The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

1977 - The Spy Who Loved Me

Alternate Title - The Spy Who Gave Me Chlamydia

PG - 125 minutes

Director - Lewis Gilbert

Stars - Roger Moore, Barbara Bach, Curd Jurgens

    Titties. One of the first things you see in this movie is a wall of a submarine plastered with pictures of titties. Most of the time tits are subtle in these movies but this time they said fuck it.

    Yet again Bond has sex with a woman and the second he leaves she calls her friends to kill him instead of just having the plan be that she slits his goddamn throat during sex. Their back-up plan leads to an exciting downhill skiing scene which culminates in Bond flying off of a cliff and pulling a parachute chord at the last second. Cue the music. 

    The plot is that a nuclear submarine has been stolen and both Bond and Russian agent XXX are sent in to find out information. Agent XXX’s fuck-buddy has been killed in action by Bond during the ski chase. We are left to assume this because they don’t do a very good job explaining that her lover is the one Bond shot in the chest with a ski stick-rocket. Yes, a rocket.  

    We meet the villain, Karl Stromberg, who has an underwater building and has coordinated the plan to steal the nuclear submarines. I consider his introductory scene part 1 of 2 of scenes in which a woman is brutally murdered to the sound of classical music. The second part is in Moonraker. We meet Jaws who is assigned to tracking a piece of microfilm and killing anyone that attempts to go near it. There is another henchmen but he doesn’t have metal teeth so seriously, fuck that guy. He looks like a mix between Michael Chiklis and Don Rickles.

    Bond is sent to Egypt and is immediately sent to the only place in Egypt anyone would recognize, the pyramids. Jaws kills XXX’s other friend like a metal vampire. For some reason Jaws loves biting necks despite not being a vampire and only having metal teeth. 

    Barbara Bach, the actress that plays XXX hasn’t worked since 1987 and it’s clear to me why she gave it up. She doesn’t even attempt to express emotions or sway from monotone. She’s pretty and is willing to show the maximum amount of cleavage. That pretty much sums up why she’s in this movie. 

    I swear Bond is looking for father figures. Every Bond villain in these early movies has an elderly villain in which Bond talks to for hours on end even though they both know they are against each other entirely. 

    This movie contains a car that once it hits the water turns into a submarine. I wish I was kidding. Bond uses it to go to the underwater building of Stromberg. Once they check out the building they head back for the beach and the car emerges as a regular car once it hit’s the sand. This leads to a man doing a cliché double-take at his alcohol after he sees this wacky sight. 

    For the entire set-up of this movie being about Bond killing XXX’s lover, almost zero attention is given to it until the third act. Even after they discuss it, it simply does not fucking matter at all. Not even a little bit. Why bother including it at all?

    1 hour and 23 minutes into this 2 hour and 5 minute movie is where the final set-piece happens. Bond is aboard a submarine and Stromberg has a submarine-eating ship and it does its job. Stromberg takes the entire crew hostage including Bond and XXX. The rest of this movie is simply machine gun fire at an almost nonstop pace. Bond disassembles a nuclear bomb like he’s fucking MacGuyver. Bond then assembles a jet-ski from a fucking duffle bag and he looks goddamn ridiculous riding it toward Stromberg’s lair. This results in the villain’s death. It’s one of the most insane boss scenes I’ve ever seen. Bond shoots Stromberg in the dick to death. Well, it probably would have killed him without Bond shooting him a few more times. The dick. Shot him in the dick. 

    The rest of the movie is no surprise. Bond rescues XXX from the underwater building. Jaws kills a shark by biting it to death and the underwater building is blown up. Our heroes float to the surface in an escape pod while XXX wears basically nothing but her nipples. Again, she isn’t wearing an expression on her face at all so it’s all you really have to look at.

    Overall, it’s good but not great. Way too much of this movie is spent on the ship after it eats the submarine. I got to the point where I couldn’t stand to watch another underpaid extra shoot a machine gun toward something off screen. Good theme song but it sounds more like a song used to sell tampons than a Bond theme. The villain had a decent scheme which is to destroy all the land on earth so that he can use his underwater city. Apparently he just wants to be the supreme landlord. This one is worth watching just for the Bond Vs. Jaws fight scene which results in a cartoon style ending. 

Moonraker (1979)

1979 - Moonraker

Alternate Title - Let's Cash In On The Star Wars Craze!

PG - 126 minutes

Director - Lewis Gilbert

Stars - Roger Moore, Lois Chiles, Michael Lonsdale

    The movie opens on two planes making sweet, gentle love mid-air. Doggy-style of course. One of these planes is called Moonraker. The other plane can fuck off because we only have room for one titular aircraft in this movie. A couple of mods steal Moonraker and the other plane blows up. Cut to an overused scene of M on the red phone with his superiors. 

    The next scene is a skydiving sequence that involves Jaws and Bond fighting over parachutes which is actually pretty cool if you’re into that sort of thing. It’s well done is what I’m getting at. Personally I don’t feel the need to parachute, what with Red Bull giving me wings and all (pay up). Jaws’ parachute doesn’t open and instead he lands on a circus tent which you clearly hear rip when he hits it so basically he should be fucking dead on top of a now dead elephant. Cue the Moonraker song which is the most anyone has gone out of their way to include the name of the movie in a theme song. 

    Bond meets Hugo Drax and his suspicious goatee. Bond should always be aware that every villain has a mansion and a passion for interior decoration. Also, anyone that surrounds themselves with someone with a name that is a pun is probably a villain. In this movie it’s Dr. Goodhead. 

    This movie answers the question of how could anyone make Roger Moore look even more elderly in his Bond role by putting him in a centrifuge trainer. It’s basically a NASA level carnival ride which simulates the gravity force when shot into space. In this movie though it simulates what it would look like if Roger Moore drank from the wrong cup in The Last Crusade because he starts to fall apart like a damn wax figure in the sun. Needless to say, Bond gets stuck in it because a henchmen has taken control. When Bond finally gets out he just sort of makes eye contact with the henchman and they both go on with their day like nothing fucking happened. This movie has more nonchalant attempted murder than I thought was possible. 

