James Bond Franchise (1962-∞)

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Mr Sausage
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Re: James Bond Franchise (1962-∞)

#726 Post by Mr Sausage » Wed Jan 20, 2021 10:50 am

Not only that, but much of the card game is dedicated not to the intricacies of people’s hands, but more dramatic stuff like Bond trying to figure out Le Chifre’s tell, getting overconfident and being manipulated, and having to learn to rein himself in. There’s a decent amount of character and drama in the card moments to complement the two action scenes that break up the game.

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captveg
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Re: James Bond Franchise (1962-∞)

#727 Post by captveg » Thu Jan 21, 2021 9:24 pm

No Time to Die officially moved to 10/8/21, to the surprise of no one.


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Pavel
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Re: The Films of 2021

#729 Post by Pavel » Wed Sep 29, 2021 8:40 am

Unlike Jeffrey Wells, I won't spoil the ending of No Time to Die (or reveal much of anything really), but I will say that I really enjoyed it. I imagine most fans will be pleased — the plot is very familiar, but the set pieces are fun and the new additions to the cast are great. I was sort of annoyed by a certain comic relief character (and some one liners fell flat), but honestly better than I expected. Wish I had more to say, but that's all I've got as someone who doesn't consider any Bond film to be truly great (though I think almost all of them are a good time)
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I talked to some friends afterward who didn't like the ending, and I imagine it might prove somewhat controversial. I thought it worked on a conceptual level and was well-executed — I got sort of emotional and it's likely a big factor of why I consider this one of the best Bond films

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Re: The Films of 2021

#730 Post by aox » Wed Sep 29, 2021 12:29 pm

Did they drop the attempt at a Roger Moorse-esque lighthearted tone that I felt destroyed Spectre, despite some amazing setpieces, scenes, and cast? People keep mentioning "comic relief" and it is making me nervous. There was a cartoonish quality to Spectre that just doesn't fit Craig's Bond, IMO. Did they go back to the darker tones and themes or Casino Royale/QoS and Skyfall?

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Pavel
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Re: The Films of 2021

#731 Post by Pavel » Wed Sep 29, 2021 1:15 pm

The tone wasn't particularly lighthearted (and out of all the Bond films this one tries the hardest to have an emotionally satisfying/affecting arc). There's a Russian character that was entertaining at points, but is occasionally too broad. Ana de Armas' character (in the film too briefly imo) was also fairly comedic in nature, but not quite so over-the-top (and also balanced out by other characteristics that fit well with the tone). Bond's rivalry with another agent got a few laughs out of the audience, and I thought it worked reasonably well. I don't remember much of anything from Spectre, but I'd say this one has more humor than Casino Royale while also attempting to pull at the heartstrings on a more overt level (for my money it worked).

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Re: James Bond Franchise (1962-∞)

#732 Post by Caligula » Sat Oct 02, 2021 11:17 am

Saw it last night with my family. It was OK, but for me not on the level of Casino Royale or Skyfall. I really enjoyed the pre-title sequence. It made me excited for the rest of the film. Really liked Ana de Armas in the film, and the other female leads were effective as well. That said, I found the film bloated, and at time reminiscient of a video game. Malik & his head-honcho tried, but were to my opinion no standouts amongst the great Bond villians of the past. When it got to the end, I just didn't care anymore. Not as bad as Quantum of Solace, though. 3/5, we felt

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Re: James Bond Franchise (1962-∞)

#733 Post by Brian C » Sat Oct 09, 2021 1:59 am

I thought this was mostly sorta-OK but also frankly a bit tedious. So much of the Craig era has been built around these repetitive mind games, trying to wring some pathos out of the Bond character, and I was a little bit nostalgic for the good old days when these things weren't always so goddamned tortuous. Don't get me wrong, the history of the Bond films has always been pretty hit-and-miss - usually within individual movies - and all of the Craig films have been an improvement over the last couple Brosnans. It's not like they ruined a great thing. But I don't find the machinations of the Craig films to be all that clever or thematically fulfilling or even surprising. They're just convoluted for the sake of being convoluted, and pushing three hours long, it tries my patience.

