James Bond: The Wrap-up

Wow, so it took a lot longer than expected, but we have finally gone through all the Eon-produced Bond films. Of course, as a new film is released, I will be sure to promptly review it and rank it in its proper place.  And someday I would like to review the "unofficial" Bond films, such as Never Say Never Again and 1967's Casino Royale, but I think it is a time to take a short break from our British super spy!

Watching all the films again, in order, was truly a fascinating experience.  For better or worse, the franchise changed with the times, accurately judging the latest fads that audiences were into and capitalizing on them.  Sometimes that meant you were getting lean and hungry spy thrillers, and sometimes that meant James Bond was going to space!

This flexibility is also what allowed the franchise to survive longer than any other.  Historically, most film series would chug along until the studios felt the audiences had lost interest, and then they would be put out to pasture.  Bond was different.  When Cubby Broccoli felt the audiences tuning out, he would tweak the formula to get them back in.  We see this phenomenon more often today, as old franchises are rebooted for modern sensibilities. But Eon Productions was ahead of the curve; they’ve been playing this game and playing it well for over half a century.

First things first, here is my final ranking to all the Bond films, as well as links to their individual reviews.  I don’t feel entirely confidant about the middle of the list, as some of these films really shift in their spots depending on my mood.  But I am confident about the films that are in the bottom, and even more confident about Casino Royale being at the top. It really is that terrific.

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

I also wanted to rank the actors who played Bond themselves.  I have already spent some time going into this, but thought it would be important to official rank them here at the end.  The good thing is that I feel the Bond producers have almost always hit the mark with their lead character, only having missed the target once.  I truly do not like Lazenby as Bond, even though I have liked him in other films.  The rest of the performers playing the iconic role have been excellent choices – though only two have been the perfect package.

1. Sean Connery – the first, the best, the man who made Bond what he is.  Connery perfectly embodied all the elements that Bond needed – he was ruthless and believable as both a spy and a warrior, he was charming and debonair, he could handle a good pun and was completely at home flirting with the ladies. He is universally considered the best, and for a good reason.

2. Pierce Brosnan – the man born to be Bond.  He is the only other actor who I feel really embraced all the different elements of the character.  I do feel that he took a different approach to the character, however. As mentioned in earlier reviews, I always felt that Connery was a fighter who taught himself to be a suave man of the world.  Brosnan seems to me to be the opposite.  He was a charming and roguish prep school kid who then learned how to fight.  However you come into the role, I still feel these are two actors who most embodied everything Bond could and should be.  People discount Brosnan sometimes because his movies were not the best (and two of them are close to the worst), but they should really revisit those films just to observe Brosnan himself.  He truly was born to play the role.

3. Daniel Craig – another bruiser who became debonair, like Connery.  No actor has so fully embraced the flaws in Bond’s character, especially his arrogance, as Craig has.  His Bond is not a role model.  He has deep rooted problems. Craig is dangerous and is excellent in action mode. Admittedly, I don’t think he is as strong in the lady and comedy department. While part of this is because his films are more serious, he has had some opportunities to show off Bond’s lighter side.  And he is fine at it, just not remarkable. Can he nail the one-liner like Connery, Brosnan and Moore?  Sometimes he can, but sometimes the jokes fall a bit flat. And his Bond is also missing one important component – Bond has a certain joie de vivre.  He genuinely enjoys his work.  Craig’s Bond really seems to hate it, which might be why he tries to leave MI6 every single movie. I know that is a character decision and not necessarily the fault of Craig’s performance, but on the other hand, good producers also know to play to their actor’s strengths. Creative teams see what their actor is good at and they build around it to reinforce those strengths.  And Craig’s brooding anger is a huge asset that you can build around.  It just doesn’t necessarily vibe with a character who just loves being a spy.

4. Roger Moore – talk about someone who loved being a spy! Moore was the perfect Bond for the 1970s. He could play up the absurd, and was terrific at delivering a pun.  And his flirting with the ladies was always entertaining.  Look, could anybody in real life get women to swoon the way Roger Moore’s Bond did?  No, absolutely not. It is completely unrealistic. But in the context of the insane world that Roger Moore’s Bond inhabited – with its iceberg submarines and hovercraft gondolas – yes, I absolutely believe all of these women wanted to sleep with him. Yes, the world was crazy, but Moore’s Bond was in on the joke and winked at the audience through seven movies. Could I take Moore seriously as a dangerous spy?  Not really, though he had his moments.  Were Moore’s fights sometimes clunky and not particularly exciting?  Definitely.  Moore was better at throwing a quip than a punch.  But it is hard to deny that the man was having fun, and we were having fun with him.

5. Timothy Dalton – Dalton was the polar opposite of Roger Moore. Until Daniel Craig arrived on the scene, Dalton was easily the most serious Bond, and certainly the most dangerous.  In fact, if you were to think about which Bond actor fits the mold of a real spy, I would pick Dalton hands down.  I totally believe Dalton as a Cold War superstar, whether it is assassinating KGB agents or stopping heroin smuggling in Afghanistan.  Where he faltered was the other part of Bond's character.  He wasn’t particularly funny, and his romantic scenes always seemed forced. I do understand the producers wanted to tone down Bond’s promiscuity as the headlines of the late 1980s were dominated by the AIDS crisis.  But that doesn’t change the fact that Dalton’s Bond just looks uncomfortable with the ladies.  He just doesn’t want to be there.  He’s acting like he is begrudglingly sleeping with these women because he knows it is expected of him, and he would really rather be off somewhere else, beating up bad guys.  Dalton’s Bond can be a complete stick-in-the-mud (which Craig can also be guilty of).  Though he does sometimes enjoy himself like a true Bond should (look at the sheer pleasure he gets from sliding down the side of a mountain on a cello case in The Living Daylights), that is only the case when he is in the thick of the action, which I feel is only half the equation.

6. George Lazenby – the only terrible Bond. I like all the other actors who have played Bond.  They may have some flaws, but I enjoyed all of them and thought they brought something cool to the role.  But I really do think Lazenby is awful.  And it is nothing against George Lazenby himself.  I’ve seen him in a few other movies and he is fine.  I think he is downright hilarious in his cameo appearance in Kentucky Fried Movie.  But as Bond, I just think he is dull and flat.  Maybe I can give him a pass because this was his first movie and he just didn’t know what he was doing yet.  Maybe if he had accepted that multi-picture deal, he would have grown into the part and developed into a worthy 007.  But in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, he’s just dull and I feel he brings the whole picture down with him.  I don’t believe him as a dangerous spy for a second, he’s not particularly suave or charming, he can’t really deliver a joke, his romantic scenes with Diana Rigg seem forced (apparently, the two actors didn’t like each other very much).  I will say that the man clearly knows how to throw a punch.  So I guess there’s that.

Okay, now that we got that out of the way, let’s go into a few other iconic Bond “elements” that I didn’t really get into during my reviews. There are a lot of pieces of the James Bond formula, aspects that have now become just as iconic as the character himself, and it would irresponsible for me not to mention them!


Best Bond Song:

The Bond films are now famous for their opening credit songs. As every new film goes into production, people wait with anticipation to see which artist has been Selected for the opening credits.  It’s a brilliant marketing ploy to build buzz, sell soundtrack CDs, and potentially bring a new audience to your movie. Seriously, how many hardcore Adele fans do you really think would have seen Skyfall if she hadn’t performed the opening number?

Just like the films themselves, the Bond songs have kept up with the popular trends of the day, and a number of huge hits have come out of the franchise. I generally prefer the brass-heavy or faster-paced songs, but the franchise is just as well known for its slower ballads.  There are some truly great songs in the canon: Diamonds are Forever, You Know My Name, Skyfall, Goldeneye and A View to a Kill - the last of which gets a special nod because the first 20 seconds are the coolest James Bond has ever sounded.  The whole song is good, but those first 20 seconds...brilliant!

But in the end, these songs (except for the aforementioned 20 seconds) are just honorable mentions. There are two true titans of the franchise, two songs are so good they need to be separated from the rest of the pack. These songs are not just the best Bond songs, but should be considered among the best songs written for any film ever.

Paul McCartney’s Live and Let Die is so dynamic and thrilling that it was used as the soundtrack for the entire film, and was somehow perfectly appropriate for both the love and action scenes.

