Last Bond Movie You Watched? 1.0

lachesis wrote:

Unfortunately moving on to TMWTGG all of those issues become amplified and the odd positives evapourate altogether, the dialogue - so much a redeeming factor of the previous two films is borderline inept "I'm dreaming of a Solex agitator" somehow it even manges to nullify both Moore's charisma and Christopher Lee's presence.

Mary Goodnight: Solex?
James Bond & Francisco Scaramanga: Bukakke.
Mary Goodnight: Beautiful.

Watched OHMSS the other night, class as always. Just watched FYEO on Blu Ray. Or at least tried to watch it. The sound mix on this is so f*cking horrific that I spent most of the film diving for the volume button on the remote. Conti's score just screeches horribly in and out, the soundscape is just so quiet one minute, ear-piercingly loud the next, so screechy and tinny that it ruined my enjoyment of the film. No wonder modern audiences by and large don't like Conti's score, if this is how recent DVD releases have presented it. A cracking score bludgeoned and a decent Bond film given awful sound treatment. I wouldn't recommend this Blu Ray to anyone.

Lazenby. wrote:

Watched OHMSS the other night, class as always. Just watched FYEO on Blu Ray. Or at least tried to watch it. The sound mix on this is so f*cking horrific that I spent most of the film diving for the volume button on the remote. Conti's score just screeches horribly in and out, the soundscape is just so quiet one minute, ear-piercingly loud the next, so screechy and tinny that it ruined my enjoyment of the film. No wonder modern audiences by and large don't like Conti's score, if this is how recent DVD releases have presented it. A cracking score bludgeoned and a decent Bond film given awful sound treatment. I wouldn't recommend this Blu Ray to anyone.

While I haven't yet got to the FYEO blu ray from the box set, I have the earlier Blu release (which I thought was the same) watched it last year and did not experience the sound problem you have had.....is it possible your centre channel speaker became reset or out of balance?

Lazenby. wrote:

Watched OHMSS the other night, class as always. Just watched FYEO on Blu Ray. Or at least tried to watch it. The sound mix on this is so f*cking horrific that I spent most of the film diving for the volume button on the remote. Conti's score just screeches horribly in and out, the soundscape is just so quiet one minute, ear-piercingly loud the next, so screechy and tinny that it ruined my enjoyment of the film. No wonder modern audiences by and large don't like Conti's score, if this is how recent DVD releases have presented it. A cracking score bludgeoned and a decent Bond film given awful sound treatment. I wouldn't recommend this Blu Ray to anyone.

You mean the 2.0 channel or 5.1?

Erica Ambler wrote:

It's the constant self-references, inadequate actresses and Lo-Fi CGI that cripple DAD for me.

Full marks for product placement by Antonov, though.

I said it many pages back, but the parasurfing sequence is hilarious to watch on Blu-ray. More than ever.

TOMORROW NEVER DIES (1997)

Eh. It's entertaining as a 90's nostalgia trip if nothing else.

Yeah, really, it's nothing else.

The movie might've been better if Carver's plot weren't revealed from the get-go. As the audience found out straight away, it was only logical that Bond would have to find out straight away - leading to those terrible "lost at sea" quips - thus there's really very little to unravel and investigate... making the whole movie pretty pointless.

I will say that I've taken a liking to Carver. Funny, crazy bastard.

There's more chemistry at a Year 7 science lab than there was between Broz-Bond and the desperate housewife. Didn't buy it at all.

The action is overblown of course. Bond goes full Rambo. Also, those goons he battled in the carpark are unbelievably stupid, even by 007 standards. So you've got a sedan heading straight towards you, you've got a rocket launcher, and you choose to aim for the big hole in the windshield instead of, I dunno, the engine. Hope he was sacked.

That whole motorbike chase in Saigon wasn't needed. The one time in the movie I felt like dozing off (the explosions keep you awake at every other junction).

I don't mind TND for what it is - mindless muzzle flash porn - but Ian Fleming's James Bond it ain't.

P.S. What's the deal with "Surrender" not being used for the main titles? It spanks, roots, impregnates, and refuses to pay child support to the snoozer they ended up using.

Quote :

There's more chemistry at a Year 7 science lab than there was between Broz-Bond and the desperate housewife. Didn't buy it at all.

