I suppose showing US locations as glamorous might give the game away to the American audience - that indeed many of the European locations shown aren't really as glamorous in reality. It may be a subtle form of one-upmanship to make everyone think, wow, Bond's world is cool, his European origins. Perhaps it also struggles to make London look so cool at times. I do think there is scope to make Manhattan Island look cool, I recall the American movie Someone To Watch Over Me in particular, with its stunning opening shot to Sting's version of the famous song. But it might also provoke class envy among its audience... Same with showing Bond's abode in LALD or SP, make it too fancy and you get a lot of viewers thinking, okay, this is above my pay grade which they tend not to do when Bond is on 'holiday' or in effect some expensive press trip.
Ha, sleep is for suckers! I'm a night owl, so I do a lot of work into the wee hours, taking frequent breaks to post this or that.
The United States is pretty much the same no matter where you're at, dominated by the same retailers, restaurant chains, and in many cases, architecture. A few cities stand out because of oft-used iconic imagery -- NYC, Miami, Washington DC, and so forth --- but there's an overwhelming amount of sameness here, at least visually. And we're a fairly young culture, so finding the sense of romance and history that the Bond films tend to seek out from locations -- even if such is embellished -- is more challenging, I think.
It's why the American knock offs of Bond, such as the Helm and Flint series, struggled in my estimation. They never had the glamour or sophistication of the Bond films, in part, because the United State is not a glamorous or sophisticated nation. We are a rich one (though there are richer) and a confident one, but we're not particularly cultured. Even when the knock offs went to "foreign" settings (mostly on a Hollywood backlot), they couldn't figure out what was the draw other than the superficial. It's in our cultural genetics. So I can understand even the Bond producers being a bit stymied on what to seek in the U.S. that might be comparable to locations in Europe and Asia.
Diamonds are forever is my least favourite by a long way. Dull, cheesy and campy and not in a good way, Connery’s worst bond film (including NSNA). The man with the golden gun isn’t great and one of my least favourites despite Christopher lees brilliant performance. I like all the other body films but as controversial as it is I’d have to say The living Daylights is my 3rd least favourite, I find it very dull and the plot/villains are poor, Dalton no necrosis almost Dave it and Kara is a good Bond girl but overall just a boring film.
DAF, LALD and TMWTGG are actually favourites of mine, as a fan of Hamilton/ Mankiewicz - and so is LTK. While highly entertained by AVTAK, DAD and SP - they're Bond, after all! - I'd probably rate these (in descending order) as my least favourite among the Eon fare.
Critics and material I don't need. I haven't changed my act in 53 years.
I will leave out SP and NTTD as I've not seen them enough to triple down on hating them.
TND: There's plenty to like about TND like the non-stop action and as time goes on, the comment on the media (now with Social Media's yada, yada, yada). However. Brosnan is not good in this. He's trying to overplay almost every scene. He's either too cool, too intense or just overdoing the humour. People talk about him not being relaxed in GE but in TND he's still coming across as uncomfortable, but that's more with the material than being James Bond (maybe not his fault then). The finale is one of the weakest in the series and relies too much on machine guns (I find on rewatches we just turn the movie off when they find the stealth ship). Chemistry between Bond and Wei Lin is non existent, Teri Hatcher is out of place and the 'class' is crass (like having drinks in the really uncomfortable speeding daimler). Still, lowly ranked - but it's entertaining and a hoot if you want some 90s action porn.
DAD: We've heard it all before so I'll keep it brief. First half is great, second half is rubbish. I do like the PTS and Madonna's Bond song though...
DAF: Catch me on the right day and the first 30 minutes of this film is very funny. Connery is also more interested than he is in YOLT and nails the comedic stuff. Outside of that, this is just a camp, poorly made money maker for the studio and an embarrassment to folks involved with OHMSS that wanted to keep things real. Most of the characters after they're established just become annoying and Vegas is made to look pretty damn unglamorous. The special effects are super dodgy too.
DAF - where the humour became more important than the thrills and laid the ground work for the silliness of some of the RM movies to follow. For a series that did an excellent job of perfectly casting characters from the books sometimes with unknown European actors this is the first real example of terrible miscasting particularly Blofeld and Felix. Blofeld is Bond's Moriarty so his death (unless you include him being dropped down a chimney in FYEO) was a total let down. So campy it could have been a Flint or Man from UNCLE movie.
