Tag Archives: skyfall

Top 10: Film Villains With Justifiable Motives

WatchMojo has a great idea for a list this week with the Top 10: Movie Villains With Justifiable Motives.  The best villains believe they’re the hero of their own stories.  The elite make the audience believe their actions, no matter how heinous, are justifiable.  Think of the best screen villains, and you usually know why they’re doing the things they are.  One of the MCU’s biggest problems until recently was a lack of motivation given to the villain.  Most non-MCU comic book films focus on the villain almost to the detriment of the hero (most Batman films), but the MCU took the opposite route and poured all its character development time into the heroes.  Phase 3 took a different approach and gave us more nuanced villains like Ego, Killmonger, Zemo, and even, yes, Thanos, were given a twisted logic for their crusades.  WM went with The Vulture for their list, and that’s a good pick.  I actually don’t have much of a problem with any of their picks: Silva from Skyfall, Syndrome from The Incredibles, Koba, Magneto, etc.  I think the only flaw in the list is that it doesn’t go back any further than 1982’s Blade Runner for candidates, but I’m sure everyone can think of a few baddies who had motivation enough for some sympathy.  Who would you have put on this list?  Javier Bardem in Skyfall

Top 10: Movie Villain Monologues


If The Incredibles taught us anything, it’s that if you can get a villain monologuing, you’re likely to find out what they’re up to….and quite possibly live (or not) to regret it.  WatchMojo has delivered another fantastic list focusing on the greatest monologues from movie villains in screen history.  I would take issue with some of their placements, and I’d swap out a few, but these are 10 amazing scenes.  It’s no mistake that of the actors featured in these roles, five were nominated for Oscars for these performances and four won.  Some of these moments we’ve broken down before like Silva’s Rat Monologue in Skyfall and Colonel Jessup on the stand from A Few Good Men, but a few of these just jumped to the lead in future installments, because each one is worthy of examination.  Watch, enjoy, and weigh in with what other movie monologues you think were worthy of inclusion on the list.Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight

Top 10: Most Rewatchable Movies of the 21st Century

Some movies have a quality to them that allow for infinite repeat viewings.  WhatCulture (another must-subscribe channel on YouTube) has identified the 10 most rewatchable films made so far this century.  This could be because the film is so funny that it makes you smile on the worst of days (Anchorman), because it’s such an entertaining and riveting film that it never gets old (Skyfall, The Dark Knight), or because you HAVE to watch it several times to truly appreciate what a brilliant work of art it is (Memento, Inception).  Christopher Nolan directed three of What Culture’s picks and I can’t disagree.  I doubt I’d have picked Super Bad or Kill Bill, but otherwise it’s a list that I completely agree lends itself to endless repeat viewings.
Guy Pearce, Memento, Christopher Nolan

Movie Review: SPECTRE (2015) *Bond Bombs* Spoiler Warning

SPECTRE, Daniel Craig, James Bond
Going in to SPECTRE, I was of the opinion that Daniel Craig was the best Bond of all-time and was more worried that this might be his last film as 007 than I was about the film itself.  After all, the same team behind Skyfall, probably the best Bond film of all, was back and everything we’d seen looked fantastic.  Leaving SPECTRE, I have to say, even though he’s under contract for a fifth film, I hope Daniel Craig is done.  SPECTRE isn’t just the biggest disappointment of 2015, it sets the Bond franchise back to its pre-Casino Royale renaissance and paints Craig’s Bond into an ending so final that it’s difficult to see how anything but another reboot is the next step. Continue reading Movie Review: SPECTRE (2015) *Bond Bombs* Spoiler Warning

My Favorite Scene: Skyfall (2012) “Silva’s Rat Monologue”


By the time of Daniel Craig’s third go-round as Bond, he had already owned the role, but he hadn’t been given a legendary villain. Sam Mendes fixed that when he cast Oscar-winner Javier Bardem as Silva, and gave us-arguably-the best Bond film of them all.  Skyfall tells more about Bond’s boyhood and maturation than the previous 22 films combined without actually giving him an origin story. I know they’re going deeper down the rabbit hole in SPECTRE, but I always felt Wolverine lost a lot as a character when his whole origin was neatly laid out, and I think Bond would, as well.

Javier Bardem, Silva, Skyfall

This really is as much Judi Dench’s picture as it is Daniel Craig’s and after six films as M, she certainly earned a co-starring role as she and Bond hunt and are hunted by Silva. Bardem is certainly flashy and over-the-top in the Bond villain tradition, but unlike most, he’s every bit as good as James, and spends most of the film beating him quite handily. There’s so much good and done right in this film that it’s hard to nail a scene as my favorite, but I love a good entrance. When you get your villain making monologues from the get-go, you know you’ve got a good one.  I’m going to cheat and also stick in Silva’s reunion scene with M, because I can’t decide between the two. Bardem should have at least gotten an Oscar nomination for this film. Just brilliant.