What I don't get about bond films especially past ones is that villains had Bond and yet they wait. They strap him into get ball lasered and yet he always finds way to escape. If you were a villian would you rather kill agent that will spoil your evil plot or would you rather let him live to see your destruction yet he ends up escaping and foiling your plot. Evil mad men can't be this stupid.

There needs to be a chance for Bond to survive, otherwise there's no film. But yes, I agree with you, it's infuriating to see all those masterminds just blabbering about their plans to Bond instead of just shooting him. Maybe he's just lucky and the other 00s get the actually competent villains, and that's the reason he's the only one who always survives. That's why I like Goldfinger so much, he actually has a good reason to let Bond live, and if he hadn't tricked Goldfinger, Bond would've been killed. Twice.

Moonraker
They giveth and they taketh away! So after a couple of duds: DAFE, LALD, TMWTGG we got the brilliant The Spy Who Loved Me. At the end of that they promised Bond would return in For Your Eyes Only. Then Star Wars was released! Now I’m a big sci-fi fan and if it wasn’t for Star Wars then the Alien script probably would never have been picked up. But there was a slew of atrocious Star Wars rip-offs in the late 70’s. Ok so its not as bad as Starcrash, Battle Beyond the Stars et al but its clear that its trying to cash in on the Star Wars histaria.
Theme tune is bloody awful! From what I’ve read it was thrust on Bassey at short notice.
The same scriptwriter as TSWLM, its just a reshash but in space instead of the ocean. Jaws makes a welcome return but he’s immediately become comical than intimidating.
Drax is a better villain than Stromberg but again he’s pretty similar in style. Lois Childs impresses as Dr Goodhead but I’d prefer if they could keep the innuendo names for the minor conquest characters. It just undermines a strong and intelligent character here.
The G-Force simulator scene is the best part of the film, brillianlty acted by Moore.
I can’t help but feel if you are going to have a stupid Bond in space idea you may as well go full out with it. Its only the last half hour that it becomes sci-fi which it was no doubt marketed on. Two years after Star Wars and huge increase in budget on TSWLM it ends up looking worse than both.
Overall its not a bad film but it’s a real lazy paint by number production. Wasted opportunity to do something a bit different here.
The “I think he’s attempting re-entry, Sir” probably won’t ever be beaten for the ending double entendre though :)
I’m being generous at 4/10.

Welcome back!

Scores updated to this point.

For Your Eyes Only
***Never seen this one before.***
Not fussy on the song, and don’t like how the title sequence has Sheena Easton singing, makes it feel like its just a music video.
Opening “Blofeld” scene is terrible. I get the reasons behind it due to the dispute but it is embarrassing.
The storyline to this is more of a realistic spy thriller. Topol and Julian Glover make good bait and switch allies and villains.
I like Havelok, a little sullen in parts but I suppose her parents were just murdered. Ice skating girl is really annoying, but credit to the writers for not having Bond bed her, she must be about 35 years his junior.
The action scenes aren’t anything new but they do them a lot better than earlier versions.
That rock-climbing scene was intense but the final battle does disappoint.
Ending ruined by having an actress portraying Thatcher in it though. Just to put in perspective less than a year later she would order the sinking of a retreating ship killing 323 men.
Overall a fairly bland Bond but I enjoyed it as a more simplified and believable one.
7/10, I might have gone up to an 8 if it weren't for the terrible opening "Blofeld" scene or Maggie the milk thief turning up at the end.

I’ve been putting this one off, and if it wasn’t for my rule that I have to write the review for the last film before proceeding to the next one, I might not be finally doing it. Roger Moore’s swan-song, A View to a Kill, holds a weird place for me. It’s not a good film and probably his worst. He should have left after Octopussy but stayed on as a favor to Albert R. Broccoli. He had definitely gotten too old for the role and it was apparent stunt doubles were doing a lot of the action. But this was a film, the first that came out in my lifetime, that I saw repeatedly when I was younger. TBS aired it repeatedly on Dinner and a Movie back in the 1990s. So much so, that I flash back to their discussions whenever I watch it.