MR - the worst JB movie ever. Where do you begin - a brilliant PTS ruined by the inclusion of Jaws, the gondola turning into a hovercraft and the double taking pigeons, Bond going into space, Jaws getting a girlfriend etc. etc.
QOS - after CR which is one of the best Bond movies ever made this was such a disappointment. An underwhelming plot, increasing water prices in Bolivia not exactly up there with starting WW3. Started the trend in the DC movies of casting a good actor as the villian only to let them down with a totally underwritten part . Xavier Bardem was the only one to buck the trend with Silva. Elvis as the henchman - seriously. killing off Mathias who was a great character and then having Bond dump his body in a dumpster, still that might have been symbolic of the whole movie.
He's in lots of art house films and a few high concept films that push the art house vibe. His biggest most recent film is probably Grand Budapest Hotel.
Also, much of the criticism about about underwritten parts and a poor script of QoS can be attributed to the writers strike at the time and the script basically coming together from MG Wilson (hmm) and on set...
"laid the ground work for the silliness of some of the RM movies to follow."
Woah, woah, woah.
DAF, LALD and TMWTGG are all tonally similar because that's what audiences wanted at the time. Escapist, humour driven basically piss-take stuff as an actual escape to the misery of the early 1970s and hangover from the 1960s - and perhaps the producers/studio wanting to avoid the heaviness of OHMSS and also not make the same 'mistake' of introducing a Bond that was an attempted carbon copy of Connery.
The 'silliness' and 'camp' in the following RM films are very different to the style of humour which is part and parcel of those films, not the entire goal of those three.
Mathieu Amalric was also in Munich with DC before he became Bond. Him, Christoph Waltz and Rami Malik all had the potential to be great villians but ended up with parts that were underwritten.
I understand that a lot of the problems with QOS came about a a result of the writers strike but I can only go on what was on the screen.
With regard to DAF lets just say I prefer my Bond a bit more serious where the humour comes out of the action ('shocking, positively shocking') rather than instead of it. OHMSS is one of my favourite Bond movies and DAF was a disappointment to me after it. Probably down to the fact I'm also a big fan of the books.
One of the nice things about this forum is that the one thing we can agree on is we will disagree and its great to see the wide diversity of opinions. Its sometimes made me rethink my own opinion about some of the movies.
right, I've seen Munich, and Grand Budapest Hotel. I actually have that dvd somewhere I should watch it again. I guess I just didn't recognise him! ...Budapest... has a lot of cult actors in it though, that may be why I didnt notice the lesser known name. I wonder if he got the part in Quantum... because he knew Craig? I assume Craig got Ana de Armas her role i the latest film
One of the nice things about this forum is that the one thing we can agree on is we will disagree and its great to see the wide diversity of opinions. Its sometimes made me rethink my own opinion about some of the movies.
absolutely, it adds to my appreciation of the movies when I see everybody else give their own subjective critique, and I've learned to appreciate many aspects that had bothered me before. I know folks who call themselves BondFans in real life, but we never have conversations the like ones we have here. In real life, usually "fans" don't like the films that deviate from the formula, and when I say "but that bit you don't like is actually the way Fleming wrote it" the response is "who? never heard of him"
hmm, definitely didnt see that one. Looks a bit too depressing for me though, so I might not rush to watch it. I gave up on another widely respected film the other night because it was all about disease and midlife crisis, I think I require escapism in my movie watching these days.
but lookit the cast for Grand Budapest Hotel, no wonder I missed Amalric. I'd completely forgotten Fiennes was the main dude, and Lea Seydoux's in it too , thats three of ours! I just remembered it as one of those visually stunning Wes Anderson films that always feature Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman, forgot all these other monster talents were all in it too! but if Amalric's good enough for a Wes Anderson ensemble cast, he must be pretty good.
Starring : Ralph Fiennes, F. Murray Abraham, Mathieu Amalric, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Harvey Keitel, Jude Law, Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Saoirse Ronan, Jason Schwartzman, Léa Seydoux, Tilda Swinton, Tom Wilkinson, Owen Wilson, and Tony Revolori
Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) The characters are utterly bland ciphers that serve only to carry the plot and the film is visually very uninteresting – I never get the sense I'm in either Germany or Vietnam, whereas most Bond films function as glorious travelogues.
