rate the last movie you saw

[AndyDursin]

I always found, as good as the film is, that FYEO peters out as it nears the climax, as so many Bond films do. It builds up a head of steam but then it just sags. That said I like the film a lot and some of the set pieces are tremendous. I profess I enjoy Conti's score a lot more than Paul, and I love the theme song, which I'd rank as one of the best. Carole Bouquet was great, and Lynn-Holly Johnson was cute back in those days also.

That opening teaser was bizarre though -- Eon's way of saying "we don't care about Blofeld, we're done with him, Kevin McClory he's all yours"? Have to think it was more of an in-joke than anything else.

[Monterey Jack]

That opening teaser was bizarre though -- Eon's way of saying "we don't care about Blofeld, we're done with him, Kevin McClory he's all yours"? Have to think it was more of an in-joke than anything else.

"Blofeld" also gets hands-down the weirdest line in 007 history when, pleading for his life, he offers to bribe Bond with "...a delicatessen in stainless steel!" That ranks up there with "My boss is so cool that, when he goes to sleep, sheep count him" from Heist as one of the strangest non-sequitir lines I've heard in a movie.

[Paul MacLean]

Octopussy

Some of the silliness of the eariler Moore films returns, and there are one or two cringe-inducing moments (like Bond's "Tarzan yodel" as he swings from vine to vine in the jungle chase). I also found it a touch implausible that Q takes-on the duties of a field officer -- odd, considering his senior ranking in (and importance to) MI6, to say nothing of his age.

But overall this is a fine Bond adventure, with the requisite colorful locales and first-rate action, as well as a somewhat more complex screenplay than usual. Phony Fabergé eggs, a rogue Soviet general, a nuclear time bomb and the settings of East and West Germany are quintessential espionage elements (though some of these are conspicuously reminiscent of Frederick Forsyth's "The Forth Protocol" -- which was made into a movie a few years later, interestingly enough starring Pierce Brosnan).

The Indian location provides the traditional exotic Bond backdrop, though despite the obligatory shot of the Taj Mahal, we don't see nearly enough of the country (most of the "Indian" scenes are actually Pinewood interiors) -- quite a change from The Spy Who Love Me's expansive Egyptian sequence (which gave us the Nile, pyramids and other ruins).

Maud Adams is more impressive in the role of Octopussy than she was in The Man With The Golden Gun, and Octopussy herself a broader character. Significantly she is also an older and more experienced woman than the typical Bond girl -- and more Bond's equal. Louis Jourdan's Kamel Khan is despicably suave and menacing, and Gobinda is one of the better Bond henchmen (and certainly more believable than Jaws). High points must also go to the great Steven Berkoff as General Orlov, and it's nice to see Walter Gotell get a little more to do this time as well. Tennis Pro Vijay Amritraj proves a pretty decent actor too.

The marketplace chase isn't an especially great action sequence, but the train sequence and chase to the air force base are superb. The Soviet general staff meeting is also a lot of fun (with its preposterous rotating seats and massive video screen).

John Barry's score's is one of his more "generic" for the series, but it's great to have him back in any case. As always, his music not only enhances the movie, but brings something special to it. "All Time High" is also one of the more appealing title tunes as well.

[AndyDursin]

Another great review Paul.

I wonder if George Macdonald Fraser being involved with the screenplay added something to the script being less "formulaic" and having a bit more involvement in its plotting.

I have great memories of OCTOPUSSY, seeing it on Nantucket with my parents when I was 8 back in the summer of '83. The film is lighter than FOR YOUR EYES ONLY, but it is a grand adventure film with some excellent set-pieces. Louis Jordan and Maud Adams were both excellent; Adams is one of the better Bond heroines and, you're right, she's much better in Octopussy than she was as "just another Bond girl" back in Man with the Golden Gun. By his standards, Barry's score is kind of blah -- not bad by any means, but a bit uninspired (his Bond theme rendition is positively by the numbers) -- but like you said, "All Time High" is a lovely tune. In some ways it's a gorgeous Barry love theme and that's what he was becoming more interested in by the time you get to the mid 80s and the latter stages of his career. (I've always said THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS is more of a "John Barry score" than a "James Bond score", but we'll come to that!). The opening set-piece, as I remember, had the audience going!