     A few scenes later Drax is hunting birds and Bond joins in on the murderous fun. Drax asks Bond to take a shot at a bird and Bond fires. Drax says, “You missed, Bond.” Bond responds with, “Did I?” as a sniper working for Drax falls out of a tree. Bond knows Drax was about to blow his fucking head off and all they do is look at each other, Bond gets back in the car and drives off. Nothing is said about how he tried to kill him or how Bond killed a man. It’s all ignored into the next scene. After this, Drax fires a girl that helped Bond and she runs into the woods while dogs chase her in slow motion. This is part 2 of the epic “girl being torn apart by animals to classical music” scenes. 

    Later, Bond is in a glass making factory, apparently. He appears to not know how glass works because he spies on a group of people while hiding behind a giant clear vase. You can see him the entire fucking time. In fact, the shape of the glass enlarges his face to a comical level. 

    This movie has one of the stupidest scenes in cinema history. Bond is involved in a boat chase in Venice when suddenly he decides to turn his boat into a hovercraft and crawls onto the land. Just like The Spy Who Loved Me, the same man on the beach does a double take at his bottle of wine. Then, the impossible happens. An image that made me question my sanity and if life is worth living. Right after the alcoholic man does a double take while watching a hovering boat, a pigeon literally does a triple take at the boat. As if the pigeon was so surprised, it didn’t believe his bird eyes the first two takes. I’ve never seen a triple take before. I’ve never seen a non-cartoon pigeon react to anything in a movie before. I wasn’t aware that a bird would even know the fucking difference between a car or a hover-crafting boat. No angle of this shot makes any sense. I could write the rest of this review on this moment alone but to keep my sanity I must move on. 

    Later, Bond kills two elderly scientists on accident and then is attacked by the same bowl-cutted henchman that tried to kill him earlier. This time he is dressed in Asian combat attire and attacking with what is basically a fucking piece of wood. Bond kills him via piano. Yes, piano. 

    We also find out that Jaws makes a pretty good back-alley rapist. A girl helping Bond is alone in an alley while a carnival goes on in the background. Jaws walks up to her dressed as a giant clown and tries to bite her. When several partiers enter the alley he pretends to dance with and kiss on her a bit before Bond jumps on him to break up the romance. To be fair, most of my romantic stories involve clowns and Brazilian alleyways at night. But that’s just the way I do things. I just have a bigger heart than most.

    There is so much crazy shit in this movie that it makes me want to skip some of it but the whole gondola scene is amazing. James and his woman are going down a mountain in a gondola when Jaws snaps a wire and starts a high-wire fight. It’s amazing if for no other reason than Jaws backhands the woman like a fucking pimp. Some shit happens and it leads to Jaws crashing into a building that appears to be some sort of 7-Up collection facility. That or the soda company sponsored this movie. Take your pick. Jaws meets a girl and without speaking they both walk away holding hands. 

    More insanity when a boat chase leads to Bond turning his boat into a hang glider and floating away. I won’t get into it though. It’s a lot to take in. This scene lands him in the jungle where he follows a beautiful woman into a building that looks like they would sacrifice virgins at the top. The building is full of beautiful women and they try to kill him blah blah blah same story every time. This building ends up being Drax’s lair and it shows that Drax is ready to head to space on a Moonraker. 

    Through an unlikely series of events, Bond and his vagina having pal are launched into space and meet up with Drax’s base. The plan is kill everyone on earth and repopulate with all of Drax’s beautiful people. The facial hair finally makes sense because he’s basically Space Hitler.

    Let it be known that the first 1 hour and 50 minutes of this movie was pretty damn good (except the stupid goofy humor) but then this movie turns into a fucking SPACE LASER FIGHT. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen. Perhaps it wouldn’t have been so bad if I wasn’t enjoying myself during the previous near 2 hours of screen time. 

    Quickly, lots of people die. Jaws turns good because of his love for the girl he met at the 7-Up billboard house. He helps Bond and his woman escape. Bond then space-fucks. 

    Overall, this is a fading light in the franchise for a while because it’s the last movie before the 1980’s, which is the worst decade in human history. Including the dark ages and the years of WW2. I know most people say this is the worst Bond ever and I can see why if you just focus on the space shit. Personally, I really liked the movie before they got into space. I could always do with less pointless humor. This movie is full of gags and non-jokes. I really liked watching this and then suddenly I couldn’t stop laughing at the point where they all broke out their space laser guns in an effort to cash in on Star Wars. But the plot was set up nicely and you know what you were watching which is more than I can say for the next movie, For Your Eyes Only. 

For Your Eyes Only (1981)

1981 - For Your Eyes Only

Alternate Title - Four More Years Only

PG - 127 minutes

Director - John Glen

Stars - Roger Moore, Carole Bouquet, Topol

    I’ll start out by saying that my first viewing experience was a confusing one. I remember being 1 ½ hours into this movie and having no comprehension of plot. We shall see how this second watching goes.

    This movie opens with a scene that kills that whole theory that every actor that plays Bond is actually just a different person entirely instead of a continued story of the same agent. Bond visits the grave of his wife that he lost at the end of, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Well, there goes that bad-ass theory. 

    This is the movie where Bond finally kills Blofeld. Since they technically didn’t have the legal rights to refer to him as Blofeld or reference Spectre they just show him in a wheelchair from behind and let the cat do all of the talking and acting. This whole scene is done in a super sloppy manner that felt more like Inspector Gadget making fun of Bond. Bond takes control of a helicopter and drops Blofeld down a chimney. That’s it. That’s how the main villain of the series dies. It’s such a letdown to the showdown I was hoping to see. 

    For some reason Bond movies love to start on a submarine in peril and then cut to both British and Russian heads on a red phone. Apparently, Bond villains all have submarine fetishes and must include one in their plots. 

    There are plenty of car chases in this movie. They’re done really well but there are just too many of them. Plus, the whole time it’s scored by a horrible 80’s soundtrack. 

    A huge subplot of this movie involves a 14 year old figure-skater who is constantly giving Bond fuck-me eyes. I’m amazed that Bond has the power to turn her down throughout the movie. 

    There’s a large chunk of this movie that has Bond on skis and the bad guys are chasing him on motorcycles on the snow. If that sounds stupid, it is. It goes on forever. It even goes on a bobsledding track which FINALLY gives a sequel to the On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’s bobsledding finale. 