Moonraker (1979) I simply can't suspend my disbelief here: the plot is ludicrous and Drax is very poorly scripted: his dialogue isn frequently ridiculous and his behaviour when he first meets Bond makes no sense whatever.
A View To A Kill (1985) There's not as much wrong with this one as the two above, but then again there's nothing exactly right with it either.
No Time To Die (2021) there's so many wrong things happened in this film, it didn't felt like a Bond film, more like an action movie starring Craig, and the film focused too much on Madeleine Swann, one of my least favorite Bond Girls, I can't believe that she ruined those two films, also this film felt like 'Bond's Greatest Hits' with too many references on the past films, and the repetitive use of OHMSS theme felt like an insult to the original film but it's not the worst for me, the next one is.....
Diamonds Are Forever (1971) This film is the worst for me, more worse than Die Another Day, atleast DAD has great visuals and action, this film has none. And it didn't act as a follow up to OHMSS, instead what we've got is
'This is EON's style of making a Parody film', not funny.
A View To A Kill (1985), didn't hate it as much as the other two (in fact it's the Bond film that introduced me to the series), but I can't help but to notice some of the unpleasant things in the film: Moore passed his prime, those cringe sex scenes with May Day and Stacey, and Stacey Sutton who's tied with Mary Goodnight as the worst Bond Girls ever.
The first half is Good, also those scenes in Paris, but once it reached America/San Francisco, it went downhill and things became convoluted.
Comments
'Posting at 3.19am? When do you sleep, GassyMan?'
I suppose showing US locations as glamorous might give the game away to the American audience - that indeed many of the European locations shown aren't really as glamorous in reality. It may be a subtle form of one-upmanship to make everyone think, wow, Bond's world is cool, his European origins. Perhaps it also struggles to make London look so cool at times. I do think there is scope to make Manhattan Island look cool, I recall the American movie Someone To Watch Over Me in particular, with its stunning opening shot to Sting's version of the famous song. But it might also provoke class envy among its audience... Same with showing Bond's abode in LALD or SP, make it too fancy and you get a lot of viewers thinking, okay, this is above my pay grade which they tend not to do when Bond is on 'holiday' or in effect some expensive press trip.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
TMWTGG
DAD
TWINE
been a fan since there were only 10 in the series; LOVE Craig’s interpretation, and I think he really nailed the role in NTTD, which I LOVED.
Ha, sleep is for suckers! I'm a night owl, so I do a lot of work into the wee hours, taking frequent breaks to post this or that.
The United States is pretty much the same no matter where you're at, dominated by the same retailers, restaurant chains, and in many cases, architecture. A few cities stand out because of oft-used iconic imagery -- NYC, Miami, Washington DC, and so forth --- but there's an overwhelming amount of sameness here, at least visually. And we're a fairly young culture, so finding the sense of romance and history that the Bond films tend to seek out from locations -- even if such is embellished -- is more challenging, I think.
It's why the American knock offs of Bond, such as the Helm and Flint series, struggled in my estimation. They never had the glamour or sophistication of the Bond films, in part, because the United State is not a glamorous or sophisticated nation. We are a rich one (though there are richer) and a confident one, but we're not particularly cultured. Even when the knock offs went to "foreign" settings (mostly on a Hollywood backlot), they couldn't figure out what was the draw other than the superficial. It's in our cultural genetics. So I can understand even the Bond producers being a bit stymied on what to seek in the U.S. that might be comparable to locations in Europe and Asia.
Diamonds are forever is my least favourite by a long way. Dull, cheesy and campy and not in a good way, Connery’s worst bond film (including NSNA). The man with the golden gun isn’t great and one of my least favourites despite Christopher lees brilliant performance. I like all the other body films but as controversial as it is I’d have to say The living Daylights is my 3rd least favourite, I find it very dull and the plot/villains are poor, Dalton no necrosis almost Dave it and Kara is a good Bond girl but overall just a boring film.
1. Thunderball
2.QOS
3.NSNA
" I don't listen to hip hop!"