So that nostalgia, coupled with the melancholy of Moore’s final Bond film, have always stuck with me. But the film has obvious flaws which I can’t ignore. The plot is probably the flimsiest we have seen in the franchise. Bond is sent to investigate a potential leak at Zorin Industries, except it’s almost as if they forgot about that because the first hour or so is about Zorin’s illegal horse racing activities. They do stumble upon his plan to destroy Silicon Valley, but I’m still at a loss for what this has to do with the British Secret Service. The CIA seems almost totally uninterested here. Thank goodness we have Bond?

Tanya Roberts is also the worst Bond girl of the classic era, and possibly the franchise. She and Moore have zero chemistry and the character serves nothing more than to link Bond from the horse racing shenanigans to the Silicon Valley plot. The film tries to make her mysterious when Bond first meets her, as she casually ignores his charm, but does a complete 180 later in the film without ever really letting her to develop. And I’m sorry but, who lets a BLIMP sneak up on them? I thought her entering a mine in high heels was the height of incredulity but shockingly, no.

Christopher Walken as Zorin, the main villain, also feels incomplete. Walken gives him that dash of wild insanity but it feels he’s constraining himself almost too much so that the character becomes forgettable. Sure, he gleefully massacres a number of underlings, but other than that, the film barely takes advantage of a big personality like Walken. Grace Jones was an interesting addition as May Day but is given little to do. My favorite addition to the cast was Patrick Macnee as Sir Godfrey Tibbett. Following in the footsteps of his former Avengers co-stars, Macnee brings humor and charm to a small part. I wish he had been in it a little longer. The scenes between him and Moore as a flustered valet and a fussy aristocrat are the funniest in the film.

One of the true highlights is the music. I’ve always loved the theme song and I especially enjoyed the slow, instrumental version that plays throughout the film. The scene where Bond first meets Stacey at the horse auction always sticks out in my mind because of the music. This is a scene where it usually hits me that this is last adventure for Roger Moore. More than any other Bond, the melancholy sets in. Connery would have three finales and Dalton and Brosnan never got proper final adventures as the franchise would be in flux. But people knew going in this was Moore’s final film, and as the Bond for the most official films, it’s hard not to get sad even if the film itself is unfulfilling.

Moore had a tough job. He had to make Bond his own while still carrying the franchise forward. More than any other, Moore was the gentleman spy. He relied more on wit and charm than his fellow portrayers. Coupled with the amazing stunt-work in his films, this gave Bond a more rounded characterization. It wasn’t just rough and tumble but Bond could also be dapper and equally at home both at a dinner party or clinging to the side of a plane. As the films became more action-oriented in the 1980s and 1990s, it’s nice looking back to see how Moore made the role his own using his natural talents. Sometimes the franchise would go a little too far into camp, and Moore had admitted that the more sadistic aspects of the character made him uncomfortable, but he still did a admirable job walking that fine line between his own sensibilities and the needs of the role.

I’m going to give A View to a Kill a 5/10. The film is an enjoyable enough watch but the plot is muddled and the characters only roughly defined. A quick shout out to the lovely Lois Maxwell, who also makes her departure from the series with this film. Her role as Miss Moneypenny had been more reduced in the Moore era which is a shame as her scenes with Connery and Lazenby worked as great character moments and it was not just something that was required to be in a Bond script. Although this is not the end of “classic” Bond, it’s definitely the end of an era.

Current Rankings:
1) On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
2) From Russia with Love
3) Goldfinger
4) For Your Eyes Only
5) The Spy Who Loved Me
6) Thunderball
7) Dr. No
8) Octopussy
9) Live and Let Die
10) You Only Live Twice
11) The Man with the Golden Gun
12) A View to a Kill
13) Moonraker
14) Diamonds are Forever

The Living Daylights is getting a 6 from me.

Middle of the road sort of stuff this one. Some really cool stunts as per usual, decent enough plot, but nothing terribly enthralling. Dalton has always been one of my least favourite Bonds. He's not bad, just slightly forgettable and dour (although I guess they were going for the latter with the shift in tone after Moore's departure). That said, some of his humour is superbly delivered (the "salt corrosion" line is perfect).

Never warmed to Whittaker as villain, although both Koskov and Necros are good as villains. Bond girls are kept to the minimum, which is a plus as it allows Milovy's character and relationship with Bond to be better developed.

Last but not least... another cracking theme song.

