EYG Hall of Famer Akira Kurosawa had directed many classic international films during his life, but many believe that his greatest work is the black and white film Rashomon, which I watched today.

This movie inspired the storytelling technique called the Rashomon Effect, which is the style of telling the same event in a contradictory manner through the POV of different characters, having them adjust the events to benefit themselves.  It is a technique that I have seen many times, but I hadn’t been aware of until this movie crossed my path.

I was able to see an English subtitled version on Amazon Prime.  As in all of the subtitled movies, after awhile, it feels as if I am no longer reading the subtitles and they are just happening.  It is a very interesting effect that I have seen and it has changed my tune on the subtitled movies.  At one time, I did not want to “read” a movie, but now, it does not bother me at all.  In fact, I was 100% prefer that over dubbing voices over top of the film.

Anyway, in Rashomon, three men congregate under shelter in a rainstorm at the Rashomon city gate to stay dry.  While there, they exchange eye witness accounts about a crime that had just happened. The infamous bandit Tajômaru (Toshiro Mifune) came across a marred couple and he becomes enamored with the wife, Masako (Machiko Kyô).  Tajômaru chased after them and captured her husband, Takehiro (Masayuki Mori).  After raping the woman, her husband wound up dead.  This is where the contradiction comes into play.

Fascinatingly enough, the film never really reveals what the actual events were.  There were four versions, and it may seem that the fourth version is the one that is the truthful one, but there is enough questions raised to bring uncertainty to the film.  According to the details on Amazon Prime, even the actors in the film had approached Kurosawa, to find out what the answers were, and he would not tell them.  He said the film was meant to explore the multiple realities.

The film showed the nature of eye witnesses and how unreliable they may be.  You can never tell what might color the perception of an eye witnesses story.  In Rashomon, even the story that seems as if it should have been the most unbiased brings questions as to the viability of the tale.

The film is shot beautifully, with the black and white creating such a rich and textured backdrop for this story of betrayal and struggle for power and honor.  There are many examples of symbolism throughout the film, the entire story itself an analogy for the perception of man.

The acting was tremendous and, once again, shows me that I do not want English translation dubbed over top.  The voices, speaking in Japanese, is required to feel the connotation and the emotion within it.  You do not have to understand Japanese to understand the feelings of those involved.  The actors do an amazing job.

Rashomon truly was an experience that I was glad to have undertook.  It is a beautiful looking story of the depth of man and the ways each person can adjust a story to make it fit their world view.  It was truly a masterpiece.

For the fifth time, Roger Moore strides onto the screen as British Secret Service Agent 007, James Bond.

After the sloppy sci-fi schlep Moonraker, the James Bond franchise took a giant and grateful step back towards its roots with For Your Eyes Only, the 12th Bond film.

For Your Eyes Only was considerably better than the previous Bond film as the producers decided to make a film closer to the old days of secret spies.  The gadgets were kept at a happy medium and in a much less campy manner.

Check that.  The cold open was very much full of camp as, apparently, Bond’s old enemy Blofeld made another appearance, only to get killed with the help of an over the top helicopter trick.  This did not match the tone of the rest of the film, but it was a nice shout out to anyone who wanted the camp in a Bond film.  It was just enough for my tastes.

In this film, Bond must find a communication device, known as an A.T.A.C., which went down with a British spy ship before the Russians.  During the adventure, he meets a woman named Melina Havelock (Carole Bouquet), who is out for revenge on the people who murdered her parents.

I really enjoyed For Your Eyes Only.  It returned the franchise to a much better place.  Sure there are still jokes and over-the-top antics, but they are not played for total camp or slapstick humor.  This felt like a spy movie again instead of a parody of one.

The action sequences are crisp and entertaining.  I talked about how I thought I had remembered a ski scene in this movie during the movie, The Spy Who Loved Me, and I had.  The ski scene was very well done and more extensive than in The Spy Who Loved Me.

How many times does Bond have to avoid some giant predatory animal in one of these movies?  We have seen piranha and giant snakes before.  This movie was, at least, the third time that sharks make an appearance in the Bond films.

