film criticism by maryann johanson, not an AI | since 1997
In the era of COVID and Brexit, much of this overstuffed adventure feels redundant, farcical, inconsequential, and desperate. But Ana de Armas and Lashana Lynch show us the way to a future for 007.
Save us from male artists who think they are dangerously, uniquely innovative. This stew of toxic masculinity and CGI-cartoon violence is nothing but tediously mundane.
After a truly spectacular and fresh opening sequence, everyone might as well be enacting a Bond puppet show, which is sometimes unpleasantly retro-icky.
What we witness here is the destruction of the old Bond mystique, and the creation of a new one. This is the sneaky cleverness of the film: it is, at last, going to tell us why Bond still matters.
I am consumed by the aubergine power of muddled confusion and despair.
*Entertainment Weekly* is suggesting, in its latest issue, that the Bond franchise may be dead…
A suprisingly underpowered, plodding police procedural that thinks that holding back on ‘action’ makes it ‘serious’ even in the absence of anything substantial to take its place…
Take a break from work: watch a trailer… Crazy Mel Gibson is crazy. “Hangin’ on the cross or bangin’ in the nails”? *snort* Hey, not only did Martin Campbell direct Casino Royale, he also directed the 1985 British TV miniseries Edge of Darkness, of which this is a remake and — obviously — a truncation. … more…
We can only blame *Casino Royale.* The 2006 reboot of James Bond was so brilliant, so satisfying, so organically of the moment that it could only prove hard to top, and even hard to equal.
