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[RumHam]

I couldn't get over the stupidity of No Time To Die

Spoiler

Spraying bond with a virus engineered to just kill him is just such an overly convoluted plan when any one of those party guests could have just shot him. 

The idea that Blofeld could have meaningful conversations with the people running Spectre from his cell and everyone just thought he was talking to himself is also stupid as hell. 

Both these things would have been forgivable if it were a good movie. There's stupid shit in Skyfall too but it's still one of my favorites. 

[Spockydog]

The plot of Skyfall is beyond absurd. The only way it makes sense is if it was written by cretins. 

[RumHam]

25 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

The plot of Skyfall is beyond absurd. 

This has to be true of most Bond films by now though. Can you be more specific?

What gets me is his stupid "get captured to escape and kill M" plan and the train thing.

[Darryk]

RRR (2022)

Hindi language film. So good. Awesome action sequences mixed with great musical sequences mixed with a strong story.

Considering all the trite produced by Hollywood lately it's nice to know foreign language production centers like Tollywood provide alternatives. 

9/10. I would've give it 10/10 but at three hours it does feel like they could've shaved about 20 minutes off.

[Iskaral Pust]

I enjoyed Skyfall even if it was over-long.  It was well made and well shot, e.g. the contrast between the glamorous Macau casino, the desolate abandoned island and the crumbling Scottish manor.  M had a grand finale exit, Javier Bardem played his role well, but Bond aged too quickly and it was just a poorly conceived plot and leaned too heavily on a personal nemesis for M with near infinite power and resources and energy to spend on the vendetta.

And then they repeated the very same problem of a near omnipotent personal nemeses for Bond in Spectre and then for the boring Bond girl in No Time To Die.  There was always another super villain with a personal axe to grind too elaborately.  In fairness, this is the franchise that built huge futuristic bases in the caldera of a volcano and underwater and in space.

Casino Royale was very good, mainly because of the chemistry with Vesper.  Quantum Of Solace was ok but there was zero chemistry or energy from any of the other actors, so it all fell a bit flat.  Skyfall, as described above, was pretty good.  And then it all fell to shit.  At least we’ll always have that flirtatious banter on the train to Switzerland.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Casino Royale is the only story from Craig's run that was based on the books, and it was a pretty faithful adaptation, just modernized and they greatly expanded Le Chiffre's role. In the book you don't really see him until the game, but after that it's basically the same. QoS is a short story about a failed marriage Bond is told by a governor. The rest is all made up except for Blofeld existing. I think there's a compelling argument that outside of GoldenEye, none of the Bond movies that are not based on the source material compare to the ones that are. There's a reason why Goldfinger, Dr. No, From Russia with Love etc. hold up so much and it's because the source material is well written, although Fleming was a huge racist. I just wish Moonraker had been a faithful adaptation as it's one of the better books.

[Corvinus85]

Every time I saw the title listing for Treason on Netflix I couldn't help but think of Palpatine's words: "It's treason then." But I eventually decided to give it a go and it was quite a decent British spy thriller. Somewhat in the vein of Bodyguard but with more interesting stakes and some good spy stuff.

[Teng Ai Hui]

I have watched the first half of Andor.  It’s an interesting character study of a group of people involved in a rebellion against tyranny and colonialism.  Unfortunately, I don’t really like any of the characters.

[dbunting]

16 minutes ago, Teng Ai Hui said:

I have watched the first half of Andor.  It’s an interesting character study of a group of people involved in a rebellion against tyranny and colonialism.  Unfortunately, I don’t really like any of the characters.

I think this has been the best Disney series by far, but like you I didn't really care for the characters too much. Another season and I'm sure they will grow on me. 

[polishgenius]

Skyfall's main problem is it was trying too hard to be The Dark Knight.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

The Menu, which is on HBO Max now at least in the US, is truly one of the oddest films I've ever seen. It's predictable, yet I could not turn away. Highly recommend.

Labeling this a musical or a comedy for awards is pretty offensive to either genre though. 

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

5 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

Skyfall's main problem is it was trying too hard to be The Dark Knight.

Not sure I get the comp at all. Did you mean to say Home Alone?

