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Mennonite · 10-21-2021, 09:40 AM

Wrapping up my 007 marathon.

Octopussy (1983)

An absolutely ridiculous movie, I admit, but it's so damn over the top that it eventually won me over. It's just bonkers. The clown killing, the crocodile disguise, the general who loves circuses more than anything else in life, the thug who yields a yo-yo with circular saw attachments, the stuffed tiger attack, the balcony escape scene, the mechanical horse's ass that hides a miniature airplane - the madness never stops!

Octopussy's bed: Am I the only one who thinks it looks like a vagina? I mean you can clearly see that it's supposed to look like an octopus, but when you look at it (and the curtains above it) it kinda looks like a twat. I can't be the only one who sees this. Either way it looks like it belongs on the set of "The Best Little Whorehouse in Atlantis."

Casino Royale (2006)

Still my favorite. Great action scenes. No campy humor. Pretty good bad guys. No major plot issues.

Spectre (2015)

Boring. Very very boring. With a script this weak you would think they would try to wrap things up as fast as possible but no this movie is two and a half ****ing hours long. The best part is that after you get the Austin Powers plot twist you've got another good 30 minutes or so to sit there and think about how dumb this movie is without being interrupted by anything interesting happening.

You Only Live Twice (1967)

So close to being a good movie, but the sloppy writing brings it down a few notches.

Things I can overlook:

- The fact that faking 007's death makes no sense in the context of the rest of the movie. Why fake his death, send the story to the newspapers (along with Bond's picture!), and then send him on a mission in the same region without any kind of disguise? This could have been fixed with two lines of dialog from M: "When I realized we couldn't get you out of Hong Kong alive, 007, I realized we'd have to get you out dead. Did you find any evidence linking China to SPECTRE?"

- Blofeld's brilliant plan to profit by starting nuclear armageddon.

- The villainess who doesn't recognise Bond even after seeing his obituary "in all the newspapers" who, instead of shooting him when she has the chance, decides to go with the classic "I'll get him on a plane, lightly restrain him, and then parachute out at 30,000 feet and just assume that he won't escape like he has a million times before." I love how none of these bad guys never think twice about sacrificing an entire plane instead of spending money on a single bullet. Scaramanga did it right.

What I can't overlook:

The stupidity of Bond's Jap disguise. To call the makeup job half-assed is an insult to butt cheeks. And it's all so pointless. From a storytelling point of view all you need to do is get Bond from the village to the top of the hill to discover the bad guy's hideout. Instead of just having him walk up the ****ing hill they go through ten or fifteen minutes where Bond has to be "transformed" and also take time to train as a ninja. Oh, and they also take a few seconds to kill the Japanese spy girl who has been helping him for the entire movie and then immediatly replace her with another Japanese spy girl who serves the same purpose without even missing a beat. They waste all this time for nothing - the two of them just casually walk to the top of the hill. Hell, Bond doesn't even wear his ****ing "disguise"!

A lot of these movies get ruined by this type of shitty writing. It's either issues that could be easily fixed, or stupid stuff that is added for no damn reason. 60 years later and the franchise is still doing it too.

Never Say Never Again (1983)

I dismissed this as an "embarassing money grab" upthread, but after thinking about it it does have some good points. Fatima Blush is cool. Connery gets some good one liners. The action scene with the sharks is good as well as the motorcycle chase.

It's a bad movie for sure, but it's not totally bad. The awful musical score, casting mistakes, and the fact that the best actors didn't have much to work with in the script end up ruining it ultimatly.

Quantum of Solace (2008)

What the hell happened here? A very disappointing follow-up to Casino Royale. This is one of the worst filmed movies I've ever seen. I've never seen a movie with this many quick cuts. It's like you are constantly skipping ahead 15 seconds for every second that is actually passing. It's almost nausiating.

The villains are also some of the weakest of the series. Maybe the weakest.

The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)

What a wasted opportunity! Christopher Lee as the world's greatest assassin, Herve Villachez as the world's smallest factotem, exotic Asian locales, sexy young Britt Ekland and Maud Adams in her pre-OctoMILF years and yet the movie is still one of the worst. The problem is that there is a great 45 minutes worth of story here but it's buried under another 80 minutes worth of crap. Oh well at least Britt was cute:

License to Kill (1989)

The worst of the worst. I thought "The Living Daylights" was one of the series' best but this sequel is horrible. It doesn't feel like a Bond film at all. It's more like a stereotypical 80s "tough cop out for revenge" movie. The problem is that these guys have absolutely no idea how to make this type of movie. Dalton looks incredibly uncomfortable. He's a fish out of water from start to finish. The story is terrible; the direction is worse. It's hard to understand how a big budget movie can look flatter and cheaper than contemporary 80s tv dramas but it does. This is compounded by the fact that most of the American actors they hired were minor has-been tv actors. When the typical Bond silliness crops up near the end it comes across even goofier than usual due to how (tediously) grim the rest of the movie has been. They should have hired some director from Golan Globus or PM Entertainment to direct this thing. It would still have sucked but at least it would have had a pulse.