And then there is Goldfinger – the perfect Bond song - full of towering brass and featuring the titanic vocals of Shirley Bassey.  This was also the first time that the song was dedicated to the villain of the film, which I think is just hilarious.


Opening Title Sequence:

For better or worse, the franchise has also become famous for its elaborately designed opening credit sequences, popularized by the late, great Maurice Binder.  Stylized and always heavily symbolic, these opening title sequences ranged from octopus tentacles engulfing the screen to footage of the characters projected on gold-painted belly dancers (and yes, it is just as weird as it sounds).  The title sequences were probably most famous (and infamous) during the Roger Moore years when they truly went off the rails – often featuring blue-tinted nude silhouettes dancing, bouncing on trampolines, swinging off of giant gun barrels (with the guns often serving as the ultimate phallic symbol). They are bizarre and often unintentionally funny, but I wouldn’t call them good, necessarily.

For the best title sequence, I am going to have to go with Goldeneye – it features all the hallmarks of the Bond title sequences (tinted colors and silhouetted dancers), but they are dancing on top of crumbling monuments of Cold War Russia – and in some cases, smashing these monuments apart with giant hammers.  What is a perfect symbol of the uncertain era that Bond is about to enter – a chaotic new world where it isn’t always as clear who the good guys and bad guys are.  It’s pretty brilliant.

Best Pre-Credits Sequence:

Bond was also the first franchise to feature a pre-credits tease, a little mini adventure for audiences to enjoy before the film actually gets started.  Sometimes these pre-credit sequences are connected to the main plot, sometimes they are completely random.  But you can always count on a Bond film to start with one.  There have been a number of truly superb sequences, including the stylized black & white scene in Casino Royale where a newly minted 007 gets his first kills.  But for my money, you have to go back to Goldfinger for the best.  This short adventure is Bond at his most iconic – everything we know about Bond’s character and the formula that has served is his character so well for decades is featured in this tight 5-minute sequence.

Bond sneaks into the villain’s base in a wet suit, plants some explosives and then peels off his wet suit to reveal a tuxedo underneath so he can go to a swanky night club nearby.  We have some sneaky spy work, a few well-choreographed fights and even some spare time to make out with the local belly dancer.  And who can forget Bond giving one of his best Bond puns.  After electrocuting a bad guy at the end of a fight, he looks around in disgust, mutters “shocking” to himself and walks out.  If there is a sequence that manages to literally define everything Bond is about in under 5 minutes, this is it.


Best Bond Villain:

I know the answer is supposed to be Ernst Stavro Blofeld.  As the leader of SPECTRE, Blofeld is Bond’s ultimate nemesis and has plagued him for multiple films.  But honestly, I feel the franchise has always sort of missed the mark with Blofeld.  He was at his most terrifying and powerful when he was not seen, when he was just a faceless, intimidating voice in a Board Room full of villains.  As soon as he started appearing in the films, he somehow became less scary.  Whether it was Telly Savalas, Charles Gray, Donald Pleasance or Christoph Waltz, I never thought Blofeld was a truly credible threat.  Instead, Blofeld’s henchmen were always more menacing – Dr. No, Red Grant, Fiona Volpe, even Mr. White and Silva in the Craig movies (following the logic that both worked for SPECTRE).  But they all pale in comparison to the greatest henchman in the Bond movies, and maybe in any movie: the unforgettable Oddjob! 

I have loved Oddjob, played by Hawaiian actor (and Olympic medialist!) Harold Sakata, ever since I saw him crush those golf balls with his bare hands in Goldfinger.  The guy doesn’t have a line of dialogue, but his silence, with that “I am better than you” smirk permanently plastered on his face, is sublimely and menacingly perfect.  I love that he has an unbelievable weapon (a killer hat he throws at people) that is somehow made believable by his badassness.  And I love that Bond truly cannot defeat him.  He just can’t.  Oddjob mops the floor with him.  In order to win, Bond has to cheat.  I’ve always loved that.  So for me, this really isn’t a difficult choice.  Oddjob is my favorite villain, hands down.


Best Bond Stunt: 

The franchise has also become famous for its stunt work.  Lately, thanks to the vast improvements in digital effects, Bond's stunts have become a bit less flashy.  But back in the day, there was a lot of buzz about the next big stunt - whether it was the record setting bungie jump in Goldeneye or the 18-wheel tractor trailer that pops a wheelie in License to Kill...or the entire winter sequence in For Your Eyes Only that is more imaginative and stunt-laden than most chase scenes today.

But there are a few amazing sequences that rise to the top.  Here are my picks for top three stunts in Bond history below:

Coming in at #3, is The Spy Who Loved Me.  While the franchise had employed a lot of fantastic stunt work in the past, this is the film where they really said, "hey, audiences, guess what?  We are about to blow your mind!"  And when James Bond skies off that mountaintop (another record-breaking moment for the franchise) and deploys his Union Jack parachute, audiences were given one of the most iconic stunts in movie history.  And minds were indeed blown!

Then at #2 - we have what is easily the best car stunt ever, featured in Man with the Golden Gun.  This stunt is important in movie history because it was the first stunt to ever be conceived and calculated with a computer program.  There was some debate among my friends about whether this stunt was real or not, but I assure you it was.  This was an actual car with an actual driver, a driver who thought he was going to die, and who refused to do a second take when the first take miraculously went off without a hitch.  So enjoy this awesome car stunt.  I urge you to watch this with no sound, because the stupid slide whistle pretty much ruins the whole thing!

And now, at #1, the best stunt in James Bond history!  The cargo net fight in The Living Daylights.  Sure, in the tighter shots, this is Timothy Dalton fighting in a studio.  But for the wide shots...those are literally two stunt men hanging off the back of a cargo plane...this is an incredibly dangerous and awe-inspiring stunt once you realize what those stunt men are actually doing and how life-threatening it is...well, I'll just let the video do the rest of the talking:

Best Bond Girl:

Last but not least, the Bond Girl has become an enduring and iconic part of the franchise. The Bond Girl has become such a key ingredient of the franchise that there is actually an entire documentary about the phenomenon (Bond Girls are Forever).  It’s an exclusive club – though in fairness, these actresses were often given nothing to do except to look pretty and get rescued.  There is certainly a lot of sexism in these films, and watching how many of the female characters are treated, especially in the older films, can at times be uncomfortable.  But there are also a lot of empowered and progressive Bond Girls – badasses like Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman), Xenia Onatopp (Framke Janssen), Tracy (Diana Rigg), and Agent Mai (Michelle Yeoh) who go toe-to-toe with Bond and serve as equal partners or powerful villains.

So who is the best Bond Girl? I know I am supposed to say Ursula Andress in Dr. No.  She was the first, and she has that famous entrance as she walks out of the ocean with a knife in her belt, like some sort of armed Venus de Milo.  It's an iconic moment, and rightly so.  And for that beach walk alone, she probably should go near the top of the list.  But I would never put her at No.1 because after that iconic entrance, she kinda…doesn’t do anything.  She’s just there, serving no purpose and adding nothing of value (except for her looks, of course).  So who would I pick in her place?
 
It's also tough to choose just one because the Good Bond Girls and Bad Bond Girls are so different and hard to compare to each other.  So I will pick a favorite in each of the three categories.

For the Bad Bond Girl, I love Fiona Volpe (Luciana Paluzzi) from Thunderball, one of the few truly dangerous villains in Bond’s rogue’s gallery. One could argue that she is actually smarter than Bond; she’s almost always one step ahead of him.

For the Good Bond Girl, I would say Vesper Lynn (Eva Green) is terrific in Casino Royale; she is the one Bond Girl that I honestly believed the character could fall in love with.  Her arc in that film is positively heart-breaking.

But wait, I hear you say, you mentioned three categories. Was that a typo?  Definitely not!  There is of course the important third category, the Bond Girl That I Would Most Likely Fall In Love With...and that is without a doubt Solitaire from Live and Let Die, played by Jane Seymour.  Because it is Jane Seymour.  And...well, yeah, there really isn't much else to say about that.  It's Jane Seymour.

So there we go.  That’s it.  This series of reviews is over!  This has been a fun experiment, and while I hope you enjoyed revisiting this franchise as much as I did.