Skyfall is a dozen tropes smashed into one film. 

[polishgenius]

3 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Not sure I get the comp at all. Did you mean to say Home Alone?

 

Silva's plan is very Joker, and in general the visual style is pretty indebted to Nolan from a director who isn't typically like that.

[Heartofice]

19 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Skyfall is a good Bond film, it's just not as great as a lot of the hype was.

It's definitely not as good as the hype, but I am not sure overall I would rank it as a good movie. It has the same flaws a lot of these Craig Bond's have, it's just overly long, overly serious and doesn't have a well crafted streamlined plot. I thought the last hour of Skyfall was deathly dull and it's bemusing that it should be in a James Bond movie. I still don't understand how they managed to go from 'this is raw rookie Bond' to 'I'm too old for this shit' Bond in such a small space of time, a bit like the Nolan Batmans.

I have to say though, there are so few genuinely good Bond movies out there it almost doesn't matter if Skyfall isn't great, it's a pretty par for the course Bond film.

[BigFatCoward]

James Bond as a character sucks, as do most of the films.  He is just a 1960's Andrew Tate.  

[TheLastWolf]

Bland. James Bland. 

[Darryk]

3 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

James Bond as a character sucks, as do most of the films.  He is just a 1960's Andrew Tate.  

No ways, James Bond is the bestest And it's not like we have many male heroes to root for in films these days.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

6 hours ago, polishgenius said:

 

Silva's plan is very Joker, and in general the visual style is pretty indebted to Nolan from a director who isn't typically like that.

Eh, I just don't see it that way. It's overly theatrical like the Joker would do, but the motivation doesn't feel the same to me. 

4 hours ago, Heartofice said:

It's definitely not as good as the hype, but I am not sure overall I would rank it as a good movie. It has the same flaws a lot of these Craig Bond's have, it's just overly long, overly serious and doesn't have a well crafted streamlined plot. I thought the last hour of Skyfall was deathly dull and it's bemusing that it should be in a James Bond movie. I still don't understand how they managed to go from 'this is raw rookie Bond' to 'I'm too old for this shit' Bond in such a small space of time, a bit like the Nolan Batmans.

Again, to reference the books, Bond does get burned out rather quickly, but cannot find a way to leave because he doesn't want to let M and a few friends down. It's pretty realistic for the character to not want to do his job for a long time. 

Quote

I have to say though, there are so few genuinely good Bond movies out there it almost doesn't matter if Skyfall isn't great, it's a pretty par for the course Bond film.

Hard disagree. It's true that there are a lot of bad Bond movies, but don't let that diminish the number of good ones. And sometimes the bad ones are still fun. See Diamonds Are Forever (another one that would have been better served by sticking to the source material, but hey, Jill St. John was fire so it's okay in my book). 

[Heartofice]

1 minute ago, Tywin et al. said:

Again, to reference the books, Bond does get burned out rather quickly, but cannot find a way to leave because he doesn't want to let M and a few friends down. It's pretty realistic for the character to not want to do his job for a long time. 

Doesn't make for a great film franchise though. It kind of misses the middle portion where Bond gets to enjoy being Bond or actually IS Bond. It's like you spend 1.5 movies for him to become what we know as James Bond and then the rest of the time it's him looking for a way out. It's like there are 3 missing movies in between. Plus all the dialogue talking about how Bond is this or that, as if it's all stuff that happened off screen inbetween movies. It's all a bit odd.
 

3 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Hard disagree. It's true that there are a lot of bad Bond movies, but don't let that diminish the number of good ones. And sometimes the bad ones are still fun. See Diamonds Are Forever (another one that would have been better served by sticking to the source material, but hey, Jill St. John was fire so it's okay in my book). 

It makes the good ones more noticeable sure. My point being your average Bond movie is actually kind of forgettable and not really all that good, so I don't have massive expectations around them. 

[Isis]

Up to episode four of Archive 81 - a genuinely hair-raising moment in this ep. I must learn to take my own advice though and stop watching this beore bed!  Highly recommend if you like stuff like The Black Tapes podcast, cos it is literally about tapes, demons, hauntings, conspiracies...