Anyway, like I say ... hit and miss. A big hit here is Ana de Armas, who is immensely charming and funny and just an all-around pleasure to watch, and I was terribly disappointed when I realized her role was going to be pretty small. Honestly, I'd watch a whole movie centered around her character, one of the best supporting roles in the history of all the Bond films. I also continue to think that Whishaw's casting as Q was inspired, as was Fiennes's casting as M. And Seydoux brings a lot more to her role than it deserves, as well, considering that she seems to be written as a cipher.

On the miss side ... my heart sank when Waltz's Blofeld finally showed up, although thankfully his appearance isa fairly brief also. Malik has a really dopey bad guy to play and is overwhelmed by the sheer dumbness of it. And Craig ... I've never really understood what Craig is doing with the Bond role, if I'm being honest. He's a very engaging actor with a lovely comic touch outside of Bond, and those are qualities that are good for a Bond actor to have! But as Bond, either by his choice or others', he mostly sulks around and plays it all grim. I suppose I understand not wanting to risk becoming the next Roger Moore, but again, these films have mostly just seemed overly tortuous to me and Craig's performances are central to that.

Otherwise, I guess it's really hard to bring any kind of novelty to action setpieces these days, but man, it seems like even more than usual, the staging of the action sequences involved a lot of guys shooting a lot of guns and Bond and missing. Obviously that's always a thing to some degree, but I have to agree with Caligula's comment that it's "reminiscent of a video game" - this Bond should have a health meter at the bottom of the screen. And if that's not enough, he gets blown up like three times and just shakes it off. Endless anonymous bad guys - even by the standard of Bond films! - pop out of the shadows just to get shot dead. It's like the filmmakers made a conscious choice to assemble a list of all the old action movie cliches and go a little extra on them, although sadly not to any comic effect or even to the benefit of the intensity of the scenes. Like a lot here, it just doesn't feel like anybody put in a lot of effort to think these things out.

It is what it is, I guess. I can't imagine anyone not being able to sit through it if they've enjoyed watching the series to date, but most of it feels destined to fade from memory pretty fast. I guess the Bond films have always had a disposable-by-design quality to them, but I'm ready to move on from this era of the franchise.

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Re: James Bond Franchise (1962-∞)

#734 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun Oct 10, 2021 1:51 am

Brian C wrote:
Sat Oct 09, 2021 1:59 am
I thought this was mostly sorta-OK but also frankly a bit tedious. So much of the Craig era has been built around these repetitive mind games, trying to wring some pathos out of the Bond character, and I was a little bit nostalgic for the good old days when these things weren't always so goddamned tortuous. Don't get me wrong, the history of the Bond films has always been pretty hit-and-miss - usually within individual movies - and all of the Craig films have been an improvement over the last couple Brosnans. It's not like they ruined a great thing. But I don't find the machinations of the Craig films to be all that clever or thematically fulfilling or even surprising.

I've never really understood what Craig is doing with the Bond role, if I'm being honest. He's a very engaging actor with a lovely comic touch outside of Bond, and those are qualities that are good for a Bond actor to have! But as Bond, either by his choice or others', he mostly sulks around and plays it all grim. I suppose I understand not wanting to risk becoming the next Roger Moore, but again, these films have mostly just seemed overly tortuous to me and Craig's performances are central to that.
I think I know what you mean about the Craig Bonds- it’s not exactly a fair (or, rather, congruous) tightrope to walk in attempting to humanize Bond’s characterization with waverings between “realist” shelled grit and an undercurrent of emotional baggage, while continuing to imbue the character with a cool nonchalant anti-personalized individuality and forcefield of invincibility. The Bond of Old is a corporeal superhero, and the most consistent streak of best Bond films involve Connery doubling down on this in-joke whilst also transitioning from charm to quiet self-seriousness and brutality when the situation calls for it. That subtle nuance allowed the character to be both a cartoonish joke and switch to relatable desires and needs for justice and virtue in an acute instant, when circumstances demanded a moral or self-preserving action. The Craig Bonds have generally positioned themselves toward attempting to grasp at existential meditations without letting us into this substance, which may be a good thing, but the Connerys sent a clearer and more effective message with an entirely behaviorist approach. I like Casino Royale, but it's a film that's overhyped and undermined by the halfhearted expectation that it can have its cake and eat it too, unsuccessfully investing in a Vesper love angle that didn't work for me, or deserve an entire five-film arc of devastation for the character. Skyfall worked better, but its reveals about Bond’s vulnerable history still felt loosely enigmatic, perhaps deliberately so but to a degree that degraded some of the emotional momentum.