But I’ll be honest, I do look forward to reviewing other films again!

Until next time…

Diamonds are Forever

Diamonds are Forever

Eon Productions was in a weird spot.  Even though its box office did not live up to the dizzying heights of the Connery era, On Her Majesty's Secret Service was still a success and producers Broccoli and Saltzman had planned to continue the series with George Lazenby as Bond.  But as the 1970s started, Lazenby thought the wind was heading in a different direction, and that Bond was an archaic, violent brute who had no place in the changing world.  So he gave up the role (which he has since admitted was not the best idea in the world).  And once again, Eon had to look for a new Bond. They considered Burt Reynolds (Deliverance), Adam West (the Batman TV show) and Michael Gambon (Dumbledore in the last few Harry Potter films), and even hired American John Gavin (Spartacus) at one point.  The studio, United Artists, was understandably uneasy.  Maybe the franchise really was becoming outdated. Maybe they had all taken it as far as it could reasonably go. To hedge their bets, they wanted Sean Connery back and applied pressure on Broccoli and Saltzman to get it done...no matter what the cost.

The news exploded like wildfire.  The original Bond was coming back to save the day.  But he didn't come cheap.  His salary was a then record 1.25 million pounds (most of which he donated to the Scottish International Educational Trust).  For a director, the producers turned to Guy Hamilton, who had guided the franchise to one of its greatest successes with Goldfinger.  But even with the return of Connery and Hamilton, the final result was a bit of a mixed bag.  Critics didn't seem to like Diamonds Are Forever all that much, and history has been even more unkind to it.  It is routinely ranked among the worst of the franchise, and easily as the worst under Connery's watch.  But is it really that bad?

I guess it depends on who you ask.  The plot is certainly a bit thin.  Bond goes undercover as a diamond smuggler, only to discover his nemesis Blofeld is using the diamonds to create another super laser weapon with which he will hold the world hostage (because super laser weapons obviously need diamonds to function properly).  But there are worse plots in the series, so that's not really worth complaining about.  I think critics didn't like Diamonds are Forever because it is so bizarre.  After the deadly serious ending of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Eon seems to have gone too far in the other direction.  And make no mistake, the camp and absurdity of the Roger Moore era really pales in comparison to some of the shenanigans going on here.  And the fact that the franchise went from being a serious spy thriller in 1961 to featuring over-the-top moon buggy chases less than 10 years later must have driven critics crazy!

But I kinda dig it!  There is a bizarre charm to Diamonds are Forever that I appreciate.  But more on that in minute...

...because there are some really bad things about this film that it is only fair to mention.  Much of the humor is forced, the movie drags in some places, the gadgets are among the worst (a mousetrap gun holster?!?!), the climax of the film, a battle on an oil platform, is shockingly bad.  From the moment Bond arrives at the platform, walking across the ocean in a giant inflatable ball (you read that right), until the end credits, the film is almost unwatchable.  And how did SPECTRE, whose previous base was a volcano, for crying out loud, get reduced to hiding out on an oil rig??

I also realized something about the franchise - Blofeld is actually not a very good villain.  When he was mysterious and off-camera, he was menacing and terrifying, but as soon as they revealed him in You Only Live Twice, he ceased to be scary or even a worthy opponent for Bond.  Donald Pleasance and Telly Savalas were not very memorable in their takes on the role, and Charles Gray, who plays Blofeld here, is the worst, least threatening Blofeld of them all.  What a waste of a nemesis!

But there is also lot of good stuff in here, as well!  Connery returns and immediately erases all memories of Lazenby.  John Barry delivers yet another superb score, showing that he was not running short of ideas even seven movies in.  Bond girl Jill St. John does a fine job, though her character runs out of things to do fairly quickly.  There is an excellent car chase in a Vegas parking lot and an excellent, brutal fight in an elevator.  And a lot of the aforementioned weirdness just...works.  So, you may ask why I enjoy the camp in Diamonds are Forever and yet loathe You Only Live Twice.  The reason is one of intention - You Only Live Twice thought it was being just as cool as the other films in the franchise, whereas Diamonds are Forever knows exactly what it is: an over-the-top, absurd mess. Just look at the strangeness in this movie - strange henchmen/lovers, Mr. Kidd and Mr. Wint, Blofeld running around in drag, Bambi and Thumper, swimming pool fight scenes, that moon buggy chase...a moon buggy chase?!  This is bizarre stuff and once I understood the strange nature of the roller coaster ride Hamilton put me on, I just sat back and enjoyed the ride.  Is Diamonds are Forever good? Maybe. But probably not.  But it certainly fun, and I think it deserves a second look.


RANKINGS:

So film history has decided that Diamonds are Forever should be near the bottom of the list, but I think it there is too much fun stuff to relegate it there.  It is certainly far below the Dr. No, From Russia with Love, Goldfinger and Thunderball.  But I'd certainly rank it higher than On Her Majesty's Secret Service and You Only Live Twice.  I think it will fall very comfortably in the middle.

1. Thunderball
2. From Russia with Love
3. Goldfinger
4. Dr. No
5. Diamonds are Forever
6. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
7. You Only Live Twice

MVP:

So this should show you how awesome Sean Connery is.  Diamonds are Forever is not even close to his best performance as Bond.  He is starting to look a bit old and uninterested.  There are scenes where I can just tell he doesn't want to be there (especially in the end).  And you know what?  It doesn't matter.  Because it's Sean Connery playing James Bond and he's just awesome at it, plain and simple.  He just elevates the movie, playing the comedy and the danger with equal panache.  It should tell you something that Connery is not even in peak form and he's still the best thing about the movie and the clear MVP!

BEST LINE:

James Bond: Weren't you a blonde when I came in?
Tiffany Case: Could be.
James Bond: I tend to notice little things like that - whether a girl is blonde or brunette.
Tiffany Case: Which do you prefer?
James Bond: Well, as long as the collar and cuffs match...

TRIVIA:

The original plot involved Auric Goldfinger's twin brother (also played by Gert Frobe) on a mission to avenge his brother's death.  That would have been...not good.

You Only Live Twice

You Only Live Twice

What the hell happened?!  The Bond franchise was consistently cranking out quality spy entertainment, had just produced the biggest hit of the series (Thunderball), and then they make this drek?  What were they thinking?!

Look, I understand there is law of diminishing returns when you start to make too many sequels.  But the dropoff in quality from the first four Bond films to You Only Live Twice is astounding and on the level of the epic Matrix to Matrix Reloaded dropoff.

Let me backtrack a bit.  The fifth film in the series finds James Bond faking his own death in order to go undercover and continue his battle with SPECTRE.  The nefarious organization refuses to stay down after their embarrassing defeat in Thunderball.  If anything, they are upping the ante.  Now they are capturing space shuttles and planting enough evidence so that cold war rivals United States and the Soviet Union blame each other.  Hopefully, this scheme will trigger a world war that SPECTRE would surely benefit from.  The Russians and Americans are belligerent and ready to fight immediately, but the British provide cooler heads and persuade the two super powers to wait until the mystery can be solved by their best man: James Bond.

Despite decent reviews and strong box office, I have to say that You Only Live Twice stinks.  It just absolutely stinks.  There are literally six things I like about this movie.  Literally.  Don't believe me?  Here we go:

1. Sean Connery is still awesome.  Maybe he's not up to Goldfinger and Thunderball levels, but he still gets the job done.  He is the best Bond of all time, after all.

2. John Barry writes ones of his most lush and lyrical Bond scores.  From the stunning love theme to the impending doom the music brings to the space shuttle scenes, Barry knocks this one out of the park.

3. The fight in the office with the sumo wrestler is pretty good.

4. There is one amazing aerial tracking shot of James Bond running along warehouse roofs near the Tokyo pier, fighting oncoming enemies along the way.  It's one helluva shot.  Kudos to Freddie Young, the three-time Oscar-winning Director of Photography who lensed this film.

5. The villain's base is inside a volcano, and let me tell you, that volcano set is pretty spectacular and a true highlight of Ken Adams' career.  Apparently the cost of that one set equaled the entire budget of Dr. No.

