which is the best James Bond movie?

craig is the only bond

Casino Royale (the recent one) was utter toss.

Probably From Russia With Love for my taste, although I didn't mind some of the Pierce Brosnan ones, didn't mind them at all. And actually On Her Majesty's Secret Service isn't half bad.

I have still never seen a Bond film all the way through. Which is the best one to start with? As opposed to the actual best one.

that is the most shocking thing you have ever written.

i thought casino royale was good but often hard to think why. there is no quantum of solace torrent yet!

casino royale was some low rent wanna be bourne shit - kinda amusing but who wants emo bond - bond is not emo - that was not bond

I like emo bond way more than phoning it in playboy bond

it's the 2000s let's get with the times--deep tortuous guilt and anxiety is the global mood

in wht way is craig emo? cos he has emotions? max otm. anyway I never enjoyed a bond bt I enjoyed casino royale a bunch and if anything he's a high rent jason bourne. you want low rent jason bourne try liam neeson's taken

anyone voting for a non-Connery bond film should die in a fire.

lol this poll

my ranking:

1. goldfinger
2. the spy who loved me
3. casino royale (2006)
4. from russia with love
5. on her majesty's secret service
6. dr. no
7. you only live twice
8. goldeneye
9. thunderball
10. quantum of solace
11. tomorrow never dies
12. for your eyes only
13. the world is not enough
14. octopussy
15. licence to kill
16. live and let die
17. die another day
18. never say never again
19. the living daylights
20. a view to a kill
21. diamonds are forever
22. casino royale (1967)
23. the man with the golden gun
24. moonraker

"On My Ladies Royal Tush"

Live and Let Die is the best, and Roger Moore was the best Bond. The new Casino Royale was pretty good too.

I just like the ones that feature Toblerone

truth (which surprised me): pierce brosnan would be my 2nd favorite Bond (though i'm willing to see how the david craig era goes before making that final).

the blaxploitation parts of "live and let die" were amusing (as was yaphet kotto blowing-up a la Violet Beauregarde in "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory") ... the part where it turned into a precursor of "smoky and the bandit" (complete with dumbass rednecks and overlong, pointless chases through the bayou) were not so.

can't believe OHMSS didn't place higher!

Eisbaer, I think Brosnan (the first couple of films at least) is a great Bond. He's like a great balance between Dalton's grit and Moore's charm. Goldeneye is a ludicrous film, but I'd rank it up there with the best Bond performances.

wtf dude, 5th place is way too high as is

not really.

you could make a good case for a couple below it but moonraker is certainly not one of them.

I enjoy ho w Roger Moore was both posh and could kick some ass

you could make a good case for a couple below it but moonraker is certainly not one of them.

― gyac, Wednesday, February 15, 2012 9:36 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, 4 votes for Moonraker, WTF. The Living Daylights should be much higher. Can't argue with the top four though.

Who the fuck voted for Licence To Kill

I miss Goldeneye on N64

i'm guessing that some folks found "moonraker" to be entertaining in a campy way ... i didn't find it so, but i guess i can see some folks looking at it that way.

ohmss is a solid movie but lazenby's boring. regardless, it placed really high and i cant see being dissatisfied with that. maybe you think it's better than live and let die, but surely not the other three ahead of it?

lazenby wasn't bad at all ... he only suffers in comparison to sean connery IMHO.

i'm more shocked w/ the lack of love for "the spy who loved me" ... not only is it the best film from the Roger Moore era, IMHO it's one of the best films during the entire series.

i think Lazenby's kinda wooden, it's an excellent film tho.

all Moore's films are for shit tho.

roger moore is like the fucking Tory party James Bond

I thought Roger Moore was the better Bond when I was a kid

it's probably a "who did you see first" thing, i saw Connery, then read the books, then when i saw Moore i just felt like he was taking the piss

roger moore is like the fucking Tory party James Bond

haha was thinking the same thing.

Moore was my 1st Bond ... so i originally thought that Bond was supposed to be a bit of a clown. only later did i see the Connery Bond films and had a rethink.

oh come you guys, Octopussy is nonstop roffles

it has a KILLER YO-YO in it

Octopussy, followed by Moonraker, are probably the best Moores if you kinda hate him as I do.

when Diana Rigg or snow chases aren't onscreen, OHMSS is boooooooooring

best james bond movie is the one that's on TV, obviously. up until roger moore quit doing them, at which point it becomes one of the other ones.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nikXT7UnFfQ

About the only charming quality to Roger Moore is that signal he sends to the audience that we know he's too old for this shit and he knows we know.

You all loved it when Moore cold-bloodedly pushed that dude in the car off the cliff in For Your Eyes Only. Don't even front.

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

Tough call. Either would have been Casino Royale or the one set in Vegas. Or the one with Grace Jones and Walken and, you know, Duran Duran.

Can't believe Die Another Day got even a single vote

That movie stopped being awesome the moment Hallie showed up

When Halle showed up, she was in a bikini, so your thesis statement is tragically flawed

This is an odd poll, b/c it seems that bond films of different eras would be incomparable. Goldfinger works differently than For Your Eyes Only which is different that Goldeneye and Casino Royale.

And how does one compare 1964 Shirley Bassey to 1981 Sheena Easton?

Oh shit GOLDFINGER. how did I forget that

Hmm, interesting: a collection of essays/reviews running down each soundtrack:

http://www.tjbd.co.uk/james-bond-soundtracks.htm

The moments where Conti’s score turns into classic orchestrated Bond music are terrific, and if you can overlook the Moog synthesisers and disco funk of some of the other tracks, it is a much better soundtrack than For Your Eyes Only is a film.

russia otm

James Bond is irrelevant in a post-Urban-doctorate world

0 votes for Goldeneye, wtf.

