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

[Zzzptm]

Birdemic

OH WOW THIS IS BAD

Watching with my mom and daughter, we all love terrible movies. And this one is TERRIBLE.

On a scale of 1 to 10, it's Birdemic!

[Charger]

Carrying on with the Bond movies.

My old favourite For Your Eyes Only!

And I can safely say nothing has changed with this one! Still just as fantastic as I remembered. The 2CV car chase was suberb as was the skiing bit. Roger Moore was in top form here and Sheena Easton's title song was just as good as ever and Carole Bouquet was as stunning as ever...that hair...oh that hair!

The thing that also sets this apart from most other Bond movies is that the villain here isn't trying to take over the world or kill everyone...it's a nice "twist" and yes it does mean there's no real big end fight but that's okay as the rest of the movie is so damn perfect.

[Zzzptm]

My other daughter came over and we watched Turkish Star Wars.

It's 100% batshit insane, we didn't stop laughing with all the bootleg footage and bad kung fu!

[KiloDeltaCharlie]

A couple of films I've seen in the last few days:

Strays

A live action film with talking dogs gets the R/15 Rated treatment! Starring Will Ferrell, Jamie Foxx, Isla Fisher and Randall Park as the voice of the main dogs and Will Forte as the main live action human!! There's a couple of cameos from Josh Gad and Sophia Vergara.

Reggie the dog (Ferrell) is cast aside by his owner (Forte) in the big city where he teams up with fellow strays Bug (Foxx), Maggie (Fisher) and Hunter (Park). Reggie wants to get home to take revenge on his owner... and bite his dick off! What ensues is a road trip.

This could have been so much better if it didn't rely on sweary language, sex references and poop/pee humour virtually every moment of the film. There are some funny moments, particularly when the strays come across a patch of magic mushrooms. Not dreadful but if they had a greater / less shallow variety of laughs it could have been a lot better. 5/10

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Meg 2: The Trench

The Action / Thriller / Horror franchise returns for a second outing. Starring Jason Statham, Jing Wu, Shuya Sophia Cai, Cliff Curtis, Page Kennedy, Skyler Samuels and Sergio Peris-Mencheta... I hadn't heard of anyone except Statham!! Like the first film it is a Warner Bros / Chinese co-production.

The team of ocean researchers lead by Jonas (Statham) head off on a dive using submersibles to explore the ocean depths. They disturb a shady mining operation and inadvertently release some Megalodon's to wreak havoc on a nearby holiday island.

There are so many preposterous, physical law breaking moments going on in this film that anyone who is actually an engineer is going to rip their own eyeballs out in exasperation! BUT... that's not the point it's a great action film, with a ludicrous plot. It's not really that scary and I agree with Statham who says he thinks there should be more blood and gore in the film. 7.5/10

[Charger]

I quite enjoyed the first Meg so I'll be checking this one out as well at some point!

[Charger]

The final two Moore Bond were the next in line.

Octopussy was actually again little bit better than I remembered but it still has it's flaws biggest being ofcourse Maud Adams...There are some really good action sequences here though, the opening sequence, the rickshaw chase and the train fight are all those classic Bond moments. But there is a bit of a lull in the middle of the movie...the ending fight with the girls is pretty good too though...the plane fight at the end though is bit too ridiculous even in Bond standards.
The theme song is sadly very very poor as well.

A View To A Kill again was every bit as good as I remembered. Christopher Walken's Zorin still remains one of the most evil Bond Villains and yet has charisma to share. Tanya Roberts is lovely as hell and Grace Jones is...well I'm not entirely sure what Grace Jones is to be honest.
Sure Roger Moore started to show his age already at this point and wasn't quite as fast in his moves anymore and had to rely heavily on stunt men but he still has his charisma and witty style.
Some great action here as well one of the best ones being the bit by bit dwindling Renault...and the ending fight at the Golden Gate Bridge is a classic among classics.
And ofcourse Duran Duran's theme song is just SUBERB.


I think I would rate the Moore bonds as follow:

The Spy Who Loved Me
For Your Eyes Only
A View To A Kill
Live And Let Die
Octopussy
Moonraker
The Man With The Golden Gun

With the two first ones pretty much sharing the title.

On to the Timothy Dalton ones ->

[Vyn]

I used to love James Bond movies. Octopussy was the last one I've seen - not sure why I never went to see A View to A Kill when it came out, but I still haven't seen it, or any of the rest of them. But when I was a kid, a new James Bond movie coming out was like an extra Christmas, and I've wanted an Aston Martin ever since. Still don't have one lol

[Charger]

I too was a huuuuge Bond fan as a kid. Loved them to death.