6. I like ninjas.

That's it.  That's what I like about You Only Live Twice.  What don't I like?  Well, how much time do you have?  Basically, the Bond formula has a reputation that includes both good and bad elements, and You Only Live Twice is like a greatest hits album of all that is bad about the franchise.  Stupid gadgets?  Check.  Dumb puns?  Check.  How about a villain monologuing and describing his master plan instead of killing Bond?  Check.  Or a villain killing his subordinates instead of killing Bond?  Check.  I also think that it is very telling that the Bond film most targeted by the Austin Powers' series is You Only Live Twice, right down to Dr. Evil's makeup and costume.

Let's get into some specifics here, since I feel like ranting.  SPOILER ALERT.

The plot doesn't make a lick of sense.  Part of the master plan is for Bond to go undercover as a Japanese fisherman until he can find SPECTRE's hidden base.  So they make Sean Connery Japanese.

...

Let me say that again.

They make Sean Connery Japanese.

They do this by giving him a Spock haircut and bushy eyebrows, and directing the six foot tall Connery to hunch over to look shorter and squint a lot.  Are you kidding me?  Then he goes to ninja school to learn to fight.  I don't know why.  But either way, it is obvious the master plan isn't working because the bad guys try to assassinate Bond two or three times while he is at the ninja school (and killing one of the film's two unmemorable Bond girls in the process).  What I don't understand is if SPECTRE knew Bond was at the ninja school and was disguised as a Japanese fisherman, then how come his disguise suddenly works so well once he leaves the school and goes to the Japanese fishing village?

Other nitpicks?  Little Nelly is silly.  Yes, I understand this gyrocopter was real and in principle I guess it is kind of neat.  But Connery just looks plain ridiculous flying that thing.  And the aerial fight sequence between the tiny Little Nelly and SPECTRE helicopters is just ridiculous.  I also don't understand the character of Helga Brandt (Karin Dor).  Her ruthlessness and red hair is certainly supposed to remind us of Fiona Volpe in Thunderball, but her character just makes no sense.  So she captures Bond and is about to torture him to death, but he bribes (and seduces) her into helping him escape.  Then when they are on the plane to Tokyo, she sabotages the plane and jumps out with a parachute, assuming Bond will crash.  Why?  Why?  Why does that make any sense?  If she was going to kill him, why not do it when he was tied up and already beaten?  Why go through the whole charade with the plane?  What was the point?  Look, I understand that the Bond formula can be absurd, but you can at least be creative about it!  In Live and Let Die, the villains strand Bond on a small island surrounded by alligators instead of just shooting him.  On a surface level, that is equally silly, but it also sets up a very cool stunt of Bond jumping on the backs of REAL alligators to get to back to the main land.  That's pretty damn cool.  And that's the way the formula is supposed to work.  When shitty villains like Helga Brandt appear and do shitty stuff that makes no sense, I understand why some people dislike the franchise.

And then we have the issue of Blofeld, James Bond's nemesis, the head of SPECTRE.  Up until now, we have never seen Blofeld beyond shots of his hands petting his cat.  But we've heard his ruthless and cold voice and we just knew he was a man to be reckoned with.  After a buildup of four films, we finally see Blofeld and the result is...well, Dr. Evil.

My opinion of You Only Live Twice was not affected by Mike Myers.  On the contrary, Dr. Evil is such a funny character because Myers hits the nail on the head - Donald Pleasance's Blofeld is as harmless as the cat he insists on petting on his lap.  He is one of the most underwhelming and weak sounding Bond villains of the franchise.  I don't blame Donald Pleasance.  He was a great actor and I am sure he had a great Blofeld in him.  I can only imagine it was the way he was written and directed.

Speaking of which, the script was by Roald Dahl instead of Richard Maibaum who wrote the previous films.  So let me get this straight...you need a new writer for the James Bond franchise and you go for the dude who wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?

Come on, guys.  Get with it.  No wonder Sean Connery wanted to leave the series after this movie.  It just sucks.  Done.  I don't have anything else to say.

RANKINGS:

Well, I think this is pretty obvious.  You Only Live Twice is going at the bottom of the list.  The question is, is anything worse?

1. Thunderball
2. From Russia With Love
3. Goldfinger
4. Dr. No
5. You Only Live Twice

BEST LINE:
Tiger and Bond are being bathed by Tiger Tanaka's women.

Tiger: You know what it is about you that fascinates them, don't you?  It's the hair on your chest. Japanese men all have beautiful bare skin.

Bond: A Japanese proverb says, "Bird never make nest in empty tree."

TRIVIA:
In the book, Blofeld's base is an ancient Japanese castle built along the coast.  When researching for the film, Oscar-winning production designer Ken Adam discovered this would be impossible to find. The Japanese never built castles near the coast because of typhoons.  Thinking quickly, Adam's solution was to create the volcano base.  And history was made!

MVP:
So out of the few things I like about this movie, which one is actually strong enough to become MVP?  I think I am going with John Barry and his superb score.  You Only Live Twice is just a terrific piece of work, with one of the best themes of Barry's career. It's a tough call because I am tempted to go with ninjas or that volcano set, but I think in the end, the MVP goes to John Barry.

Thunderball

Thunderball

When I was a teenager, I have a very clear memory of rushing into my dad's office and I telling him I had just seen Goldfinger and that it was amazing.  His response has always stuck in my head.  "Just wait until you see Thunderball."

I will never know why I didn't just rush out and see Thunderball immediately.  That's just common sense.  The clips I had seen didn't seem particularly exciting, I suppose, but you would still think I would trust my dad and watch the movie.  Years later, I finally did.

And, boy, was he right!  Thunderball is pretty spectacular and easily one of the best films of the franchise.  After sitting Goldfinger out, Terence Young (who directed the first two Bond films) returned to the director's chair.  And I have a feeling that he looked at Goldfinger, realized that Guy Hamilton had just upped the ante, and responded by saying, "oh, yeah?!  You think you're better than me?  Get ready for a surprise!" Because Thunderball pushes things up to even bigger level - featuring a more interesting story with a true global nuclear threat, armies of scuba divers in a massive underwater battle, and two of the best Bond girls of the series.

An American jet and its nuclear warheads have gone missing.  The culprit?  SPECTRE, making a return appearance in a big way after taking Goldfinger off to lick their wounds.   If the world doesn't pay $100 million, then SPECTRE will use the nuclear weapons to attack a major city.  Bond only has a few days before SPECTRE makes good on their threat and heads to the Bahamas to track the warheads down.  It's a simple enough plot, but the plots rarely matter in the Bond films.  This movie is the franchise firing on all cylinders, from the action to the scripting to the acting.

The villain this time is Largo, SPECTRE's second-in-command.  As played by Adolfo Celi, he is menacing enough and certainly efficient in carrying out his master plan.  But he is overshadowed by his right hand, one of SPECTRE's best assassin, Fiona Volpe (played by Luciana Paluzzo).  Paluzzo is superb, bringing the right balance of sexy and menace to the role.  You know that Bond will eventually beat Largo, but you are not too sure about Volpe.  Like Red Grant in From Russia With Love, you get the sense that she is not only equal to Bond, but possibly even better.  I'm also a fan of the other Bond girl, Largo's trophy girlfriend, Domino.  Though played by a former Miss France (Claudine Auger), Domino is more than just a pretty face, and unlike a lot of Bond girls, is essential to the plot.

I have some friends who are not a fan of Thunderball.  They think it is slow and not particularly interesting.  But I disagree.  I think it perfectly blends the more methodical spy work of the first two films with the over-the-top entertainment of Goldfinger.  The story is interesting, the stakes seem real, and Connery is at the top of his game.  All in all, I think it is a great film.

Sure, if you want me to nitpick, I can.  I can always find something I don't like about a movie.  I've never been a fan of the jet pack gadget in the opening scene, and view it as a sign of bad things to come (invisible cars, anybody?).  I don't care if someone really built a jet pack and used it in the movie.  It's silly.  The underwater battle, though exciting, probably goes on for 5-minutes too long and gets a bit repetitive, and bad rear projection and over-editing almost ruin the final fight on Largo's boat.

But I say "almost" because it's still fun for me and contains two of my favorite individual moments of the film.  SPOILER ALERT.  I love the second Bond bursts into the ship's bridge to kick butt, a badass moment perfectly punctuated by John Barry's score, and I love that Domino is the one who actually kills Largo.  It's fitting, and from a filmmaking perspective, a beautifully framed shot.  Okay, Spoilers over.

