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I've decided to proceed through the films aiming for what basically amounts to random taste but in the interests of fooling myself I'll call it 'flow.' I'm chiefly interested in how the film feels, more than whatever loose continuity there might be. Having read all the novels again recently I found myself letting the spirit of them take the lead (as much as they could).
Here's how I'll be watching:
CR/QOS -> DN -> LALD -> LTK -> TLD -> GE -> OP -> GF -> AVTAK -> MR -> DAD -> DAF -> FRWL -> TB -> SP -> OHMSS -> TSWLM -> FYEO -> TWINE ->TND -> TMWTGG -> SF -> YOLT
Here's my reasoning:
CR/QOS/DN - Beginnings
LALD/LTK - Being Moore's first, LALD continues the beginnings idea and also functions as something of a spiritual successor to DN (locales, Quarrel Jr., etc.). In the same vein LTK picks up where LALD leaves off; together they make up a large chunk of Fleming's second novel, so it feels natural to position all these early in the marathon.
TLD - Mainly a way to bridge LTK to something more fantastic. Tim's first film gets to come early in the marathon.
GE/OP/GF/AVTAK - From Pierce's near first film to his actual first; again getting an actor's debut as close to the start as possible. GE's '86-set pre-credits ties in with TLD. A lot of the soviet iconography carries over into OP; Orlov and Ourumov similar as secondary villains. GF gets sandwiched between OP and AVTAK, as the three of them share story DNA. You also get in this sequence a smattering of elements from the novel Moonraker (the tiny bits that made their way into GE and AVTAK), creating a vague progression on from the LALD/LTK grouping above.
MR/DAD/DAF - Obviously three more bombastic entries, the latter two each involving weaponized diamonds. Tried to spread these out but it might end up being more natural having them clustered here. Added bonus of finishing off the Moonraker elements (I'll be through the third novel 12 films into the Bondathon) whilst having DAF as the immediate follow up.
(NSNA?)/FRWL - The most abrupt shift in tone, but I can't avoid it, because I really want to preserve the order that comes below. One thing I've considered doing is having NSNA follow DAF — older Connery being the connecting point, basically; the strangeness of it in comparison to the rest might ease the landing back to FRWL. I haven't seen NSNA in over a decade.
TB/SP - SPECTRE and Spectre. TB positioned before the Tracy stuff. The tone and ending of SP connects nicely with...
OHMSS/TSWLM/FYEO/TWINE - Tracy through-line in the first three of these; TWINE tries to do some OHMSS stuff as well and joins up neatly with...
TND - Pierce bridge to the final trio; action in the far east and Hong Kong handover will tie in well with...
TMWTGG/SF - Lots of You Only Live Twice and The Man with the Golden Gun novel elements in SF; end point of the marathon coming to rest alongside the novels. And we finish off with...
YOLT - The perfect dream to end the whole series on.
Open to suggestions of course.
I'll be starting tonight with a double bill of CR and QOS. Aiming to watch one film each night but we'll see how it goes.
Love your reasoning there @Strog. It's been a couple of years since I have indulged in a full blown Bondathon so looking for an interesting new pattern to view them in.
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Looking forward to DN tonight. Last night's CR/QOS double-bill went excellently. I've written up some thoughts on CR, posted below. I'll save my QOS thoughts for tomorrow and work from a day ahead of my viewing thereafter.
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CASINO ROYALE (2006) is the lost 1980s Bond film, a logical culmination of the work that John Glen began with FOR YOUR EYES ONLY (1981) but never fully realized. Glen spent a decade attempting to graft Fleming onto the skeleton of the modern action flick. Unfortunately, he was given to work with the remnants of half-pillaged novels and ideas original meant to play on 1950s television. Glen never overcame the patchwork quality that resulted, but had he the luxury, as Martin Campbell does here, of a wholly unfilmed novel from which to stack a backbone, Glen may well have hit his mark—and that mark would've looked remarkably like what CR in fact gave us.
The necessary consequence of this is that CR ends up servicing the action genre far more than it does Bond, which is what Glen was always ultimately heading towards. This is not to say that CR is necessarily a bad Bond film; only that its function as an actioner outstrips its Bond pedigree. In fact it is quite easy to imagine the film divorced from the Bond name. The film's relationship to the source material is specious enough, and its relationship to past Bond films—being a 'reboot'—is rebuked and extends only so far as the influence the Bond films have had themselves in shaping the action genre.
Quick hits
Eva Green is marvelous as Vesper, but she's not the character from the novel. Same goes for Craig and his Bond. The dialogue is sharp and has wit, but at times it comes across as too written. As above, Campbell has made this the definitive take on Bond as an action hero; future attempts will be hard to top, simply because it's got that Fleming spine. Switching out chemin de fer for Texas Hold 'Em offends the puritanical Fleming in me, but I'll admit it hasn't dated the film as much as I'd perhaps like to think. As with GE, I get the feeling the film is at times trying to be sexier than it is. Also as with GE, the casino scenes appear to be taking place in a soap opera. It's twenty minutes too long for a Bond film—the only way the final twenty minutes work is if it's an action film first and foremost.
