Tag: bond

Ranking the Bond Flicks

Okay, so this is my very fast and loose attempt at ranking the Bond movies from favorite to least favorite. I spent about seven seconds thinking about this so it would probably change here and there if I thought about it more. This is not definitive, but it is my gut feeling right now.

  • From Russia with Love (1963) Sean Connery
  • Goldfinger (1964) Sean Connery
  • Casino Royale (2006) Daniel Craig
  • Skyfall (2012) Daniel Craig
  • Thunderball (1965) Sean Connery
  • Dr. No (1962) Sean Connery
  • You Only Live Twice (1967) Sean Connery
  • No Time to Die (2021) Daniel Craig
  • The Living Daylights (1987) Timothy Dalton
  • GoldenEye (1995) Pierce Brosnan
  • On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) George Lazenby
  • Diamonds Are Forever (1971) Sean Connery
  • Spectre (2015) Daniel Craig
  • Quantum of Solace (2008) Daniel Craig
  • Live and Let Die (1973) Roger Moore
  • For Your Eyes Only (1981) Roger Moore
  • License to Kill (1989) Timothy Dalton
  • The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) Roger Moore
  • The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) Roger Moore
  • Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) Pierce Brosnan
  • The World Is Not Enough (1999) Pierce Brosnan
  • Die Another Day (2002) Pierce Brosnan
  • Octopussy (1983) Roger Moore
  • A View To A Kill (1985) Roger Moore
  • Moonraker (1979) Roger Moore

The Great James Bond Movie Rewatch of 2022 Update Again, Yet Again, Again

I have made so much progress on this idiotic Bond movie rewatch. Amazon Prime Video is dropping the whole series on Friday (I think). I have all of the Daniel Craig movies, except for the most recent one, on iTunes so I need to get through Pierce Brosnan before Amazon fails me. I can do it. Probably with time to spare. Why? Because I blew through FIVE movies since the last post. Woah!

A View to a Kill is the final Roger Moore movie, thankfully. I think he was probably 85 years old (kidding) and it shows. Christopher Walken plays a decent psycho, but he’s a little over the top. Was he trying to make up for the rest of the cast? Probably. Grace Jones… eh. Sorry. Tanya Roberts… ugh. The chase scene with the fire engine is ridiculous but fun. Over all I think it was better than I remembered it, but it’s not very good. There’s nothing overtly bad about it, there just isn’t much to work with.

The Living Daylights is one of my all time favorites. I freakin’ love that movie. Timothy Dalton brings a little menace back to the roll without taking it too far. I think this is the first Bond movie that I was aware of at the time of it’s release, and I clearly remember people trashing it because Bond only bangs one Bond girl. Aids was in full terror mode and the idea of sexual promiscuity was something society was trying to avoid. Hence only one sexual partner for ol’ 007. I didn’t have a problem with it then and I don’t have a problem with it now. The movie is just great. I enjoyed it every bit as much as I hoped I would. In a historical context, rooting for the Afghan resistance knowing that one of those fighters would grow up to be Osama Bin Laden is uncomfortable at best, but they do stick it to the commies, so I guess it’s okay.

Licensed to Kill was better than I remembered, but still not as good as Living Daylights. The bad guy was kind of annoying rather than scary. We’re sort of back into bad stereotype land with this one. Its a good movie but not on my all time greats list. Wayne Newton though? Huh? The worst part of the movie for me is knowing that it’s the end of Timothy Dalton’s reign. We hardly knew ye, oh T-Dal.

Goldeneye is another one of the greats. Pierce Brosnan, on paper, is the perfect Bond actor. It doesn’t turn out that way in the end, but with this movie on it’s own? Perfect. Everything about this movie works for me. Absolutely everything. Sean Bean is great, Famke Jenson (did I spell that right?) is way over the top but not too annoying. The computer nerd hits a little too close to home for your humble computer nerd blog post writer, but that’s okay. The chase scene with the tank would have been stupid if Roger Moore had been driving but Brosnan somehow pulls it off. This is another that goes on my short list of favorite Bond movies.