Goldenbrowneye

I think that's a James Bound movie

http://cherrybrookkitchen.com/products/frosting_vanillaspread.php

When Halle showed up, she was in a bikini, so your thesis statement is tragically flawed

Tragic attempt to invoke Ursula Andress. The only thing worse than her in DAD is the invisible car.

better an invisible car than a bucky blue ball

For Your Eyes Only is really great!

Definitely one of the most interesting of the latter Moores.

lotta trolling in this poll

prime example:

I can't tell any of these films apart
― Shakey Mo Collier, Wednesday, May 2, 2007 6:15 PM (5 years ago)

'007 And Counting' is my favourite Bond music

― blueski, Wednesday, May 2, 2007 10:37 AM (5 years ago)

Gotta be March in Space

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

Sorry, Space March.

They're playing every film here starting in a couple of weeks:

http://tiff.net/bond#

I've seen almost nothing--bad rep prints of a couple of early ones, Live and Let Die when it came out--so I'm looking forward to at least seeing all the Connerys, and also some of the "other Bonds."

I was not trolling fwiw

the bond films are so different in tone and style and even mise-en-scene that i honestly dunno how you could say that -- like even 'from russia with love' is completely different than 'goldfinger.'

structurally they are all nearly identical in terms of plot mechanics, the sequence of scenes, the overarching themes ("British empire is sexy and authoritative! Also violent!" - the entire premise of which I find alternately laughable and offensive). Moorcock was right about Fleming.

essentially they're movies where nothing of consequence happens - the viewer can rest assured that no matter what, there will always be another Bond film a few years later with the same requisite villain/Bond girl/theme song/car chase/explosions etc

well yeah, but you can say the same of any action film series. just in terms of the way the films are put together -- on a shot-by-shot level -- the first three bonds are completely dissimilar.

fleming's books are terrible, but they aren't the films.

i think even the lesser films are so markedly different that every time i see one on TV it takes me about a minute to figure out which one it is. and i mean there are some that are clearly remotely unlike any other bond, like bond in space or "bond vs the cocaine cartels" or bond + i walked with a zombie + southern caricatures + blaxploitation.

i guess for anyone who doesn't like bond it really is best to just start w/casino royale and the first few connery films.

well yeah, but you can say the same of any action film series

don't think this is true, Bond is kind of unique in this regard. what other action film series' are you thinking of?

essentially they're movies where nothing of consequence happens - the viewer can rest assured that no matter what, there will always be another Bond film a few years later with the same requisite villain/Bond girl/theme song/car chase/explosions etc

― stop swearing and start windmilling (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, October 8, 2012 12:51 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah well christmas and the high holy days come around every year too

halloween, new years... how does anyone have a good time??

Sorry, Space March.

Space March owns, but my favorite is still On Her Majesty's Secret Service. I like to play it when I'm in the car and pretend I am on some sort of spy caper.

Kinda with Shakey on this -- the Moore/Dalton/Brosnan Bonds all blur into 3 decades of smugness and explosions for me, with bonus dyspepsia from Dalton and flat attempts at laughs from Moore.

nicole otm

peak moores are likely 'the spy who loved me' and 'live and let die', i like the two dalton flicks a fair amount, and the brosnans peaked w/goldeneye imo. i think having a couple of ace eurobabes like famke janssen and izabella scorupco are in keeping w/bond tradition a lot better than subsequently trying to juice up bond w/halle berry, denise richards, & teri hatcher. i realize i'm not mentioning michelle yeoh or sophie marceau but they felt so out of place, idk.

yeah well christmas and the high holy days come around every year too

holidays are like movies in what way now?

frequently involve hours of uncomfortable silence surrounded by people you barely know while you crave booze

uh in the way you just described

xp well maybe that too

shoulda gone with "people you'd normally avoid"

being drunk in a movie theater sounds terrible

omar otm

uh in the way you just described

movies are not rituals

let me submit to you to consider that maybe they are sometimes

altho maybe for you guys watching Bond films are a ritual - you go through the motions in order to be comforted by their unchanging nature? I dunno.

xp

I take it you haven't seen this, SMC.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0281724/

bond movies are constructed more like a long running tv series where these regular notes the films hit become like, idk, norm walking into cheers with another joke or columbo coming back with "one more question" or rod serling's VO. it's also probably overstated how much the films rely on those series tropes, and also they've been kind of messing w/the formula a bit ever since felix leiter got half eaten by a shark.

omar otm x 2 - eurobabes are key. or just ridiculously beautiful women that haven't been over publicized by Maxim's hottest thousand list every 2 months. Berry & Richards were gorgeous at the time but eveyrone knew it so it was almost boring to have them there...whereas those lesser-known/exotic beautiful women add more intrigue or something idk

and Nicole def otm with OHMSS -- EXCITEMENT! DANGER! around every corner when it's playing

omar stop being otm

shakey otm

ty

yeah idg how the rules and conventions of bond films are really any different, more ritualized or restrictive than any genre conventions or dramatic conventions in general.

tbf, the titles are not particularly useful when trying to tell 23 movies over 50 years apart

dr. no, goldfinger and the man with the third nipple at least tell you who the villain is. the latter three brosnans are particularly unhelpful

particularly

pierce brosnan's delivery of the de-rigeur Bond puns was always u_u

like that whole Christmas coming once a year or w/e

lol

i think the denise richards and the second dalton are the only ones i haven't seen, though several i haven't seen in forever. thank you ted turner.

007 DAYS OF 007

syfy did a bond marathon last Thanksgiving...I wonder if they'll do it this year

I'm in the mood for a bondathon

big problem with the Brosnan ones was that there was one good film and then a quick decline into the most joyless shit imaginable

was goldeneye actually any good though? kinda suspect more a case of brosnan was good for role, they got some stuff right, we were happy to have bond back and recognizable than goldeneye was actually good. haven't seen it since it was in the theater so i could be wrong.

