, arguing that it bookended the narrative that began with Casino Royale; so how do they explain it appearing at the end again here? Adele's title song - a nice throwback to the epic orchestral themes of yesteryear - is one of the very best of the entire series. In my opinion, Craig's four films have two of the best and two of the worst theme songs.

My main grievance with Skyfall at the time (and still now) is Raoul's ridiculously convoluted plan, which is completely at odds with the simplicity ("A gun and a radio... it's not exactly Christmas") of the rest of the film and sadly undermines a lot of the positives. If Raoul just wants to kill M, why not just shoot her outside her home, when she's effectively unprotected? He doesn't need to be captured and escape at all. If the argument is that he goes to such great lengths to infiltrate MI6 because he wants to see M disgraced and embarrassed by an Inquiry, that isn't really going to happen either, since he promptly shows up to kill her in Westminster anyway. Such a shocking public death would be likely to lead to any past sins being forgiven and, if anything, she'd be lauded posthumously for her earlier achievements. Not to mention the fact that Raoul's entire plot - years in the planning, as Q remarks - involves far too many variables (where he'll be imprisoned, when they'll check the files, when and where the inquiry will occur) and effectively comes down to him walking into a room to shoot her, when a random police officer or security guard could easily kill him before he gets the chance, and in a room from which she could have been whisked away prior to his arrival. While people will say I'm being ridiculously fussy here - "It's a Bond film, for heaven's sake" - of course I can acknowledge all that, but I find the juxtaposition of Craig's taut, back-to-basics, gritty Bond with such absurd plotting to be a major flaw in Skyfall.

 

Most (if not all) Bond films are ridiculous to varying amounts... seeing such claims on Skyfall seems odd to me in that context.

 

I won't disagree. I just feel that the series reboot with Craig was going for a harder, grittier Bond, more rooted in some type of "reality" - as much reality as we can expect from a blockbuster movie about a spy - and a departure from Roger Moore's knowing wink to the audience and Pierce Brosnan's gadget-laden tenure. As such, I feel Skyfall is let down by a central assassination plot that has more holes in it than the DB5 does by the end of the film.
Raoul doesn't want to create a new world underwater, or destroy all the world's computer records, or create a super race in space; he just wants to kill M, and goes to extraordinary means to do so in the most convoluted and spectacular way possible. Now, of course, the entire series can be criticised in the same way (as best epitomised by Hugo Drax's immortal "You continue to defy my efforts to plan an amusing death for you" - he's not happy just to simply shoot Bond and be done with it), but the tone of most of the pre-Craig Bonds was quite different. His Bond is a post-Bourne one, where such Moore/Brosnan levity is absent and - in my opinion - the darker tone of his films create a world where such gaping plot holes seem somehow accentuated.

 

James Bond Producers Are Reportedly Leaning Toward Idris Elba as the Next 007

 

Spectre (2015)

James Bond (Daniel Craig) searches for the Spectre organisation.

Another crap Daniel Craig starring James Bond movie. I’ve not been a fan of any of his Bond movies. This probably isn’t necessarily his worst but I couldn’t work up the enthusiasm to finish it. I at least finished the previous movies. I gave up after fifty minutes when he ejected from the car and said, ‘Evening,’ to someone on the street. It was obvious it wasn’t going to get better so I bailed early to watch some TV on my hard drive. A very, very muted film. Strangely very flat and quiet with all the obvious drama leached from it. For such a massive budget (about $250,000,000) you would expect the action to be at least slightly exciting on some level. Instead they appear to have made the world’s most banal action movie. It has no pulse. It’s a dead film walking. I could detect numerous jokes and not one of them even began to land. It’s in the running for the least funny movie ever made. Utterly dead humour that just sits there on the screen in an embarrassing way.

The brown colour palette during the pre-credits sequence looks almost like Heaven’s Gate (1980) but with the added obvious digital manipulation of the colours (Bond looks punched into the scenery with different lighting on him). The much criticised cinematography looked okay to me, and was even quite pretty from time to time. The muted colour tones and digital manipulation wasn't to my taste, but I wouldn't call it ugly.

I couldn't work out whose funeral Bond was attending, and whose widow he was talking to. I had to have it explained to me that it was the guy's in the white suit from the pre-credit sequence. I thought it was M's funeral.

There are lots of extras and stunts during the opening sequence, but now with computer effects nothing impresses as you just assume three quarters of it was added later.

