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Bond-A-Thon Ranking summer 2014
.1. Thunderball
.2. From Russia With Love
.3. On Her Majesty´s Secret Service
.4. Goldfinger
.5. You Only Live Twice
.6. Dr. No
.7. Diamonds Are Forever
What are your opinions on Laz? :P
Tan pis.
Bond-A-Thon Ranking summer 2014
.1. Thunderball
.2. From Russia With Love
.3. Live And Let Die
.4. On Her Majesty´s Secret Service
.5. Goldfinger
.6. You Only Live Twice
.7. Dr. No
.8. Diamonds Are Forever
You don't like Tee-Hee!?!?! :(
The movie's two greatest strengths are its characters (almost everyone, from Trevelyan on down to Tanner and Mishkin, is on fire) and its willingness to question Bond's role in the 90s. Sean Bean remains excellent as Trevelyan, a darker version of Bond who has just a few more evil traits and a few more bad breaks pushed over to the dark side. Natalya is one of the most human and most capable Bond girls of all time, despite (or because of) being a normal person sucked into the world of espionage. Judi Dench is excellent in her first turn at M, and it's probably her best performance at least until Skyfall.
Of course, the reason she's so great is her relentless thrashing of Bond early on in the movie, which everyone gets in on. Moneypenny admirably tells Bond off, Trevelyan is constantly in the habit of delivering breaking speeches to Bond, and even Xenia in the movie's opening scenes represents a kind of clash of generations with Caroline. Defense Minister Mishkin and his wondrous goatee have a few brief remarks at Bond's expense during the interrogation scene.
The movie is also exceedingly well-directed by Martin Campbell and has a fine array of action sequences, including the attack on Severnaya, the immortal tank chase, and the final fight in the satellite array.
The movie's chief flaw is its tendency to get too jokey, a tendency that would be exacerbated in the rest of Brosnan's tenure. Pierce sounds unsure at times when delivering his quips, and other times tries a bit too hard to look cool, but these can be written off as the same first-movie nervousness that afflicted Lazenby and Moore. The rest of the jokiness hurts primarily by cutting against the questioning of Bond's role. Some of it (the obligatory Q scene, Zukovsky) is fine, but others (Jack Wade) really do hurt the serious tone. At least they didn't decide to make Joe Don Baker the main villain. What a silly idea that would be...
All in all, it retained its spot at #5, firmly entrenched within the top rung of Bond movies.
:-q
No prizes for guessing which film I started with, I'll leave it to the video.
Also would appreciate if you could give me advice and whatnot on the video and maybe even subscribe. Thanks.
Bond-A-Thon Ranking summer 2014
.1. Thunderball
.2. From Russia With Love
.3. Live And Let Die
.4. On Her Majesty´s Secret Service
.5. Goldfinger
.6. You Only Live Twice
.7. Dr. No
.8. The Man With The Golden Gun
.9. Diamonds Are Forever
I'm the same with Golden Gun; I always imagine it being worse than it actually is. Apart from the middle third-ish, GG is quite straight laced, and Lee and Moore interactions are uniformly superb.
Bond-A-Thon Ranking summer 2014
.1. Thunderball
.2. From Russia With Love
.3. Live And Let Die
.4. The Spy Who Loved Me
.5. On Her Majesty´s Secret Service
.6. Goldfinger
.7. You Only Live Twice
.8. Dr. No
.9. The Man With The Golden Gun
.10. Diamonds Are Forever
Still one of my all-time favorite Bond movies! I love the simplicity of it. Bond has to retrieve the ATAC before it falls into the hands of a slick middle-man who intends to sell it over to the Soviets. What a fantastically simple yet engaging plot! Roger Moore is hands down THE MAN in FYEO. It's definitely one of his best performances. I recently bought this one on Ultimate Edition, and having owned the Special 007 Edition previously, I can safely say that the UE makes the already stunning location work look even more magnificent. As for the soundtrack, I can agree with most fans in that it does sound very '80s and at times cheesy, but on the whole, I really like it. As far as Bond soundtracks not composed by John Barry, FYEO's is one of the best. Thank goodness we had MR before FYEO, because otherwise FYEO might have been over-the-top, and that would be a tragedy! It's a Top Five contender, without a doubt.
Spring/Summer Bondathon 2014
Spring 2014 Bondathon Ranking
1. GoldenEye
2. From Russia with Love
3. License to Kill
4. For Your Eyes Only
5. A View to a Kill
6. SkyFall
7. Tomorrow Never Dies
8. Octopussy
9. Diamonds Are Forever
10. The Man with the Golden Gun
11. The World is not Enough
12. The Spy Who Loved Me
13. Dr. No
14. Thunderball
15. You Only Live Twice
16. The Living Daylights
17. Live and Let Die
18. Die Another Day
19. Moonraker
20. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
FRWL has had quite a history with me, to say the least, hahaha. It was one of my favorites along with GoldenEye as a middle schooler, if not because of the GameCube video game adaption, haha. Over time, it sort of slipped down the rankings, usually around spot #7 or #8, but it never left the Top Ten, from what I can remember. When I watched it the other day, I realized that it needed to be back in the Top Five where I once had it!
Precisely! That's always what makes or breaks a Bond soundtrack, in my opinion- whether or not I remember anything from it. I didn't like SkyFall's soundtrack when I watched it in theaters when it came out because there wasn't anything I remembered from it except for that brief little tune that plays when Bond goes to Shanghai. Now, there are some Bond soundtracks that are memorable but just plain bad, such as Dr. No's.
