What was the last movie you saw...? Part IV

[Charger]

So as today I'll move forward to the Roger Moore era let's put the Connery era in order.


Diamonds Are Forever
You Only Live Twice
GoldFinger
Dr. No
Thunderball
From Russia With Love

Diamonds took the bit surprising lead. That movie was a whole lot better than I remembered. Time surely has treated that one well!

[KiloDeltaCharlie]

Although I have not seen any of the early films for years, I always remember From Russia with Love as my favourate. I might think differently these days should I rewatch them.

[Charger]

You might indeed...Time surely changed my viewing of the movies.

Just finished Live And Let Die. The iconic boat chase hasn't lost a beat. Probably still one of the best chase scenes in all of Bond movies.

Moore is still finding his way with the character and isn't quite there yet but the movie itself is very entertaining and ofcourse Jane Seymour was an absolute dream back then...oh my.

I can imagine this movie is now considered racist...

[KiloDeltaCharlie]

Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One

7th (of 8 ) episode in the M:I franchise sees the returning cast of Tom Cruise, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg and Rebecca Ferguson joined by Hayley Atwell, Vanessa Kirby, Esai Morales, Pom Klementieff and Shea Whigham... Henry Czerny makes a return as Kitteridge last seen in the very first M:I!

Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and his team must track a dangerous AI weapon before it falls into the hands of the highest, shadiest bidder. The film globe trots the way most of these films (such as Bond, Fast and Furious, Bourne) always seem to. starting with a Russian sub mysteriously sinking (more on that in Part Two me thinks!), then a bunch of time in Italy where deals and spying takes place as well as running through the streets of Venice and having fights and car chases, before the final act which takes place on the Orient Express where much of the main action sequences take place.

Since the 4th entry (Ghost Protocol) the films have been much improved over the first trio (IMO), where the plots and set pieces have consistently got more ridicul- err better! This one is no exception and even though the AI theme is getting a little over used these days you have to remember that this started filming in 2019 (it was held back as Cruise didn't want 2 potential big blockbusters he was in to come out in the same year). The plot is quite good, the action is unmatched, but at 2:45 it is maybe a little long. Also as this is Part 1 you don't really get a satisfactory resolution.

This film cost $291m to make (a big overspend thanks to COVID-19), but really looks like money was well spent. FAST X cost $320m dollars to make and looks like it had a budget of $50m if I'm being generous!!

8.5 / 10

[Thelemech]

My ranking for the Sean Connery 007 movies

Goldfinger
Dr No
From Russia With Love
Diamonds are Forever
You only Live Twice
Never Say Never Again
Thunderball

[Tyr66]

Nothing could be wrong with Christian Bale.
8/10

[Charger]

The Man With The Golden Gun was up next last night. And I have to say I remembered it being better. It was bit slow, not a lot of action and ofcourse no real end fight at all.

Christopher Lee was pretty good but I think he could have been better and more involved.

Lulu's theme song is still good, although Alice Cooper's one would have been far superior but sadly he was too "rocky" for the producers to chose.

Britt Ekland was probably the best part of the film. But kind of like with Connery-era the second movie here is the worst of the lot.

[Tyr66]

Seen on streaming. I stopped everything after an hour to understand what I was looking at. How boring !!
I restarted the reading by looking at it from the angle of animal abuse (an ultra-sensitive subject for me) and I went to the end but what a disappointment vs the first 2.
5/10

[Charger]

The Spy Who Loved Me

This is another quintessential Bond movie. It has everything, great action, beautiful women (especially the insanely pretty Caroline Munro) a masterful villain brilliantly played by Curd Jurgens and a tough henchman in Jaws. And ofcourse beautiful locations and funky gadgets and a great over the top ending battle!

Probably one of the best Bond movies ever made and most certainly one of the most entertaining ones.

The only real gripe about this movie is the atrocious theme song by Carly Simon....how could they write such a lackluster and bland theme for such a great movie is still beyond me.

[Thelemech]

The Spy Who Loved Me is my favorite Bond movie and one of my favorite movies period

[Charger]

My favourite Bond has been For Your Eyes Only, but I have already seen some of my old listings change so we shall see.

[Thelemech]

I also love For Your Eyes Only!

[Charger]

My Bond marathon was cut short by Amazon Prime pulling all the Bond movies from their list...bastards!!

