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.

What in the blue hell did I just watch?

I watched the 1980 film Popeye, starring Robin Williams and Shelley Duvall, and I cannot decide if what I saw was a masterpiece or a total and complete mess.  Perhaps it’s both.

Just recently, Popeye longtime animator Gene Deitch passed away at age 95 and, when I saw the film on Netflix, it got me thinking about the movie.  I had never seen it, but I had heard some just terrible word of mouth about it.  Even Robin Williams had made fun of the movie.

However, I love Robin Williams, and I had heard recently some positives of the film from film critic William Bibbiani.  I had placed it on my queue on Netflix on the weekend that I had decided to do the Punish-Myself-Binge, but I did not get to it as the first four I watched that weekend ruined that concept for me.

Finally I decided this morning would be a good time to watch it.

Um…..

Okay, first of all, the casting of this movie was spot on.  As great as Robin Williams was as Popeye, I do not think I have ever seen a more inspired bit of casting than Shelley Duvall, the same year that she played Wendy Torrence in the Shining.  Duvall’s performance was as if the oddball character of Olive Oyl had leaped out of the comic strip and onto the big screen.  Paul L. Smith was a perfect Bluto.  Ray Walston, a personal favorite from Picket Fences and Eerie, Indiana, appeared as Poopdeck Pappy.  Classic character actor Paul Dooley was Wimpy.

I am watching the movie, trying to hear the constant mumbling by just about all of the characters, and then they started to sing and I thought, “Is Popeye a musical?”  Honestly, I am still not sure.  The songs were bizarre and different than I had ever heard in a musical.  That is not a bad thing, but I struggled in my head to classify it.  Perhaps the idea is that Popeye is meant to defy expectations.

The story is pretty much a group of scenes strung together to show the characters as a live-action cartoon.  We have Popeye arrive in Sweethaven searching for his pappy, meet Olive Oyl and her eccentric family (her father and his constant desire for an apology is a funny running gag), fight an unbeatable boxer, find Swee’pea, and fall for Olive.

The plot actually kicks into gear in the third act when Swee’pea is kidnapped by Bluto, because the baby has some future predicting skills and Bluto wants him to find the mysterious hidden treasure.  The entire cast of characters chase after Bluto and end up on an island with a giant octopus.

Director Robert Altman created a live-action cartoon that is certainly unlike anything I have ever seen before.  As a movie, I am not sure that it is any good, but as a piece of weird and strange entertainment, Popeye succeeds.  Musical?  Maybe not.  There are songs… sort of.  The village of Sweethaven is a masterwork in construction and the people that populates the village create a world that felt lived in and, about as real as could be.

I can certainly understand why people hate this movie because it is one of the weirdest experiences I have had watching a film in a long time.  That is not a negative.

It continues to be amazing watching these early James Bond movies because you see all of the spy movie tropes in action before they became tropes.  In fact, these are the movies that inspired the use of these tropes.

Thunderball is the next Bond movie and it featured a villain with an eye patch, Largo Number Two (Adolfo Celi).  Eye patches always lead to evil villains.

James Bond (Sean Connery) returns to do battle with the criminal organization S.P.E.C.T.R.E., who has stolen nuclear warheads and is blackmailing England and the U.S. for money or they will detonate them.

Some have referred to Thunderball as the under water movie as much of the action takes place under water.  In fact, it received an Academy Award for Best Effects, Special Visual Effects for the amazing water scenes.  At the time, this was groundbreaking work.

Sean Connery continued to grow into the role of Bond, but you could begin to see the age start to show on 007.

Largo was anything but a well developed villain.  He was simply a one-note villain with an eye patch.  He is a step down from Auric Goldfinger from the franchise’s previous installment.

Thunderball may not have been as great as Goldfinger, or even the other two films prior to it, but it was fun and had some epic James Bond action.  The underwater third act action was unlike anything I had seen before.

“Do you expect me to talk?”

“No Mr. Bond, I expect you to die.”

Perhaps the most famous quote from the Bond franchise appeared in the third film in the series, one of my all-time favorite Bond films, Goldfinger.

Auric Goldfinger (Gert Fröbe) is our main villain in this installment, a man with an obsession for gold and a plan to irradiate the gold supply at Fort Knox.  James Bond (Sean Connery) is along for the ride in an attempt to stop him.

There are some iconic moments and characters that appeared in Goldfinger.  Auric Goldfinger’s loyal right hand man, Oddjob (Harold Sakata) and his projectile hat was seen here.  We also meet the one and only Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman), the most appropriately named Bond girl ever.  The movie contains perhaps one of the most infamous death scenes in film history with the gold paint on the girl, that even appeared on the movie poster.

I have to say, rewatching this after so many years, there is a scene that makes me pretty uncomfortable.  James Bond certainly seems as if he forces himself on to Pussy in the barn.  They play it off as if she was seduced and became enthralled with Bond, but it sure looked like, at the minimum, sexual assault and, at the worst, rape.  This was a different era, but that scene truly plays worse in today’s world.

The rest of the movie is solid, superspy action with an iconic villain facing off against Bond.  Bond was off his game nearly the entire film, as Auric kept him distracted throughout.  Goldfinger certainly let his “super villain” tendency get in the way of his evil plan.  He should have let that laser cut through Bond in that famous scene and his plan would have gone off without a hitch.  His own negative tendencies led to his own demise.

It was also interesting how the film recast Felix Leiter.  At first, in Dr. No, the CIA agent was played by Jack Lord, who declined the role when offered to him, and now he was portrayed by Cec Linder.

One of the best components of this film is the awesome theme song, something that becomes more of an important part to the franchise moving forward.  Goldfinger was sung by Dame Shirley Bassey and it kicks the film off with a mysterious and eerie beginning.

Still near the top of the Bond films, I did find that scene in the hay with James and Pussy to be iffy.  Otherwise, this is a classic Bond adventure that redefined the franchise moving forward.

The James Bond film franchise took a step forward with the underappreciated From Russia with Love, another film based on the Ian Fleming books.

Bond (Sean Connery) is in pursuit of a Russian decoding machine, known as “Lektor,” and must gain possession of it before the evil S.P.E.C.T.R.E organization gets its hands on it.  The Russian government wants it as well and they send a spy Tatiana Romanov (Daniela Bianchi) to go undercover with Bond to get it.

The Cold War was fully underway and this spy thriller really played into the tensions in the world at the time.  It was a film that was not just a “Bond” movie, but could be considered a straight-up Cold War movie itself.

I had no idea how much the Austin Powers characters of Dr. Evil and his crew were parodies of actual characters from the Bond franchise until I saw the members of S.P.E.C.T.R.E.  Rosa Klebb (Lotte Lenya) looked to be exactly like Frau Farbissina while the character of Number One (who would eventually be revealed as Blofeld though not named here) was Dr. Evil right down to the cat he held.  Having this background makes one appreciate the Austin Powers movie more.

Back to From Russia with Love, there was a distinct Hitchcockian feel to the film, in particular the ending half of the film.  Not only did it take place on a train, which was one of Hitchcock’s preferred settings, but the helicopter at the end felt like an allusion to North by Northwest.  The inspiration from Hitchcock is what makes this film feel different than some of the other Bond movies.

This is the first time we see M (Bernard Lee) and his gadgets that play a huge role in the film.  We also get a powerhouse heavy in Donald “Red” Grant (Robert Shaw).

I was surprised how the film was more connected to Dr. No than I thought it was.  I had always pictured the Bond series as more of a one off adventure, but there was definitely continuity involved in the story as “Number One” made reference to Dr. No in this film.

This was a very well done Bond movie and should be considered one of the better installments of the franchise.