Casino Royale has always puzzled me greatly- I can't ever completely make up my mind about it. I definitely wouldn't put it anywhere near the bottom of my list, but at the same time, I don't know if I could rank it up with the Top Ten. There's just something that seems to hold me back every time. Perhaps it's the last half hour with all the stupid Bond/Vesper love stuff, complete with the rather lackluster finale in the sinking house. Maybe it's the whole Bond re-boot feeling; I don't like re-boots, so that might factor into it. It could possibly be the whole Bond and M trust thing combined with the "blunt instrument", "Bond is only a man" emphasis that sometimes detracts from the excitement and turns it into a drama. Like I said, I do highly enjoy much of Casino Royale, because it is a really awesome Bond movie. The location work is magnificent (some of the best in the series) and the action scenes are dazzling. Daniel Craig is all right for his first outing, but at times I just don't feel it with him. Again, I can't always put my finger on it. Arnold's work on the soundtrack is fairly decent, although sometimes seems a little bland. Still, there are some stand-out moments, so that counts in his favor, for sure. I'll probably be in the minority here, the vast minority, but I can't stand Vesper. She gets on my last nerve! I believe she is entirely overrated. Other than Vesper, there's nothing else I necessarily despise about CR other than the feel for a re-boot, which always takes me out of a movie. All things considered, CR is a Bond movie that I can surely enjoy but can't particularly call a favorite.
Spring/Summer Bondathon 2014
Spring 2014 Bondathon Ranking
1. GoldenEye
2. From Russia with Love
3. License to Kill
4. For Your Eyes Only
5. A View to a Kill
6. SkyFall
7. Tomorrow Never Dies
8. Octopussy
9. Diamonds Are Forever
10. The Man with the Golden Gun
11. The World is not Enough
12. Casino Royale
13. The Spy Who Loved Me
14. Dr. No
15. Thunderball
16. You Only Live Twice
17. The Living Daylights
18. Live and Let Die
19. Die Another Day
20. Moonraker
21. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
I feel the same way about TLD- obviously it has all the right ingredients for an epic Bond movie and by all rights should be a Top Ten, but there's just something about it that keeps me from totally enjoying it.
For me it's the villains (sans Necros). Their too goofy. They feel like saturday morning cartoon villains of the week.
They don't feel very...menacing I think is the word. Koskov is too jolly and over-the-top, whereas Whitaker is some fat bloke who's only in it for a few scenes. Necros is the only one that seems like a real threat to Bond.
It feels like they should have been in TMWTGG where it feels like Scaramanga should have been in TLD. That would have made TLD really great.
I dunno, I actually like Dr. No's escapist campy score. It works and helps cement the film in my memory. Underneath the Mango Tree rocks just for being evocative of Honey and the Jamaican atmosphere in general.
Skyfall's score is certainly not one of the better ones but it's not a bad score. It's got some good tracks but more often than not it's a little lackluster. Adele's song should've been scored out and used as a motif much more than it was. That bit played as Bond rides up to the casino is the best snippet of music in the film.
I liked it very much this time around. I usally end up feeling ok about it, but this time i got suprised in a positive way. Also, Franz Sanchez may be my favourite bond villian now.
"I want you to know this is nothing personal, it's purely buisness"
I don't want to call it boring, but I just could not muster any enthusiasm this time round. It's been a fixture of my top handful of films for as long as I can remember, but I don't know if that will be the case this time.
1. Dr No
QoS is a very curious Bond movie. At times it seems like one of the best Bond movies ever made, but then right around the corner, you realize why that's not the case. It's like watching a Ping-Pong match where neither opponent is getting the upper hand. There's just this continual back and forth between really great and really awful. I would venture to say that most of that can be attributed to Marc Forster, who didn't do a good job of helping the audience out as far as direction is concerned; all too many times during QoS, I'm left wondering what is going on and why certain scenes are taking place, such as the airplane dogfight prior to the sinkhole scene. However, like a Ping-Pong ball, I go from total confusion to gasping in awe at some pretty awesome scenes like the Tosca opera, Bond reuniting with Mathis, and the finale in the desert. Scenes like this carry you just long enough until you find something to complain about. Thus, QoS is really a very curious Bond movie. In its favor are a very fine performance from Daniel Craig, some highly entertaining action sequences, a fairly decent soundtrack, absolutely gorgeous location work, and a pretty worthy main Bond girl. Against it are a complicated and incomplete plot, an incredibly brief run time, a lame main villain (and henchmen, for that matter), and some very frantic camera work that tends to hurt the head after a while. There is good and there is bad. I suppose that can be said about all 23 Bond movies, but for QoS, it's like a stalemate. Therefore, I'll probably have to rank it somewhere in the middle.
Spring 2014 Bondathon Ranking
1. GoldenEye
2. From Russia with Love
3. License to Kill
4. For Your Eyes Only
5. A View to a Kill
6. SkyFall
7. Tomorrow Never Dies
8. Octopussy
9. Diamonds Are Forever
10. The Man with the Golden Gun
11. The World is not Enough
12. Casino Royale
13. Quantum of Solace
14. The Spy Who Loved Me
15. Dr. No
16. Thunderball
17. You Only Live Twice
18. The Living Daylights
19. Live and Let Die
20. Die Another Day
21. Moonraker
22. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
Bond-A-Thon Ranking summer
.1. Moonraker
.2. Thunderball
.3. From Russia With Love
.4. Live And Let Die
.5. The Spy Who Loved Me
.6. On Her Majesty´s Secret Service
.7. Goldfinger
.8. You Only Live Twice
.9. Dr. No
.10. The Man With The Golden Gun
.11. Diamonds Are Forever