    Well, it happened again. I was over 1 ½ hours into this movie and I realized that I don’t really know what this movie is about. Other than the bad guy taking a piece of important equipment from the downed submarine from the beginning of the movie. 

    There is a pretty brutal torture scene in which Bond and a girl are dragged behind a boat and get cut to shit on the coral in the ocean so that their blood attracts sharks. Oh yeah, the villain doing this is the father of the 14 year old previously mentioned. He really should have banged her to piss off the villain more. When they get free and dry they are clued in on plot points by a fucking parrot. The bird repeats random shit it overheard the bad guy saying to someone else and relays it like a child that hasn’t learned the finer points of social cues. 

    Another big section of this movie has Bond sneaking up to a mountaintop base to rescue a girl like a goddamn fairytale. It takes up way too much screen time for such minimal payoff. They could have just had them drive to the top and use the leftover screen time on plot points. While Bond is climbing the rest of the crew is watching him like they are hundreds of yards away yet when Bond throws a guy off, the body lands eight feet in front of them but they don’t stop looking at him like he’s incredibly far away.

    In the end the big solution to the problem is throwing the fucking submarine equipment off of the mountain and hoping it breaks. Apparently it worked because the guy that wanted to buy the equipment just flies away in his helicopter. Ends with an amazing scene in which Margaret Thatcher talks to the goddamn parrot thinking it is Bond. 

    Overall, fuck this movie. It’s so uninteresting unless you’re really into pointless action and car chases. Every Bond movie that came out before this had its own character. Even the shitty racist tones in Live And Let Die had more heart to it than this one did. It just felt flat. You can tell the producers were saying, “Shove tons of action in there and people will eat it up. What? Plot? Fuck plot. People don’t want to know what’s going on when things are blowing up.”

Octopussy (1983)

1983 - Octopussy

Alternate Title - Senior Citizen Love Fest '83

PG - 131 minutes

Director - John Glen

Stars - Roger Moore, Maud Adams, Louis Jourdan

    Eggs. The movie’s about eggs. I wish I was kidding but the crux of the plot involves Bond chasing down a ring of counterfeit Faberge egg makers. As if that wasn’t stupid enough, the movie is also book ended with some of England’s finest dressed up as clowns. In the beginning another agent is running away from the circus, dressed as a clown and at the end it is Bond as a clown running into the circus to stop a bomb from exploding. Sunrise. Sunset.

    Bond tracks the egg ring to India and this results in the next forever amount of screen time consisting of Bond wandering around India like a doddering old man. He doesn’t blend in well even in the slightest with the apparent Indian tradition of wearing fuchsia dresses all the goddamn time. He seems to be wandering the beautiful set pieces with no goal in mind and just happens upon main characters and plot points. 

    The main villain, Kamal Khan is overthrowing his boss, the sanely named Octopussy. At one point Octopussy says that her father was the one that gave her that name. She never says if he was imprisoned for child molestation charges or not. I guess we will have to write our own story there. Regardless, Octopussy looks like a 60 year old in this movie which isn’t that bad if you consider that Roger Moore still makes her look young by comparison. Remember Pussy Galore from Goldfinger? This title suggests that Octopussy is 8 times better than her but in reality it appears that she’s just 8 times older.

    Anyway, Khan’s rag-tag crew consists of a bunch of expendable henchman and a guy that uses a saw blade yo-yo. I shit you not. Nevermind the fact that the blade would never be able to go fast enough to cut through half of the things it does. It’s clearly in the movie because it’s fucking cool and cocaine is a great way to make movies. 

    Bond kills all the sub-villains (including knife throwing twins) and chases a train that leads to the circus. There is a bomb hidden in the clown cannon for some reason. He sneaks into the circus dressed as a clown for absolutely no reason whatsoever. He walks past the guards and literally three seconds later is discovered and has to run anyway. He might as well have just walked the hell past them to begin with instead of wasting precious time changing into highly detailed clown makeup and outfit. He fights the heavy circus security and our elderly duo disarm the bomb and save the day. 

    Meanwhile, a bat-shit crazy scene has Octopussy’s women attacking Khan’s men one at a time like ninja-sluts. Octopussy shows up and confronts Khan while Q literally hot-air balloons Bond into the scene. It’s like they ran out of time so instead of editing they made forty action scenes converge onto the same location. This all leads to a strange plane scene that has Bond holding onto the skin of the plane like the creature from The Twilight Zone. Bond crashes the plane but not before our geriatric duo bail out to safety. The fall would have killed a fit man so in reality these two would be reduced to dust. But this is a movie so they easily survive hitting the ground at a brisk 140 miles an hour. 

    Overall it wasn’t horrible despite all the crazy shit described above. The first half moves more like a suspense movie than a Bond movie which is rather enjoyable. There is a horrible scene where Bond swings from vine to vine like a monkey. The villain, Kamal Khan is awesome but the supposed ‘villain’, Octopussy is a cougar in a silk robe. All in all this movie felt like it was clearly a reaction to Raiders Of The Lost Ark which came out a couple of years previous to this one. Swap out the Ark Of The Covenant for priceless Faberge Eggs and change the Nazi’s to… well, that part is still Germans. That country is so evil it can’t be contained by one movie franchise. 

Never Say Never Again (1983)

1983 - Never Say Never Again

Alternate Title - Never Play Bond Again

PG - 134 minutes

Director - Irvin Kershner

Stars - Sean Connery, Kim Basinger, Klaus Maria, Max Von Sydow

    I realize this isn’t a “true Bond film.” I also realize that all of the Bond movies are made as an attempt to make a ton of money but this one is truly a cash-grab by Kevin McClory. Basically all he owned was the rights to Spectre and the ability to produce a remake of the mediocre, Thunderball.

    At least they finally acknowledge the fact that Bond is getting older in this movie. That’s the one thing they do that hasn’t been done before. Bond reveals that lately he’s been more of a teacher than an agent. His supervisors tell him that he has to diet and exorcise from now on. This is the exact way that you want to see Bond.; bloated and elderly. 

    Since I already reviewed Thunderball, I don’t be going into much detail on this one. Suffice to say it’s the same fucking movie starring the exact same guy, 18 years later. 

