James Bond Films

I are Bond Rockist.

He is NOT Roger Moore, and, while Sean Connery got it closest, we need a Bond who just don't give a fuck except for his mission and his jollies.

i can't get into it.

look yeah so roger moore is shit but the moore films are better.

The soundtrack to For Your Eyes Only is also totally brilliant but for different reasons.

In 2077, nobody will remember anything about McCartney except that he did the tune for Live And Let Die.

Thunderball would be an order of magnitude better if they never made him wear that dinky helmet when he uses the rocket belt.

The ones Lewis Gilbert directed are all fucking smashing, not a one of them makes a lick of sense and all end in ludicrous crowd-panic gunfights.

Goldfinger is played out. I blame cable.

Pierce Brosnan makes Timothy Dalton remind you of Sean Connery. I can't countenance any of his contributions to the series, I wish they'd retcon him out of existence. Everybody hates Lazenby because he's just about two ounces less totally awesome than Connery is, but OHMSS is one of the best Bond films ever made. Moore's perfectly enjoyable but he doesn't give you the impression that he's hatefucking all the bitches like Connery does, which I think is really part of the character.

Search: From Russia With Love (my favourite, just a fantastic thriller), The Living Daylights (Enormously underrated, some great set pieces and an actual plot), OHMSS.

Destroy: All Brosnons except for Goldeneye, License to Kill, most of the Moores.

Live And Let Die=Blaxploitation + The French Connection

The Man With The Golden Gun has got Christopher Lee (w/a 3rd nipple!), Tatoo, Britt Ekland & a American Motors-powered car chase!

I don't think I agree with the premise that Bond films are "mediocre;" I know I have shit taste in movies because I spent $25 to get the long cut of Lynch's DUNE, but there have been occasions when watching Connery films that I've had to catch myself and remember that there are probably lots of reasons we have color film technology, not just this one.

I do remember Daylights being pretty strong despite Dalton but License To Kill is a steaming pile. Horrific.

(signed)
JAMES BOND
DOUBLE
O
SEVEN

Favorite Moore scene: when he kicks the car over the cliff in For Your Eyes Only

but tombot is so largely otm! john barry, check. sheena easton, check. ohmss (art direction! dialogue!) and esp. soundtrack, check. i'd add:

thunderball remains the masterpiece, period. is too goddamn long for cable to ever play out. song best bond theme and best tom jones song at once.

live and let die is the only 100% successful moore film. next up is view to a kill. the first thirty minutes of the man with the golden gun are the best of the moore films.

lazenby rules. the only bond to ever play a spy actually playing someone else (prosthetic eyebrows don't count), a la h. bogart's bookstore nerd in big sleep or h. ford's decency commission dude in blade runner. his sissy-ass kilt get-up is fucking awesome, and he wears it like a pro. his only problem is that he's not connery. also: blofeld savalas is awwwwwwesome. all the blofelds rule, but man.

the cinematography, esp. the interiors, in the greats, like, say, frwl, is so accomplished and handsome it makes you wanna cry.

brosnan wasn't sooooo bad the first couple times around, before he started looking like fred mcmurray. there's no saying how good he might've been if there'd been no remington steele write-in campaign etc. & he'd gotten the role when he was really young enough (see also roger moore)

dalton is mostly just depressing but whoa! the living daylights while probably the worst is also the most entertaining of his bunch. wayne newton! benicio del toro! anthony fucking zerbe, for heaven's sake!

my favorite line in the entire series is in thunderball where bond is getting into his wetsuit and felix leiter says, "on you anything looks good." gayest moment ever. (though the ludicrous sped-up boat footage is close behind.) second favorite moment is in view when walken does his quintuple-take at bond's info under his desk.

if i ever get a car i'll call it the disco volante. peter sellers is the most underrated bond of all.

thing with connery is...:

dr no -- just plain bad
russia with love -- good
goldfinger -- played
thunderball -- YES. his best film.
you only live twice -- drags a bit, dunnnit.

that's only five films (i won't mention 'diamonds', total dud) and only four of them worth considering. it's not much of a golden age. i say it on every bond thread but 'living daylights' owns. 'license' IS really bad, but it's not dalton's fault.

As far as this kind of thing goes, the extras are not bad. For instance, I learned that Roger Moore is quite a good laugh, both on set and off.

You do get a pretty good idea of what is involved in making a Bond film, rather than just a load of PR twaddle.

Having said that, not worth the money, really.

Has anyone picked up the all new bells and whistles Ultimate Edition James Bond DVDs?

Paul Greengrass on Bond: "Personally, I spit on those values. I think we've moved on a little bit from all that, the martini shaken, not stirred."

He's essentially an imperial adventurer of a particularly English sort.
I guess this is a valid comment although is it worth pointing out that Bond is half Scottish/half Swiss.

james bond would kill jason bourne with his own cell phone

the first bourne movie is exceptional but the second one starts to fall apart when he goes to moscow, I think. Maybe needs a rewatch.

james bond being of a "particularly english sort" is true inasmuch as bond clearly has class warfare issues spewing out of every pore

RIP Dr. No

nrq completely wrong about everything on this thread (except FRWL being good)

james bond would kill jason bourne with his own cell phone

^^^^ This, especially Daniel Craig.

Wow Stephen Berkoff is a giant ham isn't he...

Is Octopussy on telly or something? It's a shit film.

Actually what am I talking about, Octopussy is always on Telly.

It was, and it is. Roger Moore's eyebrow looks like it was making a space-launch attempt, it was so far up his forehead.

xp the ITV website keeps screwing up and listing the wrong Bond movie - for instance it said that Octopussy was on last week as well. Pointless trivia: Louis Jourdan looks like my secondary school Geography teacher.

It's a shit film.

Came out the same year as 'Never Say Never Again'. Connery's is by far the better film. Berkoff's performance is what saves Oct', from the conference room presentation to "Follow that car!". Walter Gotell on top form as always as Gogol. Moore puts in his absolute worst smirking ironic eyebrow raised take on Bond. At least he dialled it down for 'View To A Kill'.

peter sellers is the most underrated bond of all.

^^^ The scene where he plays baccarat against Orson Welles is the best 'Bond beats villain at cards' bit in any Bond film, official Eon prod or otherwise. Connery vs Adolpho Celli in 'tunderball is a pretty close second.

octopussy was on last week as well.

view ta kill is on today, as well as two anticipated footy matches. i ain't goin nowhere today

all the india stuff in octopussy is super boring and kinda racist

i loves me a good train chase tho

Poll for most racist line in a Bond film? "That should keep you in curry for a while" would probably top it.
Oct' train chase is good - although iirc the stuntman hanging off the train was seriously injured?

view to a kill... surely the second worst bond after man with the golden gun. DESPITE some memorable villains they fuck it completely up. I've still watched it probably ten times and I'll watch it again if it's on the telly

If you're in the UK it's on ITV1 at 3:50pm. Otherwise some ILXors might be liveblogging it here. I really have some work to get on with, but after roast pork and apple pie & custurd I will probably be sitting here going "buh" and counting the lines on R. Moore's forehead.

