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Fat_Cow posted:Man, RT is hammering this movie. Is it that bad or just critics being critics? It's much slower than most other Bond movies, even the other Craig movies, which themselves are a response to how ridiculous the previous Bond was (while stealthily being just as ridiculous). Craig Bond is a seemingly joyless, hard-edged motherfucker, but he still gets to do fun things like visit the board meeting for the Legion of Doom. I enjoyed this and it wraps up the Craig plotline in a neat bow. So it'll be interesting to see if they do a fifth movie and unravel it. I found myself wanting a little bit more as far as interesting backdrops and fun set-pieces (the car chase was unimaginative at best), but it's all shot beautifully.
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Nov 7, 2015 11:44
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Remember how the skull masks were constantly in the advertising and even made it on the official poster? They're only in the first 3 minutes of the movie and the people wearing them are completely irrelevant to the plot.
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Nov 7, 2015 11:49
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Immortan posted:Remember how the skull masks were constantly in the advertising and even made it on the official poster? They're only in the first 3 minutes of the movie and the people wearing them are completely irrelevant to the plot. Would it have been a really much better movie if everyone wore a skull mask the entire time?
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Nov 7, 2015 12:13
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Immortan posted:Remember how the skull masks were constantly in the advertising and even made it on the official poster? They're only in the first 3 minutes of the movie and the people wearing them are completely irrelevant to the plot. Remember Stephanie Sigman being announced as a Bond girl ? Bond had more interaction with that waiter at the clinic.
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Nov 7, 2015 12:18
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I really dug the film, but then I don't really give a crap about narrative consistency - sure it's not really realistic that the villain's entire base explodes from one shot in the right place, but hey, the resulting explosion looked beautiful so why complain? Can't understand the complaints about the film not looking good though. Those shots at the funeral in the brutalist building were stunning, as was everything in the Moroccan desert. Not as good as Skyfall, but miles better that QoS.
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Nov 7, 2015 12:22
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Yeah, it's probably the second best looking Bond. It's just a disappointment since it comes right after the best looking Bond.
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Nov 7, 2015 13:14
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I skipped going to skyfall in theaters because QoS was so bad. I'm glad I waited to read about this before blindly going and getting disappointed.
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Nov 7, 2015 17:33
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Am I going to be severely lost if I see this without ever having watched a Bond movie before? Some friends of mine have an extra ticket and I've got the spare time.
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Nov 7, 2015 17:37
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This movie was loving fantastic. People who love classic Bond movies are going to love it. People who love weird, experimental Bond movies like License to Kill and Skyfall will think it's a step backwards. I honestly don't understand a single complaint about this movie other than the run time.
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Nov 7, 2015 18:47
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:Would it have been a really much better movie if everyone wore a skull mask the entire time? MisterBibs posted:Am I going to be severely lost if I see this without ever having watched a Bond movie before? Some friends of mine have an extra ticket and I've got the spare time.
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Nov 7, 2015 18:51
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The Sam Smith song completely sucked. Not as bad as Madonna and Sheryl Crow, but definitely top 3 or 4 worst. And for the guy asking why Blofeld's eee-ville secret meteor base blew up... Dude, is this your first Bond movie? Blofeld hit the self destruct (it was a controlled chain of explosions) as he escaped. Of all the callbacks in this movie, that one should have been the most obvious. Austin Powers spoofed it twice because it's such a staple of the series.
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Nov 7, 2015 19:05
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Rageaholic Monkey posted:Don't let this be your first Bond movie. There are so many better introductions to the series. This one probably wouldn't make you want to check out the rest of them. You misunderstand me, I'm not looking for a movie to introduce me to the series, I'm just concerned I'll be lost.
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Nov 7, 2015 19:08
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MisterBibs posted:You misunderstand me, I'm not looking for a movie to introduce me to the series, I'm just concerned I'll be lost. You shouldn't be lost, and it's not a poor enough movie that you'll regret seeing it with friends on a free pass even if you're not wild about it, I'd think. And if you don't hate it, there are a few Bond flicks that are legitimately good films on their own merits. I'd recommend From Russia With Love and Casino Royale to pretty much anyone who likes movies.
