For Your Eyes Only (1981)

I'm going to skip Moonraker for now. I'll get to it later.

Roger Moore returns for his fifth outing as James Bond. The plot is boring, the henchmen are boring, and the Bond girls are boring. Fortunately, the stunts and action scenes are really great. Bond certainly skied a lot during Roger Moore's run, but this time we've got spiked-tire motorcycles in hot pursuit. Bond scales a mountain to get to the fortress at the top. Bond swims in yet another set of underwater scenes. Roger Moore is bearable here, maybe looking a little wrinkly, but he is supported by some good actors: Topol and Julian Glover. The Bond girl Melina is striking, but there's not really any chemistry there. The blonde ice skater protege is probably the single worst Bond girl in a film, but I don't think she really counts. Although the music by Bill Conti was grating at first--Rocky does Bond--it grew on me. It's not a great Bondian soundtrack, especially not with that horrible Sheena Easton theme song, but it's pretty fun. Altogether, a pretty enjoyable flick.

6/10

Spy Who Loved Me, The (1977)

The Spy Who Loved Me is a slight improvement over the previous installment--Bond's character is a little less inconsistent and the film is a little better executed--but I feel the film is a hollow imitation of From Russia with Love. Bond is sent on a joint Anglo-Soviet mission to discover what happened to two nuclear submarines that were stolen from both countries, partnering up with a wide-eyed Soviet spy played by Barbara Bach. Unfortunately, her acting is unbearable. The 70s are in full swing here, and they don't treat Bond well. Flared tuxedo pants, tacky cars, and a wakka-wakka 70s TV soundtrack mar the film. The puns are embarrassingly bad. The villain is kind of lame, but his base is pretty cool. The special effects are executed quite well, with some really fantastic miniature work. The best part of the film is Richard Kiel's Jaws--cheesy but menacing, indestructible but not yet the caricature he became in Moonraker.

5/10

PS: I can't help but wonder why the far more attractive Caroline Munro was not given a more significant role in the film.

Man with the Golden Gun, The (1974)

Good lord, what a stinker. The Man with the Golden Gun has an interesting premise, Christopher Lee as the villain, and polished production values (a bit cartooned up--goddamn you slide whistle!), but it ultimately falls flat due to an uninspired script, a poorly developed characterization of Bond (agitated further by Roger Moore), and the dreadful Mary Goodnight. I enjoyed the Asian setting (China and Bangkok), but there's definitely some subdued racism going on there, particularly with the character of JW (why the HELL did they bring him back?). Bond is no stranger to women or being a brute, but he usually has more finesse than this. All he does in this is crack lame jokes, gallivant around with women, and beat the pants off people for information. It's like they forced the animalistic nature of Sean Connery's Bond onto Roger Moore, and it is just unbearable. Which is probably the best word to describe the film as a whole.

4/10

Thunderball (1965)

Thunderball is the fourth James Bond outing, and it's a film with great visuals and some really fantastic production values. Emilio Largo (#2 member of SPECTRE) hijacks two nuclear weapons and threatens their usage on the world unless the world pays up. James Bond has his hands full juggling femme fatales and a megalomaniacal villain. The direction and editing is excellent, with just the right touch of that forced acceleration in the action scenes that is characteristic of Bond in the 60s. John Barry hits his stride here, turning out a fantastic score as well as a great theme song sung by Tom Jones. The biggest problem with the film--a very prominent problem--is the excessive use of underwater action scenes. While not poorly done from a production standpoint, the underwater sequences are a chore to sit through. They're well-lit and the action is pretty clear, but the underwater setting cripples sound design and movement, which ruins the pacing.

7/10

District 9 (2009)

District 9 is a clever sci-fi thriller that discusses xenophobia, cultural and racial alliances, and corporate ethics. Aliens touch down in Johannesburg, and the humans decide to provide them aid which eventually results in a slum district and sub-par treatment. The main character is a bumbling fool who heads the project to move all of the aliens to a district farther out, but he becomes ill during the "raid" and begins to transform horrifically. Reminiscent of The Quatermass Xperiment and having a bold display of Starship Troopers-esque CG effects, District 9 does not disappoint. The script is good, the acting is good, even the shaky-cam didn't bother me. Hell, on a budget of $30 million dollars, my jaw was dropping with almost every effects shot just because of the shaky-cam--imagine how much motion matching they had to do! And even then, the effects, while not necessarily looking the greatest, moved fantastically. They had weight and integrated well into the environment. I was impressed.

8/10

Omega Man, The (1971)

The Omega Man is my personal favorite version of I Am Legend, but it takes enormous liberties with the source material. Charlton Heston grouses his way through the film--as usual--playing Robert Neville, a scientist trying to develop a vaccine for a plague that resulted from biological warfare. He remains the last known illness-free survivor. In The Last Man on Earth (1964) and I Am Legend (2007), the plague turns people into vampire-zombies, but in The Omega Man they become light-sensitive albino Luddites called "The Family," ritually attacking and opposing any technology that reminds them of their former selves. The film is silly and campy, the worst of which is Heston talking to himself in the first half of the film. The film also really bounces for 1971, with some really dynamic action sequences and a pretty quick pace. The 70s TV music-style soundtrack also helps this quite a bit. Not a great film, but certainly a fun one.

6/10

Lawnmower Man, The (1992)

The Lawnmower Man is basically Flowers for Algernon for the cyberpunk genre. Pierce Brosnan plays a scientist who takes a mentally handicapped man and uses virtual reality technology to make him smarter with monstrous and unexpected results. While neither lead actor is particularly bad, almost the entirety of the supporting cast is just horrible--from the cops to the FBI agents to you name it. The FBI sub-plot is derivative, the dialogue is atrocious, and the CG effects are embarrassingly bad (I realize it's from 1992, but come on it's still bad). And there's just too goddamn much! The climax is so incredibly convoluted and full of holes that I couldn't believe they actually went with it. In fact, I think the only thing I really liked about the film is the concept. At least we got a few good shots of the soon-to-be Bond running around with a gun and a bag of explosives... which just reminded me how much I would be rather watching Goldeneye.

4/10

Barbarella (1968)

Barbarella psychedella! Barbarella is not a great film by any measure of the imagination, but it's a fun and groovy masterclass of camp. From the opening sequence (Jane Fonda undressing in her shag-carpeted space ship with bouncing animated titles) to the climactic battle, the film is packed full of colorful psychedelic effects, a swingin' lounge-psychedelic soundtrack (if such a thing can exist) by Bob Crewe and Charles Fox, and plenty of opportunities for the very sexy Jane Fonda to be in various states of undress. The plot is pretty thin: Barbarella is dispatched to find Durand Durand... and that's about it. The film is juvenile and doesn't really make sense, but that's kind of the point. It contains enough absurd moments, goofy characters, costume changes, cheesy lines, self-indulgent oil-wheel projector cascades, and tongue-in-cheek humor to keep pretty much anyone's attention for ninety minutes.

6/10

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