    Maximilian Largo is the villain and the actor portraying him does an amazing job. He’s clearly the best part of this movie even though he comes off as a creepy rapist in his scenes with Kim Basinger. 

    The worst part of this movie is a 7 minute scene in which Largo and Bond play what amounts to high-stakes Risk in which they both hold handles and conquer land on a computer screen. The longer they play the more pain they feel from the handles. I would imagine that playing that game would be intense but watching two people pretend to play a barely visual game is fucking BORING. You begin to wonder if the movie will ever return to being about the ocean again. I never thought I’d say that because I think the ocean is the most boring setting for a movie, ever. 

    Bond uses a pen to literally blow a woman to nothingness. Afterward, even her shoes are cleaned out. It’s like it sucked her into another dimension entirely. Later, Bond is topless and Connery is doing his best at sucking in his gut to pretend like he’s not a senior citizen. 

    My mind was blown by a scene toward the end. Bond is in a submarine until he is shot out of it in a missile. Once the missile is a few feet above the water it opens up and Bond shoots out like the Rockateer, jet-pack and all…only to land on the ground to get back into a wet suit and go scuba diving to find a cave to go back onto land for a gunfight. During the gunfight he runs away and is seen being carried in a harness by a helicopter which drops him in the ocean again through a well. He went back and forth from land to water so many times in a ten minute scene that it was like watching a game of awkward environmental tennis.

    Overall, I really wanted to hate this movie but in the end it was just so-so. A lot of it was boring and stupid but the scenes with Largo made it up to me because I found him genuinely interesting and charming. I wish the actor, Klaus Maria Brandauer had been in a better Bond movie instead so that I could have truly loved that movie. Oh, and Mr. Bean is in this. So there’s that.

A View To A Kill (1985)

1985 - A View To A Kill

Alternate Title - A Horse To Ride

PG - 131 minutes

Director - John Glen

Stars - Roger Moore, Christopher Walken, Tanya Roberts

    The movie opens with the producers covering their asses by letting us all know that Zorin does not portray a real company or person. Good thing they told me because my Aunt Zorin would have been crushed.

    Yet again we are forced to watch James Bond ski. The twist this time is that Bond is wearing Elton John glasses as he does it. If you edited all of the skiing footage from the Bond movies, it would probably equal the average running time of most of the movies. After abandoning his skis, James switches to a snowboard and does a wicked face kick to the bad guys. A Beach Boys song immediately starts playing as if he were surfing. It makes no sense, whatsoever. Bond then gets into his iceberg submarine. Yes, it’s as stupid as it sounds.

    Moneypenny. This is the last time we see Lois Maxwell as Moneypenny. I assume it’s because the character finally committed suicide after three decades of Bond fucking with her head and heart. Perhaps it’s for the best because she’s an elderly lady in this movie and they even dress her like your grandma going to Sunday mass. I expected her to pinch Bond’s cheeks and give him a Werther’s Original. 

    The villain in this one is Zorin (not a real company or person) and his sidekick is Mayday. That was a long sentence to say that the villains are Christopher Walken and some black chick. I seriously can’t get over how elderly Moneypenny looks in this one. Roger Moore doesn’t look like a young man either. Picture how old Christopher Walken looks now; Moneypenny looks like his mother. They even pair Bond with an even older man so that he looks young by comparison. 

    The awesome car chase scenes from, For Your Eyes Only are a thing of the past as Bond steals a taxi while in Paris and it turns downright retarded. He does what can basically be called vehicular parkour which is an oxymoron but it’s pretty much what happens. He even ramps the car off of a trailer and gains more air than he would if he were going 300 miles an hour. The car is even cut in half while Bond drives around in the front half of it before jumping onto a cruise ship. I consider the movie, Ronin to have the greatest car chase scenes of all time. That movie takes place in Paris and so does this one however this one I now consider the be on the opposite side of the spectrum from Ronin. It’s anti-Ronin. 

    Brace yourself because most of this movie is about horse racing. Specifically, because Zorin (not a real company or name) is a dirty cheater at horse racing. Also he’s into some weird shit, sexually speaking. He appears to be involved in some mix of martial arts and rape-fantasy role playing.

    45 minutes into this movie I realized where I have seen this plot before. Bond pretends to be interested in buying a horse from eccentric millionaire Zorin (not a real company or person) but that’s just a cover for his true cause. Zorin surrounds himself with servants. His right-hand man is a black woman. Bond is in the kill or capture business. Tarantino basically took this plotline for his movie, Django Unchained. 

    Love Ben Hur? Watch as Bond ruins it in an epic horse riding scene. While chasing Christopher Walken around a track, Zorin (not a real company or person) has his henchmen push buttons that make every jump seem bigger or longer to every other jockey. If it’s meant to be a real cheat then it’s horrible because it’s painfully obvious when the pieces are moving. If they don’t physically see the bars being raised then they sure as hell will hear the high-pitched electronic whirring of the machinery. 

    Basically, Walken’s plan is the ruin the Silicon Valley so that his company will control and privately distribute microchips. The plan’s name? Operation Main Strike. Alright, he’s not great at naming yet. We find this out and then have to listen to Zorin (not a real company or person) and Mayday complete each other’s sentence as they have the titular line of the movie while looking out over San Francisco aboard a blimp. 

    Huge chunks of this movie are simply Bond sleuthing around, trying to find out information on Zorin (not a real company or person). I could understand a couple short scenes of this but some of them go on for an excessively long period of time. It felt like they were just trying to pad the screen time for some sort of contractual agreement with the studio so they had Bond just look at paperwork at a painfully slow pace. Also, this movie has some of the worst ADR ever. Most of it is Bond throwing in a pointless joke, off screen. 

    Bond ends up foiling the plan after Christopher Walken shoots like 80 people with a machine gun which was pretty awesome to watch. Walken escapes in the blimp but Bond grabs a rope that is attached to it. Walken decides to swing the rope into the Golden Gate Bridge but Bond magically wraps the rope around the bridge with apparent superhuman strength and keeps the blimp tied to the bridge. Walken ends up falling off of the Zorin (not a real company or person) blimp. The blimp explodes. 

    This movie then ends with a super creepy scene where Q is controlling a drone that looks like Johnny 5’s child. Q only uses the drone to watch Bond fuck a girl in the shower while he sits alone in the back of a van. I don’t want to know what kind of masturbatory aids Q has fixed up in his years as quartermaster. They don’t call him Quartermasturbator behind his back for nothing.