It has some parts where it's a slog, but Sean Bean makes for a good villain and has a decent backstory (tries for almost-as-serious as recent Bond), Famke Janssen is a ridiculous foil/female villain, and Alan Cumming's character always seems on the verge of being from a different, more comedic, film but pulls it off.

no ridiculous sciencey macguffin thing, either, just an almost-plausible ex-soviet weapon hijacked, with a decent reason given for why the plot goes to different locations

i think brosnan was just an average bond but he has probably had the most interesting post-007 career of any of the bonds.

connery had an epic career of course but brosnan's has been a little more unpredictable is what i'm saying.

yeah looking back it's pretty campy and i thought Sean Bean is kinda hammy in it but i haven't seen it for a while. has some great bits (the opening stunt obviously, the psychotic bad girl, Dench's first outing as M..) but is only 'pretty good' imo compared to the previous re-boot The Living Daylights which i still say is THE criminally under-rated Bond film.

Brosnan:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p7Gk1y-boM

goldeneye was sort of right time, right place and it doesn't hold up spectacularly well, but it's still a solid bond and better than the rest of the brozzies

the rest were like "whoa weapon shit or something, he's james bond, he jumps around a lot blah blah"

the one with sophie marceau/robert carlyle had some moments, like the sadistic/erotic chair torture scene, but it also had denise richards as a nuclear scientist. seemed like the plots were mostly charisma-free zones

tomorrow never dies seems like the biggest missed opportunity to me. 97 hk handover + michelle yeoh awesome foundation for an interesting/cool bond, too bad it was dumbass crap

yup, I was looking at the list of Brosnan movies and that one was just boooooring, nothing truly offensive that sticks out in my mind

and ott product placement, so even though the cars and gadgets had always been the focus those brosnan ones just got ridic, like watching an aston martin infomercial with occasional dialogue

though I haven't seen any of the brosnans for a long time so maybe I'm exaggerating that?

no, you're completely correct

If for no other reason than this one, I'm glad Punk'd existed.

They sent that smartass kid out to the red carpet at some event and he asked Denise Richards "How did it feel to play someone smart?"

I need to rewatch The Living Daylights. Should I?

omigod I had no idea this existed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUgy7fpUR2A

whoa

If movies are not rituals, somebody is gonna need to explain The Room and The Rocky Horror Picture Show a little better.

Goldeneye is solid as hell and it has the tank chase through St. Petersburg which is the best.

But the game kind of improved on some of it so that's hanging over it.

I need to rewatch The Living Daylights. Should I?

― the ones that I'm near most: fellow outcasts and ilxors (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

Absolutely, it's in my top three.

Top three Bonds that is, not top three all movies.

Encore showed all (or most) of them a few months ago. I caught Diamonds are Forever and gee willickers that's a stinker. I had completely blocked out the goofball comic villain duo.

you guys are confusing ritual movie viewing with actual movies. this whole holiday = movie analogy is stupid

It's a good movie, captures the mid 90's as much as TLD and LTK capture the late 80's. Dench is great as M, Michael Kitchen good as Tanner, Bean great as the villain (driven as much by his rivalry/envy of Bond as his desire for money/revenge). And the tank chase is brilliant.

this blogger has been going through them all each Sunday for the past several months.

I like that the score he gives has to do with the quality of the Bond tropes and not the actual quality of the film.

geez he sure likes ranking things out of 5

he's kinda otm about Pussy Galore - I always like her more nostalgically than I do when I watch the movie, I forget she's hardly in it

I rather like the two Dalton films, but I'm probably in the minority.

First one hell yes, second one fuck no.

I swear I loved Octopussy among the "heresy Bonds", it was just a ridiculous blast. Haven't seen it in almost 30 years tho.

ie it's the only Roger Moore I really enjoyed, cuz they said "fuck it"

Moonraker was pretty "fuck it" too.

Octopussy as heresy... Or harem?

you only live twice is my fav of the ridiculous bonds. the tone it hits is just perfect

yeah it's the only Connery I have much affection for besides Goldfinger, I guess bcuz of the Roald Dahl-Donald Pleasence factors.

Moonraker was the first one I saw in its first run, but it was too obv pandering to Star Wars era and bringing back R Kiel as Jaws. Points for Bunuel/Duras villain.

I've always found James Bond films utterly tedious.

they frequently are. The one w/ the Australian and Diana Rigg has some good moments but 70% of it is just deathly dull.

I didn't hate live and let die until the speedboat chase that lasted forever.

most of the action scenes in OHMSS are just rapidly cut Winter Olympics.

has to be said, Jaws was awesome

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64yHgoQMQVM

Oddjob wd slice him up

affectionate lol @ morbs' deep and measured knowledge of noted sophisticated adult film franchise james bond

i probably like you only live twice best but i've only seen the connery ones and the brosnan ones and scenes from whichever roger moore ones are on spike in between the real ones

goldeneye didn't hold up very well last time i watched it but honestly nor did goldfinger, i think i might just not be twelve anymore. (opening sequence w bono-penned tina turner song and chix swinging hammers and sickles is still joy tho.) the video game's a much bigger deal, obviously. the torture chair scene in the world is not enough, meanwhile, happened when i was exactly twelve, and when i watch it, i am twelve forever. whatever that says.

