MOVIE: Skyfall (2012)

SkyfallYear: 2012Rating: PG-13Length: 143 minutes / 2.38 hours To me, one weakness of the James Bond franchise has always been the detached nature of the timeless character of James Bond (Daniel Craig) to anything from his past. He'd go off on some globetrotting mission to save the world while never having the stakes come anywhere close to where he lived—whether currently or when he was growing up. As such, the character of James Bond always felt like a caricature. An invincible man who always packed his plot armor before jetting off to a tropical paradise to deal with some megalomaniacal genius. I feel Skyfall (2012) is the absolute pinnacle of Bond films because it makes the main character human. The brilliant way Sam Mendes used Javier Bardem as the antithesis to Craig's Bond to highlight how loyalty is a two-way street is such a chef's kiss that I can't even begin to explain how it broke the mold for Bond villains. Visually,...
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MOVIE: 1917 (2019)

1917Year: 2019Rating: RLength: 119 minutes / 1.98 hours While there have been movies filmed to look like they’re one long take (the Best Picture winner, Birdman (2015) comes to mind) and movies that revolve around key moments of retreat during war (Dunkirk (2017) comes to mind), never before have the two been so masterfully combined. 1917 (2019) is a rare piece of cinema that tackles the less-popular World War I as its subject matter, but doing so in a way that’s personal, gruesome, and tense. Those viewers who might be put off by the gore of this film might come to realize that cinema has been censoring the ugly side of war for far too long. None of the violence seems out of place in 1917. Its moments of horror highlight the ugliness of war that results in constant and ever-present death. Fortunately, there are enough moments of peace and rebuttal between these intense sequences to let the audience catch their breath....
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