Overall Rating: *****

Casino Royale @ IMDB

Summary:
When James Bond (Daniel Craig) is promoted to 007, he must prove himself against a terrorist financier (Mads Mikkelsen) and learn that in the spy business, you really can trust anyone.

Review:

Plot: The plot for this movie was pretty well put together. I liked the flow a lot, though it started to get a little confusing. When you get to the end of the movie, it becomes clear why the plot is not so clear cut. If you feel like there are parts missing, I wouldn’t hold your breath for them to fill in the blanks by the end of the film. Personally, I think it was an interesting approach. The mission and action played out the way I expected a true Bond movie should, with almost no gadgets.

Acting: There was a lot of negative hype around the selection of Craig as Bond. I’ve seen him in other films, like Layer Cake, and he met my expectations. Since he is playing an “immature” Bond, he comes off as an arrogant and slightly niave assassin. Though he is suave, he’s not quite as charming as Sean Connery and Roger Moore. Perhaps, we’ll see a little improvement in future films, masked as character development. The Bond Girls didn’t really stand out, but they were much better than Halle Berry and Denise Richards.

Action: Entertaining and engrossing, especially the first major chase/fight scene. The best part was there was no percievable CGI. I was very pleased to see that considering the apalling job they did in Die Another Day.

Overall: Definitely worth the ticket price. I was impressed with this reboot of the 007 franchise. I recommend seeing it on the big screen, you won’t be dissappointed.

So I found somone who was critical of my reviews. I would show a link to his site, but I can’t post a url to his content with good conscience. He claimed I was not critical and he couldn’t find a single review that I didn’t give 4 or 5 stars to. Now that’s not true. Take a look at these:

The Ring Two
The Fog
Domino

I think part of the problem is I don’t review movies that I don’t like. And I don’t review movies I don’t like, because I spend the limited time I’ve devoted to this site on movies I enjoy. Not necessarily a balanced approach, but this is my site to do with as I please. I haven’t posted any reviews in the past three months. The main reason is that it takes me too long to write a review. I love my format. I spend a lot of time writing these reviews. Unfortunately, it means it takes me way to long to post something after I’ve seen a movie. I think I’m going to try some new formats over the next couple of months. I’ll see if I can get more reviews in. I’m open to criticism, but in a friendly and honest manner. If you think I’m not critical enough let me know. I’d like to see how many people think I need to be more discerning (my one critic, seems a little perverse and doesn’t really seem to be the type of person whose opinion I would value).

I’ll put up my first attempt at a new format later tonight or tomorrow.