Skyfall
Recently, I have been pleasantly busy. Surprisingly enough, I managed to make 5 dishes (two of which were very simple, of course) in just a little bit of an hour. It tasted super great! Sometimes, a quasi-elaborate Chinese dinner is exactly what I need. There is almost nothing as comforting as that. In comparison to that, our Thanksgiving dinner comprised of roughly 8 dishes (plus cranberry sauce and gravy) and it took two entire days. That is a little less comforting, but I consider it an achievement.
This blog does not have a single entry of a Bond movie, because I never saw Casino Royale nor Quantum of Solace. In fact, I saw “Die Another Day” in theaters and the roughly 4 or 5 Bond movies before that as well. To me, Pierce Brosnan is the movie Bond that I grew up with and the others are the “TV Bonds” which I remember only vaguely from the many films I saw on TV at the time. Ever since I seriously got into films though, I have been following the development of Bond in movie reviews but even Eva Green could not get me to actually watch the movies. It is only most recently that we got into watching films in theaters, and boy I enjoy it.
This Bond film is a very special one to me. It’s the first one I am seeing as an adult person, and a strong sense of nostalgy goes throughout the entire film. I feel like the story is written just so they can bring out all those classic bond scenes (chase scene on trains, falling off huge bridges, cars with gimmicks etc. etc.) while still having a modern outlook. It’s a film about how the old must make place for something new, in almost every aspect. I thought the film was surprisingly gloomy in how it was almost mourning the past, and at the same time it was lovely how the series tries to add some sort of depth to it. In my opinion, it is well done and rather thoughtful, making me look forward to more of the entire package – Bond action coupled with an engaging storyline.
The biggest downside of “Skyfall” is, without a doubt, the women. While Judi Dench got a spot in the sun, as the title of this posting suggests, the other women (Moneypenny and the superfluous Bond girl of the year) were absolutely shameless. I am more or less OK with women randomly falling for Bond and not really being more than a pretty face, but “What a waste of good scotch” was probably the most deprecating thing James Bond ever said. The irrelevance of these disposable female characters has never been this obvious, I don’t think Bond typically made morbid jokes in the moment of the death of some woman he slept with just awhile ago.
The brightest side of “Skyfall” is not Judi Dench, however, but obviously Javier Bardem. He is just so damn awesome, and needs no further explanation. This is the fifth film I saw with him (Los lunes al sol, No country for old men, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Biutiful) and I thought he was brilliant in every one of them. His character in Bond was especially delightful here, I absolutely approve of his gay scene with Daniel Craig. Lovely.
Unless you have an incredible disdain for the franchise, “Skyfall” is definitely one of the better Bond films, and if it’s just to see Javier Bardem in blonde.