That's all to say that I loved No Time to Die, a film that builds upon the inconsistencies and missed opportunities of those two good-to-great Craig Bonds, and delivers a fixed product. I don't know who to credit most, the writing team or producers, but the tinkering and ultimately courageous full-measures taken to these ideas created a digestible catharsis. This is a film where the high stakes are felt- particularly the choice to include a surprise third innocent character as the only Higher Power greater than oneself Bond could place above himself in a manner that's authentic to his identity, a tangible presence that can become a spiritual gateway. The ethical dilemmas presented are worthy of our time, not exactly bordering on le Carré's realism of blunt, grey espionage life, but as close as the series has gotten to it, and the evolution of global politics was more potently-driven than Skyfall's semi-successful seed-planting in this realm. Plus, I find the idea of biomedical weapons to be the most frightening threat out there, so emphasizing a worst-case scenario of creative lengths this could reach really landed for me. The methods the final Craig film took to ruminate on how our history affects us and others around us doesn't cast itself aside for nationalist or simplified-moral agendas like Skyfall defaulted to, and the concept of having a literal infection for life shook me halfway through the film before it became a more sobering plot point in the final act. The idea isn't obnoxiously metaphorical in alluding to the permanent consequences of our actions, and the film thankfully doesn't stew in that space, but I couldn't stop thinking about that reading as a peripheral energy around the directly surface-level content on the table.

I appreciated the specific application of how this entry chose to engage in justified killing, not so much because of moral reasons but because of calculated self-preservation based on emotional rationalization. Two characters make choices around sacrificing people who have reached a level of uselessness to them, have continued to pose as vehicles of pure harm, and are slowing them down, distracting from saving their own and other lives. As someone who identifies as a radical humanist and believes that nobody is above rehabilitation or should be sentenced to death by the judgment of another person, it's always refreshing to witness these sacrifices occur outside of Higher Justification. The deaths don't happen earlier because the characters who do decide to kill are moral and emotional and empathetic, and when it's finally time to die, this choice is firmly planted in a need for survival, instead of devaluing the life itself as net-dead from here on out in any and all circumstances. One might seem like vengeance via non-action, but Bond’s anti-interventionist decision is as much about being tired and limiting his energy to focus on saving his family, refusing to revive a threat to them, than to ethically wrestle with the implications of his role in a death. I thought Craig was fantastic here, finally developing a multidimensional approach to the fatalistically aloof, yet deeply passionate and sensitive Bond he danced around for a few movies there.
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I also loved how, during the confrontation between Bond and Safin, Bond didn't save his kid. She escaped on her own, making a very independent and fearless 'Bond'-type choice for her developmental stage. When Bond and Madeleine come across her without Bond having saved her himself, we experience a sincere offering for reinforcement of Bond's powerlessness and limitations as a human being with agency. Superman, he is not.
However, I do understand how these elements contrast with the continued presence of Bond getting shot at, confidently standing in place, and besting his opponents, though unlike Brian I didn't feel like this happened more than other Bonds- it appeared to occur much less in this one. The setpieces in general were fantastic, effective action - especially the entire Cuba act (and totally agree, de Armas was the best part here, at least in terms of the typical Bond fare). The action didn’t feel like a video game (though I couldn't help but imagine that this Bond, like Goldeneye, would be ripe for a similar program of intricate levels!) An argument could be made for that one long take near the ending, but I thought it was gritty and involving, and reminded me a lot of Children of Men’s approach to first-person action. The film's transition in the second half was worrisome at first, but instead moved into strong philosophical and emotional terrain, besting On Her Majesty's Secret Service's institution and embellishment of intimate concerns, which was clearly the borrowed influence. So I guess for me, having largely agreed with Brian's criticisms of the Craigs, at last No Time to Die forged an effective balance of Old Bond and New Bond strategies for narrative and characterization, and earned its heavy existential payoff just in time. It's too early to say, but this may be my second favorite Bond movie after Thunderball, for each reaching the peaks of opposing tonal efforts on the franchise’s spectrum of interest in this character.