Pick...
A thrilling scene: The parkour chase, of course.
A dramatic scene: Bond and Vesper in the shower.
A moment: I love the brief knife struggle that Bond and Dimitrios have in the midst of the crowd.
Ranking:
1. CASINO ROYALE
Main titles featuring the dancing silhouettes of nude females; cinematography which is full of vibrant color; suits stitched from mohair tonic; a bond girl whose name fits in right alongside Pussy Galore or Mary Goodnight; Bond armed with a Walter PPK; Universal Exports used as cover; a score that provides a sense of place; ultra-modern, spacious sets.
A 60s Bond film? Why no! It's 2008's oft-maligned QUANTUM OF SOLACE.
I seriously just had the best viewing I've ever had of this film — and I already liked it quite a bit — but then again I seem to say that after every viewing of the film. It is definitely my dark horse of the Bond films.
When Daniel Craig comes crashing through the glass ceiling of what Marc Forster described in passing as an "art gallery cathedral"—that is, presumably, a place where a work of art is elevated to the status of worship—it is perhaps not an insignificant fact that the building is undergoing renovation.
After all, we shouldn't be too quick to dismiss the action sequences in this film as simply existing for their action. That Marc Forster conceptualized each one around an element—however pretentious the idea comes across; this is 'just' Bond—indicates he thought of them as something more and not simply spectacle.
Although if you thought so, you might bully them for their Bourne-ness, for their shaky cam, their hyper-continuity, and quick-fire editing. Valid perhaps, but ultimately meaningless in an era where most movie watching is done on some sort of small screen, where the motion contained in the frame becomes easier to track, and furthermore at a time when films can and are intended to be watched and rewatched again and again. Detail accumulates. How much does it really matter that on opening night in November 2008 you couldn't exactly tell what was happening on the big screen? Does it even matter now? Soon after Bond surrenders his weapon to M, does it matter that the ensuing fight in the elevator fails to unfold with all the 'pace' of the Franks elevator fight in DAF?
Forster understands that we are literate far beyond the point. Peter Hunt understood much the same about audiences in 1962 when he revolutionized action cinema by chopping out all the bits he wasn't supposed to. But what he was focused on back then, the spectacle, was all to come; and we've become dulled since. Five decades hence, we all know Bond will win. It no longer matters how. Action instead serves why: Bond's, Camille's, Greene's. Action becomes a sketch. Some have complained that the more dramatic moments seem to exist only to setup the next action bit. One could equally complain that the opposite is true. We're unused to this. In fact it's antithetical to the entire history of Bond, which is presumably why it induces disgust in many.
The whole film is full of such examples of the traditional being undercut by the meaningful. The action scenes are high concept set pieces, as typical, but we can't necessarily follow them; Quantum is a fantastical, international criminal network, but their scheme is ripped from the headlines; the villain is a seemingly benevolent entrepreneur but, far from being charming or carrying himself well, looks like the creepy guy who works behind the counter of the corner store; the story and its world have all the characteristics of a classic 60s Bond, but they're viewed through a camera shooting from the 21st century; the plot involves six continents and a somewhat complex trail of double-crosses and deceits, yet the film runs roughly 100 minutes and features the least amount of expository dialogue in the entire series; it is absolutely evocative of the character Ian Fleming created, yet it is overtly unlike anything Eon has produced.
The Tosca sequence—to return finally to the significance of the action—encapsulates the whole film. The abbreviated editing (Bond simply escapes) navigates us between a Bond concerned with revenge and death and a staged production about revenge and death, between a classic of opera and a modern film, between the artifice and the real.
QOS is Forster's Bond renovation. And Eon utterly discarded it.
Quick hits
- Nice symmetry between Mathis planting the bodies in the trunk to frame Le Chiffre's men in CR and himself being planted in a trunk to frame Bond here in QOS (this film is more carefully constructed than Craig or Forster would like you to believe, I feel).
- Best Bond score since TLD
- I love that Bond actually learns something about himself in this movie: a few things actually, chief among which is that he can do the job .
- I love the more overt homages to TSWLM (off the roof) and GF (Field in oil), even more so that they are not simply throwaway; they are consequential.
- To elaborate a bit of the Flemingness of QOS: Bond is gallant, Camile is a wounded bird, physically marked with a 'defect' and crossed with Gala Brand and Judy Havelock; Forster's lingering shots of the everyday in the locales evokes Fleming's grace for capturing a place (the shot of the iguana in particular jumps out).
Most of all, the film could be called, straight out of CR, a meditation of the nature of evil. What might taken for cynical politics in the film—'the West is evil'—is merely a spin on Fleming's own "this country-right-or-wrong business is getting a little out-of-date." There is a definite sympathy in the film with the world's poor, and I have little doubt the left-leaning politics started with Haggis (perhaps it is even inherent in MGW's original idea) but Forster and Craig, through their focus on the Bond character, worked it back around to Fleming.