Roger Moore was starting to look his age here.  He was fine during this movie, but it was clear that his days as James Bond was going to be coming to an end sooner rather than later.

The ending scenes of the Bond franchise, especially during the Moore years, seem to be fairly similar with Bond getting the girl, literally as his bosses try to talk to him.  It has grown to be a bit repetitious.

This was also the first film that M was not on screen.  Bond’s long time boss was said to be on leave during this filming because the actor Bernard Lee had died of stomach cancer before they could film his scenes.  Out of respect for the actor who had been in the previous 11 Bond films, producer Albert R. Broccoli refused to recast the role.

This film featured one of my favorite, most underrated Bond themes.  For Your Eyes Only was recorded by 80’s diva Sheena Easton and the rich vocals and sultry voice fit beautifully with the tone of the film.

This was a welcome return to pseudo-seriousness after the stupidity of Moonraker.  For Your Eyes Only was a huge success and one of the most under rated of the Bond films.

I had set a goal to watch Moonraker today, the next in line for the Bond watch.  Then, my internet/TV/phone service crapped the bed for a big chunk of the day.  Fortunately (perhaps), it came back in time for me to watch this Bond film.

I had never seen Moonraker before.  There are a few of the Bond films that I had not seen, specifically those whose reputation may be, let’s say, a tad shaky.

Shaky is kind.  This was dreadful.

It felt more like an Austin Powers movie than a James Bond movie.  And not in the good way.

The United States space shuttle Moonraker was hijacked in midair as it was on the way to be loaned to Great Britain.  James Bond (Roger Moore) was put on the case to investigate and he discovered a plot for global genocide.

The gigantic and, I guess, nigh invulnerable Jaws (Richard Kiel) was hired as muscle for Bond villain Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale).  Oh, and there is a Bond girl named Dr. Holly Goodhead (Lois Chiles).

The slapstick becomes way more than just campy in this film.  It takes all of the silliness and amplifies it 100% and then it doubles down on it.  The silly situations and the gadgets are just too much.  There was always elements of camp in the series, even the most serious of the films, but this takes that to an utterly absurd level.  Especially after the fairly well-balanced The Spy Who Loved Me that proceeded this in release.

In space, no one can hear you scream.. but they can hear the pew pew of lasers …and the crashing ships.  Oh, and astronauts do scream when hit with the pew pew lasers.  The third act of this is such a travesty that any positives that may have been in the earlier part of the film was absolutely ripped apart.  It is utterly ridiculous and not in the good way.

Space Bond simply is too stupid and does not work.  Amazingly, the Rotten Tomatoes score has this as a “FRESH” film.  I just do not understand.

This is one of those movies that many of my friends think is awesome, but I have always avoided watching.  I am not much of a fan of Chevy Chase and Fletch feels like Chevy Chase to the nth degree.

Recently, Fletch turned up on a Top 10 Show and I know that Matt Knost has unbridled love for the film, so I decided that I would finally watch it, placing it on my Summer-Watch list.

Irwin “Fletch” Fletcher (Chevy Chase) was an investigative journalist who went by the name “Jane Doe”  He was working undercover on the beaches of Los Angeles on a story about drug trafficking when a wealthy businessman Alan Stanwyk (Tim Matheson) found him and asked him to commit a murder.  His own.

Stanwyk told Fletch that he was dying of cancer and he would be doing him a favor if he killed him.  He offered Fletch $50,000 to to the humanitarian thing.

This kicked off the central mystery of the movie, and Fletch, the investigative reporter, smelled a story.

I found this movie to be fine.  I certainly would not place it in the upper levels of comedy movies, but it is probably my favorite Chevy Chase movies.  It had some good laughs and Chevy’s zany banter was mostly entertaining.  Fletch was written with a lot of intelligence and was filled with a quick wit.  He felt very much like David Addison from Moonlighting.