Oh man I was reading the Thunderball liveblog yesterday, we really shd do it again.

Moore himself said that by that point he was about "a few hundred years old for the part".

This opening sequence starts off well but gets increasingly cringe inducing.

View to a Kill>>>>Octopussy as I recall.

The plot takes a bit more explaining, but Bond tearing around Paris in a Renault is pretty good.

Also Duran Duran bring it with the theme tune.

It's the last Moore, no? Hope they show Living Daylights next week, it's very underrated. It has a proper plot and everything. And friendly Jihadists.

Unfortunately Moore alternates between looking surprised and looking old.

xp Mujahideen that supply Bond with alcohol, no less.

"View" has a lot scenes farting around in this chateau.

Any chance of a bacon sarnie to go with this booze, Mohammed?

"View" has a lot scenes farting around in this chateau.

― Les centimètres énigmatiques (snoball), Sunday, September 19, 2010 4:21 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

yep. same with the indian castle in 'octopussy'. cut to the friggin chase.

And I mean there's no way this elderly German dude could possibly be suspicious in any way...

And that final fight on the bridge was a real shambles.

octopussy is better imo, for the german sequences

prefer the pre-credits sequence too, though it is ridiculous

didn't watch this coz my tv appears to be buggered

Hope they show Living Daylights next week, it's very underrated.

Next Sunday is 'Never Say Never Again'. TLD under-rated though - first Bond film I saw at the cinema, so maybe I'm biased, but it was a big shake up of the series to go from VTAK in 1985 to TLD in 1987.

Don't know about under-rated. I like it a lot, but so do most Bond geeks I know of.

it's always been my favourite. one of the first i saw, if not thee first.

yeah it's certainly not underrated. am also on the record as saying it's my favourite, although 'north by northwest' has since supplanted it

prefer 'the living daylights' meself, though 'nnw' is pretty good

okay i really cant think what nnw is ?

oh duh

Probably my third fave after From Russia and Casino Royale (Craig). Pity License to Kill was pants.

Basically for me to truly love a Bond film it has to have some sections set in Eastern Europe. That's the essence of the franchise for me, not swanning about in tropics.

Nah I think most of the early Bonds especially - and the books too - spend a lot more time swanning around the tropics rather than Eastern Europe. Eastern Europe was kinda dangerous and inaccessible for British secret agents in the 50s and 60s.

That's what makes it exciting!

yeah but that's why Bond doesn't really do it

This is an entirely subjective thing - I know the first Bond film takes place almost entirely in Jamaica, for example, I'm just personally happiest when Bond is behind the Iron Curtain.

yeah sorry I wasn't meaning to come across all gatekeeper-y about it. Just never really associate Bond with behind the Iron Curtain shenanigans

Nah, all good.

Yeah The Living Daylights is bloody amazing. (Spoiler!) His nowty mate Saunders' death early on was a shocker to the pre teen me. Perhaps i misremember but it seemed like an unusually emotional moment for a Bond film. Certainly there's nothing of the sort in the wacky wisecracking Moore ones. Dalton was a proper actor too that helped. Pet Shop Boys were down to do the theme tune but then they discovered *another* band would be used over the closing credits (The Pretenders as it happens) so they walked. Is this the only Bond to have 2 different memorable tunes in it?

The opening scene for NSNA is really top notch, as is the banter between M (Edward Fox) and 007. Pity that by the end of the movie M is turned into a near-comical figure.

A really nice comparison of CLARITY via editing in action films...

Bond vs Chan

http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/?p=10077

i don't normally go for basinger, but damn...

She is certainly k-rowr in this. A nice touch to have Graham Norton as the villain as well.

Could possibly do without the imminent Rowan Atkinson comedy interlude.

Striving for clarity in fight sequences is all well and good as a general proposition, but comparing Chan to Dalton and/or Stallone isn't really fair. Chan is a highly gifted physical comedian and stuntperson, Dalton is an actor, and Stallone is a walking steroid. Directors can't be expected to get out of the latter two what they can get from Chan.

you still don't have to run everything through the Dark Knight mixmaster.

The hyper/unclear fight scene style maybe did evolve partly as a response to paucity of Western actors/stunt guys. I think there's a place for it - but it's a really small place and it's been far too overused for the last several years now.

Just watched Every Which Way But Loose last night, in which Eastwood plays a bareknuckle fighter. The fights in this are not only cartoonish in the extreme, but poorly done in almost every possible way. It's like they said, there's no way on earth we make this stuff look convincing, so fuck it let's just do a half ass job and save ourselves some grief.

uh, it's a comedy right? wd you like to break down Chaplin's fights in City Lights?

lotta monkeying around in that movie

Aimless, stop monkeying around 'ere!!

Aping the previous post nagl

Suggest Orangu-Ban

From Russia With Love has everything a Bond movie ever needed, and more.

uh. monkeys.

it's a comedy right?

Hard to say no, but hard to say yes, either. It is ridiculous in many ways, but falls well short of funny most of the time. It's more like a fantasy for males with a twelve year old's mentality.

You're bananas!

From Russia With Love has everything a Bond movie ever needed, and more.

like ripoffs of North by Northwest?

change of gear there, but why not? Doesnt in any way make it a poorer bond movie.

The novel From Russia With Love, which contains most of the NxNW ripoffs as I recall, was published 2 years before NxNW was released.

ah, that great original film 'north by northwest'

chaplin's fights look pathetic and hilariously ineffective which gives him the edge on realism imo

Chaplin's technique is remarkably effective against walrus-mustachioed policemen and angry shopkeepers tho.

^ voice of experience?

It's Goldfingaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah on ITV1 now.

Scotland has Dr No, which I don't think I've seen before. Mayswell give it a go.

Goldfinger looks like suck a dork in his golf outfit. The golf scene in the film is tedious, but in the book it's three chapters.

They broadcast Bonds as frequently over here (Norway) as they seemingly do in England, and Scotland -- shame it's not synchronized so that everyone can join in on the same chat. Today it's On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Good old Irma Bunt.

Oh ITV1 have been broadcasting one or two Bonds every weekend for the past few months as they have nothing else to show at weekends apart from X Factor lulz'n'tears.

Never noticed it before, but what on earth is he wearing.
Nice one piece Mr Bond !
http://hmssweblog.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/goldfinger-connery-eaton-fleming.jpg

There's also the odd way he puts his hands in his pockets during the scenes at the golf club.