In the end, not everyone loves Thunderball.  But I do.  It takes what works best about all the previous films and then pushes the series into even greater heights.  It has to be seriously considered on the conversation as the best film in the franchise.

RANKINGS:
For taking everything Dr. No, From Russia With Love, and Goldfinger did right, while not taking on their weaknesses, Thunderball leaps to the top of the rankings.  Here is how the rankings are playing out so far:

1. Thunderball
2. From Russia With Love
3. Goldfinger
4. Dr. No


BEST LINE:

James Bond, after spearing Vargas to death: "I think he got the point."

MVP:
As good as Sean Connery is, I have to go with Luciana Paluzzo.  She might be my favorite evil Bond girl actually. She is glamourous, edgy, dangerous and ruthless.  But she also represents an important turning point in the franchise.  Dr. No, while not physically impressive, was menacing enough that you worried for Bond's well-being.  Red Grant and Oddjob both represented dangerous adversaries that we weren't sure Bond could defeat.  Fiona Volpe belongs in the same camp as these icons, but she also represents the end of an era.  Her stalking of Bond in the middle of the film marks the last time I felt that the super spy was in any sort of real danger for over four decades.  The series has had its share of great villains with great dastardly schemes, but I never felt Bond was in any danger.  Not even close.  Not until Daniel Craig's Bond was tied naked to the chair and brutally tortured in Casino Royale in 2006 did I feel that Bond was vulnerable again.  I am giving Paluzzo the MVP not only for her great performance, but also because this is the last appearance of a truly threatening presence, the likes of which we wouldn't see again for literally 41 years.  That's pretty crazy.

TRIVIA:
Thunderball has a bit of controversial history.  Originally, the story was conceived in 1959 as a screenplay called James Bond: Secret Agent, co-written by Ian Fleming, Kevin McClory, and Jack Whittingham. For whatever reason, that film did not get made and Fleming cannibalized the plot for his novel Thunderball.  When Saltzman, Broccoli and Eon Productions obtained the film rights to the series, McClory immediately sued.  After years of acrimony, the feuding producers decided to team up and produce this film together.  The result was the most successful movie in franchise history.  But then the partnership dissolved.  While Eon Productions continued with the main franchise, McClory retained the rights to Thunderball and tried to remake the film repeatedly over the decades.  He was constantly stymied by Eon's lawyers and his attempts kept coming to nothing.  He did succeed once, in 1981, when he lured Sean Connery back to the role and produced Never Say Never Again.

Goldfinger

Goldfinger
Goldfinger has quite the reputation.  If Dr. No introduced the icon, and From Russia With Love showed what the character could really do, then Goldfinger is when lightning struck and the Bond formula was solidified.  Goldfinger is considered the quintessential Bond film.

It is hard to argue with that assessment.  If the previous films introduced pieces of the Bond formula, they all truly come together perfectly in this third film of the franchise.  It is in Goldfinger that the villains go over-the-top, and where we are introduced to the truly outlandish gadgets from Q Branch (the briefcase in From Russia With Love is too realistic!  It doesn't count.).  It is also Goldfinger where Bond's pun-ful sense of humor goes from an occasional aside to self-aware silliness ("Shocking," he says, after electrocuting an assassin to death).  And Goldfinger is when we have the sequence that perfectly incapsulates the Bond character.  In the opening scene, Bond dressed in an all black wetsuit swims into a harbor to complete a mission.  Once finished, he unzips the wetsuit to reveal a perfectly tailored tuxedo on underneath.  He proceeds to go into a bar to drink and ogle belly dancers.  If that sequence of events doesn't describe Bond in a nutshell, I don't know else could!

This time Bond is on the trail of Auric Goldfinger, an incredibly rich gold smuggler who plans to contaminate the U.S. gold supply in Fort Knox in order to increase the value of his own holdings.  The plot doesn't sound like much, especially compared to the world endangering plots of the other Connery films, but Goldfinger is a lot of fun.  In fact, that is probably Goldfinger's greatest strength - fun.  The previous films are much more serious, and it is Goldfinger where the franchise fully embraces its silliness.  A car with an ejector seat?  A villainous henchman with a steel-rimmed hat that he basically uses as a deadly frisbee to kill his victims?  Come on, that's silly stuff.  But wow, it is entertaining!  And unlike later films, the absurd elements are perfectly balanced with the serious secret agent adventure.  Goldfinger is the film future Bond directors should watch to see how to interweave what should have been two competing tones.  Even the character of Bond seems to be in on the joke now.  Connery plays the character like someone who works as a suave super spy as a lark. Quite simply, he loves his work.  This is a key character trait that you don't quite get in the earlier movies.  Goldfinger also has a lot of my favorite moments of the franchise.  His Aston Martin is easily my favorite Bond car.  The aforementioned henchman, Oddjob, is a personal favorite of mine, and I love the final fight between him and Bond.  Even the gray three-piece suit Connery wears is my favorite Bond suit.  Simply put, Goldfinger really is the quintessential Bond film. It is the pinnacle which every film that followed judged itself by.

So why isn't it my favorite Bond film?  It used to be my favorite when I was younger, but it has slid down a little bit in the rankings.  Just because the film best represents the Bond formula doesn't make it the best film.  There are things that have really begun to grate over the years.  BIG SPOILERS AHEAD.  Why does Goldfinger proceed to tell the American gangsters his master plan as if he wants to recruit them, only to kill them all?  Huh?  I used to laugh that off.  Maybe now I am just old and cynical, but this bothers me now.  How did the entire army division guarding Fort Knox, as well as the thousands and thousands of people who live in the area effectively coordinate to simultaneously fall down and play "dead" in order to trick Auric Goldfinger during the movie's climax?  This really doesn't make a lot of sense.  The way Bond is first captured is ridiculous, and is a completely uncool way to destroy of such a great car.  And the way Bond convinces Pussy Galore to turn on Goldfinger is just uncomfortable and a bit rapey to me.

This may sound like nitpicks, but the more you watch the film, the more these things will bother you. They certainly bother me, and they knock the film down enough points to keep it from being number 1 on my list.  But in the end, it doesn't change the fact that Goldfinger really a great film.  The direction from Guy Hamilton, filling in for Terence Young, is terrific.  Connery is at his best.  Gert Frobe is a great over-the-top villain, and Harold Sakata is brilliant as his henchman Oddjob.  So far as Bond Girls go, I thought Honor Blackman was solid as Pussy Galore.  She is one of the better actresses of the Connery era, though I feel they could have done much more with the character.  The title song and the score are both superb, with the former staking a valid claim as the best Bond song ever (for me, it is a tie between this and "Live and Let Die").  All in all, it's a great movie and possibly the single most important, defining film of the franchise.    

RANKINGS:

As I mentioned, a couple of years ago, Goldfinger was firmly in the #1 spot.  But those nitpicks knock it back.  And I have grown very fond of the steely professionalism that is on display in From Russia With Love.

1. From Russia With Love
2. Goldfinger
3. Dr. No

BEST LINE:
You have to go with the classic on this one.  Other than "Bond, James Bond," this exchange has to be the most iconic of the entire franchise.

Bond: Do you expect me to talk?

Goldfinger: No, Mr. Bond.  I expect you to die. 

MVP:
Now this is really difficult.  I almost want to say John Barry, the Oscar-winning composer who wrote the fantastic title song and composed one of his most memorable scores.  But I think I am going to have to fall back to Connery, who delivers his most assured performance as Bond in this film.  He was terrific before, but the line between actor and character vanish in this film.  It's such a charismatic performance that you simply can't look away.  Connery gets my MVP.

TRIVIA: 
When Shirley Bassey recorded the theme song, she sang as she watched the opening credits of the film, to make sure her vocals were matching the images.  When she hit her final high note, the credits...kept going...and going...and going, and Bassey was forced to hold that high note.  She made it to the end, but almost passed out in the process!