The story beats worked fairly well and the investigation allowed you to try and determine what was happening as Fletch found out about it too.  The conclusion was a tad anti-climatic for my tastes, and perhaps somewhat unrealistic.  The whole thing of Fletch being picked by Stanwyk was fairly coincidental, but you are able to ignore those issues because the rest of the film is engaging.

I am glad that I finally watched it.  Check that one off the list.

I have found some strange tidbits while doing this James Bond re-watch, such as I don’t remember much about any of these movies.  For example, I am up to The Spy Who Loved Me and I remember watching it.

Yet, I have seemingly forgotten most of it.

In fact, the only things I remember from this movie was the cold open with the skis (although truthfully, I thought this was in For Your Eyes Only), the underwater car, and Jaws (Richard Kiel) on the train (by the way, I don’t know why Bond keeps going on trains.  He seems to always get attacked there).  The rest of this movie felt like a brand new one.  I know I saw it, but it really blends together with other ones.  So I am glad I am doing this re-watch because it gives me an opportunity to have a better knowledge of each movie and to separate them more.

Plus, of course, most of these have been really good.

The Spy Who Loved Me is the tenth movie chronologically in the James Bond franchise and the third film with Roger Moore as 007.

James Bond (Roger Moore) teams up with Soviet Agent XXX, Major Anya Amasova (Barbara Bach) to investigate the disappearance of two nuclear submarines, one from the Soviet Union and one from Great Britain (Yes, I got a definite You Only Live Twice vibe to it).  The Bond villain in this case was Stromberg (Curd Jürgens), who was looking to launch the missiles at New York and Moscow.  He hired the all-time henchman Jaws, the indestructible man with metal teeth.  Jaws made it through a couple of Bond movies because he was such a great villain.

It was refreshing that Stromberg was not interested in a blackmail scheme (unlike all of the other Bond villains… yes, I’m looking at you Blofeld!).  However, I still do not understand these villains.  They have Bond captured, why not just put a bullet in his head.  They let him live and he always comes back and kills them.

I enjoyed the relationship between Bond and Anya.  There is an interesting conflict thrown into the relationship that causes some strife between them.  That conflict is not really handled as well as it could have been.  I would have liked to see more from Anya as she wound up being rescued by Bond quite a bit.  She was very smart, but her dialogue in the last third or so of the film was, “James,” and then pointing at something that was about to happen.  I know this was the 70’s but I like strong women.

There are some fun gadgets involved here and it was not over top.  The underwater car was a cool gadget that worked well.  You can see though that the franchise is going to be moving more in that direction.

I find this strange, but I really enjoyed this film despite it being a low Rotten Tomatoes score of 44%.  I mean I found it very weird when I looked at Rotten Tomatoes and saw that score.  I expected it to be much higher than it was.  It is one more example of how movies are subjective, I suppose.

In The Man with the Golden Gun, James Bond (Roger Moore) returns to action to search out an assassin named Scaramanga (Christopher Lee), a marksman who uses a golden gun and hires himself out to the highest bidder.  Scaramanga lives on his own island with his manservant Nick Nack (Hervé  Villechaize, best known as Tattoo from Fantasy Island).

I thought the combination of Christopher Lee and Hervé Villechaize was inspired and that they were,perhaps, the best boss/henchman combo in the Bond franchise up to this point.  They were distinctly menacing and I got the feeling that Scaramanga was the equal to 007.  The training pieces where Scaramanga would have Nick Nack hiring killers to “test” him were fascinating.  The whole solar power plot point felt as if it did not fit with the story that they should have told.  I was not interested in the search for the MacGuffin of this story, but I was into the one on one aspect between Bond and Scaramanga.

The film went further with the slapstick humor and, for the most part, it did not bother me.  I am not sure that I needed to see Clifton James reprise his role of Sheriff Pepper from Live and Let Die, but it did not hurt anything either.