50th anniv of Dr No:

http://www.fandor.com/blog/daily-50-years-of-james-bond-movies

I've always meant to watch THAT Casino Royale at the Museum of TV, if they have it.
― Dr Morbius, Monday, April 16, 2007 8:09 PM (5 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

If that's the Jimmy Bond one somebody was reshowing it on Freeeview tv a couple of years back, so I saw it a couple of times. Guess it's not bad for a 50s tv play on U.S. TV.

I got the Sean Connery box of the dvds a while back, never quite got all the way through it. Did watch a couple with the commentary playing, interesting.

& I did enjoy Brosnan as Bond, thought he was probably the 2nd best at the time, behind Connery, but then I don't like the geriatric, wooden Moore. Now I think Craig's pretty useful.
But still he's no David Niven or Hoagy Carmichael is he?

these Pierce Brosnan Bond movies are a trip. I used to anticipate them when I was a kid and, looking at them now, it's obvious that the anticipation of a new Bond movie, following its casting and potential release date, was most of the fun.

what are 007's biggest fuckups?

http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2013/10/james-bond-bungler.html

really sweet montage of credit sequences here

http://vimeo.com/groups/montagecreators/videos/51244006

I've been thinking lately that I've mostly outgrown these films, but a rewatch last night confirmed that The Spy Who Loved Me is still a blast. The opening ski sequence, Jaws, a truly bugfuck villain with an awesome fortress (Ken Adam=the real star of this picture?), underwater visuals, a wokka-choo-wokka disco-funk variation on the Bond score--it just might be the best possible 70s Bond movie. Even Moore annoys me less than usual, though he still can't sell any of Bond's (already awful) quips the way Connery could, and yeah, his Bond is still an asshole who uses women as human shields, but there's still far less ickiness here than in, say, Live and Let Die.

funny, i just read Mike d'Angelo's take on Spy on Letterboxd, he kinda loathed it.

"Bond demands info from henchman, gets it. Pushes henchman off high building. Looks down at corpse. "What a helpful chap." That was somebody's best effort."

three HOUR 'making of'doc about The Spy Who Loved Me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTWguaAiecM

Blimey. I'd watch a half hour one maybe.

Ooo, thanks. I'll prob watch it all.

weirdest Ken Adam obit headline calls him "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang designer"

http://theredlist.com/media/database/settings/cinema/1960-1970/goldfinger/012-goldfinger-theredlist.jpg

Who said it?

“The whole thing has become a Frankenstein monster. The merchandising, the promotion, the pirating—they’re thoroughly distasteful . . . They’re like comic strips. I am fighting for money and time. I want to get as much money as I can. And I want to do them in as little time as possible, so I can fit in other things that mean more to me.”

Mark Harris on Bond in '67:

https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/cinema-67-revisited-live-twice-casino-royale/

Moore = charmer offscreen, passable on
Connery = charmer oncscreen, dickhead off

License to Kill gets an unfair slagging on this thread, it's one of the better Bond movies (I swear). It's also weird that it's considered "offbrand" when it's so tonally close to the books.

To be slightly fair to Connery, some of his post-Bond movies (The Offence, Zardoz) are more interesting projects than eg Thunderball.

licence to kill is alright but i do wish circumstances were kinder to timothy dalton - he's really great at playing total bastards hiding behind a veneer of suaveness, which in theory should be perfect for bond

I don't know if Licence to Kill is a good Bond film, but it is pretty solid as just a straight-up 80s action film. I'll usually watch at least a bit of it whenever I come across it on TV.

Connery for all his limitations was a good movie star in his pomp, obv this is different to being a good actor but fuck that. The Offence is excellent, as is The Hill

Also in a world of Superhero Franchise 4 Bond movies look fairly benign to me

License is right on the edge of being one of the best Bond films. I like both of Dalton's outings but they do have a bit of Goldilocks porridge about them... Daylights is too sprawling, and his character almost too nice to be Bond; License is refreshingly lean and mean, with a way better villain, but the limited globetrotting and lame "you're off the force!" plot mean it just doesn't feel like a James Bond movie. The setpieces in both are great though, blowing almost all of Moore's entries out of the water.

Dalton really got screwed by outside circumstances imho... feel like one more film and he would have totally been in the groove. I feel like the narrative has become that those films flopped and audiences rejected him as Bond, being too different from the preceding round of Mister Magoo films, but that's not really what happened.

People always talk about the book Bond being more of a bastard, but he's not really like that - he's a fascinating, slightly passive weirdo in a way the movies have never really captured - and maybe wouldn't be that interesting onscreen, anyway.

Dalton gets it pretty close - charming but impatient, passionate about the job but existentially empty - but he's just not SEXY enough. (That's a big part of the books too.) Connery gets the sexiness but he's too sure of himself.

OTM re: setpieces and villain - some of the best in the series, I think - and doubly weird given the preceding string of duds by the same director.

Glen is the kind of director the films require. I said it elsewhere but I think Martin Campbell's work on Casino Royale was so good and unobtrusive and unflashy in the best sense that it made going with false grail auteurs like Mendes and Forster look like an even bigger mistake, imo.

i mean i think Glen's films were occasionally vv good, not wholly duds.

Daniel Craig WILL RETURN

Will Christoph Waltz?

would be nice for craig to get one last shot at logging a fun, pacey, rewatchable Bond film. casino royale comes the closest but he's really gotten screwed by mendes in the last two, where craig's just killing it, the setpieces are great, but the script's insulting, the plot's an overstuffed mess and nobody has their eyes on the ball.

It will never happen, but I'd love to see a closer adaptation of Moonraker as a period piece - it's one of Fleming's best books, but for obvious reasons the plot wouldn't work as a Casino Royale-style modernisation.

It would be nice if they hired an actual action director

Martin Campbell's still around. Would be nice if they hired new screenwriters too. It's been the same guys since World is Not Enough. "Congrats - you made the worst Bond movie! Now we're going to hire you forever."

tbh it's the scenes between the action that have killed the last couple of movies for me, middlebrow hacks like mendes have nothing to offer these types of movies

get takashi miike in there, he'd do it up right

bond/fast and furious crossover, daniel craig dies at the end and ludacris takes up the mantle of james bond

d. Johnnie To, w. Catherine Breillat

shut up and take my money

Mendes has done a lot of damage to movies I think

I hope he dies

mendes has zero idea how to direct. everything looks vv nice but there's no kineticism within the prettiness. he made one of the most boring gangster movies ever and ruined Daniel Craig Bond.