From Russia With Love

From Russia With Love

We are continuing our reviews of all the Eon-produced Bond films...and up next is the second film in the series, From Russia With Love, which is universally considered one of the classics.  The original film of the franchise, Dr. No, is also considered a classic, but I found it to have a few considerable flaws that keep it solidly in good, but not great territory - the biggest issue being that everyone seems to be still finding their way with the character (with the huge exception of Sean Connery, who just knocks it out of the park with his first performance of the character).  So what about From Russia With Love?  Does it deserve the title of classic?

Oh, without a doubt.  The film has the same team (including director Terence Young and writer Richard Maibaum), but they showed that they are fast learners and From Russia With Love is an improvement in every way.

With the Cold War at its height, the villainous organization SPECTRE sets out to steal a secret Russian encryption device, called The Lektor, which they will then sell to the highest bidder.  Of course, they will play the Western allies and the Russians against each other, upsetting the delicate Cold War balance in the process.  SPECTRE's intricately woven plan, which involves tricking a Russian agent Tatiana (Daniela Bianchi) into thinking she is duping the British Secret Service into stealing the Russian Lektor, might be a bit overly complicated, but it's also rather ingenious.  And of course, SPECTRE specifically targets the British agent who messed up their operations in Jamaica and killed their lead scientist Dr. No in the previous movie - James Bond.

There's a lot going on in From Russia With Love.  And more-so than any other Bond film, this one feels like a true espionage thriller.  Though there are a few fight scenes, this is not an action film.  Instead, there is a lot of lurking about, snooping, delivering secret passwords, getting fake passports, and other deeds of intrigue you would generally see in a more realistic spy film.  The pace is deliberate, but unlike Dr. No, it never drags.  The cast is terrific - Connery shows yet again why he is the best Bond, and he is ably supported by a solid Bond girl in Bianchi, a terrific ally in Pedro Armendariz (in his last film), and two iconic villains with Robert Shaw as Red Grant and Lotte Lenya as Rosa Klebb.

Admittedly, I do have a few problems with the movie.  There is an excursion to a gypsy camp that just seems like a sexist tangent, and an excuse to have two Gypsy girls viciously fight it out over a man they both want, conveniently tearing at each other's clothes in the process.  I don't care if the scene is in the book.  It's just strange.  I also was a bit underwhelmed by the climactic scenes.  Minor spoilers here - even if there is not a lot of action in From Russia With Love, it does still contain the greatest fight scene in the franchise, a brutal fistfight between Bond and Red Grant on the Orient Express.  The fight is so good that both the helicopter fight and boat chase that follow pale in comparison.  They just seem a bit limp.  Now, a film professor friend of mine said that I need to put myself in the mindset of the early 1960s.  Audiences were not used to seeing helicopters, not until Vietnam.  So the scene where Bond is running in a field, chased by a helicopter, knocked audiences out of their seats back in the early 1963.  He remembers being knocked out of his seat.  So there is no way the climax of From Russia With Love is ever going to have the impact that it did 50 years ago, and I'll never quite understand why it was so exciting at the time.  But even if I can intellectually admit that, I still can't help feeling letdown after the Red Grant fight.

All in all, these are quibbles.  From Russia With Love is a huge improvement over Dr. No.  It should be said that audiences noticed, too.  It wasn't Dr. No that was the huge hit and cemented the franchise.  It was From Russia With Love (I suppose it helped when President Kennedy talked about how much he loved the book).

RANKINGS:
Easy.  From Russia With Love moves ahead of Dr. No on the list.

So here is the list which is taking shape...

1. From Russia With Love
2. Dr. No

BEST LINE:
Bond approaches the clerk in the Russian embassy.

Bond: Your clock, is it correct?
Clerk: Always.
Bond: But of course. (he walks away, checks his watch, then comes back) Excuse me, you did say your clock was correct?
Clerk: Russian clocks are always - (Bomb explodes in the embassy) 

TRIVIA: 
Lots of good trivia in this one.  Ultimately, I am going to go with a near fatal accident involving director Terence Young.  A helicopter carrying Young during the climactic scene crashed into the water, trapping him beneath the surface.  There was a small air bubble in the helicopter canopy that kept him alive until the crew managed to dive down and save him.  Safely back on shore, his injured arm in a sling, Young just shrugged it all off like it was nothing and went right back into filming. Wow, that is pretty badass.

MVP:
As good as Sean Connery is in this film, he is challenged in the MVP spot by Robert Shaw, playing one of the super spy's better adversaries, Red Grant, a brilliant killer in the employ of SPECTRE.  Grant is every inch Bond's equal...in fact, you could say that for most of the film, he is running rings around Bond.  Shaw embodies the role perfectly.  Audiences who have only seen Shaw as the craggy, grumpy, and dirty Captain Quint in Jaws need to see From Russia With Love so they can see him play the polar opposite.  Clean, tall and muscular, quietly efficient and brutal beyond words, this character is no joke.  People fear him.  I get the sense that even Bond is afraid of him, and that is the most telling thing of all.  Bond?  Afraid of anybody?  To make that believable, you better cast the right actor.  And the producers did.  They got Robert Shaw.  He gets the MVP.

Dr. No

Dr. No
So this is where it all began, one of the longest-running franchises in Hollywood history, the introduction to one of cinema's greatest heroes and the progenitor of the modern action film.

Our first James Bond adventure takes us to the Caribbean.  A British agent John Strangways disappears in Jamaica and James Bond (Sean Connery) is sent to investigate.  Almost immediately, he is targeted for assassination.  The attempts on his life grow more frequent as he closes in on Strangways' killers, signaling that the murdered agent was on to something really big and potentially explosive.  But what does all of this have to do with the mysterious scientist with metal hands named Dr. No (Joseph Wiseman).

I will be honest, it can be a bit difficult to review Dr. No objectively.  After all, this is where the formula originated: the smug and charming know-it-all agent, the women, the fanciful villains...it's a classic!

But is it really?

Well, it must be.  Everyone says so.  But again, is it really?

Look, make no mistake.  Dr. No is a fine film.  I really enjoyed it.  And it is a fascinating piece of cinematic history, but it is hardly a classic piece of filmmaking.  Let's start with director Terence Young, who deserves a lot of credit for making the franchise what it is and for helping mold Connery into what the character could be, but this is hardly visionary directing.  His pacing seems sluggish at times, the fights are rather silly, the dubbing is poorly done, the climax is anti-climactic, and the camera remains detached, contributing nothing to the escalating tension we are supposed to be feeling.  I actually never actually felt Bond was in any danger throughout the entire film except for his encounter with the spider and when he meets Dr. No himself, and that has more to do with the fact that I don't like spiders and because Joseph Wiseman's performance is so deliciously malevolent.

At first, I just figured that it was a different time, with a different standard of filmmaking and I should cut the film some slack.  But then I realized that this reasoning was a bit ridiculous.  Dr. No is lacking even when you compare it to other films made in the 1950s and 1960s.  Look no further than North by Northwest (1959) or To Catch a Thief (1955), both inspirations for the Bond series and both infinitely better.

I was also admittedly uncomfortable with the way Bond treats his black colleague Quarrel, a character whose introduction is badass but who then quickly devolves into a Caribbean stereotype. Bond just bosses him around with colonialist superiority that I could not help but feel a bit offended.

But what I can say is there must have been a learning curve - for the director, the writers, the producers, the composers...really, for the whole darn production team.  And they learned quickly because they came together and made one of the very best films of the series when they produced the sequel From Russia With Love. But they are fumbling a bit in this first film.

Okay, I know this all sounds bad, so now it is time to backpedal a bit.  Remember I said I liked the film?  I actually really do.  I like the fact that it is mostly an investigation, with Bond interviewing Stangways' friends and doing actual spy stuff, instead of bursting into rooms with guns a'blazing.  I love how ruthless and cutthroat the character was in the early 1960s.  They softened him a bit as the franchise continued, but this movie features Bond murdering unarmed men and also having a female enemy spy arrested only after he sleeps with her.  These are reminders that Bond is not a role model. And he's not supposed to be.  But these actions do make him an infinitely more interesting character.

I feel like this review would not be complete unless I mentioned the Bond girl and the villain!  For the Bond girl, you have Honey Ryder, played by the volcanic Ursula Andress.  Most people consider her one of the best, probably because of the iconic moment when she steps out of the ocean in her bikini with a knife strapped to her waist (no better way to capture the franchise's obsession with sex and violence in the same image!).  Andress is fine in the role, but after that first scene she doesn't really have much to do.  So I wonder if the reputation is based less on the character and more on that entrance and the fact that Andress is so explosively attractive.

