A One-Sentence Review of “Skyfall,” The New James Bond Movie

We've come a long way since Christmas Jones.Courtesy of Columbia Pictures

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Skyfall
Columbia Pictures
142 minutes

I have an obscenely long list of graphic, expletive-riddled phrases I’ve been using to illustrate how much I enjoyed Sam Mendes‘ installment in the Daniel Craig era of Bond movies, but I’m told that this is a family-friendly website.


Now that my official review is out of the way, I’d like to share something else with you: It was written by Tim Stanley, a British historian who wrote a book about Pat Buchanan. He is a blogger for the UK paper The Telegraph, and he adores Ronald Reagan.

Last May, he authored this post (in response to seeing Skyfall‘s teaser trailer) titled, “RIP James Bond: killed by political correctness and an overdose of oestrogen“:

The rot set in with the casting of Daniel Craig. Things had been going a little haywire since the late 1980s, when the producers first caved into the non-existent popular demand for political correctness. But being the 1980s, they interpreted that to mean people would like to see beautiful ladies with big chests occasionally firing a gun (Hell, yeah!).

[…]

Connery and Moore played their parts in an age when character trumped looks and women were encouraged to find a man attractive well into his seventies…And we, the heterosexual men for whom these movies are made, could watch them and aspire to be them…Gentlemen, Bond has been stolen from us and redesigned to appeal to women…Bond has thus become violent feminine porn.

Stanley blogged a follow-up last month in which he fantasizes about punching Sigmund Freud in the face. (I say this as someone who wrote a glowing review of Battleship and thought Piranha 3D was the best movie of 2010: The immaturity here is astonishing.)

Stanley’s is an example of what I call a Costanza review: Whatever it says, do and think the exact opposite.

He is correct in one respect, though: Since Daniel “Politicians Are Shitheads” Craig assumed the starring role with Casino Royale in 2006, the Bond franchise has indeed morphed into a barely recognizable enterprise.

Just compare and contrast the present-day glory of Craig-era Bond, on full, brooding display here:

 …to the equally glorious glory of this era of Bond: For more on why Skyfall is a 007 flick for the ages, listen here, in which ThinkProgress culture blogger Alyssa Rosenberg and I break down the latest Bond movie for our weekly podcast.

Skyfall gets a wide US release on Friday, November 9. The film is rated PG-13 for intense violent sequences throughout, some sexuality, language and smoking. Click here for local showtimes and tickets.

Click here for more movie and TV features from Mother Jones.

To read more of Asawin’s reviews, click here.

To listen to the weekly movie and pop-culture podcast that Asawin co-hosts with ThinkProgress critic Alyssa Rosenberg, click here.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

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