"Skyfall." Best. Bond. Ever.

That's right, I'll say it again in case you misunderstood me - Best.  Bond.  Ever.  I could just quit writing right there, because it really doesn’t get any simpler than that.  Don’t get me wrong – Goldeneye was great.  I still love Thunderball and Goldfinger.  Even Live and Let Die was pretty good, but if we are to take the word “reboot” literally, then I have to consider the Daniel Craig era as a separate entity from the rest of the Bond series, and as such, Skyfall is simply the best of the bunch.  One of the greatest sensations I can hope to experience as a moviegoer is when a movie lives up to my high hopes for it.  This one most certainly does.

After an intense pursuit of a stolen hard drive that contains vital information through the streets of Istanbul, Bond is wounded during a desperate fight atop a moving train, flung to a river below and left for dead.  MI-6 continues on without him, but when the complex plot of a cyber-terrorist to discredit and disgrace “M” (Judi Dench) begins to take shape, he reappears from the dead, only to be told that he’s possibly too old and out-of-shape to continue serving.  Not that he or “M” would allow silly things like physical evaluations and psychological profiles to keep 007 out of action for long, so rules are bent and superiors are ignored, and Bond then jet-sets halfway across the globe in pursuit of those who seek to make use of the information on that stolen hard drive.

That information turns out to be the identities of every covert operative currently undercover in terrorist organizations all over the world, and it’s being used by some evil mastermind to wreak havoc on MI-6 in general, and on “M” in particular.  The villain turns out to be a former MI-6 operative named Silva (played by a wonderously-creepy Javier Bardem, who can do Creepy Bad Guy better than most, as proved by No Country for Old Men), whose plans turn out to be much more complex, and much more personal, than mere cyber-terrorism.  His first meeting with Bond must be the grandest entry of any Bond villain into a film, and his ensuing conversation with him must also rank as the strangest.

Of course, it’s amazing what an Oscar-winning director can do for a franchise-formula movie (pay close attention to that statement, Walt Disney company, when deciding who will helm the next Star Wars flick…).  I have wondered what sort of “action movie” Sam Mendes could make from the moment I heard of his hiring to direct this film.  I mean, let’s face it – American Beauty and Revolutionary Road were wonderful movies, but they don’t exactly make one think he could just as easily have made Die Hard or something like that.  That said, I’ve had a gut feeling all along that he’d pleasantly surprise us and would make Skyfall something special…  and he sure as Hell did.

Mendes has given us the most visually gripping Bond film I can remember.  As exotic settings have always been a staple of the Bond series, Mendes makes fantastic use of the nighttime settings of Shanghai and Macau, with a skyscraper’s glass and a city’s neon lights apparently being the new trees and foliage in which snipers ply their trade these days.  The gloom of Scotland, the light bulbs of the London underground, and the harsh sunlight of an abandoned island in the South China Sea are all important parts of Mendes’ lovely finished product.

I can’t rave enough about this script, either.  Skyfall is certainly the most character-invested film of the entire Bond series.  We see Bond have doubt about the world changing around him.  We see “M” face her mortality.  We see other, younger operatives suffer the consequences for actions demanded of them.  We see the people to whom they answer question their very necessity in the modern world and the wars we might fight.  We also, for the first time in the fifty-year history of the cinematic version of the character, see that Bond actually did exist before he was granted his Double-O status. Screenwriters Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and John Logan apparently took advantage of the extra two years provided by MGM’s financial problems to hone this script to near-perfection, and given the sorta-flat previous film in this series (that would be Quantum of Solace, which actually began filming without a completed script), it’s easy to forgive being made to wait longer for this movie.

We’re even given the pleasure of being reintroduced to some of the characters and details we used to love about the series that went away after Casino Royale, in ways that are entirely appropriate to the new style and tone of the series.  There were just enough winks to Bond’s past to be appreciated, but none of them so over-the-top as to make one’s eyes roll at the cheesiness of doing so.  I am so tempted to give away some of these nuggets, but oh, how I don’t want to deprive you of the pleasure of learning these things for yourself (I will blab that it’s great to see that Bond made sure the Aston Martin he won from Demetrios in Casino Royale got shipped over from the Bahamas after that mission was completed, and that it has a few specs that harken back to other Bond movies…).