For the villain, I gotta say I am a fan of Wiseman's Dr. No.  He is cruel and calculating and so unemotional, it is downright eerie.  He also begins the two Bond traditions of having a strange physical attribute (metal hands) and monologuing about what his master plan is.  Though I give credit to Dr. No for actually giving the villain a good reason to monologue - he is trying to recruit Bond to join the ranks of his organization, SPECTRE.  While the final fight between No and Bond is a let-down, it is still a memorable performance and a very cool villain.

So there you go.  I know I spent a lot of this review complaining about Dr. No, but I want to make it clear - this is a solid movie.  I enjoyed it and it is intriguing to watch how everything got started.  And it is very clear from the beginning that there is something cinematically magical about Bond - and especially about Connery playing Bond.  It is no wonder the film was a success.  But let's be careful about calling it a classic.  Because it most definitely is not.

RANKINGS:

So I will be ranking all the Bond films as I watch them. Obviously, there is only one film so far, so we might as well let Dr. No enjoy its brief time in the sun before From Russia With Love comes a'calling.

MVP:
"Bond.  James Bond."

And with that short phrase, two stars were born - James Bond and the legendary actor who played him, Sean Connery.  Connery just owns this role.  Even if he had only made one film, he still would have an easy claim to being the best Bond ever.  Other Bonds generally excelled at one or two of the character traits that are essential to character.  Roger Moore handled the one liners quite well.  He was charming, suave with the ladies, and adept at handling Bond's ambivalence (or pretended ambivalence) to danger.  But I never really believed him in a fight.  Timothy Dalton brought danger to the role, but was completely unbelievable when flirting, Brosnan could handle himself equally in an action set piece and in the bedroom, but the over-the-top antics they put him through kept him from ever being truly believable, George Lazenby...well, let's just skip George Lazenby, and Daniel Craig, who is my second favorite Bond behind Connery, has completely inhabited the role of a brawler who has turned himself into a sophisticated man of the world, but he has yet to show me the nonchalance and the charm that is so essential to the character.  It all goes back to Connery.  He did it all.  He inhabited it all.  Without Connery, Dr. No would have been well received by audiences, it may have even warranted a sequel, but it would be remembered now by only spy film enthusiasts and Ian Fleming fans.  Connery made Bond a legend.  He's the MVP!


BEST LINE:

This is a tie between one of my favorite Bond pickup lines and when Bond ruthlessly kills one of his enemies.  First, the pickup line, spoken just after Honey Ryder comes to shore from the beach.

Honey Ryder: Are you looking for shells?

Bond (clearly ogling her): No, I'm just looking.

And then the great line when Bond kills an enemy whose gun has run out of bullets:

Bond: That's a Smith and Wesson, and you've had your six. (boom)

TRIVIA:
The hunt for Bond was an arduous one.  Connery came late in the search. As fans of North by Northwest, Broccoli and Saltzman first asked Cary Grant, who would only agree to one picture and who also expressed a concern that he was a bit too old for the part (he was in his mid-50s at that point in his career).  Broccoli and Saltzman then asked North by Northwest's villain, James Mason, who also would not agree to a multi-picture deal.  Several actors were thrown into the discussions, such Steve Reeves (Hercules), Roger Moore (who would go on to play Bond in later films), and Stanley Baker (Zulu).  But they liked Connery.  He was manly, a former body builder, but still moved gracefully "like a cat."  Ironically, Fleming did not like the casting at first, but was so taken with Connery's performance that he began to write with him in mind in the later stories.

BOND...JAMES BOND

Bond is my franchise.  Let me just get that out there.  It was something I realized around the time of Casino Royale (2006).  As a child of the 1980s, I grew up in a time when franchises were really beginning to explode, and I was raised on a healthy diet of Star Wars, Star Trek, Indiana Jones and James Bond.  Since then, I have seen all of these franchises hit some dark days.  In fact, in some ways, I'm not sure I want those franchises to survive.  I think many of us would agree that the Star Wars prequels and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull almost killed Star Wars and Indiana Jones, respectively (even if they did make a lot of money).  We'll see what Disney has in store for these series moving forward, but my expectations are not that high.  And Star Trek, while I like the cast and found the first reboot to be genuinely entertaining, was not really Star Trek to me.  It felt more like J.J. Abrams' demo reel to get the Star Wars gig.

So why do I prefer Bond to those others?  Longevity and consistency.  Look, there is not a single James Bond film that is as good the original Star Wars Trilogy, Raiders of the Lost Ark, or Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.  No Bond film even comes close to hitting the triumphant peaks that those films reached.  And yet, the character and the formula of Bond endures.  And unlike other franchises, there doesn't seem to be a lot of second guessing.  If Eon Productions makes a bad Bond film, they shrug their shoulders, fix what isn't working, and then move on to the next one.  There is comfort in that consistency.

There is also the matter of Bond himself.  I hear Disney is rebooting Indiana Jones with a new actor in the lead.  That's not gonna work.  Indiana Jones is Harrison Ford.  Bond is bigger than any of the actors who played him.  He has entered the territory of Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, and other icons who are far more important than the actors who are playing them.  I think that is an important point that needs to be made.

As far as I'm concerned, the Indiana Jones series ended with The Last Crusade.  Star Wars only had three films that ended in 1983, and Star Trek was ruined by the Next Generation's cast moving to the big screen (three out of those four films were garbage, and even the good one, First Contact, was only okay).

Nope.  It's official. Bond is my franchise.

One of the longest continuing film series in history, James Bond was the literary creation of Ian Fleming, a British author who had spent time as a naval intelligence officer in World War 2.  While his war service was nowhere near as adventurous as Bond's career, it did give the books a bit of authenticity.  I always felt that Bond was the spy Fleming wished he could have been, but that might just be me reading into it too much!   Either way, the books were hits, and it didn't take long for Hollywood to come calling.

The first Bond adaptation was the Casino Royale episode of the Climax TV show.  It featured Barry Nelson as American (not British) spy James Bond and weaselly Peter Lorre as the villainous Le Chiffre.  I think most people just consider Casino Royale as an interesting side note and mark the true beginning of Bond's cinematic career when producers Harry Saltzman and Cubby Broccoli teamed up in 1962 to make Dr. No.  And that is where I will begin my reviews.

I plan on watching all these films and reviewing them in order, and ranking them as I go.  It will be fascinating to watch the series change as the decades pass, always riding a wild roller coaster from fairly serious and realistic to over-the-top special effects bonanzas, and then back again, always staying current by cashing in on current trends (including even Blaxploitation, Kung Fu and the Star Wars films) and continually riding on the timeless coattails of one of the most entertaining characters in movie history.  This is going to be fun.

So let's get going!

Cuba

Cuba

Cuba is just plain awful.  There is no other way to say it.  It's just a terrible, terrible film.  But it is also a good example of how awesome Sean Connery is and why he is one of the greatest movie stars in Hollywood history.

I will explain why later.  But first, let's talk a bit about this mess of a film.  Cuba follows the last days of the Batista presidency in Cuba, just as the revolution led by Fidel Castro is gaining real momentum. Realizing they are losing the war, Batista's generals hires badass mercenary Major Robert Dapes (Sean Connery) to help turn the tide against the rebels.  But in a bit of a crazy coincidence, guess who else lives in Cuba?  The answer is Alexandra Lopez (Brooke Adams) with whom Dapes had a passionate affair when he was serving in North Africa a decade earlier...when she was 15 and he was 30, mind you.  So, uh, that is already a bit uncomfortable...but moving on...

Alexandra manages a factory that is in theory run by her no good, philandering husband, Juan Palido (Chris Sarandon, clearly practicing the douchebaggering he would perfect later in his career as Humperdink in Princess Bride).  The factory is a hotbed of revolutionary activity that the movie would have you believe is all because Juan likes sleeping with one of his employees.  And what else is going on here?  Oh, yeah, there is a chubby American businessman (Jack Weston) representing American big business trying to take advantage of economic opportunities in the Cuban upheaval. And then there is a British businessman Donald Skinner (Denholm Elliot) who is in this movie for...I don't even know why he is in this movie.  Elliot is awesome and he's just wasted and I don't even remember any of his scenes except for one funny site gag involving a door...which is admittedly pretty hilarious.  This movie just plain makes no sense.  Apparently, it wasn't making any sense to the cast, either.  The script wasn't finished when they started production...and I actually don't think they ever finished it. This movie is just bizarre, and bizarrely bad.