James Bond pic.twitter.com/8eXHGCxCt2

— Pixelated Boat (@pixelatedboat) July 26, 2017

The opening day of the dead long take and the train fight in Spectre are pretty kinetic imo but I totally get why people don't like the movie as a whole. I like it in general as this chilly distanced recreation of Bond elements one would associate from the more cartoonier eras. Weird that the fillmmakers/studio felt like they needed to have their story hinge on ripping off the element of Star Trek Into Darkness that people hated the most.

...the bit between the credits?

https://www.avclub.com/the-entire-james-bond-series-has-been-recut-into-a-sing-1822228444

lol Dick

Jan 31 72 Went to see.....Diamonds are Forever...Sean has got potty and now really looks like a miner going to seed. Which he is...His Scots accent was more pronounced than ever - perhaps deliberatelty - perhaps indicating Home Rule for Scotland....Anyway it was good clean fun.

— Richard Burton (@BurtonDiaries) January 31, 2019

:D good review

got potty? (gone potty would be the normal usage, but doesn't seem to fit in this context)

Don't know, maybe the Twitter transcriber messed up. I assume Burton meant "gotten flabby."

Potty = pot-bellied here I think

Connery took the lead in Lumet's The Offence the following year which definitely makes use of his encroaching age

That makes sense, NV (maybe it's a Welsh expression)

Think the Offence is the first movie he made without a syrup

One of my favourite Lumet films, it's suitably bleak.

solid Burton zing, though I'm still amazed he was only 39 when he filmed The Spy Who Came In From the Cold.

Withdrawn Criterion Bond commentary tracks available to download here

https://www.the007dossier.com/2011/04/21/banned-james-bond-commentaries/

plus music & effects tracks for Goldfinger & Dr No!

Dr. No could be a stage production, there's so little action.

^ The dragon is a perfect cardboard craft project for a school play, it's true

https://bondcar.jp/images/bondcar084_m0405.jpg

Thunderball underwater scene is like the world’s longest live action screensaver

My local theater is re airing “Casino Royale” this weekend. Very tempted to blow off my plans to see “The Card Counter” today for that. (But I probably won’t.)

this sunday will mark my first journey to a cinema since last year

looking forward to this :D

(to see No Time To Die)

Card Counter was great

Is “James Bond” a single character that has existed on an imaginary timeline for almost 60 years or is “James Bond” a trained position on Her Majesty’s Secret Service that multiple people can/have filled?

Like does Daniel Craig James Bond have fond memories of taking on Oddjob in 1964, or is he someone else who has slipped into the government’s secret role of “agent 007”

read that as "taking an Oddjob" at first, thought this was a euphemism I hadn't been aware of

Is “James Bond” a single character that has existed on an imaginary timeline for almost 60 years or is “James Bond” a trained position on Her Majesty’s Secret Service that multiple people can/have filled?

* bong rip *

He's sort of a Homer-Simpson-type character, with a license to kill.

vg pls tell me your thoughts about this movie asap

u_u

fail - i got my dates confused, mr veg informed me our tickets are for NEXT sunday not today goddammit

;_; ;_;

oh even better, now i don't feel like i'm too late to try to see this opening weekend

it's early-opening on Wednesday in Regal's fake IMAX here fyi Brad

thank u sic, gonna try to coordinate it with my gf assuming she wants to see a near-three hour bond experience (prob not)

we're seeing it friday :)

I always thought the 007 was a numbered position, like how 'Felix' is a named one.

Is “James Bond” a single character that has existed on an imaginary timeline for almost 60 years or is “James Bond” a trained position on Her Majesty’s Secret Service that multiple people can/have filled?

― licorice in the front, pizza in the rear (Whiney G. Weingarten), Sunday, October 3, 2021 11:01 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

feel like the Daniel Craig Bonds are a reboot but the rest of them are all the same guy (even though he's played by 5 different actors). although never say never again and OG Casino Royale aren't canon.

Yeah, that’s explicitly the case - 2006 Casino Royale has Bond being promoted to 00 status.

that does not in any way explicitly make all the other ones the same guy

not even the one who turns to camera in his first scene and explicitly says “I am a different person from the other guy, take that as a reference to IRL actors or to in-movie as you will, it really doesn’t matter either way”

OK but you have Bond in For Your Eyes Only visiting the grave of Teresa from OHMSS. I mean, yes, it's all a bit Homer Simpson timewise but I always had impression there was meant to be continuity prior to the reboot, 'this never happened to the other guy' fourth-wall-breaking notwithstanding.

IMO continuity and canon discussions in Bond movies should be limited to "lol Lazenby broke the fourth wall" or "lol why does Felix Leiter never mention that Bond's turned into a different person between Live & Let Die and License to Kill" or "lol Rog put on a different toupee between takes". I understand why the Craig Bonds went the continuity route, it's what people expected after Jason Bourne, but it's definitely the dreariest part of the Craig movies.

Anyone seen Casino Royale lately? Still holds up but it's *much* closer to being a Brosnan cheesefest than I remember

i’ve watched that movie a lot and wouldn’t agree it resembles any brosnan movie

there’s a lot of low-key continuity in the connery-lazenby era, all of it around spectre tho. do y’all think that lazenby bond quit the service after his wife died and connery bond resumed the role to take revenge on his behalf

my favorite continuity error in ohmss is that blofeld supposedly doesn’t recognize bond through his very basic disguise

the craig bonds eventually go one further and add an origin story layer cf. blofeld is your brother and also in one movie we’re going to visit your childhood manor. this is the stuff i hate in the new films

yeah that stuff is awwwwful, really stopped Spectre dead in its tracks. Bond's not a person --- it's not interesting or meaningful for him to have a backstory or a childhood connection to the villain (which also is trite and silly taken just as a story element).

Welcome to 2022: the year Fort Knox's entire gold supply would cease being radioactive if Auric's plan had succeeded in GOLDFINGER (1964). So that's something. pic.twitter.com/bHH37vGyn8

— The Bubbles Tickle My Tchaikovsky (@TheTchaikovsky) January 1, 2022

I’d forgotten how wonderfully daft “The Living Daylights” is - this may be my favorite of these movies after all.

POV:

1. Casino Royale
2. The Living Daylights
3. From Russia With Love
4. Goldeneye
5. OHMSS

From Russia W Love
Casino Royale
For Your Eyes Only
Living Daylights
Goldfinger

(also love Man W Golden Gun)

ohmss
for your eyes only
from russia with love
the world is not enough
casino royale

picked TWINE just to make my list special, but it should really be the living daylights or the spy who loved me

License to Kill is violent!