I think I've actually seen maybe three of these movies from start to finish, and my mental James Bond is all garbled up where he looks like Pierce Brosnan, talks like Connery and behaves like Roger Moore. But I do like action fun type movies and MOMA is screening the entire series this month, in two cycles - might try and get down there and pick up a few of the top finishers from the poll.

just placed The Living Daylights in my queue; I haven't seen this movie since 1989.

also I thought goldeneye on n64 suuuucked but we already hashed that out in the all-time video games ballot poll results thread

(and it was the first Bond film I watched in the thee-ah-ter)

xp oh i kinda think so too because i am a PC shooter snob (i am amazed that so many people played an FPS with a single joystick and no way of aiming while moving like it was perfectly normal), but it's Important is all.

I mostly stopped watching these movies when I hit mid 20s, save for a few Connery repeats.

actually, my mental bond looks like brosnan and talks like connery too.

I like Bond but don't find there to be THAT much variation in quality between most of them. Like, Goldfinger is indeed a better movie than Tomorrow Never Dies, but not by as great a distance as you'd be led to believe.

who is leading us to believe this?

I mean, I for one rate Goldfinger above half of Hitchcock and among the better works of the time, but Tomorrow Never Dies is really shallow in its depiction of media corruption, and lacks the bombastic plot of Network or the subtle yet media-led revelations of Die Hard 2. The variation in film is, as you say, negligible, but hard to put in context.

Michelle Yeoh motorcycle scene about all that's worth anything in that movie.

you guys have obviously forgotten "sir, the new version of the software is ready. as requested, it's full of BUGS... so people will be forced to UPGRADE." "excellent."

Goldfinger has its place in the critical canon, it's on Roger Ebert's Great Movies list and it regularly shows up on lists of the best action films and best British films ever.

TND is indeed kinda mediocre but still sufficiently entertaining (I always liked the bit where the villain imitates Michelle Yeoh's kung fu posture before scoffing at her, "pathetic," his status as an all powerful media Titan having afforded him cultural superiority); I can't say that if the latter came on tv right now that I'd be all that disappointed that I was watching it instead of the former. I dunno, there's a possibility that I'm so overly familiar with this series that I don't notice subtle differences between them. I should admit that I still haven't seen a few of the Moore ones (or haven't seen them since childhood, when I couldn't tell them apart in any way beyond my suspicion that Octopussy was a funny name for some reason I couldn't quite articulate), but yeah, I don't see the distance between the best and worst in this series as being anywhere near as dramatic as, say, the original Star Wars trilogy vs. the prequels, or Raiders Of The Lost Ark vs. Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull.

I haven't seen it in a long while but I remember A View to a Kill being abhorrent, but maybe it doesn't seem so bad because there's so many and of varying degrees of quality that it all feels part of an awfulness continuum, whereas in the case of Indiana Jones there's a remarkable drop-off in that one entry which makes it stand out as even worse.

'from russia with love' is easily among the best-made action films ever and far and away the series high point IMO.

if only North by Northwest hadn't got there first

They're all good in a way. I don't remember if I've said that before in this thread, but I'll watch any of them, even Diamonds are Forever, at any time if someone asks me.

A View to a Kill is irritating in that the actors and premise have a lot of potential and it ends up with a boring underground explosion plot where they're just punching in a nondescript cave and a fistfight on a blimp

AVtoK seems to be the consensus worst of the series, and as I only remember the very last scene of the film, perhaps I should re-watch it and then amend my statement about the non-varying quality of Bond films accordingly.

Ok, AVtoK is indeed pretty bad. Moore way beyond retirement age for the character at this point, and his sex scene with Grace Jones has to be the ickiest in the entire series. Plus, Walken squandered on an uninteresting character. Like, if ever there was an actor born to play a megalomaniacal Bond villain, it's Walken, but he has exactly zero interesting lines/moments/quirks in the film. Also, the movie is just way to jokey and clowny. When the Beach Boys tune came on during the opening scene, I seriously thought I was watching "Top Secret."

yeah I hated that one.

Should I roll the dice on one of the Brosnans at MoMA? Which is 'darkest'?

Doesn't answer your question, i know, but The World Is Not Enough is my fave Brosnan.

someone threw DAD (lol) a vote for lols, right? I mean, isn't that the one w/ the invisible car & Pierce Brosnan surfing on a broken slab of ice WHILE firing a machine gun?

that's the one w/ J Pryce yeah? xp

either goldeneye or twine (haha) -- goldeneye if you want a cartoony take on postsoviet uncertainty feat. judi dench calling bond a "dinosaur" and the world is not enough if you want the millennium dome + bond in an "antique torture chair" + john cleese

pryce is in tomorrow never dies which i can't remember anything about except him.

this review of the 50 box set prefers Goldeneye:

http://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/review/bond-50/2447

i do too

someone threw DAD (lol) a vote for lols, right? I mean, isn't that the one w/ the invisible car & Pierce Brosnan surfing on a broken slab of ice WHILE firing a machine gun?

the only thing i remember from DAD is the completely tension-free ice chase scene. iirc his car gets shot like a billion times and blown up like a hundred times but it's cool, nothing can stop the magic indestructible invisible car.

Goldeneye the only solid Brosnan, but I don't think any of them are particularly dark. They were clearly trying to get away from the harder-edged Dalton stuff, but quickly overcompensated with Moore-esque ridiculousness.

Tomorrow Never Dies has a good chase scene and Michelle Yeoh is good, but the finale is pretty blah and Pryce isn't a very good villain. World is Not Enough has Denise Richards and unmemorable action scenes. I don't think Carlyle is terrible, but submarine stuff is sort of a snooze and bullet-in-the-brain "i can't feel pain" is kind of pointless. Die Another Day is best avoided unless you really want to see Madonna turning up in a fencing kit.

