rate the last movie you saw

[AndyDursin]

I'm a big fan of OCTOPUSSY and rank it right at the top of the Moore films. IMO it's a nice middle ground between the more outlandish elements of the late '70s films and the attempt at a more "grounded" film in FYEO. Barry's "All Time High" is pleasant though I do think some of his score is by-the-numbers...and that Bond theme rendition may be the most positively "geriatric" of the entire series.

Still -- I remember seeing the film in theaters. It was the first Bond movie I saw theatrically also -- though I was 8, vacationing on Nantucket with my folks and cousins (what took you so long to see a Bond movie Eric??), so it remains a personal favorite. The supporting cast is excellent, and I always enjoyed how they gave Q more to do in that film that in any other Bond movie.

[Eric Paddon]

LOL. I was 14 in 1983 which was the right age to experience it for the first time. I really had no awareness of Bond when Spy, Moonraker and FYEO came out. I think the first one I saw on TV was LALD a year before Octopussy.

Since Octopussy was the first for me, I think Barry's frequent use of the Bond theme, more than in any other Moore film he did, helped me connect with the rest of the series better. I also am still waiting for an expanded score to hear some of the cues still unreleased like the first one in India.

Kabir Bedi is one of the more believable henchmen in terms of menace and also getting a laugh with his priceless, "Out there??" when Jourdan tells him to go out on the plane and get Bond!

[Monterey Jack]

Octopussy was also my first 007 film in theaters (I was nine). I don't remember much of it from when I was a kid (mainly the post-credits scene with 009 in clown disguise staggering around with a knife in his back, which somewhat disturbed me ), but viewed today, it's one of the most schizophrenic Bond movies ever made...lean and tense one moment (the aforementioned post-credits sequence, the bomb disarmament scene), and WILDLY over-the-top and goofy the next (007 swinging on a vine while emitting a Tarzan yell is one of the nadirs of the Moore era ), like someone wanted to mash up Moonraker and For Your Eyes Only into a single movie. Overall, it's more good than bad (and certainly more energetic than the lavish-yet-ponderous Moonraker), but Moore was looking seriously old by that point.

[Jedbu]

My first Bond film in a theater tops all of you-saw YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE at a small neighborhood theater in Defiance, Ohio in the summer of 1967 (when I was nine) with my father. We were on a camping trip around the state-it was our first night and I think my dad did not feel like turning in for the night just yet, so we went into town and that film just happened to be playing there. I was somewhat familiar with Bond but none of the films had played on TV yet so to actually see one on a big screen was quite the experience for someone who had yet to enter puberty.

(FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO HAVE NOT SEEN IT YET [YEAH, RIGHT] SPOILER AHEAD!!)

I remember being shocked with the opening where Bond gets "shot" but relieved when it was just a ruse to put the bad guys off the trail; thinking how cool that little helicopter was; mouth gaping open at the size of Blofeld's operations; and not really interested yet in the romantic stylings of Bond but thinking the gadgets were pretty cool.

So I am one of those who first experienced Bond portrayed by the one whom many think is still the personification of Fleming's character-Sean Connery, and, except for various and sundry moments scattered through the rest of the series, have only felt that the real portrayal that closely matches the author's vision since then is by Daniel Craig.

[Paul MacLean]

Interestingly enough Jedbu, I watched YOLT recently as part of my my non-chronological re-screening of the Bond Blu-rays. A bit gadget-ridden, and I honestly find the "Little "Nellie" sequence doesn't really make Bond look all that impressive -- all he's doing is using the gadgets invented by Q! Nevertheless the film is unfailingly entertaining with its exotic Japanese scenery (and women) and John Barry's highly tuneful score. As a martial artist, I always get a kick of out of the assault on the volcano base, as Tiger Tanaka's ninjas lay-waste to armed guard using katanas and shuriken. Awesome stuff! It's also interesting to note that many of the hitherto "regular" Bond team were not in on this one -- a new director, Lewis Gilbert, is at the helm, with Roald Dahl replacing Richard Maibaum and Freddie Young (David Lean's cameraman) filling in for Ted Moore.

The Spy Who Loved Me -- best of the Moore films, succulently designed and shot, fantastic effects work, with perhaps the series' best teaser. Anya Amasova's vendetta to avenge her lover's death is a new twist for the Bond films (and the scene in the escape pod, where revenge gives way to love, is beautifully played). Also enjoyed the scene where 007 visits his old Cambridge mate Hussan (and the reference to the fact that wealthy Middle Eastern families all send their sons to be educated in England). Exciting, melodic Marvin Hamlisch score as well (though I still don't get why there is no music for Bond's camel ride through the desert).

