Logging

Film:  Skyfall

Or should I call it No Country For Old Bond?  On the one hand, I want to put points against Bond for shamelessly ripping off The Dark Knight in the main bad guy plot line and basic conception of evil-as-emotional-chaos, but I found myself enjoying the film in a way I didn't expect.  It is far from great and I would have been pretty satisfied if it ended with the shootout in the courtroom, but these modern studio films for some reason feel the need to tack extra acts (Batman, Mission Impossible, all the Marvel films).  So I stayed and watched and they did a mini-Bond version of Straw Dogs and did my favorite moment of the film - just a look by Javier Bardem - after Bond plunges into the water with the 2nd to last villain - of complete and utter exhaustion and preposterousness.  I laughed for a good few seconds.

I'm not sure whether this movie got good or bad reviews.  At first, I heard it was good, and then I heard everyone hated it.  So I don't know what is going on, nor does it change too much my experience with it.  What did I expect from Sam Mendes and Daniel Craig?  Well, Daniel Craig is serious-Bond with Freudian issues, so I knew it would be a certain tone.  I know Sam Mendes as the director of American Beauty, Revolutionary Road, Jarhead, and Road to Perdition, not a really good movie on the list.  So given all this, I was surprisingly satisfied with the film.

The story was not totally smooth - it took too long to get going - and then they couldn't figure out a good 3rd act transition because you could feel the movie almost come to a stop and then need to re-start again.  But it did a good job of crystalizing the themes for mass audience consumption - youth vs. experience, computer/desk vs. the field, loyalty - all these ideas that are ripe for exploration in our present time and work within the context of the Bond universe.

This was not a callback to earlier Bond movies and did not employ much humor or sexiness.  It tried to explore modern ideas of cyber-warfare and a post-national world in a serious way.  I prefer this above all the other Daniel Craig Bond movies and is my favorite Sam Mendes film.  In terms of the Bond franchise...time will tell...