It's also probably the biggest role Q and Desmond Llewellyn ever had in the entire series -- it might be improbable, but I enjoyed that Q finally got to have some fun with the ladies!

While Bond purists tend to look down on the Moore era, it is worth noting that OCTOPUSSY was positively huge at the box-office. Audiences loved it, as did most critics, and I think it's one of Moore's best, bridging the gap between the "gritty" aspects of FYEO and the lavish, colorful silliness of MOONRAKER.

[Paul MacLean]

One thing which did bug me a little, is that this is a Bond film set in India -- but there are hardly any beautiful Indian women. The dish who shows Bond to his hotel room is Indian, but that's a about it. Not a single one of "Octopussy's girls" appears to be Indian. Why couldn't Magda have been in Indian instead of a blonde caucasian?

And I'm not trying to be PC here. I just love Indian women!

[Eric Paddon]

Octopussy was the first Bond movie I ever saw theatrically. I loved it so much I ended up seeing it four times that summer! (twice more than I saw ROTJ).

I think it hit all the right notes for sheer fun, and it was nice to see that the producers were savvy in the early 80s to shift away from the detente philosophy of the 70s Bond films and show Bond taking on Soviet baddies in this era. Bond's observation of what would happen in the event of a nuclear detonation being blamed on an American bomb is probably the most effective indictment of the entire Nuclear Freeze movement there ever was in a film!

I don't see any flaws casting wise. Jourdan and Berkoff offered good contrast villain wise, Bedi is a convincingly tough henchman who even knows his limits with his incredulous, "Out there?" to Jourdan when he's ordered to go out and get Bond on top of the plane. Adams and Wayborn both manage to look quite exotically fetching in Indian attire, and Wayborn I think is a rarity in terms of being one of the few secondary Bond girls to not end up dead in the film!

Octopussy proved most that Moore owned the part in 1983 and he is much better than Connery in NSNA, just as Octopussy is a better film than NSNA. It's too bad Moore just didn't hang it up here, because he would have been going out on top.

[Paul MacLean]

A View To A Kill

One of the slower-moving and weaker Moore films. The teaser does little to whet one's appetite -- we saw far-better ski chases in OHMSS and TSWLM (and good heavens, what were they thinking using a Beach Boys tune???).

Christopher Walken's performance as Zorin is...odd, though maybe that is the point, as Zorin is a paychopathic mutation. He certainly is one of the maddest Bond villains, as he gleefully mows-down his own employees with a machine gun, and later bursts-out laughing as he is about to die. On the other hand, as a German who "speaks fluent English", I find it peculiar that he has a New York accent.

I actually kind of like Tanya Roberts' Stacey, though she isn't a terribly well-developed character, but the appearance by Patrick MacNee is such a blown opportunity. This is the man who played the debonair John Steed in The Avengers. Okay, he shouldn't upstage Bond, but couldn't they have given him something cool to do, rather than play a clueless buffoon?

When I originally saw this film I thought Grace Jones was annoying ("Oh, not her again!" I thought) but in retrospect (seeing as she's a now-forgotten 80s "icon") the character eclipses her former celebrity, and May Day comes across as one of the film's better attributes -- and one of the more interesting Bond girls.

VTAK offers-up some attractive destinations -- Paris, rural France and San Francisco (America's most attractive city if you ask me), and yet this film lacks epic scope. It feels...small, almost like a TV movie.

