MOVIE: Casino Royale

Last night, after the fundraiser, I quickly stopped by home, dropped off the painting, then headed back out for the Rave (only a couple minutes from the house) to catch the 12:01am showing of Casino Royale. I wore a white tee and my pin-up girl pajama pants to the theatre and also grabbed some theatre popcorn. The experience was fun and the movie was four-of-four stars.

The opening scene was of the art-house quality, a throwback tribute to the '70s JB films, then its crisp, modern title sequence made for a nice segue to the story of 007 early in his career as told in contemporary times.

The chase sequence right after the title sequence was friggin' awesome. It wasn't a car chase... it was an on-foot pursuit on many levels. And this theme of back-to-basics style set the tone for the rest of the film -- quite refreshing.

CR was my first James Bond film, but I could tell that it is the best of the series. The film had a maturity that I really didn't expect, have previously seen the ads for the Pierce Brosnan 007 series (car sliding on ice and all,...). And it was only this morning reading some CR message board posts that I found out that Paul Haggis was attached as one of its screenplay writers. It all made sense.

Daniel Craig was the perfect James Bond. He adds dimension to an easily-caricatured figure... plus he's hot:

Personally, I'd like to see more Haggis-Craig pairings in the future -- both bring humanity to their films and are the saving grace of modern Hollywood. And it's so reassuring that they make such movies as this Casino Royale that can surprise us.