    Overall, this is a pretty good one. I wish it was about 45 minutes shorter because long stretches felt like a marathon to get through. Also, the car chase scenes were brutal. I did enjoy Christopher Walken as Zorin even though it was not a real company or person. Neither is Walken. His blonde hair and giant glasses made him look more like a child predator than a villain. He’s basically a predator in a giant white blimp instead of a dirty van. Good movie, too much horse riding and not enough cow bell.

    P.S. - Goodbye forever, Roger Moore. May the coming years bring you more horrifying skin deformities. I will miss you as I venture into the Dalton additions to Bond cannon. I shall tell my children what you have done here. At least you can say that your version of Bond never raped a lesbian in a barn. That’s more than Connery can say!

The Living Daylights (1987)

1987 - The Living Daylights

Alternate Title - The Shifting Plotlines

PG - 130 minutes

Director - John Glen

Stars - Timothy Dalton, Maryam d’Abo, Jeroen Krabbe, John Rhys-Davies, Joe Don Baker

    This movie starts out with a training sequence that turns into a real life or death situation. It was pretty good until the killer started escaping and Bond starts chasing him. This isn’t the bad part. The bad part is that the traditional Bond theme got an 80’s make-over to it so it sounds more like a fucking dance song. Let me state it here so that it’s painfully aware. I hate the 1980’s. I hate 80’s fashion. I hate 80’s music. I hate 80’s movies. It starts with the music. Musicians I love that were great in the 70’s mostly sucked for the 80’s before getting decent again in the 90’s. Tom Petty, Bob Dylan and Neil Young come to mind. So when I say that the music in 80’s movies pisses me off you know that I am in fact, biased. The thought of the time was to simply use drum machines and bending guitar solos for no reason. I involuntarily cringed when I heard the classic 007 theme song redone in an 80’s style. I knew these Dalton Bond movies would be hard for me to get through as the late 80’s are my least favorite years in history. If I was ever thrown back in time I would pray for the middle ages or dinosaur times before I ended up in 1987 again. 

    After the song we see Bond taking out a sniper and protecting a General. They have to get him to safety in Russia so they toss his ass in a tube and ‘secretly’ shoot him into Austria using metal tunnels like an oil pipeline. I say ‘secretly’ because while he is going through the tube, everyone in the entire area hears the tube from miles away. 

    Moneypenny! She’s back. Well not really. The old one is gone and now we have a younger, hotter blonde. For all we know, it’s the previous Moneypenny’s granddaughter. He meets her in a warehouse/office type thing. In the previous movies the 007 offices seemed like a governmental institution. In this one it seems more like a casual office complete with water-cooler conversations. Everything just seems more relaxed than we’ve ever seen. Even Q gets excited over the “ghetto blaster” which is a totally bodacious 80’s boom-box that also shoots rockets. In case Bond ever has to go undercover in Harlem, apparently. Wait, he did that before and it was fucking terrible and racist. Let’s hope we don’t see this boom-box again. 

    Bond starts helping the female sniper from earlier and it turns out that she can freeze time at will. To get away from a bad guy that’s watching the sniper’s apartment; Bond gets into his Aston Martin while she clumsily brings her cello into a phone booth and pretends to make a call. The man in the car is watching her but suddenly a trolley drives by between the man watching and the phone booth. The trolley only blinds his vision for about 6 seconds yet she manages to get her clumsy cello to look exactly like her with her trench coat and hat and then open the door of the phone booth, close it, then run to the Aston Martin in enough time to close the door of the car so that when the trolley was gone it looked like she was still in the booth and that Bond was just driving away, alone. I call bullshit.

    Later, using his gadget-car, Bond slices a car in half so that the top half is completely removed from the axels. This isn’t the stupidest thing in this sequence because later Bond drives into a barn and instead of tearing through both sides he manages to drive into the barn and the whole barn moves along with the car as if it were now a barn-car. He slides around on the ice awkwardly before saying, “Time to leave.” He then switches gears and blows through the thin wooden door as if it were nothing. Which it was. Which is why the whole scene is stupid. This movie has the epitome of the gadget-car and it could not be any more ridiculous. After using the ill-placed self-destruct button to blow the car up they escape by using the cello case as if it were a two-seater toboggan to go downhill in the snow. These movies are full of great action sequences ruined by incredibly over-the-top silliness that seems so unnecessary and out of place. 

    Wax Hitler. This movie has a wax mannequin of Adolf Hitler. Plus it has Joe Don Baker pretending to be a wax figure while struggling not to laugh at John Rhys-Davies (the villain, Pushkin). It’s bizarre to see Joe Don Baker actually act considering I’ve only seen him in the awful movies that MST3K has done in which he is simply terrible. It’s nice to know that he can act when he wants to. 

    Not sure if it’s available on the DVD but in this special-edition blu-ray presentation of the movie you can clearly see the girl’s unibrow. Also available on blu-ray is the high-def outline of the villain, Necros’ dong while he’s wearing a banana-hammock swimsuit. It looks like he’s cramming three penises into that man-thong.

    At this point I suddenly realized I was an hour into the movie and Bond hasn’t brutally wrecked a woman with his penis yet. This is highly irregular. Connery would have already seven women pregnant by now. Perhaps the Dalton Bond has erectile-dysfunction. No, wait. He totally just fucked her as I was writing this. No, wait again. They just made out for a minute. Seriously, I’m starting to think I’m watching eunuch Bond.

    They keep telling me over and over that Pushkin is the villain but he’s only had about three lines at the halfway point. I’m not exactly worried about all the evil shit he might do. Joe Don Baker seems like the real villain. Also General Koskov is creating all of the plot in this movie. He’s double-crossing everyone while doing almost nothing in the movie. All of his scenes are of him relaxing and just having simple chats with people. This movie is seriously villain-less.

    At one point Bond is drugged and put on a plane along with Milovy and a contain with a heart in it. This by itself isn’t that great but written on the container is “HANDLE LIKE EGGS.” Not “HANDLE WITH CARE” or “FRAGILE” but instead the oddly specific message about eggs. We find out that inside the case is not only a heart but diamonds hidden in the ice. Again, not eggs. What a letdown. 