I don't get the hate for Paris. When I was watching it, I thought they had so much chemistry. She has everything a classic Bond girl has, including chemistry with the leading man. Whatever.

The World Is Not Enough
Same with the other two 90s Bond films. I love it. Sue me.

Actually, was watching Elektra and was thinking how much of a true psychotic she is - and I love it. We've only really had that with Zorin before her. She's great. Don't get the hate. And she's bloody gorgeous.

2012 Ranking:

Tomorrow Never Dies
From Russia With Love
On Her Majesty's Secret Service
The World Is Not Enough
Thunderball
Dr.No
Goldeneye
For Your Eyes Only
The Living Daylights
Goldfinger
A View to a Kill
You Only Live Twice
Octopussy
Live and Let Die
Licence to Kill
The Man With The Golden Gun
Diamonds Are Forever
The Spy Who Loved Me
Moonraker

Tomorrow Never Dies and Die Another Day.

After watching Goldeneye last week, I thought Pierce Brosnan's Bond films could only get better. For the first half an hour of Tomorrow Never Dies, I thought I might be right, but then the rest of the film just became a bit of an ordinary action and kung fu movie. Not bad, but I just expected better, instead the film isn't really much better than Goldeneye. Like Goldeneye, Die Another Day I thought was one of the big popular Bond films, but I found it really silly at times and the longer the film went on the worse it got. It felt like it didn't know whether to be an adult film or a children's film and some of the special effects were very cheap looking. I can only hope that The World Is Not Enough is the best Pierce Brosnan Bond film, because none of his others have been all that good.

I'll watch Timothy Dalton as Bond tonight in Licence To Kill.

Paula007 wrote:

I'll watch Timothy Dalton as Bond tonight in Licence To Kill.

If at all possible I'd watch The Living Daylights first. The two Dalton outings couldn't be more different.

Python wrote:

Imagine in TND where Carver uses his media influences to label Bond as a loose cannon, paints him as the murderer of Paris, puts his face all over the news. Bond can't go anywhere without seeing his face on the cover of a magazine, he's cornered, how will he get out of this mess?

Yeah, that wouldn't raise any issues of trust with Dench's M.

Casino Royale (2006)

Solid debut for Craig. Besides the clunky dialogue during the romantic getaway ("you can have me anywhere", "I have no armor left", I am so glad Haggis is gone), I enjoy it a lot. Wish it took more pages out of the book like the two men wearing straw hats, and I very much prefer the novel's end over the shoot em up sinking house stuff, but I get that everyone that never read these books would be underwhelmed that there weren't machine guns blazing. Oh well. Maybe if EON had the rights to this all the time we might have gotten something closer. CR by Connery, Young, Maibaum, ect? I would really love to visit that alternate universe. As the film is, it's a good entry.

Quantum of Solace (2008)

Feels like I returned to LTK. Craig's still great but it's too bad that most of time he's just running, jumping, shooting, ect. Hurts that the action sequences are there merely to pad out the film because the script is too light. I'm not crazy about QUANTUM and would be very content if EON decides never bring them back. James Bond vs a committee? Let them go the way of SMERSH. Paul Haggis portraying the American government in a negative light? Feels wrong for Bond. Let's not turn it into Bourne. Some odd moments always struck me wrong. Like when M accuses Bond of shooting down that man from special branch, and Bond doesn't even try to clear himself, he just takes? Tossing Mathis in the garbage? Despicable and pointless. Still I enjoy plenty of stuff in QOS. The scene on the plane with Mathis. The moment where it looks like Bond and Camille are doomed in the fire and he prepares to shoot her down so she won't suffer. I do like the ending of the flick, and I wish the film focused more on that story instead of being sidelined by the mundane Bolivia water stuff.

Here's hoping Skyfall comes off more rounded.

1. From Russia with Love
   
2. Goldfinger
   
3. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
   
4. Dr. No
   
5. Casino Royale
   
6. Thunderball
   
7. The Living Daylights
   
8. GoldenEye
   
9. For Your Eyes Only
   
10. Moonraker
    
11. Diamonds Are Forever
    
12. Live and Let Die
    
13. Octopussy
    
14. Licence to Kill
    
15. Quantum of Solace
    
16. The Spy Who Loved Me
    
17. You Only Live Twice
    
18. A View to a Kill
    
19. The Man with the Golden Gun
    
20. Die Another Day
    
21. Tomorrow Never Dies
    
22. The World is Not Enough
    

GOLDENEYE

First time watching it on blu-ray. Very nice. Lots of extras. Moving on to the story....