Some of the negative reviews I have seen are because of an unfavorable comparison of Roger Moore to Sean Connery.  As I said in my last review, I grew up with Roger Moore as James Bond so I was not swayed away from his interpretation.  While I do now prefer Sean Connery, I am not willing to just dismiss Moore because the two men have different styles.  Moore received a lot of unnecessary hatred for his acting here and I found him to be fine.  The stories being told during this stretch of time works more with Moore than it would with another Bond.

The Man with the Golden Gun was better than the reviews give it credit for and I though Christopher Lee was an excellent villain.  I would have loved it if the film focused more on the rivalry between Bond and Scaramanga instead of the typical Bond plot.

Fantasy fairy tale telling at its finest.

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen is a film from the weird mind of Terry Gilliam that follows the return to the “Age of Reason” of the heroic figure of German Baron Munchausen.  Munchausen returns, finding his adventures being portrayed in a stage play, and feeling the need to set the record straight.  Meanwhile, the Turks are attacking the city and the real Baron takes to the skies to try and reunite his old crew, with the help of a small child named Sally (Sarah Polley).

Despite the financial failings of the film, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen has become a cult classic.

The film is a masterpiece in visual imagery and special effects.  The costumes, makeup and design is off the charts, able to match the unbridled imagination of Gilliam.

The performances here are really great as well.  John Neville strikes the perfect chord as the over the hill hero who balances between who is his and the desire to let death claim him.  Eric Idle from Monty Python fame brings a chaotic humor, delivering, and receiving, some of the best one liners of the film.

There are some extremely notable cameos in the film as well, with Robin Williams, Uma Thurmon, and Sting showing up.

How much of the story is happening and how much of it is nothing more than the rambling of an old man?  The air of mystery at the end helps to put a fantastical spin on the conclusion to the film.

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen is not your typical movie and it is all the better because of that.

And so begins the era of Roger Moore as 007.

Roger Moore was the James Bond I knew growing up.  Since I have not watched a lot of these movies for years, they do tend to blend together.  However, many of the memories I have from my childhood of James Bond comes from Live and Let Die.

Live and Let Die started down the path of taking James Bond into more of a campy, almost slapstick, route rather than the pseudo-serious super spy action of most of the previous Bond films to this point.  You can see in Live and Let Die the more reliance on gadgets and the wild situations, such as running across the backs of crocodiles, are even more ramped up.

Roger Moore fit with this quality of Bond and worked as the character is taken in this direction.  He had a lightheartedness about him that was different from Connery or Lazenby’s performances.

In Live and Let Die, Bond comes to investigate the deaths of three British agents who were investigating the heroin trade in America.  Specifically, the dealings of a crime lord named Mr. Big (Yaphet Kotto), the head of a small island country in the Caribbean.  Mr. Big maintained the services of Solitaire (Jane Seymour), a tarot card reading psychic, who gives him the skinny on the future.

Live and Let Die took advantage of the blaxploitation trend at the time, using several of the genre’s tropes and cliches.  The movie’s plot included the use of voodoo and the wild mystic villain named Samedi (Geoffrey Holder).

It also featured the weirdest chase scene in movie history.  Bond jumps in a speed boat and they begin a chase on the water.  That, in and of itself, is not strange.  However, as the boat chase started, it switched POV to a white, hick sheriff named Sheriff Pepper (Clifton James).  While I do not know this for sure, Sheriff Pepper made me wonder if he was an inspiration for the creation of Sheriff Buford T. Justice from the Smokey and the Bandit series.  It was bizarre to watch much of that speed boat chase through the eyes of this sheriff.  I know it is a divisive scene among Bond films, but I have to say it is one of the most memorable scenes for me.  I remembered Pepper from the first time I saw him.

Of course, the film featured one of the best Bond title songs, from Paul McCartney and Wings.  This is probably my personal favorite song among the Bond themes, and the filmmakers must have thought to themselves that “we have Paul McCartney” because they played the song multiple times in the movie.

This film kicked off Roger Moore as James Bond in a fun and energetic manner.  While there were some departures from the previous films, Live and Let Die holds its own place among the better Bond films and a door into the new world of 007.

The Bond is back.