Hutton-Bond is the archetype for faceless-Bond, no more interesting than a Taken or a John Wick or a Jason Bourne; despite being the least-interesting Bond he effectively wrested “Bond” from necessarily being attached to “the Scottish one” or “the Australian one” or “the corny unwatchable one” and made Bond uninteresting enough to be played by anybody. Those two movies are really good. I like the slick American-style sheen on Licence To Kill

Brosnan did the same as Hutton but was affable in this posh kind of way; perhaps my favourite Bond except that all his movies are unwatchably bad except Goldeneye

Daniel Craig is BILF, Casino Royale one of the greatest action movies of all time; Quantum is an OK follow up; Sam Mendes get your ass off the lot we took away your security pass years ago

Dalton not Hutton

Timothy Hutton would be the worst Bond

A View to a Kill
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
The Spy Who Loved Me
Casino Royale
Man with the Golden Gun

Tried to fit a Connery in, but I have to live my moronic Roger Moore loving truth.

From Russia
Goldfinger
For Your Eyes Only
License to Kill
Casino Royale

OHMSS is amazing but it feels as off-brand as Never Say Never Again.

I fucking love License to Kill -- the “least” Bondish movie is the most Fleming-ish film imo. The Living Daylights is terrific, but I get bored when Art Malik dominates the second half, pretty as he is.

I watched most of them for the first time this spring. OHMSS is visually and musically head and shoulders above the rest -- the whacky fighting, psychedelic vibes, amazing ski chase, the best main theme tune. From Russia with Love is the most completely satisfying. I didn't love any of the Moore films.

Martin Campbell is probably the best director the Bond films had. It was a very wise choice to have him usher in the Brosnan and Craig eras — just a very economical filmmaker who directs cleanly and for maximum impact, just incredible framing. He’s not a poor man’s Greengrass like Forster was w/Quantum of Solace, and thankfully he doesn’t possess the elevated, stagnant style and inability to direct an impactful action scene like Mendes.

also: enervated stagnant style

Dalton not Hutton

Big oops

It’s telling that Campbell was not only able to pull off a double reboot but that each time he did so with Bond reset in a new geopolitical era (Brosnan post Cold War, Craig post 9/11-Iraq) and they both landed and were massive hits. Pretty amazing two for two.

TIL that Goldeneye and Casino Royale had the same director. I love them both so much I'm gonna chase down his other non-Bond films

He’s a remarkable journeyman. Would strongly suggest the 1980s BBC series _Edge of Darkness_, which is also where he first worked with Joe Don Baker, who gives an amazing cast-against-type performance.

I just noticed he also directed that amazing interrogation episode in the first season of Homicide.

There’s nothing else quite like EoD in his filmography as far as I can tell. It’s amazing. The whole thing looks like it’s been shot from inside a tin of hairwax that got lost behind a cupboard. But in a good way.

Yeah, he’s good, even when the scripts don’t serve him well. I liked his first Zorro film with Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones, No Escape was a fun 90s action film, and I heard some decent things about his Jackie Chan/Pierce Brosnan film The Foreigner. I’ve liked him enough that I was even intrigued by the Daisy Ridley film The Cleaner from a couple months ago, which was basically Die Hard but she’s a window cleaner.

before Edge Of Darkness, Campbell also did half the episodes of Reilly, Ace Of Spies with the same writer, Troy Kennedy Martin.

Mask Of Zorro is on par with his Bonds, and he’s on a real action renaissance run right now (he’s released two films since turning 81 last October!). 2021’s The Protege, with Maggie Q and SamJack, is competent, 2025’s Cleaner is decent fun, and 2022’s Memory, about a hitman succumbing to dementia, is Pretty Good.

i have a lot of childhood nostalgia for Moore, his Bond movies are the ones i remember the most, watching on tv on a Saturday night while Mum & Dad entertained friends

i’m always fighting to remember that so many of them are TOO LONG and/or are deeply stupid or racist or Carry On Bond

but i do secretly love a great many of them

They are full of amazing moments and songs and vibes, but mostly shaggy and bad at full length. I remember For Your Eyes Only being better, a dry-run for the return to “serious” Bond - but it’s also pretty silly IIRC - I haven’t seen it since the 80s! I remember Topol rules in it.

On last watch, I thought Casino Royale had a lot more Brosnan-era silliness than I remembered - except done well. It’s the movie Brosnan should have made. The rest are risible to fine; every one except Spectre has good things in it.

Walter Chaw recently interviewed Martin Campbell, and the piece might double as recommendations of his work: https://filmfreakcentral.net/2025/03/nobody-does-it-better-ffc-interviews-martin-campbell/

Also, reading up on Campbell's new film Cleaner, I gotta say what intrigues me most about it is that someone made an action movie in 2025 that is only 97 minutes long (to Veg's point--yes, even most of the good Bonds are too long).

been rewatching these in order, most of them for the first time since i was a teenager. my favorite connery ones are the same as i remember them being whereas the roger moore ones have all flipped so far. moonraker is kind of amazing? i remembered all the ridiculous space stuff at the end but forgot about the earlier venice segment which is just full of great bits. whereas the spy who loved me drags really hard in the first half before the memorable final act.

weirdly excited to get to octopussy which is the only one from this era i have no memory of watching and thus probably didn't

Moonraker goated for the double taking pigeon alone. The pre-credits freefall fight with Jaws is terrific action too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLCwH1G_QEE

https://theasc.com/articles/the-freefall-filmmaking-of-moonraker

saw some shit online about how writers tasked with rebooting bond post-daniel craig are stymied because bond *died* in the last one

why on earth would they care about that any more than they care about bond looking like seven* different people over the years and presumably being in his nineties now

continuity is a curse

yeah that is real rmde shit. like there’s only 1 linear story to tell and it can only be told this way :/

if it was me running it i’d read that & get a new writers room ASAP lol

i know nothing of comics but i gather that their writers realized this 60+ years ago

iirc Calvin failed the 1st grade 10 years in a row without growing an inch

Frank King was a writer tbf

I don't know much about Bond, but when I saw this story in passing I could have sworn it was the current person tasked with writing the novels that was struggling. Maybe the books care more about continuity? Anyway, it feels like the Craig Bonds took themselves more seriously, were less cartoonish, so maybe that's why they are suddenly concerned about the sacred timeline? Whatever, just make Bezos Bond. Heck, make his wife Bond. Make them both Bond. Make Bezos the villain and his wife Bond, or vice versa. Or Bezos could play Bond, his wife could be the Bond girl, get Elon to play the villain and Trump could play himself as the president. And they can all take and spend as much as they want. They could film the whole thing in space over the course of decades, like a sci-fi "Boyhood."

set the movie at the MI6 training academy and have like six different Bond candidates all vying for 00 status and then SHOCK they thought it was a training mission but it's REAL. whoever the audience likes the most gets to be in the next movie.

Pete Davidson wins

Anthony Horowitz, the novelist commissioned by the Ian Fleming estate to write three official 007 books, echoed the concern.