Tomorrow Never Dies… I didn’t hate it. It’s not terrible. It does feel way too spoofy. In general I just don’t like Jonathan Pryce. There’s nothing wrong with him. He’s very good at his job (go watch Brazil, or Game of Thrones, or Whose Line is it Anyway), I just don’t really care for him. I don’t know anything about the craft of acting so I can’t tell you why, I just don’t like him. Brosnan is okay here, but kind of blah over all. The Chinese agent, who is played by the former captain on Star Trek Discovery who is also in all sorts of things these days but whose name always escapes me (sorry) is really good. I think my big issue is the stealth boat. I have read quite a bit of Tom Clancy and if my memory is correct, stealth planes work not so much because of what they are made out of as their shape, or it’s a combination in some way. The boat was just huge. Radar probably should have seen something, but even that’s not my beef. Navy battleships will have sonar, and with the stealth boat floating on top of the water, the battleship’s sonar would absolutely have picked up the waves sloshing off the side of the boat. I found the invisible boat floating on top of the water too unbelievable to deal with. Had it been a submarine I would have been okay with it, but it’s not. It’s the friggin’ Titanic. Oh well.

There, I am all caught up now. Two more Brosnans and five Craigs to go. I started The World is Not Enough this morning. The last three Brosnans almost feel like new movies to me. I have probably only watched them once or twice, unlike Goldeneye which I’ve seen 100 times. Same with the four most recent Craig movies (one of which I have not seen at all). This should be interesting. Now here is the updated status bar:

  • Sean Connery
    • Dr. No (1962) 95% – Finished
    • From Russia with Love (1963) 97% – Finished
    • Goldfinger (1964) 99% – Finished
    • Thunderball (1965) 85% – Finished
    • You Only Live Twice (1967) 74% – Finished
  • George Lazenby
    • On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) 81% – Finished
  • Sean Connery (Again)
    • Diamonds Are Forever (1971) 63% – Finished
  • Roger Moore
    • Live and Let Die (1973) 65% – Finished
    • The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) 40% – Finished
    • The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) 81% – Finished
    • Moonraker (1979) 59% – Finished
    • For Your Eyes Only (1981) 69% – Finished
    • Octopussy (1983) 42% – Finished
    • A View To A Kill (1985) 37% – Finished
  • Timothy Dalton
    • The Living Daylights (1987) 73% – Finished
    • License to Kill (1989) 79% – Finished
  • Pierce Brosnan
    • GoldenEye (1995) 80% – Finished
    • Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) 56% – Finished
    • The World Is Not Enough (1999) 51% – In progress
    • Die Another Day (2002) 56%
  • Daniel Craig
    • Casino Royale (2006) 94%
    • Quantum of Solace (2008) 64%
    • Skyfall (2012) 92%
    • Spectre (2015) 63%
    • No Time to Die (2021) 83%

Saturday Morning

I slept late today. I didn’t get up until almost 8:00am. The temperature outside at that time? 31 degrees. Shit. Winter is here.

I did my morning exercise before breakfast today. Over the last couple of weeks I have been walking in place for a bit then running in place for a bit and alternating until I hit about 5k in simulated distance. Yesterday I just ran the whole thing About 32 minutes, I think. Today I did the same except I actually used the indoor run workout in the workout app instead of the indoor walk setting. I went a little over my distance goal so that I could get up to 700 calories. I ended up at four miles (simulated). My feet and my calves are hurting, but I feel like I accomplished something.

The plan for today is another small kitchen improvement project, a visit to my mother, and a visit to my father. Beyond that, I don’t know for sure. Guitar, I hope. Bond movies, I assume. I want to watch yesterday’s That Pedal Show but the topic is a Boss pedal and I don’t really like Boss pedals, generally speaking.

I just stumbled over the new clock app in the new MacOS. I opened the clock on my phone and it came up on the laptop as a handoff. Sweet. Now I can track my time between bites on my computer instead of my phone.

I started a Bond movie while doing my faux running today. A View to a Kill. The last Roger Moore. It’s better than I remembered it, but it’s not very good. Christopher Walken as the bad guy. Can he play the bad guy in every Bond movie going forward? That would be fun.

I haven’t done my pick for the World Series post yet. Game one was last night. No spoilers on my pick, but the Phillies won and I am happy. I’ll do the real post later today. The UMass Lowell Riverhawks won too, and the Bruins are off to their best start in 10000 years at 8-1-0 after another win last night. I failed to watch/listen to either game, but I followed the scores as best I could. It was the first time I didn’t listen to at least a few minutes of either team’s game. Oh well.

Last night Jen and I both threw our names into the hat to be beta testers for Jack Dorsey’s new social network, Bluesky Social. Over the last year or so this page has been the only sort of social networking service that I’ve really been using. Actually, that isn’t entirely accurate. I stopped using Facebook and I’ve nearly stopped using Twitter, but I still use Flickr and lately I’ve been using the Flickr Groups more than normal and all of that counts as a social network. I have no idea what Bluesky Social is going to entail, but if it lets me thumb my nose at Musk and Twitter a little then sign me up.