CASINO ROYALE tbh

I watched The Living Daylights for the first time since a cable rerun in 1990, and it holds up! Two crippling mistakes:

1. No villain. Joe Don Baker's war buff isn't given enough to do. The blond mail Annie Lennox-esque master of disguise comes close.
2. The cellist is perhaps the most insipid Bond girl, which is saying a lot.
3. Timothy Dalton is game but given no memorable quips and is directed to act like he's in Othello.

as far as Dalton goes, Benicio Del Toro in a meat grinder >>> sliding around the snow on a cello case.

*THREE crippling mistakes rather

Daylights was my last one til the Craig Royale. I should try Licence to Kill, I guess.

actually only recently saw A View to a Kill. just horrifically bland, besides delightful Walken delivery in this scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCmgle7Q5eU

xp you might wanna avoid Licence Morbs, unless you really, really like generic B-action. it's the closest to a Stallone/Norris movie that Bond ever came

everybody has different opinions! I hate that.

I dunno. What's the diff b/w Bond and Norris -- tuxes and martinis? This is why I'm not a Bond fan.

Invasion U.S.A. is a more entertaining movie than all but like 5 or 6 Bonds so I really do not know

RAVES coming in for Skyfall.

License To Kill is a good 80s action movie.

Never Say Never Again surprised me! I expected a smug Sean Connery but his quiet weariness is exactly right for the part -- one of his subtler performances. The shark sequence (which I remembered watching on cable as a kid at a friend's house) is quite well shot.

A thousand curses on Kim Basinger. Is there a role she didn't scream for help through?

love her in Nadine actually

she didn't deserve Jeff Bridges.

I remember seeing Connery on Johnny Carson when NSNA came out, talking about putting his hairpiece on to play Bond again.

I liked it more than Thunderball for sure

!

shorter, less waterlogged + Max von Sydow

It's 2-hours-plus and drags after Brandauer walks away though.

One of the more disappointing truths of my adulthood has been learning that Thunderball pretty much sucks.

this shit is relative, Thunderball is weak but outweighs 20-odd years of bollocks that comes after it

cd argue the same about the books, Fleming slid downhill from Casino Royale on but they're all better than say Lee Childs

sonofagun, it seemed shorter... also forgot Brandauer was in it!

I had the Thunderball game.

http://jamesbondboardgames.grrgh.com/2010/10/25/thunderball/

Thunderball second worst of the EON Connery Bonds. Diamonds are Forever obviously the worst.

still love Diamonds above Thunderball, which is leaden as fuck.

the two henchman dudes in Diamonds were a portent of things to come.

taking your point but there's nothing in the worst non-Roger Moore movie that's more offensive than Live and Let Die

I just rewatched For Your Eyes Only, and was surprised how lean and stripped-down it was for a Moore Bond. (Though unlike many others, I do love a lot of the Moore era comedy stuff, especially in Octopussy.) There's no grandiose world-conquering schemes for the villain, and the ending is satisfyingly non-black & white ("that's detente, comrade: you don't have it, I don't have it"). It also features what is probably the nastiest scene Moore's Bond ever had (besides him practically raping Solitaire in Live and Let Die), when he pushes the car with the henchman inside down the cliff. And the rock-climbing finale was still a really exciting set piece, with little of the rear-projection corniness that mars many of the Moore era action scenes.

Also, Melina Havelock is possibly the most capable female lead in any Bond movie (and Carole Bouquet manages to convince the viewer she really is that tough): there's no real damsel-in-distress moments for her, and she ends up saving Bond more often than he saves her. I can't recall any Bond girl, not even in the 90s and 00s movies (I haven't seen Skyfall yet), being this skillful, which is a bit sad considering FYEO is 30 years old.

Basically, the only flaws in the movie are the totally unnecessary super-young-iceskater-has-the-hots-for-Bond sideplot (which would've been okay in some of the less serious Bonds, as Moore is quite funny when he's rejecting her advances, but it doesn't really fit here), and the fact that the romance is even more tacked-on than usually: there's literally no romantic scenes at all between Bond and Havelock before the final scene, where they just making out. I guess the idea was that a Bond movie has to end this way, but they could've at least tried to forehadow it in some way. Without those elements I'd say FYEO would easily be among the top 5 Bonds.

Here's my ranking of all the Bond movies:

The breakdown basically goes like this: 1-5 are essential. 6-11 are very good, but with some (increasingly significant as the rank decreases) flaws. 12-15 are stupid, but fun. 16 is only that high because of Christopher Lee. 17-22 are generally terrible but still worth watching because, you know, Bond. 23 is Quantum of Solace.

1. Casino Royale
2. From Russia with Love
3. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
4. Goldfinger
5. The Spy Who Loved Me
6. Goldeneye
7. The Living Daylights
8. Dr. No
9. Skyfall
10. Thunderball
11. For Your Eyes Only
12. Tomorrow Never Dies
13. Licence to Kill
14. Die Another Day
15. Octopussy
16. The Man with the Golden Gun
17. Moonraker
18. You Only Live Twice
19. Diamonds Are Forever
20. Live and Let Die
21. The World Is Not Enough
22. A View to a Kill
23. Quantum of Solace

Quantum really seems to be consensus worst, huh? Personally I found it bland enough that I barely remember it now, but View still strikes me as more screechingly bad.

Any movie with Walken and Grace Jones automatically is more exciting than the blandfest that was Quantum.

no Never Say Never Again? Best Bond performance of the eighties (guess why).

I don't really count Never Say Never Again as canon; if it was a better movie, maybe I would care more, but it isn't so I don't.

View to a Kill is really awful – even Roger Moore was like "I think I'm too old for this, guys" before they started shooting. That said, I can actually stand to look at View to a Kill for more than two consecutive minutes without having to look away, Unlike Quantum. Also, Bond doesn't make a fairly inoffensive villain drink gasoline in View to a Kill.

"I think I'm too old for this, guys" was Moore's M.O. since the seventies, no?