My biggest question in the end:
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So why was Danny Boyle really fired when they executed his controversial ending anyways?

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No Time to Die (Cary Joji Fukunaga, 2021)

#735 Post by swo17 » Sat Feb 19, 2022 1:36 pm

I liked the late moment where Bond does the iconic gun barrel sequence within the world of the film. (Has that been done before?) And the first (but not the second) time they did the "Bond. James Bond" line. And Ana de Armas. Also, how do screenwriters not realize that a line like this is so much better if you cut off the last part?
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I showed him your watch. It blew his mind.

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tenia
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Re: James Bond Franchise (1962-∞)

#736 Post by tenia » Sat Feb 19, 2022 5:09 pm

A month after having watched it, not much of No Time To Die stayed with me except that it felt 5 hours long, with a crappy villain and way too little action. Even the climax felt over-stretched and its intensity diluted, all this for a finale that never really hit the right note for me. It's quite well done though, though the actions pieces at times don't feel as memorable as they could, though it certainly isn't Quantum of Solace bad.

Meh/10

I also don't understand the hype around De Arnas. Yeah, she's cute and fun, but that's pretty much it.

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Re: James Bond Franchise (1962-∞)

#737 Post by swo17 » Sat Feb 19, 2022 5:24 pm

She also gets to say "coño" at one point, which is the movie's biggest swear

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Re: James Bond Franchise (1962-∞)

#738 Post by Randall Maysin Again » Sat Feb 19, 2022 5:35 pm

This was...definitely a step up from Skyfall and Spectre, I found No Time to Die to be at least an in some way "Bond appropriate" take on Bond as a fake Ian Fleming story with a good and consistent, more muscular, tone, more like Casino Royale, as opposed to those previous two films, whose tone was more childishly enthusiastic with subpar one-liners and clubfooted and aesthetically dismaying as they honestly reminded me very much of a, perhaps sub-par, Harry Potter movie. I liked how miserable Javier Bardem's villain was in Skyfall and that's really the only thing I even remember about it. The big cast in this one, I agree with everyone else, is quite wonderful, and there's quite a range of ladies especially and they contrast with each other novelly and compellingly, my favorites being Lashana Lynch and Ana de Armas, the latter of whom very deftly and elegantly balances sort of a Junior Miss Bond crossed with an adorable, Bridget Fonda-solving-mysteries vibe, while Lynch is very good at being a big tough high-powered amazon type. The weakest point is the villains, although they do function less obtrusively than in Spectre. Christoph Waltz is at least not as much of a fruity idiot as he was in Spectre and he at least
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dies quickly
, he is a highly gifted but uneven actor and this is his lowest point, playing this character, for me. Rami Malek on the other hand plays a villain who is interchangeably fruity and uninteresting with Blofeld, on the page, but I generally find Malek, perhaps through no fault of his own, to be a pretty hard-to-take, or spoiler alert meanness
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even look at
presence. Just the self-conscious way he talks in the earlier parts of this movie, which he basically abandons later in the film, i found to be insufferably fruity.

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Re: James Bond Franchise (1962-∞)

#739 Post by Quote Perf Unquote » Wed Aug 17, 2022 6:00 pm

This is probably old news, but new to me, and LOL:

https://liartownusa.com/a-cinematic-his ... ames-bond/

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Re: James Bond Franchise (1962-∞)

#740 Post by domino harvey » Wed Dec 21, 2022 12:32 am

After being over-aware of every facet of them yet only actually having seen a couple as a kid (and seeing no evidence that I'd enjoy more than that), I decided to give the franchise a fair shake and MY GOD is Dr No a bad film, and an unexpectedly boring one too. I cannot overstate how much I hate James Bond in this film and especially Connery's performance of him. This might be the most I've ever been flabbergasted at the common man's opinion on anything. How can anyone defend this little shit after he sleeps with that girl before turning her in, or shoots the unarmed professor? The whole movie was just me marinating in my hatred of this smug fuck. Richard--W, if you're still hate browsing, I fully understand why you love Bond now.