There aren't really any new criticisms I have of the movie. I liked it in 1995 and I like it now. What I didn't care for then still stands: Bond has a dated-hair cut/look the moment he walks on screen, and it hasn't gotten any more classicier over time.

Bond and Alec's relationship isn't given enough time to be sold to the audience as a friendship. That angle feels under-developed and/or forced on the audience. When you watch the PTS, Brosnan interacts with Bean as if he's perturbed or merely tolerating Bean's 006. At no point in the film leading up to Janus' big reveal do we ever get the sense that 006 was a significant person in Bond's life. There's no mourning, and only a passing reference to him from M. Not only that, but 006 and 007 look remarkably the same in 1995 as they did in 1986. No attempt by the makeup and wardrobe department to make them look a little different, a little younger in their 1986 mission.

If you just accept that Bond and Alec were competitors (as well as being on the same team) then the dialogue post-reveal works fine. If you expect them to act like they were once close friends.....well, that never really comes through on screen.

Another problem for me that Campbell creates unnecessarily is having Ourumov kill one of his own soldiers with the very same gun he just "assassinated" 006 with. We don't actually see the General shoot 006, so maybe he simply aimed it away from Alec just enough to miss him, but that would then mean all of his soldiers would know that 006 faked his death. I don't know. The way in which 006's death is handled needed more work.

Brosnan is a bit stiff in places, and the soundrack has some great moments and some wonky moments (though never as ass-rippingly terrible as NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN), but the real strength of the movie is the characters and the acting. Scorupco is one of the best Bond Girls ever. She has real chemistry with Brosnan and she's simply stunning looking. The viewer falls for her.

Though her accent is a bit dodgy, Famke Janssen seems to be having so much fun (as does the audience) that it doesn't really matter if her Russian is a bit spotty. Trevelyan is an underrated villain, but he's tops in my book, and Bean would have made for a far more intense 007 in the Fleming/Dalton mold than was Brosnan, but at the time Brosnan was what was safe. The only weak link in the movie is Samantha Bond, who is given some of the most politically correct dialogue the series has ever seen. No fault of hers, but her Moneypenny sounds like she's read every feminist theory article ever written by Bella Abzug, but then shows she doesn't have the courage of her convictions when she flirts with Bond.

Gravity's Silhouette wrote:

Bond has a dated-hair cut/look the moment he walks on screen, and it hasn't gotten any more classicier over time.

Never really understood why they let Brosnan keep his Remington Steele haircut. Glad they trimmed it by the next film.

My theory is that the hair department weren't told that only the first 10 minutes of the film were set in the 80's.

Die Another Day

The opening gunbarrel was playing, and it occurred to me that this was the last Brosnan Bond film. The film was closing and I reflected on the film - it was fun, it had many good moments, and some not-so-good which we're all very well aware of. But you know, if the very worst of the series still manages quite a lot of good moments, the series is in good shape. Sort of annoys me how they felt they needed to reboot, or void Brosnan's fifth entry in 2004, but such is life. Many of you believed that the first half of the film is great, and declines when he reaches Iceland, but there are some greatness in the second half - the Ice Palace I think is one of the best Bond sets, the car chase is fun, Bond and Miranda's love scene, the fight between Jinx and Miranda is pretty cool to name a few. It's not the best, but it's certainly not bad.

2012 Ranking:

Tomorrow Never Dies
From Russia With Love
On Her Majesty's Secret Service
The World Is Not Enough
Thunderball
Dr.No
Goldeneye
For Your Eyes Only
The Living Daylights
Goldfinger
A View to a Kill
You Only Live Twice
Octopussy
Live and Let Die
Licence to Kill
The Man With The Golden Gun
Diamonds Are Forever
The Spy Who Loved Me
Moonraker
Die Another Day

FieldsMan wrote:

[DAD is] not the best, but it's certainly not bad.

So why are you putting it last in your ranking?

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