I did laugh at the "Turn off the bloody machine!" line near the end.

The World is Not Enough (1999)

Why does the writing of these blockbuster Bond films feel as slapdash as some of the old American tv shows from the 1960s? Those shows had to deal with small budgets and merciless deadlines where they had to produce 30 episodes per season - so what is the excuse of the producers of the Bond movies?

I saw this in the theater and didn't like it. When I re-watched it the other night I found it to be a lot better than I remembered. The action scenes weren't as good as the other Brosnan era flicks, but it has a much more serious tone that I liked. There were some odd things that I didn't quite understand but I assumed that I wasn't paying enough attention. I watched it again last night and, no, I actually hadn't missed anything; the script is a disaster.

There are a lot of lines that are just nonsense - they sound like lines you would throw into a script as you write it knowing that you will go back later and write a proper piece of dialog. Except in this case nobody ever bothered with a second draft. The plot is rubbish too; there are so many problems that I couldn't possibly enumerate them all.

Positives: The pre credits scene is quite good and features some excellent stunt work. The theme song by Garbage is one of the better Bond theme songs. Pierce Brosnan gives a more varied performance than you usually get in these movies. The biggest plus? The women! Three of the best looking Bond girls appear in this movie:

A defense of Denise Richards: Nearly every review of "The World is Not Enough" mentions how terrible she is, and, yeah, she is miscast, but she is actually one of the best "good" Bond girls, imo. Compare her performance to those of the actresses who played Dr. Goodhead, Honey Rider, Mary Goodnight, or Solitaire and she comes across as the second coming of Meryl Streep. Jesus Christ, Roger Moore may has well been handcuffed to a pretty mannequin in most of his movies.

This is a franchise that manages to get flat performances out of legitimately great actors so I have to give Richards some credit for at least putting in some effort. She's not a great actress but her performance here wasn't any worse than that of (Acadamy Award winning actress) Halle Berry in the next film.