Watch the film. Forever however 'grey' the world is, Bond never deviates from his duty. This is the whole point. "I never left." The rest of the film might make a case for the haziness of the good and bad guys of the world—the position Bond takes in his discussion with Mathis in the novel—but the Bond of the film knows exactly what the Mathis of the novel did: "You will know how evil they can be and you will go after them to destroy them in order to protect yourself and the people you love. You may want to be certain that the target really is black, but there are plenty of really black targets around." Bond knows the black targets. His going rogue is entirely created by those who do see the world as grey.
- As a final comment on Bourne: QOS might employ its techniques, but it feels absolutely nothing like Bourne. This film is much too classy for that.
Pick...
A thrilling scene: The finale; it's stellar. So is Tosca, but that goes without saying. I choose both.
A dramatic scene: "I never left."
A moment: The opening shot, zooming over the water — then the music kicks in.
Ranking:
1. QUANTUM OF SOLACE
2. CASINO ROYALE
Excellent excellent review, and I agree on ALL points,well done !
Great appreciation of my #4 ranked Bond film.
Best review of QOS I've read in some time.
+1
But I still believe CR has the edge over It!
I agree. I wonder how much of that comes down to these latest two films being so different from the first two. It's almost like Eon turned away themselves from the 'Craig era' as it was initially conceived. Those first two movies were his, and he infused them with his personality. Like the greatest of Connery and Moore, no other Bond could've pulled them off. SF and SP had less of Craig.
I remember following the production of QOS and just being damn excited because of what Craig was bringing to the table. A never-realized 2010 Bond 23 that followed the path set down by QOS is a big hole in the last ten years.
Thanks, @barryt007! #4 is a great rank for it. I'm not sure how much it'll move up for me when all it said and done on this round of Bond watching, but it was already at about 7 or 8. Even if it ends up placing near about the same spot, I'll definitely be redrawing the line where the 'gap' resides between the excellent tier and the 'just great' tier. QOS is confirmed for the former.
Thanks, fellas. The enthusiasm from my viewing fueled the late night I spent writing that. I had bleary eyes but I couldn't go to sleep till I got it out. I still have so many thoughts swirling in my head. Reading it back, some is less articulated than I'd have liked, but I've become very passionate about the film in the past few days. Looking forward to putting a bit more thought and time into thinking about it.
And @ProfJoeButcher, couldn't agree more that QOS is the top achievement of the Craig tenure so far. 100%.
Hard to know what to say. A lot has happened since DR. NO, not least of which is DR. NO itself. Twenty-three Bond films later, seeing DN as it must have been seen back in 1962, as something other than the first Bond film, is nearly impossible. You would need to figure out some way to forget the expectations it cultivated in all action adventure thriller images to follow. If each viewing still seems to rupture what you believe is possible in film-making, then what the film must have meant originally is unimaginable.
Whatever the original might have been, we can at least say that the film we're left with is an explosion of color, style, and sensational bombast. It is a Fritz Lang crime film of the 20s, a gangster picture of the 30s, a film noir from the 40s, a paranoid conspiracy movie from the 50s—it is each of them, translated into the language of first wave youth culture of the 60s. As its face, Connery. Not as Fleming's Bond, but as something else. A man who seems at home through each step of his journey from the city to the jungle. He is part urban sophisticate, part tough westerner. The one should oppose the other, even be hostile to it; but with Connery they are in balance. It is an unprecedented turn.
Notes
- Sylvia Trench (her appearance in this film) is my favorite Connery Bond girl. Her appearance is brief but lasting. The shot of Bond on his knee in the doorway with his gun drawn with Sylvia's legs is etched in my mind as equally as Honey coming out of the ocean.
- I love that No gets comparatively little screen time in relation to the villains that came after. His omnipresence adds to the menace and lends itself well to a sort of paranoia that runs under the film among his minions. In general I would agree that the films tend to only be as good as the villain, and that giving them more time to shine is often better, but I wouldn't mind a similar withholding tactic used at some point in the future.
- Does anyone know the order the scenes were filmed? Connery looked quite off during the scene where he was questioning the members at the club in Jamaica. I thought it might have been his first day on the job. He seems giddy.
- It was good viewing DN after QOS. In the past I considered DN as the classic series blueprint and QOS as a failed new series blueprint. I no longer consider the latter failed, only abandoned, but it was nice seeing them back to back. They both have a freshness about them.
Favorite scene: "Bond. James Bond." How could it not be? That whole scene, how it is shot and edited is marvelous: the way Sylvia and her red dress stands out in a crowd of otherwise muted colors, the way Connery glides absolutely smoothly from the moment he moves his chair back and out of the way as he stands at the table through to his slipping the doorman a tip on his way out. My goodness.
Favorite action: Not much in the way we'd come to understand action here, so I'll go with Connery shooting Dent.
Favorite moment: Ursula rising from the sea. A dream.
Ranking:
1. DR. NO
2. QUANTUM OF SOLACE
--
3. CASINO ROYALE
No need to worry. TLD is coming up shortly. ;)
I'm actually looking forward to and revisiting all of them this go-through. Even SP.
