Last Bond Movie You Watched.

Brosnan sure does look like a boy next to the likes of G John. Dalton would've been a different story.

I don't think Dalton would have worked well with Famke or Izabella. Maybe with the bird who played Caroline. 

"You're just trying to show off the size of your uh, your--"
"And you're full of it!"

Izabella and Dalton could've worked I feel. Timbo already paired up with a mildly irritating pseudo-Slav in TLD.

It is hard to picture Dalton up against Famke, so to speak. Though I could picture him saying "that depends on your definition of safe sex" etc. I can't quite see it with Izabella. Like to think had there been no trouble with the legalities, a third Dalton film -GE or not, definitely would've had Caroline Bliss back.

"You know James, the offer stands on my Manilow records.
-Perhaps later, Penny, something came up in Monaco..."

On a side note, Caroline Bliss is not a bad Bond Girl name.

Ah by Caroline I meant the bird in the car who was sent to evaluate Bond. 

Of course Caroline Bliss would have been back. Don't hear a great deal about her these days.

Neither. Guess that makes it Blissful ignorance...

I know you meant the analyst, Fields. I just pine for Caroline Bliss is all

The Living Daylights (1987)

Was thinking about the film in bed last night so I watched it today in what's been a little while. This film has always been my on/off again favorite Bond film and if I were pressed to pick just one it would most likely be this one. Dalton slipped into the role very well and probably giving the closest to the novels performance of all the Bond actors and I've always adored the supporting cast especially Jeroen Krabbe as Koskov who's one of the more unique villains of the series (part wannabe puppet-master and part sniveling weasel) and while not a fan favorite I do like Joe Don as Whittaker although I do get why some don't as he's not the mastermind or menace previous villains were but I think this film was wise to go for something different. The villains are more pathetic than menacing but their actions, bloated egos and greedy nature cause serious damage which is something that happens more often in reality than someone who's a mastermind like say Goldfinger which is kind of funny given realism is what the more recent Bond films were trying to achieve yet this film managed to accomplish that with the villains and very plausible plot.

Can't forget to mention the epic and exciting action scenes in the film particularly the airbase battle and John Barry's excellent score (one of my favorites particularly it's inclusion of Pretenders "Where Has Everybody Gone?" as Necros' theme). Given the current political climate particularly concerning Russia it's became alongside some of the other more Cold War centered Bond films relevant to revisit in light of everything in recent news.

A View to a Kill (1985)
After watching TLD I was in the mood for another Bond film and noted I hadn't watch this one in a long time and felt it was time for a revisit as it shares the same director and has a great Barry score as well. Like TLD and the other Glen films the villains were fairly different than the megalomaniac types of previous Bond films who despite being evil had something of a method and style to their villainy. Here Walken's Zorin is just a pure psychopath who seems to enjoy the kill even more than he does achieving his ultimate goals. The mine sequence being the most notable but also himself showing up to torch City Hall when he could always have gotten the reliable Scarpine to do it. I think Roger is very good in it and I don't really care about his age as even in his fifties he was still pulling the role off with style and grace. Patrick Macnee as Tibbett is up there as one of Bond's best allies just for the comradery between them in the earlier part of the film.

This feels a bit like a transitional film as you still have Roger's style of Bond film on display but the style is mixed in with one of the most cold-blooded villains of the whole series which fits the tone of where the series would go with Dalton. It still works in my opinion though and is a very fun romp to close out the Moore era. It makes happiest ... in the saddle.

Good write up, S&Q. Agree with all points.

I just watched Quantum of Solace (all of it) for the first time in some 6-7 years on BBC America and found myself actually liking it, far more than Spectre, which I don't care to watch again at all.

Apparently it's aged differently with me.

bitchcraft wrote:

I just watched Quantum of Solace (all of it) for the first time in some 6-7 years on BBC America and found myself actually liking it, far more than Spectre, which I don't care to watch again at all.

Apparently it's aged differently with me.

I think it's a matter of expectations to a certain extent.

QoS is a silly film, but that was the baseline of what I was expecting going into it. With "Spectre", the expectation level was much higher.
I liked "Skyfall" (whilst I did not rate it quite as highly as some on here) and the addition of Christoph Waltz (whom I like a lot) led me to believe it could end up being a great Bond film.

While I have issues with the end, I greatly enjoy 'SPECTRE'. Sam Mandes has a great talent for staging a scene, no doubt from his background in theatre, and I think what he was able to do with the first two acts of this film was more interesting than much of 'SKYFALL' - although that is overall the better picture.

