Hey dude, did you leave a score for Goldfinger? Sorry if I missed it!

Fine by me.

Slowly catching up...

Watched Goldfinger last night.

This is still a great flick, although watching it after FRWL does diminish it slightly.

Apart from some plot contrivances, I don't really have much negative to point out. The movie flows at a nice pace, the action is crisp, the music and production design is excellent, and there's style to spare.

It's not the best Bond movie, but it is the quintessential one. It codified the rules of the series for the next 40 years.

8/10

Found a few spare hours to watch You Only Live Twice last night. It continues the gradual decline in quality since FRwL - I score it a 6.

It's the first film where I felt it dragged a little. Blofeld is disappointing as a villain - a bit too feeble to be head of SPECTRE, and I never get the impression he poses much of a threat. There's no spiky dialogue with Bond either - I don't think the script was that great in general. And that shot of the volcano after the explosion... awful.

All that considered, I still thought it was fairly watchable with some enjoyable scenes. There are some nice locations and shots (eg the scene on the harbour rooftops) and the theme song is good too (although the melody makes me think of Robbie Williams' "Millennium", which is where I first heard it).

Thunderball was one of my favorites growing up. I don’t know if it was the setting in Nassau or the big underwater battle but it was one I always looked forward to seeing. Rewatching it now you can see some of the cracks that started to become apparent in the style over substance philosophy that began in Goldfinger. Terence Young makes a welcome return after handing off the reins to Guy Hamilton but the genie is out of the bottle and Bond will rarely go back to those gritty, spy roots that we saw in Dr. No and From Russia with Love.

Thunderball is a great story. It’s not surprising that Fleming originally developed this plot as a screenplay for a Bond film and in fact it was was supposed to be the first EON film as well. When those initial plans did not materialize it became one of the novels. Legal disputes moved it from first to fourth in the EON canon but it worked out for the best. Bond has slowly been building in this more grand direction and if they had started here, the series might have taken a wholly different form. Instead SPECTRE has been allowed to build over the first few films (taking a break in Goldfinger, the only film in the Connery/Lazenby era that does not feature the organization). Their ransom demand has global implications but still allows for a gripping story in mainly one beautiful location.

My biggest grievance is you could have excised the Shrublands scenes from the film. They reek of plot contrivances and weigh very little on the overall story. Bond and Lippe decide to mess with one another when really one should just kill the other. We also get sexual blackmail which seems totally uncouth for the modern day. Once Bond gets to Nassau however, the plot takes over and it doesn’t slow down until the end.

Bond and Domino actually develop a sweet romance. Bond doesn’t have to seduce her to get him on her side but there’s a real attraction and sweet chemistry between the two. The film actually makes a meta-comment on Bond’s lovemaking abilities being able to sway women to his side given the climax of Goldfinger. Giving that statement is the real scene-stealer, Luciana Paluzzi as Fiona Volpe. Sexy, dangerous and well able to hold her own against 007, she positively burns on the screen. The intensity between her and Connery light up the film and it’s a shame her role is not larger or that she’s not used in later films.

The rest of the supporting cast is dependable but nothing too exciting. Rik Van Nutter has shades of Jack Lord’s more suave Felix Leiter but appears in so few scenes that he’s not given a real chance to shine. Adolfo Celi as Emilio Largo is a fine villain maintaining an aura of cool and steely determination however he doesn’t pop as much as the previous villains have. Desmond Llewelyn continues to steal the show in his scenes as Q and the second half of the relationship is solidified here as Bond carelessly plays with the gadgets during his briefing.

Thunderball is a 7/10. It doesn’t hold up quite as well as when I was younger but it’s still a good film. Some of the underwater scenes do go on for a bit long but the film rarely drags in those moments. The final battle is enlivened by the music and cinematography and it provided a new type of final assault on enemy forces rather than just two sides shooting at each other. Hands down my favorite moment is when Bond catches Volpe in the tub and and when asked to hand her something to put on, he hands her a pair of shoes and sits down right in front of her. Not many people could pull that off. But Connery proves once again that he is James Bond.

Current Rankings:
1) From Russia with Love
2) Goldfinger
3) Thunderball
4) Dr. No

I’m finally caught up!

Did a double header yesterday.

Thunderball:
This one is better than I remember it. Some of the action sequences, for example the plane hijacking and the climactic underwater battle—while overlong—are just great, and Paluzzi shines as a scary, calculating villain.

One thing I really like is the way Young captures the symmetry of the SPECTRE and MI6 briefings; they’re mirror images in a way.

The movie kind of spins it’s wheels for a bit, both at the in Nassau and at the Shrublands—you could probably cut 15 minutes from this movie and end up with a tighter package—but overall it’s a decent installment.

It’s somewhere between a 6 and a 7. I’m going to round down and say 6/10.

You Only Live Twice:
This one is worse than I remember :P

I like the supporting cast of heroic sidekicks but didn’t love the villains—outside of Blofeld they’re forgettable. And even Blofeld is a bit disappointing. He’s more manic and theatrical here than in his cold cameos previously.

The movie is less coherent and professional than others in the canon. Bond’s transformation into a Japanese man is weird and culturally obtuse, SPECTRE’s space technology seems unrealistic, and the movie is edited unevenly, with several jump cuts that leave out necessary connective tissue.

Also, Connery seems less and less interested in the role.

I liked the staging of some of the action scenes—there’s a wide aerial shot of Bond beating up bad guys that I just love—and the musical theme is great.

Overall a mediocre entry for me.

5/10

We’re only covering the official EON James Bond’s films in this rewatch however if someone were so inclined the unofficial parody film Casino Royale (1967) was released between Thunderball and You Only Live Twice. Suffice it to say: it’s a hot mess. The film suffered multiple directors, Peter Sellers leaving the film before he was finished filming his scenes and a script with more fingerprints on it than a handrail. It’s definitely an acquired taste.

I’m not going to review the film but I urge anyone mildly interested to see it. I’ve come to appreciate it over the years. It includes notable Bond alumni like Ursula Andress and Vladek Sheybal. You have Peter Sellers and Orson Welles facing off at a baccarat table even if they refused to film together. One of my favorite scenes is a ludicrous auction which includes peculiar bidding instructions and bids. It also features Jacqueline Bissett as Miss Goodthighs, an actress who I wished had made the jump into the official Bond films. The music score is also catchy and because of the parody nature of the film, allows it to be more bouncy than you would normally find in a Bond film.

It’s currently streaming for free on Vudu (with commercials) if anyone wants to take the plunge. Again it’s not some lost treasure but there are moments that will make you smile and if you’re a completist like me, it’s just something you have to watch if you want to cover the Bond canon.

I didn't. I skipped it since my bro didn't have the DVD. I'll leave a review for it soon though since they're on Amazon.

Watching You Only Live Twice tomorrow night!

Scores updated to this point.

I just saw "You only live twice".

It's... ok? I feel like this is the most middle of the road out of all of the Sean Connery movies. The plot is good enough, though this really ramps up the sillyness factor quite a lot. Also, this probably has more "why don't you just shoot him?" moments than any of the Bond movies I've seen thus far. He is constantly at the mercy of people who could just kill him, but they don't. Seriously, even when Blofeld has Bond at his mercy (multiple times) he goes for dramatics instead of shooting! Why not? You threw a woman to a piranha pool because she didn't kill him, now you make the same mistake? It makes the villains look like buffoons. Without a threatening villain, the movie loses quite a lot, though at least it has a lot of original settings and fight scenarios.

Overall, it's a 5/10, it's worth seeing just for the amount of spy tropes it brought to the table, but in the end is not that solid of a movie.