Skyfall movie review roger ebert biography
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The deadly theft of a weaponized virus that can target a specific person’s DNA brings Bond back to the fold, although he’s first aligned with the CIA via Felix Leiter (a wonderfully laid-back Jeffrey Wright) and a new face named Logan Ash (Billy Magnussen). Craig’s Bond deserved a better final foe, one who’s not really even introduced into the narrative here until halfway through.
If you haven’t seen a 007 for years, this is the time to jump back in.
There’s a theory that you can grade the Bonds on the quality of their villains. Then we all would have had time for something new.
Only in theaters on October 8th.
“Skyfall” is a theatrical film in the same way that its director, Sam Mendes, is a theatrical filmmaker.
I mean that in a “value-neutral” way. Is this a hint that the creators of “No Time to Die” are going to blow up their foundation and give Bond new definition? Maybe it all should have ended a couple movies ago. “I do hope that wasn’t for me,” Bond says of a small explosion. “Skyfall” even produces a moment designed to inspire love in Bond fans: a reappearance of the Aston Martin DB5 from “Goldfinger,” which remains in good operating condition.
Just as Christopher Nolan gave rebirth to the Batman movies in “The Dark Knight,” here is James Bond lifted up, dusted off, set back on his feet and ready for another 50 years.
Think of the flesh-gun in “Videodrome.” The latter is a teeny GPS tracker: A way for MI6 to keep tabs on Bond’s whereabouts. In “Skyfall,” this is a cerebral megalomaniac named Silva, played by Javier Bardem, whose unpronounceable Anton Chigurh in “No Country for Old Men” approached the high-water mark of Hannibal Lecter.
After an enemy agent grabs Bond as a human shield, M’s other agent, Eve (Naomie Harris), has both men in her gun sights. (“Not bad, James, for a physical wreck,” Silva says. An assassination scene in a Shanghai skyscraper is staged and photographed like a shadow play, with layers of glass between us and the characters, who appear mostly as silhouettes against a gigantic animated billboard.
This is dramatized during Bond’s visit to the weathered Scottish mansion inhabited by Kincade (Albert Finney), which has secrets to divulge and continues the movie’s rewriting of the character’s back story. The only thing more personal than these would be devices implantable in Bond’s own flesh. I wondered how or if these images would manifest themselves in the larger movie… and they more or less did.
It would also help a bit to clean up some of the mess left by “Spectre,” a film widely considered a disappointment. These red shapes show up again as computer images, which morph into a map of the London tube system on a wall-sized computer screen manned by Q (Ben Whishaw).
After months of delays, the 25th official James Bond film is finally here in “No Time to Die,” an epic (163 minutes!) action film that presents 007 with one of his toughest missions: End the era that most people agree gave new life to one of the most iconic film characters of all time.
It’s the kind of absurd stunt we expect in a Bond movie, but this one relies on something unexpected: a dead-serious M (Judi Dench), following the action from MI6 in London and making a fateful decision. The stakes are very high.