Again (as with India in Octopussy) VTAK film simply doesn't adequately show-off Northern California's visual allure or give the viewer much sense of the place. Ok, we see the Golden Gate Bridge and (oh boy!) City Hall...but wouldn't it have been cool to have a chase / fight scene among the giant trees of Muir Woods? How about a scene on the impressive cliffs overlooking the bay? And James Bond -- connoisseur of beautiful women -- is in California...and there's not a single beach scene with beautiful surfer girls? Talk about a missed opportunity.




The action scenes are mostly silly. The Paris chase feels perfunctory, and doesn't number among the better car sequences of the series. The fire truck chase is utterly ridiculous -- are you telling me that anyone (even Bond) could steal a massive fire truck and elude the police (especially when he's still driving it the next day)? The "comic relief" of the fat police captain (who is basically a J.W. Pepper clone) doesn't help much either. The climax at the Golden Gate Bridge however is pretty good however, with some impressive stuntwork.

John Barry's score hasn't much opportunity to be broad or beautiful here, but this score is more energized than his leisurely music for Octopussy, and his main action motif more violently strident and adrenal (though I'm still not sure how I feel about those "Jimi Hendix"-style guitar solos!). The refurbishments made to CTS Studios Wembley a year earlier also result in a more "roomy" recording than previous Bond scores done there. I'm not a fan of Duran Duran but Barry's melodic inventiveness helps their tune enormously (I'm sure Barry wrote most of it anyway), and the love theme (based on the title tune) is one of the nicest for any Bond film.

Moore looks great for a 59-year-old man, but I think he was too old to be playing Bond by this point (especially opposite to 29-year-old Roberts). This is by no means a bad film (and much better than MWTGG), but while A View To A Kill does have its moments, but it never really lives-up to its possibilities, and as Moore's swan song, it proves more of a whimper than a bang.

[AndyDursin]

Roger really looked long in the tooth in A VIEW TO A KILL. I like Barry's score and the title tune has become something of a classic, but the film itself -- particularly considering they brought Walken in -- was a disappointment. Generically written and a big comedown after OCTOPUSSY.

[Monterey Jack]

AVTAK runs a close second to Die Another Day as one of the worst Bond movies ever made. Moore looks positively mummified, the action sequences are rote, Christopher Walken ranks with Christopher Lee in TMWTGG and Robert Carlyle in TWINE as probably the best actor playing a Bond villain being wasted in one of the lamest films (although, weirdly, Javier Bardem's platinum-blonde hairdo in Skyfall seems to be an homage to Walken's hair!) and the less said about Moore getting dominated in the sack by Grace Jones, the better. There's virtually nothing to recommend from the film, aside from Duran Duran's kick-ass theme song and a pleasant Barry score. Thank God Timothy Dalton came along after this sad spectacle and gave Bond his edge back (if only he could have started playing Bond at the beginning of the 80's, rather than toward the end).

[Jedbu]

My favorite part is just before the (SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT!) self-sacrifice explosion May Day allows to happen. That is some of the worst miniature work in the entire Bond series.

[AndyDursin]

Can't wait until we get to the flawed, but still entertaining, DIE ANOTHER DAY and Paul says one positive thing about it. Monterey Jack will fly off his rocker again over his absolute HATRED of a film that, until that point, was (unadjusted) the most financially successful film of the entire series.

[Paul MacLean]

Can't wait until we get to the flawed, but still entertaining, DIE ANOTHER DAY and Paul says one positive thing about it. Monterey Jack will fly off his rocker again over his absolute HATRED of a film that, until that point, was (unadjusted) the most financially successful film of the entire series.

I only ever saw that movie on a flight to the UK...needless to say it didn't make much of an impression on a six-inch screen! I hardly even remember anything about it, except some guy with diamonds lodged in his face and an invisible car at Sweden's ice hotel.

Anyway, for now lets talk about...

The Living Daylights

I had forgotten how truly great Timothy Dalton was. He brought with him a return to a more serious type of Bond. He doesn't deliver glib dialog quite as well as Connery nor is he as good a comedian as Moore, but he's entirely believable as a spy (and to me that's what counts the most). Moreover Dalton gets the character entirely right -- he's stalwart, ruthless and slightly jaded and grim, but also honorable, compassionate and a softy where the ladies are concerned.