DAF, LALD and TMWTGG are actually favourites of mine, as a fan of Hamilton/ Mankiewicz - and so is LTK. While highly entertained by AVTAK, DAD and SP - they're Bond, after all! - I'd probably rate these (in descending order) as my least favourite among the Eon fare.
Diamonds Are Forever
Thunderball
Quantum of Solace
8. TMwtGG 9. AVtaK 10. TSWLM 11. SF 12. LtK 13. TND 14. YOLT
15. NTtD 16. MR 17. LaLD 18. GF 19. SP 20. DN 21. TB
22. TWiNE 23. DAD 24. QoS 25. DaF
Die Another Day, The World Is Not Enough, and Tomorrow Never Dies, in that order.
I will leave out SP and NTTD as I've not seen them enough to triple down on hating them.
"Better make that two."
I don't know what it is but Vegas just doesn't work for me in films. I liked Jason Bourne but could certainly have done without the Vegas shoot.
^ It's pretty damn great in Oceans 11...
"Better make that two."
My bottom 3:
DAF - where the humour became more important than the thrills and laid the ground work for the silliness of some of the RM movies to follow. For a series that did an excellent job of perfectly casting characters from the books sometimes with unknown European actors this is the first real example of terrible miscasting particularly Blofeld and Felix. Blofeld is Bond's Moriarty so his death (unless you include him being dropped down a chimney in FYEO) was a total let down. So campy it could have been a Flint or Man from UNCLE movie.
MR - the worst JB movie ever. Where do you begin - a brilliant PTS ruined by the inclusion of Jaws, the gondola turning into a hovercraft and the double taking pigeons, Bond going into space, Jaws getting a girlfriend etc. etc.
QOS - after CR which is one of the best Bond movies ever made this was such a disappointment. An underwhelming plot, increasing water prices in Bolivia not exactly up there with starting WW3. Started the trend in the DC movies of casting a good actor as the villian only to let them down with a totally underwritten part . Xavier Bardem was the only one to buck the trend with Silva. Elvis as the henchman - seriously. killing off Mathias who was a great character and then having Bond dump his body in a dumpster, still that might have been symbolic of the whole movie.
Mailfist said:
QOS - Started the trend in the DC movies of casting a good actor as the villain only to let them down with a totally underwritten part .
I don't believe I've seen Mathieu Amalric in anything else. what are some films with good performances to look for?
He's in lots of art house films and a few high concept films that push the art house vibe. His biggest most recent film is probably Grand Budapest Hotel.
Also, much of the criticism about about underwritten parts and a poor script of QoS can be attributed to the writers strike at the time and the script basically coming together from MG Wilson (hmm) and on set...
"Better make that two."
"laid the ground work for the silliness of some of the RM movies to follow."
Woah, woah, woah.
DAF, LALD and TMWTGG are all tonally similar because that's what audiences wanted at the time. Escapist, humour driven basically piss-take stuff as an actual escape to the misery of the early 1970s and hangover from the 1960s - and perhaps the producers/studio wanting to avoid the heaviness of OHMSS and also not make the same 'mistake' of introducing a Bond that was an attempted carbon copy of Connery.
The 'silliness' and 'camp' in the following RM films are very different to the style of humour which is part and parcel of those films, not the entire goal of those three.
"Better make that two."
Mathieu Amalric was also in Munich with DC before he became Bond. Him, Christoph Waltz and Rami Malik all had the potential to be great villians but ended up with parts that were underwritten.
I understand that a lot of the problems with QOS came about a a result of the writers strike but I can only go on what was on the screen.
With regard to DAF lets just say I prefer my Bond a bit more serious where the humour comes out of the action ('shocking, positively shocking') rather than instead of it. OHMSS is one of my favourite Bond movies and DAF was a disappointment to me after it. Probably down to the fact I'm also a big fan of the books.