I think both suffer from shrinking scope in the final acts. Particularly when they flesh out the world to include parliamentarians and politics, to have M (either one) and the MI6 boffins getting intimately involved in the action of the finale just seems to shrink the scope back to an almost absurd degree.

Quantum of Solace has aged well because the plot only really goes off the wagon in the Bolivia sequence and it moves very quickly.

Clocking in at 106 minutes, it's also the shortest Bond movie of the Daniel Craig era by a large margin.
In fact, I believe that makes it the shortest Bond movie ever.

Salomé wrote:

Clocking in at 106 minutes, it's also the shortest Bond movie of the Daniel Craig era by a large margin.
In fact, I believe that makes it the shortest Bond movie ever.

Yep, that flash cut editing probably lopped off several minutes

The fact it is 106 minutes is one of the reasons I rate it ahead of CR and SP (if only just). Less time to labour on all the cons that plague Craig's era (Skyfall excluded).

And yet when I saw Spectre it didn't feel as long as it was. Guess Curzon cinemas does that to a chap.

Dr No

It's still a marvel to think this is where it all came from, that if it hadn't, this might've been just another film based on a popular book/series and just one film Connery did in a handful.
I like the way it looks, the characters (right down to the gents club Strangways is part of and the local cop who helps Bond out), music (even if the Bond theme gets knackered) and the little tidbits -the sighting of [the eighth floor?] radio room at SIS HQ, the chap announcing the 707 landed (something repeated in FRWL) and the chap going to fetch Bond from the club. The latter I note as there's something about, the exterior shot and the look of the actor, that feels like a relic of the 1950s era of films.

Oh and let's not forget the spider being whacked in perfect sync to the music.

Agreed, especially about the brief glimpse into the communications room at MI6.

Watching that scene last night oddly put me in my of the Property of a Lady short story with Bond watching the traitor in action and that line "his skin crawled...so close to treachery..." I assumed she worked in a similar room.

A shame we didn't get a rash of Bond films directed by Terence Young in the late fifties where such scenes would fit in.

Also Dr No at 1hr45, a sprint of a film compared to the last two Craig's.

Needed more CGI IMO.

And a woman or non-binary who shows Bond how it should be done.

Patriarchal bollocks.

in light of recent thread murmurings, revisiting, for the thousandth time Diamonds Are Forever

as PK said a little while ago, it has that wonderful element of the bizarre. (I perhaps misremember but the gist is there!). Here, not with Sir Roge, the silliness and camp started but somehow with Connery it seems right. From the off it's a bit weird, a bit odd coming off the back of Bond having his wife killed next to him -hence the PTS feels a rushed way of going, right Bond's wife died, he's gone after Blofeld, there's the 'revenge' and now for the main show. (Of course had Laze' stayed on, this film would have started an entirely different way).

Little bits do tickle, Bond trying to be a bit smart in naming the year the sherry's associated with and when he finishes his summation, Laurence Naismith's "Precisely" sounds as if he's quietly convinced Bond is a bit of an idiot (in his mind), but then around the same time he was dealing with Moore/Curtis so perhaps he was a little overworked. There's of course the one-liners (thanks to Manks) -Bond's "You've caught me with more than my hands up" is probably my favourite. Or some of Wint and Kidd's lines ("...attractive...for a woman" and Kidd's "Most annoying" when told they need Shady alive). There's also, as always, the lift fight. Bond's surprise that his elbow has ploughed into the glass and thus alerting Franks.


I always seem to overlook Jill St. John in this film. She's a redhead so I guess it sort of blanks things out in my mind but I neither mind her nor dislike her. Coming after Diana Rigg it feels a step down but such is life. In my redraft of my never-dying LazenbyDAF story I pitched Lee Remick as a Tiffany. Who knows, who cares, it didn't happen.


Ultimately it's a fun film, and yes I like Bond to be as Fleming wrote him or as close to but sometimes there has to be one film that is fun and so DAF is it.


(Final note to John Barry, a superb score, least of all making a jumbo hovercraft departure much more exciting and epic)

Nice write up.

I like Tiff, mostly because of Jill St John's spunkiness and they way she delivers her dialogue. She really could have been a top-tier Bond girl had the film demanded more focus.

She had the potential. If the film had been more serious, revenge-driven you never know. I do like her brief turn at the petrol station "Keep leaning on that hooter, Charlie...". Indeed, she's indirectly responsible for one of my favourite Connery moments when at the casino Bond remarks: "If she gives your men the slip!" in such a way that I always chuckle. Seems the closest the Connery/Burton partnership seemed like the mates Bond/Leiter are.