At least for one movie.  Sean Connery returned to the role of James Bond in Diamonds are Forever, which would turn out to be his final appearance as Bond until the 1980’s.

After having one film with George Lazenby as 007, Connery put the tuxedo back on to chase down his nemesis, Blofeld (Charles Gray), whose latest evil scheme is to steal a valuable assortment of diamonds to turn them into a powerful laser beam on a satellite.

Interestingly enough, Bond did not make any references to the dead wife at the end of the last movie, even though the cold open to this film was Bond violently in pursuit of Blofeld with very un-Bondlike tactics.

Sean Connery is, once again, a great Bond, even if he was starting to show some grey hair at his sideburns.

The story itself was fairly middling and lacked a lot of focus.  With Blofeld’s death in the cold open, it took away from the rest of the movie…especially when he shows back up later in the film.  He also loses a lot of villain cred because he simply needs to kill Bond when he has the chance.  Blofeld has had several opportunities to just shoot Bond in the head and keeps him around for some reason.  Maybe he, deep down, really wants Bond to stop him.  Bond movies are hidden psychological thrillers.

This does feel as if the franchise takes a turn into more of a cartoonish feel than the serious spy world here.  It is just waiting for Roger Moore to show up, I guess.

The third installment of the Scream franchise showed that there was more to the life of the series than you may have expected.

The movie Stab 3 is in production until a brutal murder happens to one of the actresses.  A second killing proved that a Ghostface killer has returned.  How is this killing connected to Sydney Prescott (Neve Campbell)?

Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox) and Dewey Riley (David Arquette) appear again as the killer is running around piling up the body count.

Honestly, there is nothing new here. In fact, most of the sequel is filled with stuff that we have seen already.  Still, that did not bother me that much.  The first couple of films in the franchise was as much of a deconstruction of horror films, especially the slasher genre.  This one does not deconstruct the horror movie as much as it does the horror movie productions.

These characters are familiar enough that you want to see them safe.  I do like the idea of how Sydney Prescott is paranoid and isolating herself from the world because of everything that has happened to her.  The events of the first two films had devastating effects on her and I like how they show that in her.

Wes Craven directed this and ended the Scream trilogy reasonably well.  Considering how successful the first film was, thought about as one of the best horror films made, Scream 3 ends out the series well (although there is more to go).  It is fine.

I remember really enjoying this movie.  After watching it today, I realize that I absolutely love this movie.

City Slickers stars Billy Crystal, Bruno Kirby and Daniel Stern as three best friends who have been having their own troubles with real life.  So the trio look to find their smiles on a trip to drive cattle in the US southwest.

In this movie, the plot is pretty simple.  Honestly, the plot is inconsequential to the movie.  This is more of a character study with these three men who have been friends since childhood and how they have dealt with or have to deal with life.  The exchanges between the three of them are utterly brilliant and the dialogue draws the picture on who these men are.

From their discussions, we learn about their relationships with each other, with their significant others and with their fathers.  Each, seemingly silly, conversation has a deeper meaning delving into characterization for the three men.  It is a story of friendship and discovery.  No matter what was said or done, the three men were together and connected.

Of course, you can’t talk about City Slickers without talking about the great Jack Palance and his Oscar winning performance as Curly.  Palance brought an amazing presence to the screen with every moment Curly showed up.  Making the most of minimal screen time, Palance was a major force behind the story.

The other secondary characters were all fine, but not deeply developed.  However, everybody received their own moments that, while not deep, were character informing.  Oh, and Billy Crystal’s son is played by Jake Gyllenhaal.

Plus, the movie was extremely funny.  Billy Crystal was at the height of his game in this film and his witty banter made every line pop.  Although some might say When Harry Met Sally, for my money, this is Billy Crystal’s greatest lead performance.

City Slickers is character study that is a fantastic movie with comedy, drama and deep character development.  It has some emotional moments and really knows how to hit the feels.  It was better than I remembered.

George Lazenby.

Mr. one and done.

James Bond was no longer Sean Connery (although he would be again).  Now he was a tall and lanky Australian.