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Nov 7, 2015 19:29
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This movie was a meh experience for me. Perhaps I just don't like the style of the Craig films. My favorite Bond films will always be the sillier ones like Goldeneye and Moonraker.A GLISTENING HODOR posted:The Sam Smith song completely sucked. Not as bad as Madonna and Sheryl Crow, but definitely top 3 or 4 worst. Baron Bifford fucked around with this message at 19:35 on Nov 7, 2015 |
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Nov 7, 2015 19:31
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A GLISTENING HODOR posted:Dude, is this your first Bond movie? Blofeld hit the self destruct (it was a controlled chain of explosions) as he escaped. Of all the callbacks in this movie, that one should have been the most obvious. Austin Powers spoofed it twice because it's such a staple of the series. Are you sure about this? The way I remember it is; Bond spots vaguely industrial looking thing while escaping and shoots it. This causes a chain reaction of explosions that then destroys the base. Happy to be proved wrong, it's been a couple of weeks since I saw it.
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Nov 7, 2015 19:36
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I mean, it's extra embarrassing because MI: Rogue Nation has almost the same story and structure, and is loving awesome, with great action, a sense of humour, a wonderful female character with agency. And they did it on half the budget of this one, and with a shorter runtime.
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Nov 7, 2015 19:37
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A GLISTENING HODOR posted:The Sam Smith song completely sucked. Not as bad as Madonna and Sheryl Crow, but definitely top 3 or 4 worst. It sucks because it tied the whole Craig series together with lovely lip service and played hush hush with the biggest Bond villain, only to have him go "Oh yeahh, I'm totally Blofeld and I've been loving with you this whole time because I was jealous of you being better than meeeee!!!!! ! I'm almost sixty years old, and I'm still bitter about it!" It's the worst James Bond plot of all. It's so low stakes it's barely even interesting. A Bond movie has never, and would never have done something that stupid. The closest the series ever came to having an established continuity is Blofeld petting his cat in between scenes of Bond loving chicks. (Well, and I guess Tracy's grave in For Your Eyes Only). I just don't get it. Why couldn't the villain just be the villain and hate James Bond because he's hosed with his plan like he did before? What about that isn't acceptable to modern audiences? It's just so baffling.
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Nov 7, 2015 21:43
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MisterBibs posted:You misunderstand me, I'm not looking for a movie to introduce me to the series, I'm just concerned I'll be lost. I'm honestly curious how you'd feel if this was your first Bond film. Perhaps the twist wouldn't really hold any water for you, and you might enjoy it.
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Nov 7, 2015 21:44
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This was a lot of fun, at least for the first half. A lot of fantastic action sequences all in a row. Mexico City might be my new favourite Bond opening gambit, the car chase in Rome was more fun than any Craig car chase has been yet, and the plane chase in Austria was awesomely ludicrous and over-the-top, in exactly the way James Bond ought to be. Roger Moore or Pierce Brosnan would not have felt out of place in any of those action scenes. And the interrogation scene ripped straight out of Goldfinger was a neat update of a very old Bond scene, which deftly balanced camp with genuine suspense, two things you'd think wouldn't even be possible to balance, but the scene just works. Then the bloat sets in. That whole diversion in Tangier could have been cut without losing anything, just have Swan know the way directly to Blofeld instead of the way to the way to Blofeld. And the political subplots, which were the low point of Skyfall, continue to be loving dumb, and nothing but a distraction. For all of QoS's sins, at least it knew to keep "the villains have eyes everywhere" as a direct hook into the spy action, instead as part of the vague villains' vague schemes to do vague things. And the backstory stuff continues to be unneeded fat, which the Bond franchise has always smartly steered away from, until now. The low point was either claiming that Silva going after M was Blofeld's doing, or that Vesper was killed to piss off Bond instead of for betraying Quantum. And the ending was really deeply confused; so you're keeping Blofeld alive for future sequels, but also having Bond ride off into the sunset with his new true love? Are you ending the loving story or not? How is the next one gonna open, "LOL we broke up off-screen Spy Who Shagged Me style"? Or, joy of joys, are we going to get to see relationship drama in a loving Bond movie? I cannot imagine the next film working unless Craig is gone and they go for a soft reboot. But if you carve off all the fat, you're left with an extremely serviceable Bond film, which seamlessly blends the best parts of classic Bond into the modern formula. The problem is that there's a lot of fat to carve off. It's a solid 7/10, where Casino Royale is a 9 and Skyfall is an 8. (Also the theme song sucked. And I didn't even mind it as a single, it just didn't edit down very well.)