--
LALD
With LIVE AND LET DIE Guy Hamilton makes something as fresh and raw as a first Bond film, as though he is trying to make good on the job he turned down 10 years prior on DN.
That the two films are kindred spirits is already well-remarked: the island locale and Bond's journey to it from a metropolis; the next generation Quarrel being himself allied to Connery's 'descendant' in Moore; the flat aspect ratio, used for the first time since GF, limiting the visual excess; a plot which shows an altogether healthier balance between the fantastic and the realistic—each trait recalls the film made a decade prior, yet LALD is equally new and no less suitably of its moment.
The film's enthusiastic choice of source novel is timely, picking up on the cultural wavelength that transmitted the start of blaxploitation. LALD's pulls it off through a blend of soul and high adventure, San Monique being nothing less than a Lost World straight out of H. Rider Haggard, whose turn-of-the-20th-century adventure yarns also held much the same interest in European explorer/adventurer/colonialists and paranormal elements that LALD does in Western secret agents and voodooism. Added to this is a touch of the same mythic as in DN: Kananga as a dragon, more immediate than No's 'fire-breathing tank,' hording throughout the picture as any good dragon does a 'captured' virgin who must be sacrificed (sexually and physically); Kananga is more persistent besides, sticking around through to the end of the picture where he awaits slaying in his underground den.
Placed alongside Mankiewicz's loose chapter-serial style plotting, this all lends an appreciably unique pulp to LALD that certainly makes it stand out in the catalogue—even among Hamilton's Bond work. That he was so consistently able to strike a new sort of Bond film is admirable; even more so at this point in the series, eight films in, at the exact midpoint of Cubby's own Bond career. Fitting, then, that the film serves as the material link between Cubby's first and last efforts. Watching the film certainly provides the sense that you're lost in the middle of the classic era. In some ways it is the perfect antidote for those who might momentarily feel stuck in the doldrums of the current era while we await B25. I know it hit the spot for me.
Favorite action: The alligator farm. The boat chase is good, but I love what precedes it. Bond using the watch on the boat only to have it tied up is a great subversion, and running across the gators goes a little under-appreciated as far as go the stunts in the series.
Favorite scene: "Take this honky out and waste him!" The whole sequence tailing Bond to Harlem is excellent.
Favorite moment: Baron Samedi sitting on the train right before the credits role. A perfect way to cap off the film tonally.
Ranking:
1. DR. NO
2. QUANTUM OF SOLACE
--
3. LIVE AND LET DIE
4. CASINO ROYALE
Yes, that's right, I'm fixing the lesser films in my mind's eye and making them ALL into the classics that each deserves to be!
Next up was AVTAK, one of Moore's least appreciated efforts. Actually, I didn't have to do much to fix this one other than mentally de-age Roger by about 20 years. As a long-time resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, I've always had a soft spot for this one. I actually ENJOY watching Bond tooling around SF in a fire truck!
Then I went for Brosnan with one of the top Bad Bond films of them all --DAD! The first half of this one is actually pretty good -- Madonna's theme song is obviously INTENDED as torture, and if you can see his audience with a mistrustful M as a variation on the opening scene in the novel TMWTGG, this one doesn't really go south until you get to Hugo Drax's, er, that is to say, Gustav Grant's ice palace. I'm probably the only person in the world who likes Bond's invisible Aston Martin, but that's just because Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. had an invisible car decades earlier -- and that one can fly, too!
Most recently, I went for a Craig film and broke out SPECTRE...and again, this first half of this one is actually pretty good, until we get past the Hotel Americaine and into Spectre's most recent billion dollar HQ that is doomed to blow up real good once Bond puts his back into it. While I really like the Day of the Dead intro, and think Bond's scene with Lucia Sciarra is one of the hottest pairings in the series, it's hard to do anything to fix Blofeld's step-brother jealousy. This one just keeps going downhill in my estimation and I wonder if it's ever going to stop dropping. Is DAD ever going to climb out of the cellar ranking I had thought it doomed to inhabit for eternity?
The question now becomes, what next? Am I going for a Dalton? (After all, there are only two of them and I like them both fairly well.) Or is TMWTGG next on my viewing list? We shall see...
For once John Glen manages to completely submit Bond into the service of a John Glen movie. Usually it's the other way around. In LICENCE TO KILL Glen delivers what is perhaps his best Glen movie but his worst Bond film, a generic late-80s actioner whose unusual violence calls attention to itself and co-opts the Bond myth in the name of producing something that makes well sure its audience knows it should be sensing the gravitas. Glen was in some ways headed for this moment from the start. He spent the entire decade stifled by Fleming leftovers and a notion of cinematic Bond as sketched from Richard Maibaum's vague memory of the early 1960s. Never quite managing to wrestle these (or the intentions embeded in MGW and Maibaum's scripts) into his own ironical sense of humor and sober directorial style, which was primarily interested in pure action, it's natural that he should only realize himself in full when, as in LTK, both the unused literary material is most sparse and the cinematic Bond is a stranger.