    No, wait. Bond might have fucked her. It’s not certain because after several best-friend hugs they started kissing for a few seconds before the next scene started. Normally we would have seen them in bed afterward but this one cuts to them riding horses. They seem to be involved in a fifth-grade relationship as opposed to the usual Bond-ing.

    After this the movie is a ton of guys on horses attacking Russian dudes in trucks who are too stupid to use cover. Despite men on horses being a fairly easy target, they are never shot. The people we are told are the villains are rendered useless in this scene because they are freaking the fuck out and hiding at the front of a truck instead of doing anything cool. They seriously just panic and run back and forth while using the truck as cover. Apparently the Russian translation of villain is “one who can use cover.” 

    His love interest in this one, Milovy seems like she’s a child-like retard. She refuses to put out and she always seems to be awkwardly chasing James. She is obsessed with best-friend hugging him too in liue of the usual penis receptacle that Bond is used to. She’s always staring at him like a girl that’s obsessed with a movie star on the screen. 

    The ending sequence is really well done. Our two protagonists are on a plane and out of nowhere so is Necros. Milovy is flying the plane while Bond and Necros fight while clutching to a bag full of heroin that is sticking out the cargo door of the plane. Oh, as if that wasn’t enough; a bomb is ticking down the entire time. Further proof that she’s either incredibly stupid or actually retarded when Bond comes back up to the cockpit after killing Necros and she is just blindly flying directly into a fucking mountain. As if she though that the open sky always had brown pointy things in it. 

    Overall, this was a pretty good one. I expected it to be overly 80’s but after that song I bitched about it wasn’t bad. Some typical 80’s bikini party and car chase fodder didn’t bother me at all. I also wasn’t sure how I would react to Dalton but I actually prefer him over Roger Moore in spots. He plays the sarcastic lines a million times better than Moore. Whenever Moore did a pun or kill-line it was like he was winking at the camera. The only thing that was weird was that he didn’t once get his dick wet in the movie. Not even at the end. It’s just more hugging and ‘heavy petting’. 

Licence To Kill (1989)

1989 - Licence To Kill

Alternate Title - No License To Kill

PG13 - 133 minutes

Director - John Glen

Stars - Timothy Dalton, Robert Davi, Carey Lowell, Benicio Del Toro

    “A vengeful British spy goes rogue and sets off to unleash vengeance upon an drug lord whom tortured his best friend a CIA agent and left him for dead and murdered his bride after he helped capture him.” That’s the IMDb plotline for this movie. I’m assuming that isn’t from the studio because it’s clearly written by someone who has English as a second language. 

    Watch the opening scene of this movie. Not for the plot but for the sequence where Bond is on a helicopter, lowers himself down to a plane, ties a wire around the tail of the plane and the helicopter makes the plane go vertical. It’s exactly what happens in the opening sequence of The Dark Knight Rises. 

    It seems that Bond has time to make a ton of friends because after that scene above, Bond is at a wedding and having a fucking ball. I’ve never see him have so much fun not flirting up a storm or getting his STD-riddled dick wet. I really think the married couple are desperately trying to get Bond to join them for a wedding night three-way. This sets off the plot because the man Bond captured at the beginning (Sanchez) is freed by a corrupt cop, Killifer. Once he escapes he captures the groom and tortures the shit out of him. The first paragraph of this explains the rest. What that paragraph doesn’t explain is that Sanchez uses a shark to bite the guy’s fucking leg off. Bond then goes back to his friend’s office which pissed me off. Not the fact that he went back but because Felix has a ton of sports banners on the walls. What pissed me off is that they are for seemingly every random team you can think of in both baseball and football. Who the hell is a fan of just a ton of random teams? Most people seem to pick a team or two or just follow a city or two. This man has banners from Dallas, Brooklyn, Los Angeles and just wherever.

    I can’t help but notice what Dalton dresses like Mr. Rogers in his Bond movies. That is, of course when he’s not in a tuxedo. While wearing a pair of old-man pants and a nice spring sweater, Bond is told by M that his license to kill is revoked. Bond kicks a dude in the chest and flips over the railing of a house into a nice barrel roll on the dirt to escape in his old-man outfit. It’s like senior citizen parkour. An idea I’m amazed isn’t already a reality show. I’m sure Fox has it in the works as I write this.

    There’s something non-threatening about a villain (Milton Crest) in salmon colored pants. Not to mention that the secondary villain is actually named Milton. I’m not sure which one is a worst offense when you’re trying to be a bad-ass. This movie has the first underwater Bond scenes that I actually was interested in. That is until he harpoons a plane and then water-skis behind it. Bond isn’t much for subtlety. Once aboard the plane, Bond throws millions of dollars out of the plane. Adding this to the two million dollars he wasted when he killed Killifer, he’s down like 10 million or so. Seems like the money would at least help him on his quest for revenge. Maybe hire some goons or something. 

    I almost forgot this was made in the 80’s until a bar scene smashed the reminder over my head like a neon-spandex stool. Benicio Del Toro is also a henchmen in this scene, dressed in the exact same outfit he later wears in The Usual Suspects. Of course, since this is the 80’s, it devolves into a bar brawl. EVERYONE MUST FIGHT! For some reason, in the 80’s people thought that a small skirmish in a bar means everyone not involved in the fight must suddenly start punching old ladies and children if they are nearby. Bond and Pam Bouvier escape on a boat and start making out when Bond hits the horn of the boat to end it because I’m serious…his dick doesn’t work. It’s like Dalton thought it would be a fun character quirk when he took over as Bond. “Wouldn’t it be fun if Bond just couldn’t get it up anymore?” Probably a result of all the STD’s he’s accrued over the years. Oh, and it turns out that Bond kept a ton of the money and later is just throwing it at people like a child would if they came upon a large amount of money. He hands every character he meets bills like he’s in the goddamn mafia. 

    Wayne fucking Newton is in this movie. It’s amazing to see him in a movie not playing a plastic surgery version of himself. As of this movie he’s yet to look like a melting wax figure. His role in the movie is to pretend to be running a fundraising show but instead he’s secretly giving the drug dealers information without making it obvious to the law. It’s a cleverly done scene.