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Nov 7, 2015 22:50
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DStecks posted:(Also the theme song sucked. And I didn't even mind it as a single, it just didn't edit down very well.) Yeah, it was a disappointment that the part of the song that I thought worked the best (the slow build-up at the very end) was cut down.
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Nov 7, 2015 23:13
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bullet3 posted:I mean, it's extra embarrassing because MI: Rogue Nation has almost the same story and structure, and is loving awesome, with great action, a sense of humour, a wonderful female character with agency.  Jesus, really? Rogue Nation was so much better and more fun than this.
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Nov 7, 2015 23:14
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The next one will open with Swan getting gunned down by Waltz's lacky's. And the plot is going to be a sort of sequel to OHMSS.
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Nov 7, 2015 23:46
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CelticPredator posted:The next one will open with Swan getting gunned down by Waltz's lacky's. And the plot is going to be a sort of sequel to OHMSS. The two of them diving off into the sunset, the women at the meeting that they spent a lot of time on and looked like his number 2, it involved family, ties with Casino Royale, and the fact that a major set piece was on a ski slope makes it seem this is Craigs OHMSS
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Nov 8, 2015 00:10
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I liked it alright. I liked the evil base in the crater and the parachute escape from the car. The train sequence was good too. Was the ending a last minute rewrite? Ok, let's assume that everything is going by Blofeld's plan up to the watch explosion. And then Bond is rushing back to London to turn off the software install. So Blofeld immediately flies there first, and rushes to the old MI6 HQ (where there is nothing relevant to his plan), and starts decorating with giant arrows and posters of Bond's old enemies? It looked like Arkham Asylum. He then waits for Bond to show up and kidnaps his girlfriend and ties her up to a bomb, then slowly flies away in a helicopter that is nice enough to fly low and parallel to the river. And after it crashes the London police teleport in and set up a perimeter in seconds on the bridge, and instantly know it's a terrorist incident and not a tourist helicopter crash (fire and medical are ignoring the flaming chopper and wounded man despite having no way to know what's going on.) I did like the cat showing up.
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Nov 8, 2015 00:11
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I liked how there was a Bond Girl that was older than Bond. Is that a thing that's happened before?
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Nov 8, 2015 00:15
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MorgaineDax posted:I liked how there was a Bond Girl that was older than Bond. Is that a thing that's happened before? Pussy Galore and Teresa Bond.