He said: "The last time we saw Bond, he was poisoned and blown to smithereens – how will they get past the fact he is dead with a capital D? I think that was a mistake, because Bond is a legend. He belongs to everybody, he is eternal – except in that film. If I was asked tomorrow to write the script, I wouldn't be able to do it. Where would you start? You can't have him waking up in the shower and saying it was all a dream."

The martinis fortified him against the nanobots, which then reassembled him after he got blown to smithereens. Easy-peasy.

just open with the last five minutes of No Time to Die and then pull back to Bond watching the movie in a theater saying "not how I would have done it!"

if they're struggling so much with this then i'm actually really glad they killed him

the first season of Sledge Hammer! ended with the main character destroying the entire city and presumably killing every single person in it and they wound up doing a second season anyway. if they can figure it out I'm sure the geniuses behind "James Bond" can

im certain that it's canon that bond is just the 007 alias, right?

in terms of movies etc anyway

the first season of Sledge Hammer! ended with the main character destroying the entire city and presumably killing every single person in it and they wound up doing a second season anyway. if they can figure it out I'm sure the geniuses behind "James Bond" can

― frogbs,

Just the analogy I was looking for.

The second-season premiere perfunctorily explained that it and following episodes were set "five years before" the explosion

and yet he was still partners with someone he would not actually meet until 5 years later

I mean if they actually cared about continuity in a Bond film (which...really?), they not only killed Bond, they killed him in the timeline before 80% of the other Bond films. Which means tHeY wErE all a DrEaM

Lock thread before fan theorists show up

The 1967 film version of Casino Royale solved this twice. The original James Bond retired and his name and number were given to someone else so there'd be a 'James Bond 007' in the Secret Service. Then when the original James Bond was "bombed bullied and baited out of retirement" he made every other agent in the service James Bond 007, even the women.

I agree with all continuity dismissal but if they REALLY want to go that way it's easy enough: zombie bond. This would have the added advantage of making the character more like the culture he represents as well.

Why not lean in even further and have AI Generated Bond?

Bond defeats Mr Blockchain

Reworking of The Three Doctors with Dalton, Brosnan and Craig as different incarnations of Bond

....with secret villain George Lazenby!

He’d probably be able to keep the secret from himself if on set next year or later.

But any formal return to the series would detract from the way his roles in The Man From Hong Kong and Never Too Young To Die are in dialogue with his first work.

ghost bond, and all the old ghost villains from prev movies too. great film, would watch.

I ain't scared of no Bond

for your eyes only - this is the first moore one that's matched my memory of it, which is that it's unmemorable other than the monastery climbing setpiece at the end. the ski chase is alright but it's a retread of OHMSS right down to using a bobsled track as the funny escalation. i don't think there's any fun spy gadgetry in the whole film either, other than the admittedly funny facial identification computer bit

i fucking love that ski chase

It's the closest Moore ever got to the literary Bond and is interesting for that reason, I figure. It's also the first one I ever saw thanks to cable TV in the early 80s. (I remember ads for _Moonraker_ in 1979 but didn't see it then.)

Mentioned on the wikipedia thread a while back:

French filmmaker Robert Bresson admired the film: "It filled me with wonder because of its cinematographic writing ... if I could have seen it twice in a row and again the next day, I would have done."[93][94]

I remember For Your Eyes Only as not the best Bond, but maybe the vibiest. Like, an easy film to just have on in the background and pay only occasional attention to. Plus, the Sheena Easton theme is pretty.

Eyes does have the 2CV chase, with disco bond music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OstFSgoBuM

The poster was controversial at the time because it has buttocks. To my eyes it shows Bond as a tiny scared little man being effortlessly menaced by a powerful manifestation of his greatest fear - geese women - but I suppose that in 1981 buttocks were just too rude.

I admire Octopussy and The Living Daylights because the plots have a hallucinatory, dream-like quality. I recall individual events, but I still can't mentally process how the second film goes from the Czech border to Afghanistan and there's also a frozen heart, and I just can't piece together how the first film switches from a genuinely creepy cold war thriller set in West Berlin, and then Q balloons into a compound in India.

The individual sequences make sense, but how do the characters move from one to the next? They're like dreams.

The greatest rapture of my life was afforded me on a boat in Nassau by Fatima Blush.

re-watched 'No Time to Die' last night and good lord is it long

also the little girl actress was really good for however old she was (and however much she was being exploited)

also i saw a kitty online that looked like rami malek

https://i.postimg.cc/wxDX9Pz4/ramicat.jpg

French filmmaker Robert Bresson admired the film

A highly accomplished director is going to see every film they watch with a totally different perspective than any average person who sees the same film.

lmao

i think he just liked the babes

octopussy - ok yeah definitely never seen this one before, i would have remembered all the circus stuff at the least. nice to finally reach a new-to-me one, though it's just okay. moore looks like he's aged way more than 2 years since for your eyes only. i've seen the next one so i knew how severe this gets but didn't expect how all-at-once it happens. my favorite gag was the reveal that bond diegetically knows what his theme song sounds like.

the only things i remember from octopussy are that maud adams was the title character, that maybe bond (maybe?) encountered her on her boat, and the way louis jourdan admonishingly purred 'octopussy . . .'

Although Moneypenny has a small part in most of the films, it is always highlighted by the underscored romantic tension between her and James Bond. On that note, she is not always considered to be a Bond girl, having never had anything more than a professional relationship with Bond.

but in Skyfall, after Moneypenny shoots Bond and he returns and is sent out to Asia despite failing his tests . . .

Moneypenny shows up in Macau and, after shaving Bond with a straight razor . . . they totally fuck, right?

a view to a kill - i remembered this one being about Computers but it barely is, it's actually about Horses and Earthquakes. i also remembered a hovercraft chase sequence that wasn't actually in here so i'm curious if and when that will turn up.

-the mine finale is kind of a brutal tone shift, with christopher walken machine gunning down dozens of miners while bond flounders around trying to stop his rather farfetched-sounding earthquake plot. barely even feels like a win for bond when all is said and done.

-i like it when a movie ends with an unusual type of vehicle or building exploding. a blimp definitely qualifies

-interesting that all 5 80s films have the same director, i wouldn't have guessed that.

-once again this one's just okay. the standouts from the moore era on this rewatch were Live and Let Die and Moonraker. not at all the ones i expected.

the next iteration of bond should bring back the cartoonish sheriff/police chief characters

interesting that all 5 80s films have the same director, i wouldn't have guessed that.

John Glen's work can best be called 'sturdy' but he managed to keep it all going, I guess; he was no Martin Campbell but I think he did well by Dalton for his two films in particular. Read Glen's autobiography years back, had some good moments. I'll always remember that he said Moore taught him how best to fold fancy/formal men's clothes in one's luggage to prevent any creasing or the like, which struck me as a very Bond thing to do.