Yeah, but it wasn't quite as embarrassing until that one… That one shot at the race track with Moore, Patrick McNee, Robert Brown, and Lois Maxwell at the race track with them all lined up and looking about 1000 years old is just, quite literally, NAGL.

Just watched Goldeneye for the first time since it came out; actually, not even really sure I saw the whole thing back then either. Thought it held up pretty well, even on pan-n-scan VHS. The villainess is deliciously psycho, it's great seeing her in the background of shots where she's not part of the conversation and she's just like, licking her lips every time Bond threatens somebody and shivering when Sean Bean raises his gun, whatever. The ending kinda sucked - thought it was lame that Bond just purposefully lets the guy drop to his death, and was convinced that evil lady was gonna come back at some point after being left hanging in the tree (like the heavy in Die Hard).

But it basically pulls off its whole thing really well. Some awesome set pieces (the tank chase, the whole opener with the beautifully stupid "catching up to a falling airplane" stunt), good thematic hook where all the characters, good and bad, are still stuck in the Cold War, and an interesting idea of how to balance glamorous goofball Bond with "dark heavy serious spy guy" Bond. It swings very much towards the former but there are elements - like Sean Bean's "do all the vodka martinis silence the voices of the men you've killed" speech - that suggest the latter. Definitely way more compelling than the gray polygonal wasteland of the video game.

Did think it was pretty lame the way they kept calling out Bond's misogynist boys' club shtick and then just letting it past - very have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too and it probably dates the film worse than anything else besides the cheap plastic-y look of Bond's spy-camera, which probably looked good then but now looks like something I'd expect to see at the thrift store.

But the videogame had a way more compelling soundtrack than the trainwreck film version.

The villainess is deliciously psycho, it's great seeing her in the background of shots where she's not part of the conversation and she's just like, licking her lips every time Bond threatens somebody and shivering when Sean Bean raises his gun, whatever.

In my opinion she was the worst part of the film; the character was interesting in theory, but Famke Janssen's terrible overacting and scenery-chewing made every seen with her painful to watch... Yeah, I know, she's a Bond villain, you shouldn't expect subtlety, but there's a limit how unsubtle you can be without looking silly. Scorupco's character, on the other hand, was surprisingly good, one of the best Bond girls of all time, except for the pseudofeminist lines where she criticized Bond's boys' club thing. Obviously I'm all for strong female characters and deconstructing chauvinism, but the movie was too eager to say, "See? This a new non-sexist Bond movie you're watching!", so those scenes felt tacked-on. Like, are you really gonna start denigrating a guy who just saved your life for his machismo.

"seen" = "scene"

Yeah, I get where you're coming from with the overacting, I just really went for it, in the same way that I loved, say, Helena Bonham-Carter's preposterous I AM CRAZY VILLAIN hamming in the Harry Potter flicks. Feels like if any series can go slightly beyond the danger line of campiness it's Bond.

Agreed about the tacked-on "boys with their toys" stuff - sort of felt like someone cooked it up in the script at some point and then they lost the scene where it made sense to use it, and kept it anyway...didn't really grow organically out of the scenes it was in.

ie leave it out ffs it's a bond movie

You can't talk about limits to over-the-top-ness in Goldeneye. It's as goofy as Moore's goofiest movies. Famke is the right kind of exciting over-the-top and matches the very entertaining and batshit insane action scenes well.

xps Nahh, it totally could have been cool if it had just made sense. Part of me wonders if an earlier version had a scene where both Bond and Trevelyan were pulling crazy MI6 gadgets on each other, Trevelyan with an old model laser pocket protector and Bond with the latest grenade foundtain pen, having some kind of standoff. Like, there are ways that "toys" fit pretty nicely in a Bond movie! But the whole deal with Trevelyan is that he's somehow over all the cool-factor spy-gadget stuff, so somehow it becomes just Bond and a Russian guy yelling at each other for no reason when they're on the same side.

ahh, famke's great. it's scorupco who's 100% forgettable. i was saying this in the skyfall thread but I rewatched G-eye on tgiving and it really didnt hold up for me in the slightest... its just a roger moore movie with a fresh coat of paint (not-so-fresh coat these days)

Roger Moore movies are pretty fun though! If nothing else, Goldeneye looks better than those, and a couple of the sequences (again, pretty much the tank chase and the cold open) seriously up the ante on action-packedness, cinematography, and a general sense of physicality and convincingness. For me anyway.

I am trying to think of a Bond movie that I outright disliked... maybe You Only Live Twice? Aside from that one, they've all been fun to ZOMG WAU

Roger Moore movies are pretty fun though!

some are fun, some are shit.

Oh, man, the introduction of Xenia Onatopp was mind-blowing to a 15-year old.

Yeah, also, file that under "puns that you had missed."

Also, one thing that bothered me about the tank chase was the finale: when Bond's about to reach the bad guys, they jump on a train, which immediately departs. The train is traveling at a high speed, so you'd think the bad guys managed to escape, but then they see that the tank is waiting for them in a tunnel ahead! How the hell did Bond manage to drive the tank there and place it in a tunnel well before the train got there? Even if it's a Bond movie and the laws of physics are malleable, it would've been nice to at least get some explanation how Bond got there before the train.

train had to stop at watford junction and abbot's langley

I am trying to think of a Bond movie that I outright disliked... maybe You Only Live Twice?

on a board that prides itself on insane challopry this is maybe the insanest thing i have ever read

YOLT out

NV are you boggling at disliking #YOLT or only disliking that one?

"only" i think but ctfo disliking it more than any non-Connery flicks or Thunderball or Diamonds or even Dr No is just kerrrazy

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 he really is a woefully conspicuous espionage agent. Similarly it bothers me a bit how he so rarely uses an alias. Is there not some master criminal message board on which folk can be advised to shoot in the head anyone who introduces himself as "Bond, James Bond"?