Notes
- For all this, there are fleeting moments with some Bondian merit. Not coincidentally, this is where the film scores its points. Sanchez and his ethos provide a nice mirror to Bond, conjuring up both the film and literary Scaramanga. Bond's infiltrating the Sanchez machine recalls the Goldfinger and The Man With the Golden Gun novels. And Hedison's return as Felix is great and gives a real heft to what happens to him, and retroactively makes his turn in LALD all the better, even if his return serves to make more apparent the very flaw Eon was trying to overcome—i.e. that Felix was always played by someone new and if he had been played by the same actor for all this time then maybe the audience would've felt his fate all the more.
- The nod to Tracy is a nice moment. Unfortunately the opportunity passes for much emphasis to be made of the similarities between the deaths of Bond and Felix's brides and, in a way, of history repeating itself.
- In fact Della largely drops off the face of the film, as by the end a cackling, crippled Felix eyes a nurse and makes plans to go fishing with Bond after the coming weekend (in case you forget, this is before the fish statue winks but after someone attacks Bond with a fish and Pam accidentally fires a laser beam).
- Speaking of that: Q's introduction scene is absolutely ludicrous. I laugh like a drain every time the laser beam shoots out of the camera and the dude in the photograph on the wall in the resulting x-ray photograph is also a skeleton. Q's reason for needing to be in the film at all (or in such a large way) doesn't read. (Shades of SP?) That said, Desmond was always a pleasure.
- One real highlight, and this doesn't get mentioned enough for me, is Truman Lodge. Anthony Starke's yuppie comes across as a warped Alex Keaton, his placement in the employ of a drug lord as strikingly humorous as Michael J. Fox's champion of conservatism being a poster boy for social improvement.
Favorite action: The water-skiing escape. I think it's closer to classic Bond than the tanker chase. Much more stylish.
Favorite scene: Tea with Sanchez. The best Dalton ever looked in the role.
Favorite moment: When Bond bolts upright and bed and is met by the fish-face. It's absolutely bizarre, but I think I might like it simply because it's something I'd not expect from Glen.
Ranking:
1. DR. NO
2. QUANTUM OF SOLACE
--
3. LIVE AND LET DIE
4. CASINO ROYALE
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5. LICENCE TO KILL
One could go from:
01. CR (Bond becoming 007)
02. QoS
03. DN (young Bond)
04. FRWL
05. GF
06. TB
07. LALD
08. TMWTGG
09. OHMSS (Bond marying)
10. DAF
11. FYEO (Bond getting his revenge)
12. TSWLM (Bond being more experienced)
13. GE
14. TND
15. LTK
16. TLD (Bond falling in love again)
17. TWINE
18. DAD
19. YOLT (Bond is a bit bored by his job)
20. MR (Bond finally makes it into space)
21. OP (Bond is getting old)
22. AVTAK (Bond is getting maybe too old)
23. NSNA (Bond is presumed to be too old)
24. SF (Bond struggles with age)
25. SP (Bond almost retires)
I always see AVTAK as Bond's last mission.
But that's my personal choice of course.
Since the death of his wife is not even mentioned in DAF it also need not be directly after OHMSS.
Dr No (1)
Live and Let Die (1)
Licence to Kill (1) (2)
OHMSS (2) (3)
The World is Not Enough (3) (4)
Skyfall (4) (5)
The Man with the Golden Gun (5) (6)
Tomorrow Never Dies (6) (7)
You Only Live Twice (7) (8)
The Spy Who Loved Me (7) (8)
Moonraker (8) (9)
Die Another Day (9) (10)
Diamonds Are Forever (9) (10) (11)
Goldfinger (11) (12)
A View to a Kill (12) (13)
Goldeneye (13) (14)
Octopussy (14)
From Russia with Love (14)
For Your Eyes Only (14) (15)
The Living Daylights (14) (15) (16)
Casino Royale (15) (16) (17)
Quantum of Solace (17)
Thunderball (17)
Spectre (17)
1-Quarrel trilogy! Tropics!
2-Dead wives! Welcome seriousness!
3-Skiing with Bond girls! Family motto!
4-M is abducted! MI6 blows up!
5-Macau!
6-James Bond Island!
7-Playing nations against each other!
8-Lewis Gilbert's monorail trilogy!
9-WTF!
10-Diamonds!
11-Connery coasts through a Guy Hamilton joint!
12-Rich guy announces monopoly plans to a group of baddies!
13-Scenes in 1985! EMP weapons! Dated tech!
14-Russians!
15-Time to go back to Fleming!
16-Gritty reboot!
17-SPECTRE! Or Quantum!
As you can see I've put an immense amount of thought into this, but I'll tell you, it's tough to fit a couple of these together....There are other similarities to note between these movies (DAD is next to MR not only because it's nuts, but because it borrows from the Moonraker novel, LTK is not only part of my "Quarrel trilogy", but it borrows a lot from the Live and Let Die novel), but something like Octopussy, really looking at it, is quite unlike any other Bond movie.
Anyway, if this long weird post is at all interesting, I'd love some feedback or ideas! Have the house to myself next week.... :-)
TLD
THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS is a mini-reconfiguration of the series that doesn't really miss Pierce Brosnan despite his last-second loss: the film is prototypical Brosnan-era, playing the near equivalent of a late-80s DN to GE's mid-90s GF. The difference is a matter of freshness.