Time for a new poll!

Previous poll results:

Welcome to the Dalton era!

(Scores updated to this point)

I just saw Moonraker.

It was dumb. Fun but dumb. So, so dumb. Every cliche that the 007 movies are accused of is here. And yet it manages to be quite an entertaining movie, both in its highs and its lows. That opening with the freefall was stunning, especially because there is absolutely no especial effects there: they really filmed the scene while in free fall. That's nuts, just for a couple of minutes of the film. The movie setpieces are great in general, they went over the top and they nailed it every single time, from the boat chase in Venice to the final space battle. Moore is good as 007 as always, but in my opinion is Jaws who steals the show. Seriously, from him surviving a freefall from a plane, to a genuine creepy appeareance in Rio stalking the heroes, to suddenly and jarringly finding love after a fight in a sky lift, to his return to capture Bond, being pretty much the only hencheman that is capable to beat Bond in a straight fight, to his heel face turn against the big bad. This was his movie more than Bond's and I'm really glad they kept him around. It also has spectacular locations: the french palace, the city of Venice, Rio de Janeiro, and finally the space station. However, for all of its highs, it also has the dumbest plot of all 007 movies to date. Nevermind that we have two films in a row about the bad guy trying to destroy civilization to create his own empire, but at least in TSWLM there is an attempt (keyword being attempt) of restrain in certain areas. This is just a cartoon. The bad guy wants to erradicate all human life on Earth to create his own master race ruled by him. For that, he manages to select a couple of hundred people inside a huge space station that somehow stayed hidden away from the rest of the world. Just that detail there is hard to believe, even for a James Bond film. Even if we can accept the anti radar excuse, there are hundreds of astronomy observatories, and probably millions of people just looking at space with telescopes. Did noone ever see the biggest orbital structure ever floating around? Did noone see the many space launches done for the building process? But that's not all. He also wants to erradicate human life through throwing what are basically gas bombs into the atmosphere. A gas that is so dangerous that a single bomb can kill hundreds of millions of people. If we can assume that a couple of bombs can saturate the whole atmosphere to extinguish human life, how come noone has noticed it? In the movie we see an accidental breaking of the gas vials killing the scientists, and days later they had managed to clean up all of the gas. Without noone noticing. In one of the most well known and travelled to cities in Europe. How. And why the fuck are you researching that thing in a highly populated city, instead of in the middle of nowhere? The space station has the cliche of the self-destruct button, though to their credit, it's an artificial gravity button this time. But, wait a minute, they were all moving fine before pushing it. So what was it for exactly? Bond pushing the button didn't really stop gravity so much as to made everyone fall. What was the point of that? And why are all the buttons conveniently labeled? But the dumbest thing of all is the triggering event of the movie. Drax steals a space shuttle he fabricated and sold to NASA, and the reason he did that is because one of his own rockets was damaged. Why... why did you do that? If you already have enough money to build multiple space rockets, hundreds of personnel hidden and well trained and A MASSIVE SPACE STATION CLOACKED FROM VIEW SOMEHOW... why didn't you just build another rocket? He was obviously wealthy enough to do that, if he could pull off all of those shennannigans from before. Why the potential risk of alerting everyone, when up to that point your operation was all secret somehow? Just... just dumb. The villain itself is also weak. Probably the weakest of all of the series. Drax is just forgettable, has no charisma or fun gimmick, and fails into every big bad cliche you could imagine. You'd think someone that could pull of an operation like that would be intelligent enough to just shoot Bond, or keep tags on him to make sure he doesn't do anything against you. Hell, you have that gas, I was expecting a scene of Bond trying to escape from a room slowly filling with deadly gas, but the ocasion never arose. And for some reason, his ego manages to ruin his greates asset, Jaws' loyalty, making him turn against his boss. His only good scene was the dog chasing scene, which was rather chilling, I'm not going to lie. Outside of that, it's the most forgettable villain so far, which is sad considering this movie's gimmick is space. Even his death scene is not satisfying, throwing him out of an airlock into space has not the same punch when he's been killed already with a poison dart.

Overall, it's a movie that's best enjoyed with the brains turned off. Don't think about the plot too much, focus on the movies' strenghts and forget coherency. A decent 6/10.