Well an add for something else popped up and I thought why not...


BULLET TRAIN

A bunch of trained hitmen find themselves on a bullet train travelling from Tokyo to Kyoto each with different objectives but their paths inevitably cross and all sort of chaos ensues...and it soon becomes evident that they were all there for a reason.

This is straight out action comedy with over the top humor and wild fights and stunts. Not a serious moment in the whole movie.

I am not a huge Brad Pitt fan but here he shines. One of the best preformances I've seen of him. He doesn't over do it as usual but acts very casually and lets the humor shine through in nearly everything he does. He is on the phone with his handler (whose voice sounded so familiar but I just couldn't recognise it until the end when she stepped out of the car) for most of the movie and their nonchalant conversations are hilarious.
Other actors are also very good especially the lovely but far from innocent Joey King and the briliant duo of Aaron Taylor Johnson and Brian Tyree Henry.

I had heard good things about this movie but I still went into it with low expectations but my goodness did it surprise me all the way.

One of the most over the top funny and entertaining action movie to come out in recent years.
The only real gripe about it were the rather poor CGI "makeup" effects. They really were way too obvious. Even The Walking Dead did a better job with swords through the heads than this film. Oh how I do miss practical effects in movies like these.
But other than that this was a total enjoyment fest...not something you'd ever expect from a movie with Brad Pitt!

*  *  *  *

[KiloDeltaCharlie]

Barbenheimer!

So over the last couple of weeks we've seen both parts of this "double bill"!

BARBIE

Based on the Mattel toy, it stars Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, America Ferrera, Rhea Pearlman, Kate McKinnon and Will Ferrell. It's directed by Greta Gerwig.

Barbie and Ken live in a fantasy town full of Barbie's and Ken's (Plus an Alan!). When this life starts to go wrong for one of the Barbies, she feels that she needs to leave for the real world to find out what's changed. On this journey one of the Ken's hides in he car and ends up going with her. When in the real world Barbie meets with various people including the CEO of Mattel, and the designers. Ken finds a library where he discovers that men are better than women rather than equals. He takes this news back to the fantasy town...

It's not actually "that bad", both main leads are well cast in their roles... indeed Robbie has rarely looked better. It's not really for kids (little kids anyway), I would guess teenagers really! Some topics discussed include their not having genitalia! There are a couple of songs in the film, and the one that Ken sings is quite good!

It's very pink, a slightly more mature story line than I would have expected. But at the end of the day it's no Citizen Kane! 6/10

-------------

OPPENHEIMER
Christopher Nolan's latest film is a biography of the leader of the Manhattan Project, J Robert Oppenheimer. The film stars, Cillian Murphy, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jnr, Emily Blunt, Jason Clarke, Aiden Ehrenreich, Florence Pugh, Kenneth Branagh and Tom Conti.

This 3 hour film switches back and forth between time streams but they are basically:
Pre War - Oppenheimer gets his reputation and mixes with communists.
During the war - Oppenheimer leads the Manhattan project and develops the Nuclear Bomb.
Post War - Where the government tries to discredit him and get his security clearance to work on government projects revoked.

There's not a huge amount of action but what there is is during the development of the bomb, and the Trinity Test is very well done. Despite the film being largely person to person interactions and courtroom scenes, it is surprisingly watchable. 8/10

[Charger]

Back to the James Bond marathon. Thank you Prime for adding them back to the list.


Moonraker.

I was very interested in watching this one again as in the back of my mind this one was probably my least favourite classic Bond movie.
But once again things have changed a bit. In fact the first half of the movie is quite good indeed. Especially the fantastic gondola chase in Venice and the boat chase in the amazon are great classic Bond action sequences and the fight inside the glass museum is fun. And ofcourse the reappearance of Jaws is a fun one and Richard Kiel has some of the best facial expressions in the history of the Bond movies!
Special mention ofcourse to the sensationally beautiful Corinne Clery.

But ofcourse once we get to the space part of the movie things unravel quite fast. In a word it's silly. But it's not "haha" silly...it's just silly.
This movie cost more than almost all the other Bond's put together but it does kind of show that money doesn't automatically make a great movie. Here most of the budget was wasted on silliness.

But all in all it wasn't as bad as I remembered so that's a positive thing!