10-21-2021, 09:40 AM	#116
Mennonite Veteran Join Date: Jun 2014	Wrapping up my 007 marathon. Octopussy (1983) An absolutely ridiculous movie, I admit, but it's so damn over the top that it eventually won me over. It's just bonkers. The clown killing, the crocodile disguise, the general who loves circuses more than anything else in life, the thug who yields a yo-yo with circular saw attachments, the stuffed tiger attack, the balcony escape scene, the mechanical horse's ass that hides a miniature airplane - the madness never stops! Octopussy's bed: Am I the only one who thinks it looks like a vagina? I mean you can clearly see that it's supposed to look like an octopus, but when you look at it (and the curtains above it) it kinda looks like a twat. I can't be the only one who sees this. Either way it looks like it belongs on the set of "The Best Little Whorehouse in Atlantis." Casino Royale (2006) Still my favorite. Great action scenes. No campy humor. Pretty good bad guys. No major plot issues. Spectre (2015) Boring. Very very boring. With a script this weak you would think they would try to wrap things up as fast as possible but no this movie is two and a half **ing hours long. The best part is that after you get the Austin Powers plot twist you've got another good 30 minutes or so to sit there and think about how dumb this movie is without being interrupted by anything interesting happening. You Only Live Twice (1967) So close to being a good movie, but the sloppy writing brings it down a few notches. Things I can overlook: - The fact that faking 007's death makes no sense in the context of the rest of the movie. Why fake his death, send the story to the newspapers (along with Bond's picture!), and then send him on a mission in the same region without any kind of disguise? This could have been fixed with two lines of dialog from M: "When I realized we couldn't get you out of Hong Kong alive, 007, I realized we'd have to get you out dead. Did you find any evidence linking China to SPECTRE?" - Blofeld's brilliant plan to profit by starting nuclear armageddon. - The villainess who doesn't recognise Bond even after seeing his obituary "in all the newspapers" who, instead of shooting him when she has the chance, decides to go with the classic "I'll get him on a plane, lightly restrain him, and then parachute out at 30,000 feet and just assume that he won't escape like he has a million times before." I love how none of these bad guys never think twice about sacrificing an entire plane instead of spending money on a single bullet. Scaramanga did it right. What I can't overlook: The stupidity of Bond's Jap disguise. To call the makeup job half-assed is an insult to butt cheeks. And it's all so pointless. From a storytelling point of view all you need to do is get Bond from the village to the top of the hill to discover the bad guy's hideout. Instead of just having him walk up the *ing hill they go through ten or fifteen minutes where Bond has to be "transformed" and also take time to train as a ninja. Oh, and they also take a few seconds to kill the Japanese spy girl who has been helping him for the entire movie and then immediatly* replace her with another Japanese spy girl who serves the same purpose without even missing a beat. They waste all this time for nothing - the two of them just casually walk to the top of the hill. Hell, Bond doesn't even wear his **ing "disguise"! A lot of these movies get ruined by this type of shitty writing. It's either issues that could be easily fixed, or stupid stuff that is added for no damn reason. 60 years later and the franchise is still doing it too. Never Say Never Again (1983) I dismissed this as an "embarassing money grab" upthread, but after thinking about it it does have some good points. Fatima Blush is cool. Connery gets some good one liners. The action scene with the sharks is good as well as the motorcycle chase. It's a bad movie for sure, but it's not totally bad. The awful musical score, casting mistakes, and the fact that the best actors didn't have much to work with in the script end up ruining it ultimatly. Quantum of Solace (2008)** What the hell happened here? A very disappointing follow-up to Casino Royale. This is one of the worst filmed movies I've ever seen. I've never seen a movie with this many quick cuts. It's like you are constantly skipping ahead 15 seconds for every second that is actually passing. It's almost nausiating. The villains are also some of the weakest of the series. Maybe the weakest. The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) What a wasted opportunity! Christopher Lee as the world's greatest assassin, Herve Villachez as the world's smallest factotem, exotic Asian locales, sexy young Britt Ekland and Maud Adams in her pre-OctoMILF years and yet the movie is still one of the worst. The problem is that there is a great 45 minutes worth of story here but it's buried under another 80 minutes worth of crap. Oh well at least Britt was cute: License to Kill (1989) The worst of the worst. I thought "The Living Daylights" was one of the series' best but this sequel is horrible. It doesn't feel like a Bond film at all. It's more like a stereotypical 80s "tough cop out for revenge" movie. The problem is that these guys have absolutely no idea how to make this type of movie. Dalton looks incredibly uncomfortable. He's a fish out of water from start to finish. The story is terrible; the direction is worse. It's hard to understand how a big budget movie can look flatter and cheaper than contemporary 80s tv dramas but it does. This is compounded by the fact that most of the American actors they hired were minor has-been tv actors. When the typical Bond silliness crops up near the end it comes across even goofier than usual due to how (tediously) grim the rest of the movie has been. They should have hired some director from Golan Globus or PM Entertainment to direct this thing. It would still have sucked but at least it would have had a pulse. I did laugh at the "Turn off the bloody machine!" line near the end. The World is Not Enough (1999) Why does the writing of these blockbuster Bond films feel as slapdash as some of the old American tv shows from the 1960s? Those shows had to deal with small budgets and merciless deadlines where they had to produce 30 episodes per season - so what is the excuse of the producers of the Bond movies? I saw this in the theater and didn't like it. When I re-watched it the other night I found it to be a lot better than I remembered. The action scenes weren't as good as the other Brosnan era flicks, but it has a much more serious tone that I liked. There were some odd things that I didn't quite understand but I assumed that I wasn't paying enough attention. I watched it again last night and, no, I actually hadn't missed anything; the script is a disaster. There are a lot of lines that are just nonsense - they sound like lines you would throw into a script as you write it knowing that you will go back later and write a proper piece of dialog. Except in this case nobody ever bothered with a second draft. The plot is rubbish too; there are so many problems that I couldn't possibly enumerate them all. Positives: The pre credits scene is quite good and features some excellent stunt work. The theme song by Garbage is one of the better Bond theme songs. Pierce Brosnan gives a more varied performance than you usually get in these movies. The biggest plus? The women! Three of the best looking Bond girls appear in this movie: A defense of Denise Richards: Nearly every review of "The World is Not Enough" mentions how terrible she is, and, yeah, she is miscast, but she is actually one of the best "good" Bond girls, imo. Compare her performance to those of the actresses who played Dr. Goodhead, Honey Rider, Mary Goodnight, or Solitaire and she comes across as the second coming of Meryl Streep. Jesus Christ, Roger Moore may has well been handcuffed to a pretty mannequin in most of his movies. This is a franchise that manages to get flat performances out of legitimately great actors so I have to give Richards some credit for at least putting in some effort. She's not a great actress but her performance here wasn't any worse than that of (Acadamy Award winning actress) Halle Berry in the next film. Last edited by Mennonite; 10-21-2021 at 10:04 AM..
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