There were actually six '80s films, and one was directed by Irvin Kirshner - Never Say Never Again unless you're considering that one non-canon

xpost I know Moore designed his outfits for The Persuaders, he was a clothesy guy.

“ re-watched 'No Time to Die' last night and good lord is it long”

I saw it in the theater, it seems like I’m still watching it

I remember wondering if Eva Green gets royalties for the use of her image, because her face appears very briefly at the beginning of No Time and her character is mentioned at least in all of the Craig films. It's a shame she was only properly in one film - spoilers - but on the other hand I suppose the idea is that she casts a big shadow over Bond's personality, which she does, so it works. The Bond films are ridiculous enough that she could have come back as her own twin sister.

She would be called Dubai Chocolate Martini Lynd. No Time is like a whole film with a little mini film co-starring Ana de Armas embedded in the middle of it. It wasn't until after the film was finished that I realised de Armas wasn't coming back. Boo! It also indirectly reminded me - the Hugh Dennis connection - that Never Say Never Again had Rowan Atkinson in it. I had completely forgotten that. What a boring film that was.

I remember watching Spectre in the cinema. There's a bit right at the beginning where Bond goes off to do some spying, and it's a long tracking shot of him walking along a rooftop. It stood out, because - as Ned points out above - the Bond films traditionally have efficient direction. Which means that they often look like very expensive television movies, because there's no time for canna cantalope cantaloupe canna whatever.

I don't know the word. Cantalope. Cantaloupe. Cannalope. Chiaroscuro. Chiaroscuro. That's it. And montage. And mise-en-scène. All those fancy cinema things. Editing, sets and so forth. Costumes. The thirty degree rule. Match cuts. Jumpers for goalposts. Three and in. My wife left me. They're like all of the Star Trek films that came after The Motion Picture. Made on time and on budget, very popular, but visually ordinary.

Sadly almost the entire rest of Spectre was dire, although there was a nice shot of a train from above. If you're reading this, Sam Mendes, your film had two good shots. Almost as many as in Skyfall. Which you also directed. So perhaps it wasn't your fault.

It is always Sam Mendes' fault.

Can't see how Never Say Never Again is boring when it features a video game contest between Sean Connery and Klaus Maria Brandauer

and Barbara Carrera chewing up every scene she's in

die another day on

worst looking bond? special effects are horrific

they're real bad, yeah. bad era for the look of blockbusters generally.

yeah pretty dire

oh i did watch living daylights a couple weeks ago. i still like it. there's some fun dissonance between dalton's more anxious and serious portrayal of the character and the silly stunts leftover from the moore era. bond sliding across the austrian border in a cello case is one of my favorite bits in the franchise

will do licence to kill this weekend and that will mark the end of the ones i watched as a teen. don't think i've seen any of the brosnans in full though maybe bits and pieces on tv

daltons really want to be hard edged between the moore hangover parts right, and for the most part i think with some success

will always rep for goldeneye idk how much of that is retrospective videogame fondness but it has exactly the right amount of fun

likewise there is a lot of glossy brosnan silliness in casino royale - it's fun, too

last time i saw living daylights, it felt like final 30 mins in afghanistan lets the movie down (i remember it being a bit boring) but it's great until that point

i guess it's entirely possible that i've seen goldeneye and my memories of it have been completely sublimated into my memories of the video game, which was the much larger cultural presence if you're exactly my age and from one of the few parts of the world where the n64 was popular

i will find out next week

i also played a decent amount of the world is not enough game and definitely haven't seen that one

i think goldeneye was the first one i actually saw in the theater? hadn't seen the daltons and was pretty psyched for it

i recall laughing aloud at the opening scene where, in free-fall, he catches up with the plane. but the film was solid: onatopp is all-time, the tank chase in st. petersburg, alan cumming is suitably obnoxious, robbie coltrane always welcome, as was sean bean's character dying (for perhaps the first time in an impressive series?)

i have deepseated hatred / loathing for the Brosnan Bonds that rewatching them is always mostly unpleasant -i usually skip them

robert carlyle was a solid villain; jonathan pryce maybe less so

denise richards was awful; michelle yeoh was amazing

i think there was another one that i can't even remember

anyway the craig bonds are the best

licence to kill - oof, sadly this is my least favorite one in a while. feels so anonymous once you get past the initial premise of 'bond goes rogue', theres not much you can point to and say this is the only time you'll get to see bond do this. the 18 wheeler stunts at the end are the only unique thing (and the only thing i remembered). i don't think the screenplay is up to the usual standards either, lots of clunker lines and few good ones.

also there's a couple surprisingly grisly deaths in here that are out of line with the rest of the series so far, like benicio del toro (!) getting grinded to death. i don't remember the craig movies going in for gore either? but its been a while. not really what i'm looking for out of bond.

rosamund pike in her first major role is an all timer

I love License to Kill even though you could literally have made it with characters outside of the Bond universe and it would have been fine. It's definitely Bond at his least Bond.

I quit Die Another Day after ten minutes on last attempt.

Pretty sure that and Spectre are the only Eon ones I have left to see.

I might be the only Spectre defender here

does that make you a ghost rider

also there's a couple surprisingly grisly deaths in here that are out of line with the rest of the series so far, like benicio del toro (!) getting grinded to death. i don't remember the craig movies going in for gore either? but its been a while. not really what i'm looking for out of bond.

― ciderpress

yeah that del Toro death is an indelible one. also Anthony Zerbe exploding in the depressurizer iirc?

rosamund pike in her first major role is an all timer

― Wichita Referee's Assistant (darraghmac)

certainly a perfect match of character and character name and actor (a compliment)

License to Kill is very Bond IMO! The book Bond if not the film one. There's lots of un-unsed bits from the Live and Let Die and Moonraker books in there.