And it is a shame, because there is some interesting things going on here.  First of all, it is interesting to see the British take on the Cuban Revolution.  Cuba kind of walks this strange tight rope.  It is completely anti-Batista, but not quite anti-American, who just come across as silly and in a bit over their heads.  And certainly Castro's men, who engage in several attacks against innocent civilians, don't come out looking good, either.  In fact, in a way, you could say this movie is pro-British.  The only character who comes out looking good is the British mercenary Dapes...and maybe that is the point.  Maybe this whole movie represents the British rolling their eyes at the whole situation and saying that they are above such shenanigans.  When Dapes arrives in Cuba, he quickly assesses the situation and knows that Castro is going to win.  He really only stays in order to rekindle his affair with Alexandra because well, he is too morally superior to engage in the silly war, even if that is what he was hired to do.  Oh, sure, he makes a few obligatory excursions with the troops, but I think those scenes exist only to reinforce that both sides in the struggle are lame and only Dapes is cool.  So, yeah, maybe this movie is ultimately all about why the United Kingdom is awesome.  

Or maybe I am just trying to force some order into what is otherwise an unorderly, horrifying mess. Take this MAJOR SPOILER for an example.  At the climax of the film, Dapes is captured by the rebels.  They try to engage Dapes in conversation and they are rebuked.  Dapes lets them know that despises them because they aren't real soldiers, they won't fight in real battles, they are terrorists who prey on the innocent civilians and are just generally loathsome human beings.  And then Batista's troops attack...you would think Dapes would be happy that he is about to be rescued...but instead he hijacks a tank and starts attacking Batista's men!!!

What.  The.  Hell.

So basically, Castro won the war because Sean Connery attacked the side he was supposed to be working for?  It just doesn't make a lick of sense.

This movie just sucks.  And with a director like Richard Lester (The Three Musketeers) and such a great cast...there is no excuse for a movie this atrocious.


BEST LINE:

Major Dapes: Why were those people shot?

Captain Ramirez: Perhaps because they were trying to escape.

Major Dapes: From what?

Captain Ramirez: From being shot.


MVP:

As I mentioned earlier, this movie is a great example of why Sean Connery is one of the greatest movie icons of all time.  He actually has had a unique career among Hollywood stars.  Allow me to explain myself: every star has hits and flops on their resume.  But if you take James Bond out of the picture, then Sean Connery's ratio of hits and misses is absurdly unbalanced.  If any other actor had made Zardoz, Meteor, First Knight, Shalako, and Sword of the Valiant, his career would have gone down in flames.  But Sean Connery not only survived.  He thrived.  And no matter how bad the movie was, it never seemed to affect anyone's opinion of him.  Unlike any actor I know, his persona existed separately from the body of his work.  His awesomeness was so awesome that...well, it didn't matter how many movies like Cuba he made...people were going to love him anyway.  Because he is Sean Connery.  And even in this trash, he elevates above it all with his badassness.  He really does fill a unique place in Hollywood history.  And it sort of makes him the automatic MVP in any film he is in...

For those who aren't sure they agree with my theory, just look at his filmography on IMDB.  He has a handful of movies that performed decently at the box office (Rising Sun, Entrapment, The Wind and the Lion) and he has a couple of movies that are genuinely good but flopped for some reason (Robin and Marian).  But when you remove James Bond, how many blockbusters are there?  Murder on the Orient Express and A Bridge Too Far, but he only had a small role in both.   Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and The Untouchables, but he is in a supporting role in those (even if he is easily the best thing in both those films).  Hell, technically he is even the second lead in The Hunt for Red October and The Rock, even though he was clearly the major draw for both those films.  That leaves us with...wait, what does that leave us with?  Nothing else really...that's it.  Those are his big hits. And it doesn't matter.  Because nobody cares.  Because Sean Connery is that amazing.  Has any other actor achieved such status?  It's remarkable.  In a way, it makes me like Connery even more!

Anyway, that's a long winded way of saying he is MVP.

TRIVIA:

As the production could not film in Cuba, the majority of the filming took place in Spain.

The Russia House

The Russia House

I have been curious about The Russia House for a long time.  When I was younger, it seemed like my dream movie, starring two of my favorite actors at the time, Sean Connery and Michelle Pfeiffer, written by Tom Stoppard (who wrote the amazing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead) and based on a book by superb novelist John Le Carre.  Plus, the production stills (like the one above) looked super cool.  How could this not be a great movie?

So then I graduated college and I found out my brother owned it on DVD.  I asked if I could borrow it and he said, "Sure, but watch out.  It's boring."  I was taken aback, my enthusiasm instantly waning.  After all, I trust my brother's opinion almost completely.  I put The Russia House on my shelf and said, "Maybe I'll watch you next week.  No, maybe the next week."

...Ten years later, I finally sat down and watched The Russia House, almost just to prove to myself that I could do it.  And sure enough, it's boring.  The tricky part is finding out why.  My expectations were not crazy.  I knew Le Carre didn't write action flicks and that his novels are realistic and slow, more about research, talking and bluffing than they are about sneaking about and shooting bad guys.  And the story of The Russia House is interesting.  Katya (Pfeiffer), acting on behalf of Soviet nuclear scientist Dante (Klaus Maria Brandauer) smuggles a complete portrait of the Soviet strategic situation to book publisher Barley Blair (Sean Connery) in hopes that he will publish it.  The manuscript raises a lot of questions.  Is it real or a plant?  More importantly, since it paints a pretty pathetic picture of the Soviet military, how will the West react?  You would think they would be happy about their enemy's weakness, but then again, how can they now justify their own defense spending?  Naturally, British secret service (represented by James Fox) and the CIA (represented by Roy Scheider) get involved.

Done right, this is all pretty interesting stuff.  But things are rocky from the very beginning, with much leaping back and forth in time in an attempt to be clever about the exposition.  The result isn't clever at all, but is confusing, badly edited, and bizarre.  The playing around with the timeline isn't even necessary and sticks out even more considering that they don't do anything like that again until the very end (and no, that's not a spoiler).  This opening isn't helped by an overacting Connery, who seems to be trying way too hard to distance himself from his reputation for awesomeness.

The confusion isn't intriguing; it is bothersome and lethargic and made me sleepy.  But things do brighten up a bit when Barley meets Katya.  Despite the age difference, their blossoming romance is very believable.  And Connery calms down a little bit and starts to really gel with the movie.  By the end of it, I was really enjoying his take on Barley.  In fact, I would even say the scene where he declares his love for Katya features some of the most honest acting of his career.

But for the most part, the movie just drags.  The fate of nations is at stake, lives are threatened, and I never once felt any sort of suspense or danger.  The movie just glides along, trying to coast on a fine cast that is unable to save the sinking ship.  Perhaps that is a bit harsh.  There is one scene, a really long scene, where the CIA question Barley at a small cabin.  With so much at stake, they need to know if Barley can be trusted.  It's a fascinating look at the questioning process, with good writing, acting, and directing.  Oh, if only the whole movie had been like this scene!  Pity.  And it is too little too late.  For the most part, the movie is just deadly dull.  And with the talent involved, it was a big disappointment.

MVP:

I am going to go with the fine English actor James Fox (Sherlock Holmes) as Barley's handler.  Perfectly affable and polite, he doesn't look or act like a spymaster.  And yet, he seems to understand what is happening before any other character in the movie because he is busy observing and not showboating.  His reactions to the CIA, especially the foul-mouthed Russell played by Scheider, are priceless: "Russell's metaphors are becoming rather scatological."  It was a big laugh, and it sealed the MVP award for him.  

BEST LINE:

Russell: How the fuck do you peddle an arms race when the only asshole you have to race against is yourself?

TRIVIA:  

The Russia House was the first major film production from the West to be filmed in the Soviet Union with full permission of the Soviet government.