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Nov 8, 2015 00:20
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Seriously what's with the love for Skyfall's cinematography? Apart from wide shots of Scotland I thought it was a disjointed mess, especially when comparing the action scenes to Martin Campbell's brilliant clear, impactful stuff in Casino Royale. Can anyone link me some good Skyfall shots? I might have been blinded by the loving awful everything else in that movie. SPECTRE at least felt a little less disjointed than Skyfall, and also Bond didn't rape an ex-child prostitute in this one either, hoorah!. But I couldn't work out what the hell the whole Spectre organisation was for or about except general hints of random sinister activities... what was the end goal of the big conspiracy except vague expansion of evilness capabilities? Immortan posted:Remember how the skull masks were constantly in the advertising and even made it on the official poster? They're only in the first 3 minutes of the movie and the people wearing them are completely irrelevant to the plot. To me, the title sequences of these films are a good tool for working out why they work or fall flat. I love Casino Royale, and its title sequence stuck to one strong central visual theme (cards/casino), using it to bring in all the other underlying themes of the movie (killing=shattering of oneself, mistrust & betrayal) and to foreshadow the major plot points of the film. The song's lyrics fit perfectly as well. Skyfall took a bunch of totally disparate ideas and themes and tried to mash them together. So you get lots of very blue underwater stuff, then 13 seconds of a spooky graveyard with loads of massive knives/guns falling down, then the big house with suddenly loads of really bright scarlet colour for a few seconds, then back to the blue some underground place full of arches, then clouds of blood underwater turning into a skull, then child prostitute girl pointing a gun, then suddenly lots of red again because Bond's on fire and there are Chinese dragons, then suddenly black and white kaleidoscope Rorschach test stuff for 20 seconds, then back to graveyard, then hall of mirrors, then back underground, then really red again and trees/bloodvessels, then raining blood meteorites in a graveyard. The song is pretty mishmash as well. Basically, if you don't have a central theme/arc for your movie and you try to think of a cool title sequence to encapsulate it, you get the same thing as the movie (aka 'a mess') just compressed down and even more irritating. SPECTRE's was a little more together than Skyfall's but not by much. I wish Martin Campbell would come back and do Craig's last one.
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Nov 8, 2015 00:21
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El Grillo posted:Seriously what's with the love for Skyfall's cinematography? Roger Deakins
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Nov 8, 2015 00:24
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Mojo Threepwood posted:Was the ending a last minute rewrite?
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Nov 8, 2015 00:30
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El Grillo posted:Seriously what's with the love for Skyfall's cinematography? Apart from wide shots of Scotland I thought it was a disjointed mess, especially when comparing the action scenes to Martin Campbell's brilliant clear, impactful stuff in Casino Royale. Can anyone link me some good Skyfall shots? I might have been blinded by the loving awful everything else in that movie. All of Hong Kong in particular in Skyfall is amazing and I guess movie goons cannot be in complete agreement about anything if Skyfall is not a beautifully shot movie now.
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Nov 8, 2015 00:33
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Honestly, I don't know if Craig even should come back after this one, which isn't something I thought I'd be saying. The movie does him no favours, but he's not bringing a lot to the table either, completely stone-faced and emotionless for at least half of the runtime. That combined with him visibly starting to look old, makes stuff like his scene with Monica Bellucci downright skincrawling. The other aspect is they've shot themselves in the foot with all this Spectre setup and personal backstory. If Craig came back and did 1 more movie and it was a totally unrelated, "normal" bond mission, it would seem kind of weird now. Like, I would love if they did that, but I don't see it happening. Much more likely they would pickup directly from the end of Spectre, which I have no interest in.
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Nov 8, 2015 00:34
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:All of Hong Kong in particular in Skyfall is amazing and I guess movie goons cannot be in complete agreement about anything if Skyfall is not a beautifully shot movie now. It's cool man I just don't remember it. That's why I asked if anyone has any good clips on Youtube or whatever  I have a couple of friends who are all over the Deakin as well.
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Nov 8, 2015 00:40
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El Grillo posted:It's cool man I just don't remember it. That's why I asked if anyone has any good clips on Youtube or whatever My favourite is Bond taking the dragon boat to the casino in Macau.  
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Nov 8, 2015 01:06
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This entire Shanghai scene is just so weird. He approaches the dude in silence, and waits for him to just shoot some guy, and then they fight in front of a massive jellyfish, but you can't really tell who's who because they're both just silhouettes. Skyfall is really surreal. It feels like a fever dream. Spectre kind of starts out similarly surreal with Bond basically running around as a skeleton, and turning back into a human. I also loved the weird shadow conference, and all of Blofeld's hench men turning towards Bond in unison. The film indulges too much in Brosnan-era action scenes for my taste, though. Then, the final act just gets super cheesy, and it doesn't feel earned. How come that room at the start of the film exploded? Also, Monica Bellucci was wasted. She should have replaced Madeleine.
