which is the best James Bond movie?

i half-rewatched goldeneye recently and the tank scene bothered me in an odd way, kinda breaking my suspension of disbelief in the james bond universe (why this moment and not countless others, i don't know) - if you find yourself explosively plowing through the streets of st petersburg in a tank, then you have to admit that you're really a bit shit at being a spy.

Yeah, this bothered me too... Also, he's plowing through the centre of the Russian capital, destroying statues and historical buildings and stuff, and all he gets after him is a couple of cop cars, instead of the army or SWAT teams or whatever. Okay, maybe I can live with that, but not with the fact that Bond, the master spy, couldn't come up with a better way to chase the bad guy. As thrilling as that scene was, it felt like it put there purely for the "HELL YEAH!" factor, they didn't much care whether it fits the character of James Bond.

Sorry, I got that wrong, it was not the Russian capital in Goldeneye (though it's still the former capital, and the second most important city); I guess I conflated it with The Bourne Supremacy in my head.

the tank chase has a ton of killer money shots, but overall it's pretty incoherent. it's also weirdly lacking in exuberance - i think that might be due to the scoring, which is some of the worst ever in a bond picture. still one of the highlights of G-eye tho

Man, I forgot how mean Live and Let Die is.

Watched it the other week, it's a pretty unhinged film. The most convincing Bond performance from Moore by some way though.

Also, the most assholish Bond has been in any of the films.

And that's saying something.

Exactly.

I recently caught up with two Moore's that I hadn't seen, or at least don't remember ever having seen before: For Your Eyes Only and Octopussy. The former is not especially memorable or clever, but I kind of enjoyed it anyway: I'm a sucker for both skiing and underwater footage, and the movie has plenty of both. The Thatcher gag at the end had my husband and I howling. I'm under the impression that this one is not a favourite among Bond purists, but it kind of seems like the best possible Bond movie from the early 80s starring an actor who was clearly starting to age out of the role. Plus, the Sheena Easton song is actually kind of pretty.

Octopussy pretty much sucks, though. If, arguably, not as bad as A View to a Kill, it is certainly a whole lot duller. The clown stuff is cringe-worthy, and the last hour of the film is brutally sluggish, not even delivering much in the big, climactic action sequence. That saw-blade yoyo thing was pretty cool, though.

for your eyes only is awesome, partially for how much it breaks with bond traditions and also reduces the plot to pretty simple espionage. the underwater scenes are v gorgeous

octopussy's first half is p good but it loses a lot of steam when they get to the circus

i'm a moore apologist though, and i like a view to a kill

Biggest disappointment re: Octopussy, though? That the theme song wasn't also called "Octopussy."

"all time high" slaps tho

FYEO is underrated - the closest in spirit to the novels of the Moores.

I'm always baffled by FYEO love online, it seems to score high in a lot of lists and stuff, but to me it was like sketching out the idea of a "back to espionage basics" Bond without actually making a good espionage movie. The gap between Moore and stunt doubles is VERY apparent, the stuff with the teenage figure skater was creepy, the rock-climbing climax was distractingly nonsensical, and the opening Blofeld But Not In So Many Words bit was just like a fuck-you, and totally gratuitous so they had to really *want* to give the fuck-you. Also the song is terrible, somehow I can never remember the exact melody of the hook even right after listening to it.

the stuff with the teenage figure skater was creepy

Yes. Also, did they ever establish that the villain wasn't really her uncle? 'Cause if not, it just got a whole lot creepier.

no mention of the Smershpod yet so..
https://soundcloud.com/smershpod

oh i mean... it's Goldeneye. obviously

I will be rewatching Octopussy next week! Loved it (alone among the Moores) in '83.

all I remember of that besides the clown thing and the exhausted theme song was being bored as hell. maybe some dingy, flatly-lit footage of bond talking to people, in some interiors...? very hazy.

doctor c i acknowledge all of your criticisms but also you failed to mention that score-wise it's the DISCO BOND

oh i mean... it's Goldeneye. obviously

― flappy bird, Thursday, July 20, 2017 11:23 AM (forty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

goldeneye is terribly paced. i remembered it as more awesome than it actually was

best bond is ohmss and i'd probably say spy who loved me is second

The highs of Goldeneye are series highs tho, and so many of them are terribly paced that that almost doesn't even apply.