*un-used

denise richards was awful

will never agree with this

i think it's ok to let the voting record show the prevailing opinion on this one

the cheese (ivy) stands alone

will never agree with this

i would (seriously!) love to hear your case for her

she’s as bad as the writing for her character, they’re just bad in different ways

that performance could have fit a Brosnan if actually tailored for her

mookie otm tho

i don't *blame* her -- her entire character was nothing more than a lead-up to a joke

but other actresses did better/overcame that

i like die another day which mostly is because it is so damn fluffy and stupid that's it's sorta surreal to think it's from this century. it's a lot more fun than TWINE.

i'm always a bit cautious about catching license to kill (which is pretty fantastic) on tv even in the evening cus i assume the heavy cuts will spoil the effect. afaict itv made their own somewhat anomalous edit in the 90s which had different ideas than james ferman on which parts to keep and ditch.

and yeah re:gore, that's the reason it had to be cut to avoid an 18 in the uk (but this was when the bbfc really had it in for action films). in uncut form it's a 15 today and feels like one too - a few brosnans and casino royale also have 15 versions available but not for reasons of blood.

or not especially for reasons of blood i should say.

goldeneye - yeah this was good. about the best you could hope for from 90s action movie james bond, not much else to say. definitely hadn't seen it before though i was amused by how accurate some of the sets were to their video game level reconstructions, or vice versa as it was

tomorrow never dies - was pretty down on this one until the parking garage remote controlled car sequence halfway through which is some classic bond hijinks. the second half with michelle yeoh was better though the screenplay is still kinda bad. feels like the first bond movie thats truly in conversation with video games, the motorbike vs helicopter chase especially is constructed and framed exactly like every modern action game setpiece. "they'll print anything these days" when the guy dies in the printing press is a top tier one-liner, wish these brosnan ones had a bit more of that.

the world is not enough - some good Silly Vehicle action in this one. flying snowmobiles, helicopters with chainsaws, an attempted hot air balloon escape. i appreciate it. much like the last one though its weak outside of the action, some really clunky dialogue and another lame terrorists and nuclear weapons plot. when do we get back to bond villains building orbital lasers?

I’ve been rewatching these over the holidays— I would take ten minutes of a Le Carré adaptation over 60 minutes of any Bond— really looking forward to MacFeydan as Smiley

Connerys ranked:

From Russia
Goldfinger
Dr No

(Shippable:)
Twice
Thunderball
Diamonds

Lazonby is awesome

Moore’s ranked, haven’t seen them all:

Spy Who Loved
Live And Let Die
View To A Kill— I may be this films sole defender but they worked hard with senior Bond and it’s a load of fun

Both Daltons are awesome

Skip all Brosnans except Goldeneye (pity, too, he’s a great Bond)

Craigs ranked:

Casino Royale (fave Bond overall)
Quantum (better than they say)
Skyfall (worse than they say, so long and serious)

The others are 🗑️

Challop maybe but the world does not need another Bond film

for all that they try to make him love Vesper (and later Madeleine) the purest Bond moment is in Casino Royale when, in Nassau, having seen the tortured corpse of a woman Bond fucked, M says:

I would ask you if you could remain emotionally detached but I don't think that's your problem, is it, Bond?

the way he answers 'no' is incredible. kinda wonder how many takes they did just to capture that level of disdain

he's a psycho!

when do we get back to bond villains building orbital lasers?

die another day - lol ok never mind, i wished for the wrong thing, sorry. just make a good movie next time

I’ve never understood the love for Skyfall. It isn’t terrible, it just isn’t the best. Spectre is DIRE.

QoS was (I believe) written without a solid script but isn’t as bad as you think if you just go with it

Supposedly the script was delivered for QoS right before the 2007 writers guild strike, but Daniel Craig has mentioned several times that it was pretty bare bones and he and the director had to kind of come up with stuff on their own when filming started. Given how overwritten some of the later chapters were, it was kind of nice.

SPECTRE was so bad it cured me of James Bond

I’ve never understood the love for Skyfall. It isn’t terrible, it just isn’t the best.

i assume you meant 'the hate'?

other ridiculousness aside (you are MI6; why on earth would you take M to scotland to be protected by a couple shotguns? and also can you not prevent a guy from bringing in helicopter gunships?)

i was *extremely* put off by the way bond identified bardem's accomplice (sévérine) as a sex slave, then fucked her, then led her to her death

i mean yes, that's pure bond, but i don't have to enjoy it

casino royale - this was fine. i think i just fundamentally prefer silly bond though, i don't need him to go undercover in a clown suit but i do need some one-liners and silly gadgets and slapstick collateral damage. also dramatized poker always offends my sensibilities as a math/statistics guy and there's a lot of that here. the structure is weird too like there's almost no final act.

I was cool with Bond shedding the silliness for one installment, but pretty soon…

slapstick collateral damage

Read this as 'slapstick colonial damage,' which also works.

only recently discovered this song... apparently rejected for the end credits for 1999's The Worlds is Not Enough... really sounds more like one of his 1970 torch tunes, I thought he had long given up on that stuff in favor of his more avant garde explorations

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCt4O4gJifQ

quantum of solace - i hate the way this one is shot and edited, especially the action. has to be the most poorly-made bond movie. don't have much else to say. near the end when bond jumps down onto the car and yells "YOU AND I HAD A MUTUAL FRIEND" is insanely funny, not sure what they were going for there

skyfall - i saw this one in theaters when it came out! i really liked it then and i still do. what i didn't appreciate then but do now is the perfect reintegration of the sillier elements of bond they cut from the last two into the craig formula - the ramp of crushed vw beetles in the intro sequence, the komodo dragon pit, the return of Q as a technobabble hacker kid, the villain attacking bond with a tube train, etc. there's even some classic style one-liners again. a plot full of contrivances designed to produce the coolest-looking sequences in the franchise one after another. that's how you do it baby.

spectre - i'd seen this one when it came out too, but the only part i remembered is the opening day of the dead sequence. upon revisit, maybe that's because it's the only scene in the movie that is lit

Only scene where anything remotely interesting happens iirc, also Waltz and his entire plotline have not shown up yet so that also helps.

The opening scene is the only worthwhile part of that film. The rest is brutal, uninspired, joyless.

I like Spectre until they get to the Walz lair - all the stuff in Rome, and the Alps, and Tangier & the journey on the train are all quite good & very classic Bond if you like that kind of thing which I do & don’t mind if it’s a little corny

The lair is when I start feeling like I’m watching cosplay & it kinda falls apart for me

(The stuff in Tangier & on the train w Swann is especially good imo)

OK, I’ll give you the train scene (had forgotten about that)

I just read the plot summary on Wiki and am drawing a blank on almost all of this convoluted gibberish. To be fair, some substances may have been involved, back in those heady days of 2015.

I remember thinking Bautista was good in it. And that Bellucci was good but underused.

And Bond in the desert in a suit (or tux) never gets old

I’m just now realizing that the last three Bond movies are the only ones I’ve watched only once each.

Yeah it’s like they used Bellucci as a hot dress-filler & “we need u to get felt up against this mirror ok great v sexy k thx bye”

Yeah, that was weird

I’ve rewatched spectre a couple of times, it mildly sets up some of the emotional stuff w Swann but I wish it had honestly done more with that & less (or nothing) with dumb Walz/Blofeld. why not give Andrew Scott the villain. he didn’t have much to do.

BTW if you haven’t been picking up the classic John Barry scores via the hypereditions on La-La Land, you’re missing out. They sorta roll out haphazardly — still haven’t done the first two and You Only Live Twice — but what’s there is legit great.

https://lalalandrecords.com/releases/james-bond/