When you think of James Bond, you more than likely think of Sean Connery. I would say “Poor Ian Fleming”, but frankly Fleming owes the longevity and popularity of his most famous literary creation to the Edinburgh-born bodybuilder with sexual charisma oozing from his 1.88m frame.
Read MorePoor Die Another Day. Overblown and overloaded, it’s gone down in history as one of the worst of the Bond series, indelibly blotting Pierce Brosnan’s copybook and forcing a rethink and reboot of the franchise.
Read MorePoor Denise Richards. She’s gone down as one of the worst Bond girls in the franchise, and I don’t think it’s entirely fair. It’s entirely possible her own screen persona at the time worked against her.
Read MoreTomorrow Never Dies is, in the cold light of 2020, a strangely prescient film about the control of information and the interference of mega-capitalists in sovereign affairs. There’s a reason why Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are so easily imagined as Bond villains.
Read MoreGoldenEye came roaring into cinemas at the end of 1995, sweeping the Iron Curtain before it and showing that even though the world had changed, there was still a place in it for 007. GoldenEye was a clear and present game-changer.
Read MoreLook, what I’m trying to say, in as sophisticated a way as possible, with a well-researched position of which my university drama lecturer would approve, is that Timothy Dalton is wet… a lot… in this movie. And I don’t hate it.
Read MoreDalton returned to Ian Fleming’s books, surprising himself with how much he liked the original character. He drew his Bond from those sources, and added a key new element drawn from his classical work: James Bond as a Byronic Hero.
Read MoreOf course, the Roger Moore Bond films had used musical homages before, but those were classical, instrumental pieces, not pop songs from two decades earlier. It would be like the Tyrannosaurus Rex making its first appearance in Jurassic Park to the tune of Nutbush City Limits.
Read MoreFrom the time of Fleming’s backstabbing, through decades of legal action, the eventual production of Never Say Never Again and beyond, McClory would never shut up about his part in the Bond legacy.
Read MoreThe long term embarrassment caused by the title might have been mollified if the content of the film was top class, but unfortunately, Octopussy remains one of the most confusing instalments of the series, with a wildly scattered script.
Read MoreAfter the phenomenal success of Moonraker, Bond producer Albert R Broccoli knew Eon Productions couldn’t top it, and it would be foolhardy to try. Disco was dead, the 80s had arrived, and Bond was not Star Wars. It could not pull an Empire Strikes Back and build a new universe when its own empire had a 20-year history.
Read MoreIt was probably a good thing Fleming was long dead, because even though he’d designed the Moonraker plot to be film-ready, producer Albert R Broccoli decided the villain’s plan to launch a missile at London was nowhere near epic enough. Bond had to be out of this world - literally.
Do you ever want to watch a film that is just pure polished fun from start to finish? A film that will fly by, racing from one intrigue to the next, never letting up the pace, maintaining a vigorous potency the likes of which rivals 007 himself? In the James Bond franchise, that film is The Spy Who Loved Me. This movie is the fully-justified Big Dick Energy instalment of the series.
Read MoreThis James Bond retrospective is now nine films into the franchise - more than a third, less than half - but I’m willing to bet the price of one of Scaramanga’s golden shots that there will not be another that has such a gap between its parts and the whole.
Read MoreRarely has a Bond film so occupied a definitive time and space as Live and Let Die. Roger Moore’s first outing as 007 was also the first Bond film to feature a predominantly African-American cast, which is commendable. On the other hand, the film’s influence by the blaxploitation films of the era means it now makes for uncomfortable viewing at times.
Read MoreIf On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was an uncut gem - its facets revealed only after the years whittled away the George Lazenby ore around them - then Diamonds Are Forever is a return to the Koh-i-Noor flashiness of the mid-60s Connery era.
Read MoreIn many ways it was the most “sixties” of all the Bond films - certainly stylistically. But more than just the exterior sheen, I would argue its happy turned tragic ending draws a line in the sand of a certain type of Bond.
Read MoreYou Only Live Twice is the first Bond film that diverges significantly from the plot of the book - except for a now cringeworthy sequence in which James Bond is, gulp, put in yellowface.
Read MoreBilled as “the biggest Bond ever!” upon release, Thunderball is just that - more money, more danger, more girls, more explosions and more ravenous man-eating sharks kept as pets. Unfortunately all that adds up to more bloat - apt, considering one-quarter of the film’s hefty 2 hours 10 minute running time is set underwater.
Read MoreThe story goes that the reason producers Harry Saltzmann and Albert R Broccoli had chosen to make From Russia With Love as their second James Bond instalment was because JFK had named it in his top ten favourite books.
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