But I was I guess kind of surprised how much I enjoyed them now as well.

[Zzzptm]

You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah

Adam Sandler is having FUN. No question about it. He wanted to make a movie with his kids and have it be in a John Hughes kind of style. I think he pulled it off quite nicely. No monumental epic of cinema, but a good popcorn-muncher of a flick that has loads of warmth in it. It was on Netflix, my wife had a back spasm and I had some stomach trouble, so we just put it on and had some good laughs take our minds off our pains. Genuine humor in it, I don't remember cringing at all, and a very sweet ending. Sandler is going hard for that #1 Dad coffee mug with this picture.

If you want to watch junior-high kids finding ways to resolve the terrors of that age in ultimately positive ways, this is the movie for you. Sandler's daughter does a GREAT job with her role and is totally believable. Nepotism, this ain't.

[Charger]

Timothy Dalton's Bonds were next in line.

The Living Daylights was about as good as I remembered. Good action, the skiing Aston Martin was brilliant! Also he had HUD in that thing decades before it became a thing!
Maryam D'Abo was absolutely lovely and both Joe Don Baker and Jeroen Krabbe were good bad guys for sure. This was bit dialed down from some of the Moore Bonds but that's not always a bad thing.
Dalton's Bond is closest to the original and he is a good mix of Connery's seriousness and Moore's one liners. And he most certainly had the charisma to BE Bond.
A-Ha's theme was actually better than I remembered but still very 80s.

Licence To Kill had a very serious undertone to it with Bond resigning from MI-6 to go after a vicious drug dealer who killed Felix Leiter's newly wed wife and severly disfigured him. Robert Davi is excellent in the super bad guy Sanchez and eventhough there is no major plot to kill a bunch of people like Zorin, Sanchez is even more vicious and ruthless...to him it's all about the business.
Bond has to get bit more serious as well going after him but the light heartedness is still present and Dalton handles both very very well indeed.
Both Bond girls are good but Talisa Soto is just incredible. And this also features the one and only time Q comes to the field to aid Bond, which is ironic as officially Bond is no longer an active agent. So it just firms the friendship between them.
Gladys Knight's theme song sadly is not very good.

Both are excellent films and it was a real shame that the franchise died out after Licence To Kill...Because Timothy Dalton did an amazing job and his Bond was the most complex Bond...But times were changing and Bond had lost some of his appeal over the years...partly probably because of Moore's bit too long stay in the role. Dalton was actually already lined up to play Bond in A View To A Kill but Moore quite reluctantly agreed to do that one more movie...
But maybe that wouldn't have made a difference and it was just time for James Bond to retire...

It's hard to put these two in order as I still found myself loving both about as much as I did in the past.
But if a Walther PPK was put to my head I guess I'd go with

Licence To Kill having a slight edge to The Living Daylights.


But you can't keep James Bond down for long...time to jump 6 years ahead and on we go with Pierce Brosnan!

[Thelemech]

My ranking of the Bond actors

Roger Moore
Sean Connery
Pierce Brosnan
Timothy Dalton
Daniel Craig


And the worst Bond ever George Lazenby

When they decided to kill Bond with the last movie, I personally couldn't find the will to care for the franchise anymore and I also was not the biggest fan of the Daniel Craig run of Bond films anyway

[Charger]

And then I'm done with the last of the Bond movies worth watching with Pierce Brosnan!

GoldenEye is a great rejuvination with a lot of classic Bond elements just amped up a bit. Great action and the tank chase in St. Petersburg is an absolute hoot and a modern classic.
Both Famke Janssen and Izabella Scorupco are stunning and Sean Bean is a good bad guy as usual.
Tina Turner's title song isn't too bad either.
Pierce Brosnan is still getting used to being Bond and that shows a bit at times.

Tomorrow Never Dies is hands down the best of the Brosnan-Bonds and mainly because of it's satrically over the top yet rather believable bad guy in Jonathan Pryce's media mogul Elliot Carver. It is scary how close to Carver-like media has become in the past 25 years. Faking news and faking facts...
Michelle Yeoh is a good match for Bond and Teri Hatcher's small but rather important role also is a treat. Again the action is top notch and the bit different car chase in the parking garage with Bond literally back seat driving his BMW 7-series is an absolute blast!
Nothing bad to say about this one...Sheryl Crow's title song is also quite enjoyable.