    While referencing the fact that he’s without a job, Bond basically says one thing to me; the title of this movie is nonsense. Actually, he doesn’t have a license to kill. He’s previously had it revoked. That’s like if the movie, Speed was titled Cruise Control. Oh wait, the sequel totally was. Putting this movie in the same grouping as Speed 2, which says a fucking lot. 

    Not only does Dalton Bond not have sex when he clearly can but he gets denied left and right in his two movies. I’ve never seen the previous Bond men get denied. Shit, when Connery got denied by Pussy Galore, an obvious lesbian, he just rapes her until she likes it. This Bond apparently just gets off on the action instead of the sweet, sweet double-crossing vagina that comes his way. Although there is a possibility that Sanchez totally date-raped Bond. After being knocked unconscious, Bond wakes up in Sanchez’s bed and they give each other awkward stares while they chat. 

    Wow, Bond sets up Milton Krest so that Sanchez thinks he stole his money and hired someone to kill him. By putting the money that Bond stole on Krest’s boat, Sanchez finds it and kills Krest. He kills him by pushing Krest into a submarine capsule and turning up the pressure as if he were at the bottom of the sea. A henchman hands him an axe and Sanchez hit’s the air pressure tube which causes Krest’s head to literally explode. 

    I think, think, that Bond slept with Sanchez’s girl. They start making out before it cuts to the next scene but she states that he stayed with her the previous night. She doesn’t seem pleased though. Who knows what really happened in that bedroom. The next scene is Q going undercover as a Mexican landscaper. He achieves this by simply gluing the worst felt mustache to his upper lip and carrying a broom around.

    A long sequence involving Sanchez explaining to “the Orientals” how he plans to hide his drugs in gasoline. We find out that Wayne Newton’s character is a total poon-hound. After Sanchez finds out that Bond is really an informant he tries to slowly kill him in a typical Bond villain manner. Setting up the death and then leaving the goddamn room without waiting for proof of death. Benicio Del Toro dies brutally and more than I expected for a PG movie. He’s thrown into a stone crusher and his blood sprays the camera like he was killed by fucking Jason Voorhees.

    Bond chases Sanchez in a gas truck which appears to be a normal thing for Bond because he manages to get that fucking truck to drive on only the left wheels. Despite the fact that a truck that size would crush those tires. This isn’t the stupidest thing either because soon he does a goddamn wheelie in the son of a bitch. While watching this whole sequence I realized that I had seen this a thousand times when I was growing up and I thought it was stupid then. Some things just don’t change. If it weren’t for the stupid silly moments this entire sequence would be completely awesome. It has some crazy action that is really well done. However, it’s sort of hard to forget about a gas truck doing a wheelie through flames. The last of the crashes is when Bond manages to flip the gas truck that Sanchez is aboard. They are both left bloody and just generally dusty. For once a truck flipped over and managed to not explode. This never happens. Although, it’s not for long because as Bond is about to be sliced in half he pulls out a lighter on Sanchez (the one that the bride and groom gave him earlier) and lights Sanchez on fire. The entire truck then goes up in an explosion. 

    These two bitches seriously fight over Bond like a couple of middle school girls. When one is kissing him, the other must flee the scene and cry instantly. Bond ultimately chooses the girl that actually looks 14. But like a 14 year old that developed early because her giant tits are on display for the ENTIRE movie.

    During the credits, we are shown something I have never seen before. Well, I’ve seen it before but never in a movie. It simply states, “As tobacco products are used in the film, the Producers wish to remind the audience of the SURGEON GENERAL’S WARNING; ‘SMOKING CAUSES LUNG CANCER, HEART DISEASE, EMPHYSEMA, AND MAY COMPLICATE PREGNANCY.” I guess they smoked cigarettes somewhere in the movie and the producers want you to know that they do not approve. They say nothing about the fact that the entire plotline of the villain is that he’s a fucking DRUG DEALER. Because, let’s be honest, drugs are cool, just not cigarettes.

    Overall, this was a decent one. I liked the plot but it was not a Bond plot. It reminded me more of Scarface. It had a lot of awesome stuff in it that was bogged down with a lot of bullshit women drama that he’s never dealt with before. Usually he just doesn’t give a shit about vagina and in this one he’s constantly going back and forth between the two like a love-triangle movie. It had decent villains and didn’t really have any lulls like the previous Dalton movie. Also, why the fuck was there so much Q in the field in this one? 

Goldeneye (1995)

1995 - Goldeneye

Alternate Title - Bond Vs. The Dominatrix

PG13 - 130 minutes

Director - Martin Campbell

Stars - Pierce Brosnan, Sean Bean, Izabella Scorupco, Famke Janssen, Judi Dench, Joe Don Baker

    I’ll start this one out by saying that I’ve never seen GoldenEye before. I purposely avoided it because it was my favorite game for years and I didn’t want the movie to ruin that. As a result, I’ve never seen a single of the Brosnan’ Bond movies. I haven’t played the game in over a decade and yet I still remember the plot of it. The opening sequence is exactly what I remember from the game only without big-head mode. Bond and 006 blow up a Russian something or other and 006 is shot in the head (but I know better) while they tell Bond to come out and give up. Instead he shoots a bunch of barrels and the cover the men while he escapes on a conveyor belt. What happens next is the most improbably thing I’ve ever seen. Bond is on an airplane, throws the pilot out along with himself, gets on a motorcycle and as the plane falls over a cliff, Bond falls into the plane and manages to regain control of the plane before it crashes into the mountains. Apparently they were 200 miles up in the mountains because that plane is falling forever. 

    After the credits we see Bond in a fun little car chase which apparently is to the sound of almost porn music. It basically sounds like if Primus did the soundtrack for the porn spoof, GoldenCock. In this scene, Bond is driving with a woman who has been sent to evaluate him on the job as if he was a fucking substitute teacher. Despite her being a fairly unattractive woman (by Bond standards) he still bangs her in the car. My wishes have finally come true that Bond be forced to toss his STD stick inside a homely woman. 

    So far, Brosnan is the only Bond, where in his first appearance as the character wasn’t winking and smirking at the camera, saying, “Hey…I’m the new Bond. The last dude is gone. You’ll grow to love me more so don’t worry.”