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Nov 8, 2015 01:32
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CelticPredator posted:I'm honestly curious how you'd feel if this was your first Bond film. Perhaps the twist wouldn't really hold any water for you, and you might enjoy it. Well, I'd be happy to give a just-got-out-freeform-review: On the whole, I felt kinda  about the thing. I was entertained, but the movie didn't grab me or make me want to see more Bond films. The intro stuff was a solid reminder that I have to watch whichever Bond movie has Eva Green in it, because I could watch that lady read the newspaper for two hours and I'd rate it 10/10. I think I prefer a more (God save me, I tried to figure out a better term for this) short-range movie like John Wick versus a long-range Bond film. A dude with a pistol running through an apartment versus a dude with an MP5 on a boat shooting at a helicopter, if you will.Some specifics (I'll spoiler stuff I figure is a spoiler, airing on the side of caution in case some things don't happen in every Bond Film) - I guess it's a Bond Standard Thing, but the dude-singing-while-dancing-going-on thing did nothing for me. This might amuse people, but I figured because of a scene in it of Bond staring at some blonde lady, I figured that the film would climax with the blonde lady being In On The Whole Deal. Not sure if that happens or not in other movies; I only know the Bond Cliche that he fucks all the girls in the end. - I felt a bit more lost than I expected, but I kinda filled in the gaps generically. These photos of people are folks Bond Likes Who Are Dead. This is a Former Bad Guy. That was someone cared about enough to linger on an interrogation VHS of them. Related to the last spoiler, the  in me was wondering about the suitability of kept in a dusty hidden room for presumably decades.- I did a little  thing with the Blofield reveal, because it's one of the things I just know about Bond. Especially when he got the eye injury and scar and at the very end, he's clearly injured with a leg wound, so he'd have to be in a wheelchair. Which is A Thing for that character, unless I'm confusing it with a parody character or Davros.- I liked that Bond is stonefaced and grimmacing, except when he's almost smirking like he's in on the joke. - The overarcing plot of the Bad Guys felt super cliched to me. Yes, the Bad Guys are going to let the Good Guys turn on all the cameras, so the Bad Guys can use it for Evil poo poo. Wasn't that part of Captain America 2? - Blofield's Save-The-Girl-Or-Yourself, Bond Does Both thing, I'm assuming is a Bond Thing. There's prolly more but I'm tired as hell  If you or anyone else has Ask-A-Bond-Newbie stuff, I'll be happy to answer.
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Nov 8, 2015 01:46
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I hope they do one more with Craig and open the movie with the ending to OHMSS. They're pretty perfectly set up for it.
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Nov 8, 2015 02:17
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MisterBibs posted:On the whole, I felt kinda 
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Nov 8, 2015 02:36
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Hand Knit posted:My favourite is Bond taking the dragon boat to the casino in Macau. I don't have any good shots of it but Shanghai looks incredible too. The movie turns into a straight up cyberpunk film for a little bit there.
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Nov 8, 2015 02:55
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I came out of Spectre liking it and the more I think about it the more I really really like it. The ending in particular really worked for me and I actually loved the villain reveal. Sure everyone knew it at that point, but I really enjoyed how it built up naturally and didn't feel forced. I will heartily agree that the overarching conspiracy felt crowbarred in, particular for Skyfall since Silva's plan seemed way more personal. It'd make more sense if they spent a tad more time and had Blofeld say something like "I simply funded/provided Silva with supplies for his own means" rather than make it seem like he ordered him to do it. Overall I actually like this better than Casino and QOS and it's on the level of Skyfall.
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Nov 8, 2015 03:17
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El Grillo posted:Seriously what's with the love for Skyfall's cinematography? Apart from wide shots of Scotland I thought it was a disjointed mess, especially when comparing the action scenes to Martin Campbell's brilliant clear, impactful stuff in Casino Royale. Can anyone link me some good Skyfall shots? I might have been blinded by the loving awful everything else in that movie. Aside from what was posted, here's a few others.   
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