Seems like most master criminals Bond comes into contact with end up dead so maybe it's not an issue for him. Really what he's saying when he introduces himself is "I WILL END YOU".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4gPBO0CM78

Not knowing much about lol Britishes pronunciation when I first saw "View To A Kill," discovering that what I was hearing as "Sinjin Smythe" was spelled "St. John Smith" really blew my mind.

Similarly it bothers me a bit how he so rarely uses an alias.

There is a feint at this in "Casino Royale" when Bond checks into the hotel under his own name:

Bond : "Look, if Le Chiffre is that well connected he knows who I am and where the money's coming from. Which means he's decided to play me anyway, so he's either desperate or he's overly confident. But either way, that tells me something about him. And all he gets in return is a name he already has."
Vesper : "And now he knows something about you. He knows you're reckless. Take the next one, there isn't enough room for me and your ego."

FWIW I didn't actually mean "You Only Live Twice", I meant "Never Say Never Again"

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

If you treat it as parody it might work.

wait

is live and let die......good?

they're still all bad

OHMSS ofc

Live & Let Die is good-ish until it turns into the Dukes of Hazzard & you are stuck watching a chase that lasts 72 years

wait that doesnt compute, how can that be the bad part

live and let die rules, you're right deems

i revisited ohmss for christmas and yeah it's still the best one and is maybe my favorite action film of all time

LALD's chase is the one where a boat goes through a wedding cake yes

xp really have to give that a watch, i hear all the right things about it

anyway thus far (just david blained jane seymour into bed) this is a pretty cracking mix of blaxploitation, forsyth-swinger spy pad and moore being much more of a modern quipper than i remember from later bonds

it's moore's third best bond film imo (after for your eyes only and the spy who loved me) and it's remarkable to me that his initial approach to playing bond is even more severe than connery's! ofc afterward he leans into the camp

hmmm maybe a project for the new year....

they're still all bad

^^^

holy shit its the one with the exploding couch/shark as well?

/kotto

correct!

dont get me wrong, i love LALD but i hate the sherriff & the chase is SO long. Like, Thunderball underwater fight scene long. LONG.
it was the first James Bond movie i remember watching all the way through - it has a very “Saturday late night tv movie” look to me that i love (Enter the Dragon has this same nostalgic look/feel to me also)

i showered and got a wash on while the chase happened tbh

absolutely agree that the movie only benefits from dropping it, tonally as well as running time/tightness

the living daylights

^^^

...is the correct answer

My faves are From Russia With Love, and For Your Eyes Only. Living Daylights also great. OHMSS is good but not my fave.

Mark s otm

feel like i hear from the "they're all bad" contingent every time

FRWL and License to Kill are no-disclaimers good all the way through from start to finish

Goldfinger, OHMSS and the Craig Casino Royale are mostly good but severely drag towards the end (or have LAZENBY)

Most of the rest are bad-but-good or bad-but-fine

Nearly all the Brosnans and Craigs and maybe Thunderball are properly bad

A proper adaptation of Moonraker with Connery is in-my-head-classic

I watched Casino Royale for the 3rd time over Xmas. Still the best Bond. I think the actual poker play could've been done a bit better and less eyerolly but it's a Bond film so that's a minor quibble. That fight on top the crane near the beginning is just kick-ass action. Craig is the best Bond since Connery too.

the pre-titles of The Living Daylights are v good, and the sole straight Fleming adaptation in the entire series

Live And Let Die is "bad" but fantastic, my second fave

OHMSS is magnificent all round, the better of the two non-bad films in the series, and the only one out of all of them with admirable, positive sexual politics

(or have LAZENBY)

here's how good OHMSS is: it stars an asshole male model with no acting experience who did not speak to the director for the duration of the shoot and had to have his dialogue dubbed over in post and it still rules so hard that he seems 'fine' in it

casino is great until the car crash

its so bad after that it ruins what comes before

quantum of solace is overall better

russia with love best, goldeneye is good

Xpost

Diana Rigg is a magician basically

goldeneye is a lot of fun

still bad tho obv

Goldeneye was the first Bond after 6 years - a long time back in the mid 90s - so a lot of it's faults were overlooked at the time. But it's slow in places (Zhukov is a great character but his scenes are over-long), the villain reveal is really obvious, and the whole movie loses focus once they get to the jungle (also from then on it feels like a made-for-TV movie). Still it fairs better than the other Brosnan Bonds, which all feel like videogames adapted into movies.

here's how good OHMSS is: it stars an asshole male model with no acting experience who did not speak to the director for the duration of the shoot and had to have his dialogue dubbed over in post and it still rules so hard that he seems 'fine' in it

― don't care didn't ask still clappin (sic), Tuesday, December 31, 2019 2:46 PM (thirty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

he's better than "fine," his weaknesses are vastly overstated

and he's a downright incredible bond when viewed next to connery's total boredom and indifference in diamonds are forever

i think goldeneye is overrated bc of the video game, which is so much better than the film

yeah but ‘xenia onatopp’ tho, all-time great stupid name

my favorite brosnan bond is the world is not enough though, which many ppl think is the worst. it's sort of the inverse of ohmss in plot in that it features a credible *love* interest for bond but it goes the other direction with it. denise richards being HORRIBLE in it is just a plus for me tbh

i love to express my opinions about bond movies over and over and over again on ilx

A quick (if obvious) rep for the books - Moonraker, Casino Royale and FRWL are all classic; most of the rest are worth reading and have many very good bits; the only dud I’ve read, oddly, is goldfinger - the movie improves the plot and thankfully gets rid of most of the fucking golf

Love the golf in Golffinger

oddjobbly enough

Brad otfm throughout, esp about Lazenby

films were also correct to rename smersh spectre

oh nm i have got that all backwards

apologies the only og book i've read is from russia with love and that was when i was a teenager lol

Lazenby is also better than Moore in Moore’s last five

Casino Royale is really good, casually misogynistic throughout, but I really liked it at the time.