If you’ve avoided the movie’s Wikipedia entry so far (damn those European moviegoers who’ve had an extra two weeks to see it and spoil the surprises for us over here…), then you’re in for one heck of a time.  The pre-title action sequence alone is worth the price of admission, so consider getting a completely fantastic experience the rest of the way as a bonus.  In other words, Skyfall kicks ass.  Maybe I should’ve just left it at that.

Michelangelo Antonioni's "Blow-Up"

I've been accused of over-thinking movies on occasion.  Personally, I don't see how this is a bad thing - like, what's the alternative? Under-thinking them?  Surely at one time or another, you've watched a movie to its climax, looked over to whomever came with you and asked "but what did it all mean?" (or maybe that’s just me… or maybe you’re just not inquisitive enough…)  More often than not, that's not a good thing. After watching Michelangelo Antonioni's "Blow-Up" for the second time, I'm still asking myself that same question, but I'm not sure it's necessarily a bad thing. "Blow-Up" is one of those Greatest-Film-Ever movies, one that routinely shows up on lists published by various movie-loving entities and is dissected and studied in film schools and at film festivals. I had seen it once many years ago, back in the Dark Days of VHS pan-and-scan tapes played on two-head VCRs and 19-inch televisions (oh, the horror...), but Turner Classic Movies ran it again a while back as part of their 31 Days of Oscar schedule, and I was able to give it another look, this time on better equipment and with older and (hopefully) more mature eyes. 

The story follows a day in the life of Thomas (David Hemmings), a very young fashion photographer in London during the Swinging '60s. Thomas is extremely jaded for one so young (he can't be more than twenty-five), as we see his complete disdain for the women he photographs, as well as his feeling of superiority to the world around him. He doesn't care whom he keeps waiting or what he leaves behind when he decides to leave his current task and move on to the next thing that grabs his attention.  He spots a couple in a London park, a young woman (played by an almost-unbelieveably young Vanessa Redgrave) and an obviously-older man. The couple seem to frolic. Or are they quarreling? Thomas (and we) see them from just enough of a distance that we can't be sure. Voyeur-ishly, Thomas photographs them. The girl spots Thomas, confronts him, begs Thomas to give her the film. Thomas refuses, even telling her that it's not his fault that nobody has any privacy those days. She runs back into the park, but the man has vanished. The girl's efforts to get the roll of film from Thomas lead to a half-nude pot-smoking session between the two, after which the girl leaves believing she has the film, but Thomas still has it. He develops it, and what he begins to see is what moves the second half of the film. 

What is it that he sees? Was it really there? What brought about the look of fear in the girl's eyes seen in one of the photos? Is that blurred patch of light in the trees what we think it is? Thomas asks himself all of these questions, and more, in silence as he examines his photos, as do we. The genius of the sequence is that even without a word of dialogue, with just a solitary actor on screen and no sound other than Thomas' puttering about his lab, we know exactly what he is thinking and what the story in the photos is.  For those of you wondering just what the heck "editing" is, this is it.  Thomas spends the remainder of the day and into the night and following morning careening about London, searching for the girl (even spotting her momentarily at one point before she almost-magically melts into the background) and for an answer, but never finding one. 

So, what does it all mean? That question still lingers. Antonioni was nominated for a Best Director Oscar for this film, but the movie did not receive a Best Picture nod, and I can see why. The movie caused quite a stir in its day for the scenes of marijuana use and fleeting full-frontal nudity (both of which are very tame by today's standards), and critics of the day debated ad nauseam about the lack of a clear-cut ending, as well as what, if any, symbolism was supposed to be in the film's final scene (which I won't divulge...). I don't think any of that was Antonioni's point. While the shallowness of the London Mod scene of the time may have been the driving philosophy behind Thomas’ outlook on the world, I believe whether he witnessed a murder, and if he did, who may have committed it, are secondary to his being a changed man at the film's end, and seeing him awaken from his boredom and cynicism to become energized over something IS a conclusion, of a sort.