- I feel like this would've been a good point for Eon to try a new director.
- The first twenty minutes are ace; the first inkling of trouble comes at the pipeline. The thing really goes off the rails starting with the car chase and doesn't get back on the tracks for me.
- The film's few detractors seem to agree that the Afghan sequence stands out as being the marking point for the quality drop. I somewhat disagree. As I said above, for me it really starts with the car chase, and then the rest of the film fluctuates wildly.
- The villains are not great in the traditional sense of Bond villains, but in the end they have comparatively little to do with the film's problems. I like the idea of Whitaker and Koskov. I like that they are sort of big dumb goofball international criminals instead of sophisticate gentlemanly evil geniuses. They certainly stand out from the rest of the villains in the series. I prefer Koskov. I'm not sure Baker quite hits the mark for me.
Favorite scene: The adaptation of Fleming's short that starts us off. Dalton is great here. Second choice would be the Pushkin interrogation.
Favorite action: The pre-credits, certainly.
Favorite moment: The shot of the men and horses with the low hanging sun.
--
GE
A film whose decreasingly satisfying parts make a beeline appeal for Bondmania without fully justifying themselves, though done with a fresh enough contemporary spin to make their end product amount to more than their sum.
- I find Alec a pretty weak villain on the whole. The former friend angle is interesting, I suppose, but by the end Alec seemingly devolves into a generic Bond villain.
- I think the film trends downwards throughout. The pre-credits, playful car chase, casino, Goldeneye attack, Bond briefing, Natalya survival stuff is great; Bond in Russia with Wade, meeting Zukovsky, Xenia spa trip, Alec reveal, capture, escape, tank chase, train explosion is fine; Cuba and the finale is a slog.
- I've mentioned this a few times, but I really enjoy how the script follows Natalya's story separate from Bond then links up. I wouldn't mind another film trying this out.
Favorite scene: Xenia and Ourumov stealing the Goldeneye.
Favorite action: Since I was a kid I've always loved the sheer audacity of having Bond drive a motorcycle off a cliff to catch a diving plane.
Favorite moment: When Bond and Natalya are in the chopper, the missiles fire and the music kicks in against a shot of the missiles shooting off into the night sky.
--
OP
The soul-destorying ironical humor which killed FYEO blossoms into something even more pernicious with OCTOPUSSY, and though it no doubt does the film harm, the script has a high enough natural pitch to mitigate damage much more effectively. The end result is an uneven though inventive, fun take on the series which blends Glen's own action-adventure style with the series's classic fantasy thrillers from the 60s.
- George MacDonald Fraser's touch is certainly appreciated and definitely makes this script stand out in the otherwise MGW/Maibaum monopoly of the 80s.
- I love the train sequence. Might be my favorite bit of stuntwork from the 80s, which was certainly the heyday for that sort of thing.
- Eliminate a few poorly judged choices and this film easily moves up a tier in the rankings.
- The very beginning of the film (pre-India) and its middle (Germany) are the high points. I disliked the assault on the Monsoon Palace even more than usual this go around.
Favorite scene: Rog in a clown suit pleading to be taken seriously. I know that when he appears in a clown suit it's an eye roller for some, but I think it's very clever.
Favorite action: Everything on top of the train.
Favorite moment: Magda's exit from Rog's room, tipping backwards out the window then spiraling down out of her dress as Barry's romantic theme is cued.
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GF
There are a handful of the Bonds—YOLT, DAF, LALD, MR—where the artistry allows the experience of watching the film to render the plot immaterial. The quality is found instead simply in the watching, in the pure cinema of the thing. GOLDFINGER is another such film, but the difference between it and the others is exactly how good the script does stand on its own and how much it finally contributes. From it Hamilton created a sandbox which has rarely if at all been played in with more abandon. Its gallery of pop art characters are quite unlike any that cinema had seen before or since. This film is the spirit of an age. Straight to the top of the ranking.
Favorite scene: "Do you expect me to talk?"
Favorite action: The Oddjob-Bond finale fight.
Favorite moment: Bond's discovery of Jill painted in gold. (Though the old woman firing the machine gun comes this close.)
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AVTAK
Is there anything more iconic to come out of 80s Bond than Rog hanging by the 'ZORIN' blimp mooring rope, floating inevitably towards the Golden Gate bridge? Glen's least affected film is maybe his best. It helps that, for once, his instincts as a director seem thoroughly in line with MGW's and Maibaum's script. The whole thing is played straighter than any of Glen's others bar LTK, and the film's all the better for it.
- Obviously there are still some iffy choices. I'd say the Beach Boys in the pre-titles is one of them, but something which struck me on watching was the extent to which I didn't mind this choice in comparison to some of Glen's other attempts at humor, in particular during this rewatch from OP, TLD, and LTK.
- Now aside from "California Girls" I can honestly say there's little else here that truly grates on me.