Please tell me these get better

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Re: James Bond Franchise (1962-∞)

#741 Post by swo17 » Wed Dec 21, 2022 12:44 am

I haven't even seen that one and wouldn't call myself a Bond fan, but I think these are varying degrees of good:

On Her Majesty's Secret Service
The Spy Who Loved Me
The Living Daylights

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Re: James Bond Franchise (1962-∞)

#742 Post by knives » Wed Dec 21, 2022 12:57 am

I’ve been slowly going through these and share your opinion on Dr. No. It’s just indefensibly bad (and yet people do genuinely love it). I find all of the original Connery films to range from bad to mediocre. Lazenby’s is a bit better, but still not what I’d call good. I like the Moore films okay on average. They’re just better made films compared to the sometimes incompetence of the Connery films. Even still, the best of Moore is only an okay entertainment.

It’s not an official film, but I probably like Never Say Never Again best of these older films. It’s some small fun. Haven’t seen the Dalton nor Brosnan films.

I’m still missing Quantum of Solace, but have seen the rest of the Craig’s and I’d say he’s when the series finally got good. Casino Royale is already a dated and boring mess, but the two Mendes films are great reveling in the empty shell of the series and showing how Bond is this singularly alien object despite any attempt to run from the mean. This makes them also great cinematographer showcases with each DP running the show to give the ultimate expression of their style. I liked No Time to Die okay, but it’s about an hour and three plots too long. As a comedy though it’s pretty stellar.

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Re: James Bond Franchise (1962-∞)

#743 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Dec 21, 2022 1:09 am

The first one is a boring movie, and they do get better, but I can’t really defend it properly because it’s impossible for me to divorce my impressions from specific nostalgias. I’ve vocally defended later Connery entries because I think he’s much more self-aware about and leaning into his persona in ways I find fun, whereas Dr No is curiously self-serious, but to be honest I doubt you’re going to see anything artful here. I hate to pull a “if you didn’t grow up with it, then you won’t get/like it” but it kinda makes sense when these films embody everything you hate and find uninteresting about programmatic blockbusters and are bald faced in reinforcing archaic gender roles without a single attempt to give a shade of genuine characterization to anyone. I don’t expect anyone to care about the “nuance” of Bond in Thunderball if you didn’t do annual three-day Bond-a-thons as a kid counting tropes and detailing the differences and laughing with juvenile friends at the absurdities of his deadpan behavior that would never fly today, because for a non-acclimated adult viewer the misogyny and unidimensional conceit will surely usurp that nuance with indistinct blubber, simply because there’s no motivation to look as hard for it as you may have to. The Connerys objectively get better, but they’re not going to change in the ways you might need them to to feel satisfied/not angry at a vehicle built around toxic masculine smugness incarnate

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Re: James Bond Franchise (1962-∞)

#744 Post by hearthesilence » Wed Dec 21, 2022 1:13 am

domino harvey wrote:
Wed Dec 21, 2022 12:32 am
After being over-aware of every facet of them yet only actually having seen a couple as a kid (and seeing no evidence that I'd enjoy more than that), I decided to give the franchise a fair shake and MY GOD is Dr No a bad film, and an unexpectedly boring one too. I cannot overstate how much I hate James Bond in this film and especially Connery's performance of him. This might be the most I've ever been flabbergasted at the common man's opinion on anything. How can anyone defend this little shit after he sleeps with that girl before turning her in, or shoots the unarmed professor? The whole movie was just me marinating in my hatred of this smug fuck. Richard--W, if you're still hate browsing, I fully understand why you love Bond now.

Please tell me these get better
LMAO

I imagine we're in the minority, but IMHO no they don't. I was once a fan with reservations, owning several of the Blu-rays, but I tried revisiting them in 2019 for the first time in over a decade and I wound up selling them off for peanuts. It was even embarrassing that I kept them around. It used to be treated as a joke that the imperialist and sexual politics were dated, but that's too easy - it looks thoroughly awful, period.

