Skyfall (2012)

Director: Sam Mendes

Starring: Daniel Craig, Judi Dench, Javier Bardem, Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris, Albert Finney, Berenice Marlohe, Ben Whishaw, Rory Kinnear

More info: IMDb


Plot: Bond's loyalty to M is tested when her past comes back to haunt her. Whilst MI6 comes under attack, 007 must track down and destroy the threat, no matter how personal the cost.

My rating: 8/10

Will I watch it again? Of course.

My busy work schedule kept me from seeing this in the theater for over a week after its debut.  It's the first time I missed opening night on a Bond film since A VIEW TO A KILL (1985), the year that I was finally old enough to drive a car.  Since I had to wait so long to see it (it would've felt like forever if I hadn't been so involved in work), it seemed like everything I heard about it was orgasmic.  My expectations were starting to get pretty high.  Then I saw it.  I really liked it but I wasn't all ga-ga for it like the rest of the world.  I've now seen it twice and it was better the second time.  Let's just assume I liked almost everything about the picture (and I do).  The things that bugged me were how he survives the fall from the train (I'm not spoiling anything if you've seen the trailer), I wanted more screen time from the villain (and why does he have to have some physical deformity?), a good number of the one liners from Bond felt shoe-horned in for laughs, Q is too young and I'm sure there's something else I'm not thinking about.  What I absolutely LOVED was the final minutes of the film and how the characters of Dench, Fiennes and Harris play out.  I was left STARVING for the next one.  There were parts of the movie where I started to long for the Bonds of old with Connery and Moore, where things weren't so serious and ramped up.  The final few minutes of SKYFALL gave me a sense of comfort that I have with the first two decades of Bond films.  It's been a bumpy 50 year ride with the franchise but it's also been an awful lot of fun seeing the series continue.