The movie was just so mediocre and banal. Considering the money involved making and marketing it you would expect a certain level of nuts and bolts action excitement. This they failed to achieve, in my opinion. I was just left totally unengaged and faintly bored. As I said, it was strangely quiet and muted to the point of being overly subdued. Also I heard the theme song by Sam Smith for the first time. Like the film, it’s a big, bland nothing. I'll probably finish it one day as I've seen all the other Bond films, but it's not a priority.

Very bad


Spectre (2015)

James Bond (Daniel Craig) searches for the Spectre organisation.

**** me this was abysmal. Reportedly they spent something like $250,000,000 on this. For that sort of money you would expect at the very least a movie with a bit of life in it. That money is not on the screen. It certainly doesn't look like a cheap film, but there's no scale to it. If they said it cost one fifth of that budget I would believe it. The action scenes are self-contained and don't sprawl out into long battles. They made a strange decision to film it with a tone that was not appropriate for a Bond film or for an action blockbuster. The quiet, restrained, muted, mid-tempo tone did the film no favours and just rendered what was already a weak film catatonically boring. The story is crap but this tone bored me as it leached all the excitement and interest out of everything.

I gave up on it nine months before at the 50 minute point. I only returned to it out of obligation as I've already seen every previous James Bond movie. I restarted it from where I left off before. At about 90 minutes (when they discover the secret hotel room in Tangiers in a sequence that made little logical sense to me) I hit the x2 button. I watched a few action scenes at normal speed but by the end even those were watched speeded up. The action was strangely indifferent and the action climax itself was pathetically small. The bad guys were deeply ineffective and bland, but they didn't stand a chance with this crappy story and this hushed tone. I haven't seen the other Bond movies in a long time so I can't definitively say if this is the very worst film in the series, but I strongly suspect it is. It was pathetic and very boring. $250,000,000 of action should not be this bland. I hated the film and thought it was a complete chore to sit through it. ****ing abysmal. I feel insulted that the makers thought this was good enough.

Awful


Re-watched out of obligation for my Bond marathon:

Spectre (2015)

James Bond (Daniel Craig) searches for the Spectre organisation.

Well it was much better on this viewing than on the first (it originally took me nine months to finish the thing over two viewings). I even chuckled a few times at jokes I truly loathed previously. It wasn't too bad to begin with - distinctly average but watchable. It was holding my attention. The hotel room scene was a dead spot and from there my interest disappeared. After being so good and patient (by my standards) I hit the x6 fast forward button to skip the train sequence. It felt like complete narrative deadwood despite featuring a fight that kills the world's least interesting baddie and has the Bond girl fall in love with Bond. I watched the unimpressive torture scene and the amazingly tepid fight scene of their escape at normal speed. Then the whole London section was of zero interest so I got through that at x2.

Christoph Waltz isn't as bad as some people say but there's a palpable sense of major lost opportunity as his work with Quentin Tarantino shows how menacing and fascinating he can be. He was wasted by a weak script.

Skyfall (2012) is a slightly better film but they both suffer from overlong running times and slow pacing in the later half. It's a weak film. Also they have an easily forgotten reoccurring baddie of no note from the films made in 2006 and 2008 (but not the 2012 movie) who is extremely poorly introduced and explained. I only understood who he is because I'd recently watched the other movies. I suspect 95% of audiences who watch Spectre will have no idea who he is and therefore find the middle of the film to be confusing.

Below average (that’s the rating I gave it, but it sounds awfully generous to me now since I clearly disliked the movie)


Best to worst IMO (films ranked as I watched them so this list has some weight to it)


Live and Let Die (1973)

The Living Daylights (1987)

Diamonds Are Forever (1971)

Licence to Kill (1989)

Goldfinger (1964)

Dr No (1962)

Thunderball (1965)

The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)

Moonraker (1979)

The World is Not Enough (1999)

Goldeneye (1995)

Octopussy (1983)

On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)

Casino Royale (2006)

For Your Eyes Only (1981)

Never Say Never Again (1983)

Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)

Die Another Day (2002)

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

You Only Live Twice (1967)

Skyfall (2012)

Spectre (2015)

Quantum of Solace (2008)

A View to a Kill (1985)

From Russia with Love (1963)


Next: Jason Bourne

 

Elba's already 45.

Too bad the 5'9" Daniel Kaluuya (29, "Get Out", "Black Panther") isn't a little taller.

 

What happened to Michael Fassbender as Bond? He was in the running for a while.