Skyfall: The James Bond Series [Part Twenty-Three]: A film review

 - Vancouver, British Columbia - I’ll give you a warning right now: here there be spoilers. I strongly recommend watching the film, and I’ll tell you off the bat that I think it’s a phenomenal movie. If you’re on the fence about going to see it, please do so before reading this review. I was a little worried going in to see this flick based on the insane buzz around the movie. Since the film opened a couple weeks earlier in the UK than in Canada, there was already so much talk going around before I could even have a chance to see it. Further to that, the score remained consistently high on Rotten Tomatoes. So could this movie live up to the hype (if that’s ever possible)? What would I like about it, since I’ve spent so much time analyzing the Bond films? After all, I now have some notions of what I want to see in a Bond picture, and I’ve seen a lot of missed opportunities. But further to that, I really wanted to know if the gun barrel sequence was still going to be included.

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Casino Royale: The James Bond Series [Part Twenty-One]: A film review

 - Vancouver, British Columbia - Even though it grossed more than any other Bond film up to that point, Die Another Day was a critical failure and EON Productions acknowledged that maybe, just maybe, they had gone over the top with it. Meanwhile, there was some legal stuff that got all cleared up, which would allow the group to finally make the first Bond novel, “Casino Royale.” With the franchise badly in need of some new energy, a new James Bond was cast and the series was rebooted.

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The Adventures of Tintin: A film review

 - Vancouver, British Columbia - Back in 1981, Steven Spielberg made a film called Raiders of the Lost Ark, which was a huge success. Someone told him that the movie reminded them of The Adventures of Tintin, a popular French comic series. Spielberg hadn't heard of it, but looked into it and started reading them. They really captured his imagination and one day he hoped to make a Tintin movie himself. Of course, sometimes it takes a long time for a dream to come to fruition, even if you're one of the biggest directors in the world. Though, sometimes it seems that the wait is well worth it. This is one of those cases.

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The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: A film review

 - Vancouver, British Columbia - The film medium historically has never been famed for building women up, instead we continually see the degradation of women through callous exploitation of the female body, which is compounded by the shallow stereotyping of women through less than endearing female characters, which rarely exhibit much of any personal courage or strength. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is not such a film that follows this trend, but upon a shallow viewing of the film, it would be easy to think that it does. This is not the type of film that I have any desire to ever see again, but am glad that I did see it.

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Cowboys & Aliens: A film review

 - Vancouver, British Columbia - Back in my review of True Grit, I discussed how the Western has been, unfortunately, declared dead by ticket-buying film audiences. While True Grit was well received, it has hardly inspired film studios to re-invest in the genre. Thus it was a little surprising when I first heard about Cowboys & Aliens being green lit several years ago. And while I wish we would see a return to the Westerns of past that were quite good, Cowboys & Aliens is not such a film that is going to help us see a return.

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