    Remind me to never fuck Famke Janssen. Because seriously, it’s a possibility. She’s into some hardcore sex in this movie. She’s basically brutalizing this dude while banging him. It doesn’t look pleasant. Then she kills him like a black widow. Now, it wouldn’t be a horrible thing to die from but I’d still rather avoid it if possible. But who knows where the day takes me? In a scene later she mows down a room full of Russian computer technicians and soldiers and moans during and after it like it got her off. Every time she fires her gun it’s like the vibrations are directly connected to her orgasm gland. Women have that right?

    Moneypenny! This is the third version of her and this one is far, far less sad. She’s clearly sick of his shit and refuses to give him any bit of rope. She even says that she was on a date because it would be stupid to wait around waiting to impress James Bond. This version of her is far less depressing to watch than the original suicidal Moneypenny. Oh, and also M comes in vagina flavor because as of now, M is Dame Judi Dench.

    It turns out that Famke Janssen and the Russian soldier from the beginning (Ourumov) took over a facility to activate GoldenEye which apparently is a satellite that shoots a laser and turns buildings into the tower from Ghostbusters. Also it knocks jets out of the sky. Basically it knocks out all electronics in an area. 

    Q is still rocking it in this movie. Which is both awesome and incredibly gross. Every time he hands Bond something you can catch a glimpse of his giant, red deformed hands. It’s like he has elephantiasis of the hands. His fingernails are like green wax. His hands seriously look like they’re going to explode. 

    Joe Don Baker is back but this time he’s helping Bond instead of working against him. In one scene he hits his car engine with a sledge hammer. I really wished they used just a giant chunk of wood like the one he carried in Walking Tall.

    Famke and Bond have a seriously hardcore fight-fuck scene that is so hard to watch. The more he beats her the more turned on she gets. Trust me, this does not work as well in real life. Especially when they’re not entirely on board with it. I’m pretty sure they call it rape when they’re not on board with it. Which is what happens in this scene because Bond keeps trying to get her off of him but she keeps kicking his ass until he is forced to toss her on hot coals and flip her like a ninja. After he gets her at gunpoint, she leads him to a weird setting where 006 reveals that he isn’t really dead. But now he has an awesome scar-face. Surprise! Sean Bean is a bad guy. Just like fucking always. 

    Worst two lines put together that I’ve ever heard. Bond is grilling the girl that survived the explosion at the beginning and she yells, “But I don’t know anything!” To which Bond replies, “Then let’s start with what you do know.” He says it like it made complete sense. It does not. 

    I knew this was a good movie when I watched a huge chunk of it and had nothing to say. Basically Bond and Natalya are looking for a giant satellite dish in Cuba in which they will use the GoldenEye. When their plane crashes and Famke lands on Bond and starts kicking his ass, he reattaches her line to the helicopter and shoots the helicopter down. This causes her to hilariously fly at a V in a tree and the line and tree squeeze her to death. It was an amazing sequence. 

    Turns out that the entire point of 006’s plan is that he’s hacking into banking systems, making huge transfers seconds before he starts the GoldenEye so that the banking system will have no history of the transaction. Sounds like Die Hard. 

    While trying to destroy the satellite, 006 and 007 get in probably the coolest fight scene I’ve ever seen. They simply kick the living shit out of each other in a room while wrecking everything in the room. They even fight all the way down to the tip of the satellite where Bond drops 006 below to the steel bowl of the satellite. Somehow, he lives but he lands and totally fucks up his leg. When the satellite blows up it all comes crashing down on him. Alan Cumming’s character is frozen in sports-fan pose. Bond and Natalya essentially have a make-out session on a pile of marines. Cue the credits.

    Overall, awesome fucking movie. I wish I had more to make fun of for the sake of this review but I’m not going to force shit just for you. Seriously, back off. You know what? I don’t need this shit right now. I have a lot on my plate………Ok, I’ve calmed down some. This was just a great movie and is instantly my favorite Bond movie so far. Which sucks because from what I can gather, the Brosnan movies get worse and worse. The only complaint of the movie, the tank chase scene went on far too long and was insanity. No way a tank could have kept up with a speeding car in the city. 

Casino Royale (Climax! Tv Episode) (1954)

1954 - Casino Royale (TV Episode Of Climax!)

Alternate Title - Torture Royale

NR - 58 minutes

Director - William H. Brown Jr.

Stars - Barry Nelson, Peter Lorre, Linda Christian

    When I found out there was a television episode of a James Bond novel I have to admit I was excited to make fun of it. Much to my surprise it turned out to be fairly decent. It opens with James “Jimmy” Bond walking into a casino and a gunman in the shadows attempts to shoot him in the back. An assassin that apparently went to the Storm Trooper Academy of Aiming because despite being a mere six feet away he misses every shot. 

    Fast forward and Bond is in the casino and chatting with his contact. He informs Bond that he must bankrupt the villain, Le Chiffre, in a tournament of baccarat so that the super-villains have no choice but to kill Le Chiffre. Which really downplays how much of a villain your villain is if he’s in debt. The whole point of the plan is to get a third party to kill Le Chiffre so that Bond doesn’t have to. EXCITEMENT! 

    I should also mention that the guy that played Bond, Barry Nelson, looked like he was a 12 year old with makeup to make him look 50 so that he can play a 30 year old. It was confusing as all hell. Peter Lorre as Le Chiffre was great but completely incoherent at times because of either his accent or apparent alcoholism. 

    Much of the episode takes place in Bond’s room after he clears out Le Chiffre’s bankroll. Chiffre ties up Bond in a bathtub and appears to be brutally torturing his toes. I’m glad they did that instead of the novel’s version which is severe genital torture. However; since all of the actual torture is off screen, it’s possible there was some testicle play involved that was implied in the tone of a whisper. Despite being a 50's live TV show I found myself more invested in this than some of the actual Bond movies. Bond actually felt vulnerable for once. Almost every time he’s in trouble in the later movies he’s one gadget away from freedom but in this one he just gets his shit tortured. 

    Needless to say, Bond frees himself which leads to Bond and the villain shooting each other in the chests, which I found incredibly bizarre. Bond isn’t known to ever get hurt that badly in any of the movies. It should be noted that the actor that portrayed Bond was an American so the role is played more like a suave John McClane than the James Bond we know today.