- Rog was too old for the role, sure, but I never feel like I'm watching Rog struggle to keep up with James Bond the character, rather that I'm simply watching an older Bond on an assignment. He's also as good as ever in terms of nailing the tone. The effort he makes to distinguish the St. John Smythe character, without coming across as trying too hard, is evident. I'd never have advised him to return after OP, even now in hindsight, but being that he did, I feel AVTAK is a unique opportunity in the series to observe an obviously aged Bond.
- Tanya Roberts: I still maintain she's the best girl to come out of the 80s. Her "everyday Jane"-cum-Saturday-matinee-damsel-in-distress has a combination of personality and will that reads as such without coming across like she exists as a prop to be Bond's equal.
- Barry's score is among his most sublime. This and MR are definintely his best work post-DAF.
Favorite scene: Pretty much any where Walken and Moore get to play against the other. The one that stands out most to me now is the scene in Howe's office.
Favorite action: The golden gate fight is iconic, so it has to be this. The whole thing from Rog grabbing on to the rope through the blimp explosion.
Favorite moment: One that goes overlooked, I think. Since I was a kid I've always loved when Rog appears from the flames with Stacy across his back, and Barry's music kicks in. Possibly Bond's most heroic moment in the entire franchise. The first time I saw this movie, I got goosebumps. Then my heart went into my stomach seconds later when he slips on the ladder. A very effective part of the film from Glen.
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MR
MOONRAKER, the last of the Bond epics, between it's production design, cinematography, music, editing, special effects, and stunt work, might be more infused with art than any other film in the series. Though it's certainly leagues better than the franchise joke it's made to be, a few bad moments drag it down, each of them seeming to exist solely to provide the production team with peremptory evidence against any charge of taking a film where Bond goes into space too seriously.
Favorite scene: The scene where Bond shoots the sniper from the tree is a series classic in my book. "Did I?"
Favorite action: Bond getting pushed from the plane without a parachute.
Favorite moment: A few near choices, two which come from a horror film: Jaws in his towering costume moving down the alley, and Corinne being chased through the forest; elsewhere, Bond having to shoot down the pods before they enter the atmosphere is very tense. Standing above them all, though, is Bond being lured to the pyramid lair by the woman in white. The series offers a few such dreams like this (Honey rising from the ocean being another), but these images combined with Barry's music might make this the finest.
DAD
DIE ANOTHER DAY at last reduces the series in reality to being what it has often been criticized for and/or thought of as being but is in reality (or is supposed to be) so much more than. In other words, a mess.
- The usual critique: first half good, second half astoundingly bad. A further critique: second half of the second half even worse.
- One good thing in the second half: Zao vs. Bond car chase. That two gadget cars should go up against each other was always an inevitability, and this isn't carried off too poorly in my book.
- Brosnan's best performance in spite of the quality of the film.
- I really just can't abide the 'so bad it's good' or 'at least it's fun' critiques.
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Ranking:
1. GOLDFINGER
2. DR. NO
3. QUANTUM OF SOLACE
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4. LIVE AND LET DIE
5. CASINO ROYALE
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6. MOONRAKER
6. A VIEW TO A KILL
6. GOLDENEYE
6. OCTOPUSSY
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10. THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS
11. LICENCE TO KILL
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12. DIE ANOTHER DAY
Note: Yet to make up my mind about the order for that third tier. Temporarily making it a tie while I brood.
I've roughly attempted the same thing with my current rewatch, @ProfJoeButcher. Your list flows very well, even better than mine, although I do agree that it's tough to make all 24 films flow cohesively. We've made many of the same choices, so there are definitely those with a natural affinity for each other, but then problem ones inevitably arise.
FWIW, I shoved OP in between GE (which I felt shared a similar iconography) and GF (plot/character elements), and found it worked well there.
I've roughly attempted the same thing with my current rewatch, @ProfJoeButcher. Your list flows very well, even better than mine, although I do agree that it's tough to make all 24 films flow cohesively. We've made many of the same choices, so there are definitely those with a natural affinity for each other, but then problem ones inevitably arise.
FWIW, I shoved OP in between GE (which I felt shared a similar iconography) and GF (plot/character elements), and found it worked well there.[/quote]
Nice of you to say, and I like yours too! We actually have a lot of sequences in common. For example, what I'm calling the "Quarrel trilogy", which I hope to watch Sunday.
DN - LALD - LTK - OHMSS - TWINE - SF - TMWTGG - TND - YOLT - TSWLM - MR - DAD - DAF - GF - AVTAK - GE - OP - FRWL - FYEO - TLD - CR - QOS - TB - SP
My goal with this series is to have movies match up thematically from one to another, and also to spread my least favorites around and hopefully learn to appreciate them more.
So, the first round:
DR NO
Easy to forget how great this is, and I think it is too often forgotten. This movie, not Goldfinger, set up the Bond formula. Bond is sent on a mission that starts off believable and eventually goes nuts. The formula is done to perfection here, as one hardly notices how silly things have got in the final sequences. The settings are gorgeous and glamorous, Joseph Wiseman is phenomenal as Dr No, and watching the film, one just has to think: more Bond films should be like this one.