One of the nice things about this forum is that the one thing we can agree on is we will disagree and its great to see the wide diversity of opinions. Its sometimes made me rethink my own opinion about some of the movies.
thanks @Mailfist and @heartbroken_mr_drax
right, I've seen Munich, and Grand Budapest Hotel. I actually have that dvd somewhere I should watch it again. I guess I just didn't recognise him! ...Budapest... has a lot of cult actors in it though, that may be why I didnt notice the lesser known name. I wonder if he got the part in Quantum... because he knew Craig? I assume Craig got Ana de Armas her role i the latest film
One of the nice things about this forum is that the one thing we can agree on is we will disagree and its great to see the wide diversity of opinions. Its sometimes made me rethink my own opinion about some of the movies.
absolutely, it adds to my appreciation of the movies when I see everybody else give their own subjective critique, and I've learned to appreciate many aspects that had bothered me before. I know folks who call themselves BondFans in real life, but we never have conversations the like ones we have here. In real life, usually "fans" don't like the films that deviate from the formula, and when I say "but that bit you don't like is actually the way Fleming wrote it" the response is "who? never heard of him"
"The diving bell and the butterfly" from 2007 is probably Amalric's big breakthrough role.
hmm, definitely didnt see that one. Looks a bit too depressing for me though, so I might not rush to watch it. I gave up on another widely respected film the other night because it was all about disease and midlife crisis, I think I require escapism in my movie watching these days.
but lookit the cast for Grand Budapest Hotel, no wonder I missed Amalric. I'd completely forgotten Fiennes was the main dude, and Lea Seydoux's in it too , thats three of ours! I just remembered it as one of those visually stunning Wes Anderson films that always feature Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman, forgot all these other monster talents were all in it too! but if Amalric's good enough for a Wes Anderson ensemble cast, he must be pretty good.
Starring : Ralph Fiennes, F. Murray Abraham, Mathieu Amalric, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Harvey Keitel, Jude Law, Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Saoirse Ronan, Jason Schwartzman, Léa Seydoux, Tilda Swinton, Tom Wilkinson, Owen Wilson, and Tony Revolori
In descending order of dislike:
Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) The characters are utterly bland ciphers that serve only to carry the plot and the film is visually very uninteresting – I never get the sense I'm in either Germany or Vietnam, whereas most Bond films function as glorious travelogues.
Moonraker (1979) I simply can't suspend my disbelief here: the plot is ludicrous and Drax is very poorly scripted: his dialogue isn frequently ridiculous and his behaviour when he first meets Bond makes no sense whatever.
A View To A Kill (1985) There's not as much wrong with this one as the two above, but then again there's nothing exactly right with it either.
My three absolute dislikes:
No Time To Die (2021) there's so many wrong things happened in this film, it didn't felt like a Bond film, more like an action movie starring Craig, and the film focused too much on Madeleine Swann, one of my least favorite Bond Girls, I can't believe that she ruined those two films, also this film felt like 'Bond's Greatest Hits' with too many references on the past films, and the repetitive use of OHMSS theme felt like an insult to the original film but it's not the worst for me, the next one is.....
Diamonds Are Forever (1971) This film is the worst for me, more worse than Die Another Day, atleast DAD has great visuals and action, this film has none. And it didn't act as a follow up to OHMSS, instead what we've got is
'This is EON's style of making a Parody film', not funny.
A View To A Kill (1985), didn't hate it as much as the other two (in fact it's the Bond film that introduced me to the series), but I can't help but to notice some of the unpleasant things in the film: Moore passed his prime, those cringe sex scenes with May Day and Stacey, and Stacey Sutton who's tied with Mary Goodnight as the worst Bond Girls ever.
The first half is Good, also those scenes in Paris, but once it reached America/San Francisco, it went downhill and things became convoluted.
NTTD and Skyfall I really don't like.
I don't really know about a third. I haven't actually seen them all yet as I still need to watch/finish OHMSS, LALD, FYEO and OP.
I find it hard to pick a third that I dislike out of the others. They were all ok, good or great, I thought ^^
Movies: The Spy Who Loved Me. Actor: Pierce Brosnan. Theme: You Only Live Twice. :D
You're in for a treat with those four you haven't yet seen/finished @hoppimike (My least favourite of those four is OP).
That's good to hear!
I must admit I do like the "zanier" Bond films quite a bit. Like Moonraker I thoroughly enjoyed, lol. I was hoping Octopussy is a bit like that?
But yeah erm, I'm looking forward to seeing which ones I like most! People seem to think OHMSS and LALD are the best of those 4?
Movies: The Spy Who Loved Me. Actor: Pierce Brosnan. Theme: You Only Live Twice. :D