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Re: James Bond Franchise (1962-∞)

#745 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Dec 21, 2022 1:31 am

If you are thinking of continuing at all, I'd suggest watching the next two on deck. From Russia with Love is more of a typical spy story and atypical Bond, with Daniela Bianchi as a more defined female love interest/equal spy in tow, and Robert Shaw as a toned-down sociopathic villain compared to the embellished ones we get later on; it's less hammy, still somewhat sparse but more interesting. Goldfinger is a best-case scenario for old Bond, kinda like the North by Northwest of Bond movies - strong forward momentum, memorable set pieces, fun side characters. I don't think the Roger Moore movies are as good as knives does, and he makes for an even duller Bond, but For Your Eyes Only is a genuinely strong spy thriller outside of Moore's involvement and the necessary Bond tropes that weigh it down. Otherwise, skip to Goldeneye or the Craigs. There's literally no need to go in any order -even in the rare cases where characters reappear, they don't reference past events (other than the recent Craigs, which break the Bond mold, but what they reference typically doesn't matter anyways- i.e. who cares about Vesper Lynd)

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Re: James Bond Franchise (1962-∞)

#746 Post by cdnchris » Wed Dec 21, 2022 1:43 am


domino harvey wrote:After being over-aware of every facet of them yet only actually having seen a couple as a kid (and seeing no evidence that I'd enjoy more than that), I decided to give the franchise a fair shake and MY GOD is Dr No a bad film, and an unexpectedly boring one too. I cannot overstate how much I hate James Bond in this film and especially Connery's performance of him. This might be the most I've ever been flabbergasted at the common man's opinion on anything. How can anyone defend this little shit after he sleeps with that girl before turning her in, or shoots the unarmed professor? The whole movie was just me marinating in my hatred of this smug fuck. Richard--W, if you're still hate browsing, I fully understand why you love Bond now.

Please tell me these get better
They do but I'm pretty sure you're not going to like them. I'm an unapologetic Bond fan but will say Dr. No is one of my least favorites. I still wouldn't call it the worst: I'm really stuck between Spectre and Die Another Day for that spot.

I like Connery but agree his version of the character is an asshole. From Russia with Love is one of my favorites in the series, introducing a number of the elements that would become common and benefits from Robert Shaw and Lotte Lenya as villains, with a few decent action set pieces. But he's still a manipulative asshole, the Gypsy girl fight is stupid, and Bianchi's character is a bit ridiculous. Not to spoil too much it's questionable where her loyalties are (which is central to the plot) but the suggestion she's seen the light simply from sleeping with Bond didn't even sit right with me when I didn't know what was going on at a very young age (same with Pussy Galore in Goldfinger).

So those elements may still be too much for you and who knows, you probably won't care for any of the action pieces (I've always thought they were great but I first saw the movie when I was 5). Still, honestly, if you don't care for it in any way I'd probably say you'd be better off not continuing, even though Goldfinger takes itself far less seriously. The remaining Connery films are meh, but I do have a soft spot for Diamonds Are Forever. Thunderball is fine, but I've always found it too long and may actually prefer Never Say Never Again.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service is probably my favourite one, and I think Savalas was the best Blofeld.

I'd say only a couple of the Moore's are really good, For Your Eyes Only maybe being the best. Live and Let Die has its moments (Julius Harris is one of my favourite henchmen and I always thought Yaphet Kotto was underrated as a Bond villain) but Moore's first two outings don't show a lot of promise otherwise and The Spy Who Loved Me is where I think he found his footing.

I like both of Dalton's a lot.

The Brosnan's are what they are, but I at least appreciated the attempt at capturing the Moore spirit in Tomorrow Never Dies. I like Goldeneye but I have to admit I never really understood the love many seem to throw at it.

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Re: James Bond Franchise (1962-∞)

#747 Post by Never Cursed » Wed Dec 21, 2022 1:47 am

domino harvey wrote:
Wed Dec 21, 2022 12:32 am
Please tell me these get better
Goldfinger is alright, and I say that as someone who got noooooothing from the first two Connery movies. He's still a prick and the misogyny is as brutal as ever, but the focus is more on other things. I've seen all the Craig Bonds except Skyfall and the last two are good. The Fukunaga one is gorgeous (thank you Linus Sandgren) and fairly well-staged as big action blockbusters go, and it and Spectre have the best of Bond's love interests. Quantum of Solace is terrible but short and worth it to see Mathieu Amalric go insane with nervous energy (in the climax he literally starts screaming like a monkey while swinging around a fire axe).