Sean Connery had resigned from Bond during the filming of You Only Live Twice and sent the producers into a search for the new James Bond.  Lazenby accepted the role and, reportedly, was offered a 7 film contract. However, he decided to only do one Bond film because, according to Wikipedia, his agent had convinced him that “the secret agent would be archaic in the liberated 1970s.”

Hm.  Perhaps not the best advise ever given.

In the movie, Bond (George Lazenby) is in search for his old nemesis Blofeld (Telly Savalas), who was hatching his latest evil scheme.  This time, Blofeld intended on sterilizing the world’s food supply through the aid of his brainwashed “Angles of Death.”  Along the way, Bond met Countess Tracy (Diana Rigg), a daughter of a crimelord who had info on Blofeld.

The relationship between Bond and Tracy was one that was uncommon amongst the Bond movies.  Tracy felt like a complex character that we really did not get enough from.  The ending of the film focused on the connection between these two characters and drove home the emotion for them.  The final scene of the film was one of the tougher scenes in the franchise.

Continuity may have been a little iffy in this movie.  Bond and Blofeld went face to face, with Bond “undercover” and they pretended as if they hadn’t seen each other before.  Blofeld was also missing his scar from his appearance in You Only Live Twice.  I guess since both of them were new actors, one could argue they had not seen each other before.  It is just strange since they played it off as if Bond had been searching for Blofeld for awhile.

As for Lazenby, the first act or so of the movie was awkward for me.  I was watching him so much, trying to get used to him that he did not feel like James Bond, despite the efforts in the opening scene to really drive it home that he was.  However, that awkwardness melted away as the film progressed and I stopped seeing the differences and started seeing him as the character.  I actually liked what he did and how he took the character in a slightly different direction.

The film did take a couple of shots at Connery, as Lazenby saying that, “This never happened to the other fellow.”  There was a bit with Bond resigning from Her Majesty’s Secret Service only to receive a vacation.

There was a lot of great action, including some ski slope chases that were quite thrilling.  This movie was closer to the novel than some of the previous Bond films, which meant it was more realistic and less campy.  I found that to be fairly intriguing.

It was never going to be easy to follow Sean Connery in this role, but George Lazenby did an admirable job and, as I said before, the ending of this movie was uncommon and exceptional.  This was surprisingly good and makes me wish that Lazenby would have continued on with the part.

The fifth James Bond film took a step down in quality for me as You Only Live Twice has some major flaws going against it.

In the height of the Cold War, someone is responsible for hijacking space shuttles, first from the US and then from the Soviet Union.  The British government believe that it is someone other than one of the two main powers and send James Bond (Sean Connery) to Japan to investigate.

We do officially meet Blofeld (Donald Pleasence), Number One of SPECTRE, who we have been teased about for the previous several movies.

The story of the movie is very thin and contains so many holes that you have to stretch credibility way too much.  The pacing of the movie is very shaky.  The first half of the film is dull.  The second half is ridiculous.

I did enjoy the pool of piranha in Blofeld’s chambers.  That was worth a couple of cool deaths.

Honestly, there were a few times where the film felt a little racist.  I do not think the film intended to be racist.  It was just a part of the time.  So I did cringe a couple of times looking at the film with 21st century eyes instead of 20th century ideas.

Roald Dahl was one of the writers on this film, which was disappointing because I did not find anything interesting here considering I really enjoy Dahl’s work.

I see on IMDB that something that I saw early was, in fact, true.  Early in the movie, when Bond was fighting a henchman in the office of Osato (Teru Shimada), I thought that the henchman looked familiar.  I thought that the man looked like “High Chief” Peter Maivia, a professional wrestler from the 60’s and 70’s, who was the grandfather of Dwayne Johnson.  Turns out that it was Chief Maivia.  The bond franchise has used several pro wrestlers over the years (including Professor Tanaka) in henchmen roles.  It was cool to see Maivia here.

I found this Bond film disappointing and it sure seemed as if Sean Connery had begun to be wavering on the role.