Just watching the ski chase and it’s so great, one of the better scores on this bit as well.

https://youtu.be/bwYpX3JwMu0

brad, read the books, you fool

the best ones are legit weird, fun and beautiful

even the researchy chapters about tropical fish and bridge are great

lol i might read through a few this year, it's about time

I assumed this was on the New Answers because the terrible end of Spectre is on TV.

Moonraker seems to me the most striking example of good book/bad movie, whereas The Spy Who Loved Me might be the best example of bad book/good movie (which have nothing in common plotwise).

when Diana Rigg or snow chases aren't onscreen, OHMSS is boooooooooring

― Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, February 15, 2012 8:30 PM

I stand by this. However, the NY Times just did a piece on its high status with the Bondfreaks, including new quotes from Lazenby and Rigg. (came out 50 years ago this month)

whereas The Spy Who Loved Me might be the best example of bad book/good movie (which have nothing in common plotwise).

incorrect, the book is incredible

https://i.imgur.com/2mfoNWP.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/7WDnTrd.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/hK8ax8F.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/ujFwoK9.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/qzCwng1.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/KWo9Z2Y.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/rpFO1An.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/r2HhbUY.jpg

Gotta give that a rewatch

sic otm

I know that's not her in the pics but as an aside I often think Diana Rigg is the most beautiful woman who ever lived

who?

https://i.imgur.com/7Fmt9Ir.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/Yw0S4yk.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/zFTJXvv.jpg

swoon

Soderbergh on OHMSS.

https://i.imgur.com/CTrXrH0.jpg

Good piece

That’s a great piece and this

What seems obvious to me, though, is no one was helping him during the shoot or the edit (they won’t even let him finish a fucking sentence onscreen). It feels like everyone was so focused on what he wasn’t (Sean Connery) that they didn’t take the time to figure out what he was (a cool-looking dude with genuine presence and great physicality).

(they won’t even let him finish a fucking sentence onscreen)

and he's dubbed half the time anyway

would totally watch a version of this film with isolated score

I can't tell any of these films apart
― Shakey Mo Collier, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 18:15 (twelve years ago) link

This might be peak Shakey.

Anyway, I remember seeing OHMSS when I was 11-13 after having seen at least Dr. No, From Russia with Love, and Goldfinger. Probably Thunderball as well. Sad to say I was just devastated at the end. It seemed soooooo real, lol.

Dr. No? Quantum of Solace? Moonraker? what am I watching here?

watching from russia with love bcz it's on tv and it's too hot to channel-surf

it's bad

Because it's on ITV1 and there's likely a commercial break every 10 minutes?

the commercials are a blessed relief from how bad it is

as is the small screen

you gotta be fuckin kidding me

if From Russia w Love is bad, what rates for you as good?

they're still all bad

― mark s, Tuesday, 31 December 2019 16:51 (two years ago) bookmarkflaglink

!

Just been looking at a really good book called The Music of James Bond, by Jon Burlingame.

lol I see you are unfamiliar with mark's Bond opinion

Seems to be coming back to me now.

i forgot where i was, continue

*strokes white cat complacently*

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2jOaqmtuWE

Do u see?

Octopussy and Never Say Never Again are best ones, mainly because you get Roger Moore telling a snake to "hiss off" and Sean Connery wearing a ridiculous toupee, apart from when he's on the motorbike.

I just learned quite a bit about the 1967 Casino Royale, which is almost nobody’s idea of the best James Bond movie, but still.

I saw On Her Majesty's Secret Service on a big screen last night and now I firmly believe it's a top 3 Bond film. Once you get past the obvious casting flaw, you've got great '60s colors and interior decor, relentless and incredibly breathtaking action sequences, a bizarre Blofeld scheme, a credible romance, tragedy. It has you constantly laughing at Bond doing Bond things in the most Bondian way.

And Telly Savalas is wonderful in it - not only is he giving delicious line readings but he's jumping around doing his own stunts much of the time.

"We'll head him off at the precipice!"

Until the Craig films, this was the only Bond with emotional resonance, though the ending pretty much relieves Lazenby of quipping five minutes later in the film.

Used to think it was too bad Lazenby was one and done, but then I watched the Bond Icons Unleashed series (on the Vice channel).

It’s crazy how different George Lazenby looked just three years later in the Italian giallo Who Saw Her Die?. Had no idea it was him on initial viewing.

It's definitely a shame that Hunt was one and done as director, given that conflict with Lazenby would not have been an issue going forward. I enjoy a lot about Diamonds and extremely like Let Die, but both would have been much stronger with his storytelling.

Lazenby's really fun in Man From Hong Kong, kinda/sorta playing Bond as an international villain.

this guy knows what's up

Lazenby is also better than Moore in Moore’s last five

― don't care didn't ask still clappin (sic), Wednesday, January 1, 2020 9:42 AM (five years ago)

Current URL for the Soderbergh piece.

Thunderball seems to be underrated. The underwater sequences I always thought were really cool. The stealing of the plane is a good segment.

that underwater sequence is deeeeeeeeply (lol) boring and SO LONG i have no love for it except the song

What about 'To Ransom the World'?

let's think of fictional Bond films

actually TO BANKRUPT THE WORLD

I think Goldeneye is the only Bond I'd want to watch again.

Goldpussy

THE SIBERIAN MOLE

THE ATHENS CRYPTO AFFAIR

You’re doing Dirk Pitt novels now

lol