The World Is Not Enough gets a lot of bad reviews and I frankly don't understand why...the action is great there's a good plot twist that isn't too predictable and Sophie Marceau is gorgeous. Ah...but then comes the hickup indeed...Denise Richards...if there's ever been a miscast of a Bond girl it is here. She is rather horrible and pretty unbelievable in the role as well...Robert Carlyle's main villain is a bit of a step down from Pryce but he still delivers.
In this we also bid farewell to the wonderful Desmond Llewellyn's Q...in a rather great manner too. Bond getting the ultra rare BMW Z8 only to have it cut in half is sad to say the least!
This was the first Bond I went to see in theaters back in the day.

Die Another Day was the second (and last) Bond movie I went to the theater to see. And I have to say this one hasn't aged well...I remembered it being better than it turned out to be. There's already a bit of a change visible in the Bond character and the introduction of the all CGI-effects (that also haven't aged very well) in action sequences isn't what Bond needs. I remember this being marketed as a tribute to all the past Bond movies for it being #20 and indeed you can spot a lot of old school Bond gadgets in new Q's lair. That's the best part of the movie. The invisible Vanquish is bit over the top...and the car chase in the Icelandic glacier between the big UK rivals Aston Martin and Jaguar was a fun touch...with Aston (naturally) winning.
Halle Berry isn't half bad in the female lead but honestly I think she and Rosamund Pike could have traded places and it might have worked better. The plot twist in this one (both of them actually) were pretty good although I did see both coming bit before Bond did.
Madonna's theme music is...well...it's bit too Madonna of the times...over use of autotune and zero melody. Worst of the Brosnan-era themes for sure! Actually worst since Octopussy I'd say.
I can fully understand why Brosnan wanted out after this one...the direction they were taking Bond was getting evident and it wasn't the right one. But there is still more "classic" Bond in this movie than all the Craig abominations combined but writing was in the air that Bond would never be same again.



Final Rankings

Tomorrow Never Dies
Golden Eye
The World Is Not Enough
Die Another Day


Thus ends my Bond marathon. It was a lot of fun...as to be expected.

[Zzzptm]

Last 2 movies I saw...

Wallace and Gromit and the Curse of the Were-Rabbit: My daughter said she hadn't seen it since she was 3 and wanted to see it as an adult, so we had a fun night with this clever little joyride. Hilarious fun.


Rock Baby Rock It: There's a story here... my daughter is still recovering from her knee surgery, so my mom has been visiting her and they've been watching AWFUL movies to have some fun heckling them. A passion I admit to sharing with them - it did not skip a generation. This particular one is a film made in my home town of Dallas in 1957 about a bad guy named Crackers trying to boot the kids out of their rock and roll club so he can buy the place and make it into a club befitting "The Detroit Gang". The kids have 2 weeks to raise the money to pay the back rent, so they decide to do a rock and roll show. The bad guy gets his toughs to rough up the rock and roll heroes, but it's no dice as the kids had a benefactor who called a lawyer who called a Senator who got the FBI to alert the local cops and the bad guys get beat and and and and THEN THEY PLAY ROCK AND ROLL until the end of the show.

The rock acts are great except for the one that did Dixieland Jazz and had a piano player that either stared at the crowd like a zombie or stood up on his stool and played the piano like he was touching his toes... we razzed him but good. The crowd shots of people clapping along did not match the beats most of the time. Yeah, it had NO budget at all!

We had a great time watching footage of Dallas rock acts playing live in the late 50s intercut with a plot that had zero story and b-roll crowd footage. Loved it.

[Tyr66]

The Jean-Pierre Melville Chef-d'Oeuvre (1970)

[Charger]

Then to cap of the James Bond series we have the strange one...

Never Say Never Again sees Sean Connery returning after over 10 years but not for an official James Bond movie but a something of a pirate copy...former writer and producer Kevin McClory won a lengthy legal battle with Ian Flemming's company and got the chance to do his own Bond movie...however it was only to be a remake of the one he had been part of in the 60s...and that being Thunderball.
Eventhough main characters are somewhat the same as in Thunderball and the over all plot is similar it isn't a carbon copy though. The action here isn't quite as spectacular as on the "real" Bond movies but it still has some nice sequences including James Bond chasing Barbara Carrera's villain with a motorcycle.
This does take many liberties and changes some of the characters quite a bit including Edward Fox's portrail of M is quite different from what you'd see in the actual movies. Same goes for Q.
Connery doesn't take himself or the role too seriously and has a bit of a sparkle in his eye constantly.

But was there any reason for this movie to be made...? No. But it's still some fun. Is it better than the original Thunderball? Well...I'm not sure if it's even necessary to compare. This is something of a tribute and a parody put in one.