I'd love if they cut the budget on the next couple Bonds so they can just bring the scale down a notch closer to something like this, actually.
The good: James Bond was always James Bond. They didn't need to time to figure out this character. He's fully developed from his first moment on screen.
The bad: Having said that, Sean overdoes it here from time to time, grinding his teeth in the fake-looking car chase, making his thoughts too clear to the audience while exiting a phone booth, and barking commands for Pussfeller to come to his table.
The ugly: Sean's distaste for stuntwork is well on display here, as his stuntman's face is completely visible for several seconds as he modestly descends a pipeline. A stunt I could do right now, in my late thirties, out of shape, and somewhat tipsy. Kind of a disappointment.
LIVE AND LET DIE
Holy crap is this fun. When this movie wraps up with Baron Samedi cackling on the train, I feel like only 30 minutes have passed since the gun barrel sequence. Such verve and pacing go a long way with me.
Roger is bloody fantastic here, and watching the film, one has to realize that Bond needed Roger more than Roger needed Bond. He's just a natural movie star. That said, he totally delivers on the Bond front, and any comedy or silliness is just something around him that he's reacting to. His performance here is more serious and in keeping with Fleming, even, than what we got from DAF, YOLT, or TB.
Also, the villains are masterful. Between Kananga, Baron Samedi, Tee Hee, Adam, and Whisper, this is probably the strongest rogue's gallery in the series.
The good: Everything. Everything in this movie is great.
The bad: Okay, the Kananga balloon was pretty terrible.
The ugly: The girl massaging an invisible cloud in the title sequence. Maurice, you ruined what would have been your best work.
LICENCE TO KILL
This has always been my favorite Bond film, and on this watch, nothing's gonna change there. I was looking out for the negative things people say about the movie, but you know what? It doesn't look cheap. The sets look like real places. Are they totally unglamorous for the most part? Yeah, and by design. But cheap? No. If you think Miami Vice ever looked like this movie, you need to watch more Miami Vice.
I'm a fan of Timothy Dalton also outside of Bond, and this time I tended to watch him even when the camera thinks I should be watching someone else, and god, he's just great. His warmth with people close to him, and his coldness towards his enemies, it's quite a thing to him balance these sides to the character in this film. There aren't even that many Bond films where Bond has more than one side.
But my favorite thing in the movie is how Bond drives the action. In most action films, the villain is in charge: he drives the plot, throws in more difficulties. But here, it's the James Bond show. It's like Sanchez is the hero of his own movie, and the villain Bond has a big plot, and keeps turning the screws. The only thing is, the hero Sanchez never quite overcomes it.
Watching Bond crush his opponent for so much of the movie is not only a nice change of pace from other Bond films and action films, it's also a catharsis following the tragedy that occurs in the first half of the film. Wonderful stuff.
The good: Everything.
The bad: Well, I guess Felix could have been more somber in the phone call at the end.
The ugly: The guy cracking jokes about selling more chainsaws in Florida than in Oregon. Come on, have a heart!
ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE
With all due respect to Terence Young, Guy Hamilton, and Lewis Gilbert, this is what a Bond movie should look like. The cinematography is spectacular, as everyone knows, but even more than the shots during the ski chase, I love when Bond flees his phone booth and runs to Tracy's car. It's a simple thing, doing that long shot and panning, but it's more electric than anything in the previous five films.
I have no idea what to say about this one. Most of us here love it. If you don't, you're probably beyond help.
The good: George Lazenby looks good in literally every outfit. Everything. Had he been the star of Octopussy, nobody would complain about the gorilla suit or the clown makeup. He looks amazing.
The bad: The PTS, while containing almost all good scenes, makes no sense whatsoever. Can anyone explain to me what the hell is going on?
The ugly: The black girl has a banana allergy? Really? We're doing that?
THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH
This has always been my least favorite Bond film, and unfortunately, this viewing probably won't change that. It's just so grey and brown and boring and I don't care about any of it. That said, Pierce Brosnan, my least favorite Bond, made a very good impression, and I look forward to his other films. Hopefully one or two can crawl out of the bottom four rankings. Maybe I've been too hard on him.
The good: I matched this with OHMSS because Bond skis with his love interest, and a reference is made back to the older movie. I hadn't realized both films feature female nipples (Ruby and Electra)
The bad: Most of it, really.
The ugly: The title sequence is hideous.
SKYFALL
The backlash to Spectre seems to have retroactively hurt this film among a lot of Bond fans, and those people are all nuts. Beautifully shot, beautifully scored (yeah, I said it), and beautifully acted. Silva's plan is a bit contrived, but these movies tend to exaggerate themselves in the imagination: when you're watching it, it generally comes off as plausible.
The good: One of the very best title sequences ever.
The bad: The PTS, while still about 45 minutes shorter than that of TWINE, is still too long, and still too much movie proper. And really only interesting at the end.
The ugly: Maybe the CGI Silva face effect could have been left out, off screen, to our imagination? Didn't quite work....
Rankings so far:
LTK
LALD
OHMSS
SF
DN
TWINE