Last time I tried to watch OHMSS it was soooooo slooooooooooow

re: goldeneye, i am so tired by the time bond drives a tank through saint petersburg. and that's like, what, the halfway mark?

imo *prepares for no one to agree with me* the best brosnan movie is the world is not enough

the action in ohmss is filmed and edited so beautifully that who gives a shit how slow it is, i love slow

omg TWINE is in my bottom five of all bonds ever. DAD gets a bad rap and there is some very dumb stuff in there but at least you have halle berry and that cool swordfight and.... okay that might be about it but still. the only pleasure TWINE has given me is chuckles over the bad guy's ludicrous gimmick that a bullet in his brain is causing him to become more and more impaired and ineffective as the movie goes on. the rest is sooooooo forgettable and generic and dull except for how terrrrrible denise richards is. honestly i kinda think Tomorrow Never Dies is the sleeper hit of that bunch - jonathan pryce as rupert murdoch! handcuffed-together motorcycle chase antics with michelle yeoh! properly cartoonish torturer henchmen! a genuinely diverting afternoon's entertainment, though you'd probably still be better off watching Supercop and pretending Jackie Chan is actually playing James Bond in a surprise recasting decision post-Dalton.

I love slow if it's Mohsen Makhmalbaf, not George Lazenby sassing his way through

DAD gets a bad rap and there is some very dumb stuff in there but at least you have halle berry and that cool swordfight and.... okay that might be about it but still.

berry is worse than denise richards in that movie ffs. the swordfight is good but die another day is shot like a sequel to xxx, it looks unbelievably horrible

the rest is sooooooo forgettable

the rest is "bond gets betrayed by someone he actually falls in love with" which RULES imo

re: goldeneye, i am so tired by the time bond drives a tank through saint petersburg. and that's like, what, the halfway mark?

this is totally otm, i can remember thinking exactly the same thing in the cinema during that exact scene

I think i enjoyed DAD more than any other Broz bond, because it's the only one that's dumb fun when your expectations are lowered. the first two are boring and TWINE is just insanely lame

...I'd still rather see any of them than Spectre again

Also thank you for the reminder to finish watching The Spy Who Loved Me, I'll do that now

i haven't seen TWINE since it came out but I remember liking it much more than Tomorrow Never Dies, or Die Another Day later on.

Goldeneye is about as good as the best Moore movies, though not as good as Martin Campbell's work in Casino Royale, which was the best Bond since the Connery ones for certain. not sure why they gave Sam Mendes two consecutive Bonds, his direction and staging is vv pretty but cinematically inert even when things are moving swiftly. Campbell made the two best Bonds of the post-Dalton era (maybe including the Dalton era.)

i will never understand enjoyment of Brosnan Bond. i find those movies overstuffed and fuuuuuhuuucking stupid. Tomorrow Never Dies is kinda watchable & that is not saying much

thus endeth my grumpy post

I know it was hobbled by the writers' strike (Daniel Craig wound up writing some of it himself iirc) and QoS is superficially interesting in some ways but it really is amazing just how badly Marc Forster fucked up on his turn at bat

i love QoS so maybe my argument is invalid idk

again it has interesting aspects (it's refreshingly short and low-stakes, Kurylenko is good, Amalric is hilariously out of place) but the execution is inept and the action is below Greengrass levels of comprehensibility

i think the pleasures of something like Casino Royale are that it's such a classically composed, cleanly shot, clearly staged thriller w/a compelling cast, and that it's not just a good Bond film but a great action film. i think the producers overthought things at least creatively, being influenced too much by the gloomy Nolan-type blockbusters for the last two, and a bit too much by the Bourne films for QoS. I guess Spectre was an effort to return to some semblance of classic Bond but they whiffed on that one too. CR was refreshing because it just felt like the first Bond film in eons that wasn't campy or self-referential or a joke. Humorous enough to be charming, dark enough to hit hard when it had to, smart in all the right ways, and so on.

Solace is the only one i've ever written about.

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/quantum-of-solace

I can't see Die Another Day getting many votes

The fact that it even got one vote, Jesus Christ. Visiting home and my mom ended up watching it this evening; seeing it again was just painful. So horribly 2002.

for your eyes only is awesome, partially for how much it breaks with bond traditions and also reduces the plot to pretty simple espionage. the underwater scenes are v gorgeous

octopussy's first half is p good but it loses a lot of steam when they get to the circus

Agree with both -- these were the first two Bonds I ever saw (thanks early 80s HBO running them constantly) so I'll always have a fondness. I'd argue that there's just enough tension in the defuse-the-bomb run to make it work. (Also I still can't get over Gaston from Gigi as the villain, as that was the only way I knew who Louis Jourdan was at the time.)

Die Another Day contains what are definitely the worst FX in the series with those ice floats.

I saw For Your Eyes Only in the theater with my dad so that movie has a special place in my heart, even if it does feature The World's Dumbest Henchman:

https://youtu.be/8FDX6_BSas8

Cinemark is showing The Spy Who Loved Me next month, think i might try to go. I've never seen it on the big screen!

Extremely challopsy stuff from the BFI here:

http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/lists/007-great-underrated-james-bond-films

i like most of those movies but diamonds are forever is a soulless incoherent slog

TWINE is the only irredeemable one on that list.

again the world is not enough is good and die another day is horrible

I remember Die Another Day being pretty funny