3.
Skyfall
Now this is a Bond movie.
I have been a fan of the James Bond series since I first stole my grandfather's VHS of From Russia With Love and saw Sean Connery fight a blonde Robert Shaw on a train. Something about the suave and quick-witted spy captured my attention at a young age and held through the good (GoldenEye) and the bad (Quantum of Solace) and everything in between.
Yet as much fun as those early Connery — and especially the Roger Moore films — were, there was always something missing. Bond was too clean and lacked any true emotion in his movies. Maybe that's the way the character was intended to be, but as I grew up, the need for a more realistic Bond increased. The films needed to get grittier.
My desire for this type of Bond film hit a fever pitch when I saw Batman Begins and saw what Christopher Nolan did with that character, and I wondered if someone could see the same potential in Bond. My prayers were answered in 2006 with Casino Royale, which immediately landed in the top-5 of my favorite Bond movies. But my enthusiasm quickly burned out when I saw the Bourne inspired follow up, Quantum of Solace. It would be an understatement to say I was disappointed.
And that brings us to Skyfall.
This movie is the Dark Knight of the latest iteration of the Bond character. Every piece of this movie is near perfect. Javier Bardem is the best villain in more than 20 years — maybe even 30 years. He carries this air of invincibility through out the last half of the movie that should inhabit every Bond villain going forward. And his back story is one of the most personal to Bond and MI-6 that has ever been written. If there was ever a time for a villain from a Bond movie to be nominated for awards, now would be it. Can't say enough about Bardem.
Besides the villain, the choice for "Bond girl" in this movie was truly brilliant. It wasn't a supermodel, nor an A-list American actress, or even the return of Dr. Christmas Jones; it was Judi Dench as M. The lack of an emotional connection to his damsel in distress was always a weak point in the earlier Bond films. Casino Royale remedied that slightly with the Vesper Lind storyline, but that just felt like new wrapping paper on an old gift. But capitalizing on all the ground work laid in the first three films with Craig allowed the final hour of this movie to be fascinating when it could have very easily been boring.
There was very little I could find wrong with this film, even the choice for Q was a stroke of genius. This film was raw, gritty and everything I've been hoping a Bond movie could be. To say I'm excited for the next film would be the ultimate understatement.
Release date: November 9th
Reason for ranking: Bond. Really, that's it. My love of 007 is the only reason it ranked ahead of Django. And I didn't want to cheat and have a 3a. and 3b., so my tie-breaker was Daniel Craig.
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