Dalton is a very "old school" movie star -- even more so than Connery. He reminds me a bit of Olivier and Gable in their greener days (it's no surprise he was later cast as a golden age movie star in The Rocketeer). And at roughly 15 years younger than Moore, Dalton is also more believable as a ladies man, though ironically there is an uncharacteristic lack of sex scenes TLD, and this time Bond romances only one woman. Interestingly though, Dalton does bring back Bond's cigarette habit (missing from the films for nearly two decades...though Moore puffed a few cigars in his early appearances).

The teaser is serviceable, and not the greatest way to introduce the "changing of the guard" (you almost get a sense of the filmmakers thinking "maybe no one will notice it's a new guy"). In any case the ensuing film gives us a very believable, debonair and cool Bond. Communist Europe was always fertile ground for great espionage yarns, and TLD devotes considerable screen time to the Czechoslovakian setting, and makes good use of the edgy paranoia which long hung over Eastern Europe. Its also great to see Bond once again behind the (right side) wheel of an Aston Martin.

The supporting cast is terrific, from Jeroen Krabbé's slimey, duplicitous Kosvov, to the always-excellent John Rhys-Davies as Pushkin. Art Malik is also very good as the Oxford-educated Kamran Shah...although these says, it's a little unsettling to see the Mujahideen depicted as "good guys", when at the time of the film's release Osama bin Laden numbered among their ranks.

Myryam D'Abo's Kara is an exceptionally good Bond girl -- beautiful and cultured. Her relationship with Bond is also interesting as (much like Domino in Thunderball) he is merely using her for information at the outset of their affair. Attempts to make her more of a strong "modern" woman late in the film don't completely come-off however -- she's shown as a timid, doe-like character for much of the story, then suddenly snatches Shah's AK-47 and rides off on a horse near the climax (where did a cellist learn to do that?).

The car chase is somewhat underwhelming -- equipping the Aston Martin with missiles and skies just seems a re-hash of the DB5's bells and whistles in Goldfinger (and such implausible gadgets didn't really fit-in with Dalton's interpretation of the role). I do think that the action sequences in the Bond films were starting to feel a little behind-the-times by this point, having been been surpassed by Raiders, and the Mad Max and Rambo movies. That said there is definitely some impressive stunt work TLD -- particularly that fight outside the plane at the end.

John Barry's score is one of his most inspired, and for me his best of the 80s, with incendiary action cues and the most beautiful Bond song/love theme since OHMSS. He acknowledges the trends of the 80s a bit (i.e. drum machines) but they don't date the score at all.

It is also fun to see Barry cameo as the orchestra conductor at the end of the film -- but in retrospect this is a bittersweet occasion, being the last Bond picture he ever scored, thus marking the end of an era. I could always deal with different actors playing James Bond, but different composers scoring Bond was always more of an adjustment for me.

John Barry, OBE, will always be the definitive Bond composer.

[AndyDursin]

I only ever saw that movie on a flight to the UK...needless to say it didn't make much of an impression on a six-inch screen! I hardly even remember anything about it, except some guy with diamonds lodged in his face and an invisible car at Sweden's ice hotel.

it is not one of the better Bond films but it has a few good things going for it (and some not so good things lol). I can think of far worse in the series though!

[Eric Paddon]

Cringe-inducing as the worst of the Moore films can be I'll watch them any day over either of Dalton's. The man always had more the aura of someone who should have been a Bond villain than Bond himself.

[mkaroly]

I saw TLD six times in the theater. I enjoyed Dalton as Bond a great deal, and this would be my favorite Dalton Bond movie. I loved how he gave the character back an edge after Moore basically removed that characteristic from Bond entirely (IMO). Also like Chrissie's end title song a bunch. Good score for Barry to go out on.