Okay, time to wrap this post up. Bond and Tanya Roberts just stole a fire engine and jumped a draw bridge and that’s not cartoonish at all, right?

The Great James Bond Movie Rewatch of 2022 Update Again, Yet Again

Okay, where did I leave off last time I did an update post? Right, I had just watched The Man with the Golden Gun. I have watched four more movies since then. All with Roger Moore.

The Spy Who Loved Me is okay. It’s not great, it’s not bad. Jaws is kinda dumb, but at least they play him as a serious villain. He’s cartoony, but not too cartoony. That will change in the next movie. I remembered Barbara “Mrs Ringo Starr” Bach being terrible, and she sure wasn’t great, but she was better than I remembered. The bad guy wasn’t very interesting and the plot to take over the world and move it underwater was pretty lame. All in all, not a terrible Bond movie, but probably a pretty terrible movie movie, you know what I mean?

Moonraker is just stupid. So very stupid. It was 1979. Two years after Star Wars redefined the movie experience. Hey, let’s send Bond to space! I have to imagine there was a massive amount of cocaine being used during the development process. There’s really no other way to explain this movie. The special effects are laughably bad at times and it’s not hard to tell that most if not all of the cast knew what was going on. The worst part, for me, is Jaws. It’s beyond stupid. He falls out of a plane and flaps his arms. What the hell? Just a terrible movie.

For Your Eyes Only surprised me. Is this the best of the Roger Moore movies? I think it might be. It’s almost like they tried to reset things after the mess that was Space Bond and just made a straight forward good movie. The figure skater is kind of annoying and really doesn’t add anything to the story, other than demonstrating that James Bond probably isn’t a pedophile. Roger Moore is pretty good. The principal Bond Girl is pretty good. The bad guy is pretty good. The twist with the guy you thought was a bad guy thing was pretty good. It’s no Sean Connery movie, but it’s a pretty good Bond movie. …and it’s got Tywin Lannister! He didn’t have any lines, but there was that moment when you thought he was going to say something but… nope.

Octopussy was my first Bond movie. When we first got cable it was on HBO or one of the other movie channels constantly. I probably saw it a thousand times. It was out at the same time as the non-official Connery movie, Never Say Never Again (which was just a remake of Thunderball) and they both hit the cable networks at the same time and they both ran constantly and together they turned me into a James Bond fan. Well, that and my father telling us how the James Bond story was based on his life before he met my mother. It’s a long story. Anyway, the movie is pretty crummy. Roger Moore telling the wild tiger to SIT! is pretty much the only redeeming quality. Roger Moore was way too old at this point. I really didn’t remember that, but watching it last night it hit me like a brick to the face. Bam, he looks old. Connery in Diamonds are Forever was also too old, but it seems more of a problem here. I’m curious how it’s going to play out in the next movie, given that Moore is still there. We’ll see.

So that’s the update. Now here’s the list as it stands now… and I think I am going to throw the Rotten Tomatoes score onto the list as well, just for fun. 13 movies down and 12 to go. I’m half way there!

  • Sean Connery
    • Dr. No (1962) 95% – Finished
    • From Russia with Love (1963) 97% – Finished
    • Goldfinger (1964) 99% – Finished
    • Thunderball (1965) 85% – Finished
    • You Only Live Twice (1967) 74% – Finished
  • George Lazenby
    • On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) 81% – Finished
  • Sean Connery (Again)
    • Diamonds Are Forever (1971) 63% – Finished
  • Roger Moore
    • Live and Let Die (1973) 65% – Finished
    • The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) 40% – Finished
    • The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) 81% – Finished
    • Moonraker (1979) 59% – Finished
    • For Your Eyes Only (1981) 69% – Finished
    • Octopussy (1983) 42% – Finished
    • A View To A Kill (1985) 37%
  • Timothy Dalton
    • The Living Daylights (1987) 73%
    • License to Kill (1989) 79%
  • Pierce Brosnan
    • GoldenEye (1995) 80%
    • Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) 56%
    • The World Is Not Enough (1999) 51%
    • Die Another Day (2002) 56%
  • Daniel Craig
    • Casino Royale (2006) 94%
    • Quantum of Solace (2008) 64%
    • Skyfall (2012) 92%
    • Spectre (2015) 63%
    • No Time to Die (2021) 83%