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Re: James Bond Franchise (1962-∞)

#748 Post by domino harvey » Wed Dec 21, 2022 2:06 am

The only reason I will not heed some of the good advice here to quit while I'm ahead is because since these aren't streaming, I bought the box set LIKE AN IDIOT. So I'll pretend sunk cost fallacy isn't real and at least watch a couple more. Between this and those terrible Charlie Bowers shorts, my already scant recent non-existent blind buying has only resulted in me being reminded why I no longer blind buy things

Goldeneye and whatever one has Jonathan Pryce in it are the Bonds I've already seen as a lad, and I remember being bored out of my mind by the latter. I did get in trouble in high school for very loudly and without thought saying "Oh fuck me" upon being relayed by a classmate one of the stupid sexual quips for whichever one has Denise Richards in it as Dr Holly Jolly Christmas or whatever the hell her stupid name is

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Re: James Bond Franchise (1962-∞)

#749 Post by hearthesilence » Wed Dec 21, 2022 2:10 am

FWIW, when I was a fan, I thought the first three were the only "good" ones, mainly because they weren't bloated vehicles that overwhelmed the central character. In a way, a lot of latter day action films (think of the Batman films) kind of follow the later James Bond template where the central character takes a back seat to his over-the-top antagonists and the spectacle of the entire film. With the first two, they really relied on Connery's charisma, and the third kind of struck a delicate balance that was never matched as the films were generally drifting more towards bigger and bigger spectacles.

I actually like Roger Moore but I didn't like him as Bond. The Spy Who Loved Me was okay, but the rest of the time, it was like one great stunt sequence and if you were lucky maybe a memorable villain surrounded by god awful bloat. The song "Live and Let Die" was a great hit for Paul McCartney (I'm not a fan of his post-Beatles career but that was one of maybe a dozen great tracks he released in the '70s), and there was a half-hearted attempt at remembering Bond's marriage in A View to a Kill that I wished had been developed further. I'd also add that I wish Connery had done The Man with the Golden Gun just to hear him say "Scaramanga" over and over again - now there's a word that would've been perfect for his brogue.

OHMSS was kind of interesting, but IIRC there's also that ridiculous scene where Bond sleeps with like a dozen different women from around the globe. It's kind of ludicrous that's the film where he finds true love, but I have to say...
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when he's at the ice rink and he genuinely thinks he's doomed, it's a pretty great moment when Tracy skates up to him and he looks up to see it's her. Romantic fluff perhaps, but they sell it - without even telling you, you kind of figure he's thinking of her and having her show up is like this impossible manifestation of his last wish that miraculously happens.
The tragic ending is also classic.

Anyway, they all had things to like about them - usually a set piece, character or action sequence - but they were generally mediocre films. The later ones from Timothy Dalton on made earnest attempts to improve the series - Dalton was especially grounded, Brosnan was kind of the same but he added a lot more wry humor, and Craig decided to lean into all the deranged aspects of Bond that was always left unexplored - but I finally got tired of them after Skyfall. That was supposed to be a new high point, and on paper they had a great cast and what seemed like promising ideas - I even visited the Highlands soon after - but it was still underwhelming and surprisingly reactionary in a lot of ways.

I do like Connery a lot as an actor, and when he died, the favorites that came to mind were The Man Who Would Be King, Robin and Marian and Marnie, and in hindsight, they seemed like a response to the Bond films or at least highlighted everything that was lacking or terrible about them, from the imperialism to the immature adult fantasy to the horrific misogyny.

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Re: James Bond Franchise (1962-∞)

#750 Post by cdnchris » Wed Dec 21, 2022 2:22 am


domino harvey wrote: I did get in trouble in high school for very loudly and without thought saying "Oh fuck me" upon being relayed by a classmate one of the stupid sexual quips for whichever one has Denise Richards in it as Dr Holly Jolly Christmas or whatever the hell her stupid name is
The film in question is one I'm generally indifferent to (The World is Not Enough) but the line that I assume is being referenced received the biggest collective groan I've ever heard in a theater.

Dr. No is not a good film, but if you really get nothing out of From Russia with Love then yes, you've made a very bad purchase.

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