Moonraker -- in many ways a re-hash of TSWLM (villain trying to destroy the world and refashion it as his ideal Utopia), with some cringeworthy "comic" relief (the gondola driving through the square, and most of Jaws' scenes) but the film's strengths overcome its weaknesses. Lois Chiles is perhaps a bit bland, but I like the idea of a Bond girl who is a nerd, and her character and Moore have a nice tension between them for the first half of the film, which blossoms into an appealing collaborative relationship later on. The climax is exciting and looks great, Ken Adam's sets are among his best ever, and Derek Meddings effects work is superb (and all the more impressive considering he had no access to motion control or any of the other fancy tools ILM used for Star Wars). John Barry's music is among his best (for Bond or otherwise), and certainly the most "symphonic" of all the Bond scores.

Tomorrow Never Dies -- I liked this better a year and a half ago, but maybe it seemed more impressive when viewed right after a turd like Goldeneye. This time I just found it tedious. Excellent teaser, but the rest of the film doesn't measure up. The premise of a media boss trying to incite war between China and the UK was silly and Jonathan Pryce one of the weakest Bond villains. The climax on the catamaran got annoying with its endless, cacophonous machine gun fights. I will never get where Pierce Brosnan was coming from as far as his portrayal of the character. His approach the role seems to be part Moore, part Hugh Grant. I genrally like Brosnan as an actor, but his Bond never really worked for me.

[AndyDursin]

A big problem for Brosnan was that his dialogue wasn't very good. I blame that on Purvis, Wade and Bruce Fierstein whom Eon brought in to write all of his films...heck, they keep hiring Purvis and Wade even for Craig's films.

I don't think any actor could make do with "no more foreplay" and some of the lines he had to muddle through in GOLDENEYE and the other pictures he starred in.

That said, his films -- though each one of them was flawed -- were all phenomenally successful, each one more successful than the last. They opened the door -- clearly -- for the massive worldwide appeal of Craig's SKYFALL.

My main issue with Brosnan was that it took him a long time to settle down and relax. He looks like he's constipated throughout GOLDENEYE and only in TOMORROW NEVER DIES does he loosen up a little.

[Eric Paddon]

I dunno, I always found Brosnan a return to Bond as he should have been after suffering through Timothy Dalton. "Goldeneye" to me is a good film marred only by the worst score of the series. TND is the Brosnan film I liked least.

[Paul MacLean]

My main issue with the Brosnan films is that they wanted it both ways. Connery's films were gritty and somewhat fanciful, Moore's weren't (for the most part) gritty, but very fanciful. But Brosnan's films incongruously shift between extremely dark and ludicrous -- especially Die Another Day, which begins with this intense torture scene, and climaxes with a sequence like something out of Flash Gordon!

[Monterey Jack]

I dunno, I always found Brosnan a return to Bond as he should have been after suffering through Timothy Dalton.

I will go to my grave defending Dalton's tragically short-lived tenure as 007...The Living Daylights is one of my favorite post-Connery Bonds (and boasts John Barry's last score for the series -- one of his best -- plus a nice cameo for him at the end), and Licence To Kill, despite some very late-80's Joel Silver/Miami Vice/Scarface influences, is lean, mean and exciting, and boasts one of my favorite villain lines in the series (wherein a young, skinny Benicio Del Toro tells Felix Leiter -- who has just inquired to the whereabouts of his wife -- "Don't worry...we give her a nice, honeymooooooooooooooooooooooooon." ). Dalton was Daniel Craig 20 years early, and it's a shame that audiences weren't ready for his brand of Fleming-inspired ruthlessness at the time....instead, when the franchise was released from legal purgatory in the mid-90's, it eventually devolved into Full Moore silliness again by the tail end of Brosnan's run.

[mkaroly]

My main issue with the Brosnan films is that they wanted it both ways. Connery's films were gritty and somewhat fanciful, Moore's weren't (for the most part) gritty, but very fanciful. But Brosnan's films incongruously shift between extremely dark and ludicrous -- especially Die Another Day, which begins with this intense torture scene, and climaxes with a sequence like something out of Flash Gordon!

I was a fan of Timothy Dalton's Bond...especially TLD. I had issues with LTK but (full and fair diclosure) I must have seen it at least 20 times before realizing I had those issues, so I liked it enough to watch it that much!

Brosnan, on the whole, was a decent Bond IMO. I have to go back and watch his films again, but I thought he was a decent hybrid of the better parts of the Connery/Moore Bonds. The issues I had with his films moving forward was that by the end they made Bond out to be less of a spy and more of a cartoonish super-hero (i.e. the ludricrous). In a way they went back to the excesses of the Moore Bond films and gadgetry which I am still not a huge fan of. Like the other Bond films (with the possible exception of TMWTGG), for me at least there is always something I enjoy seeing in even what are my least favorite films of the series.

[Eric Paddon]

I won't deny that CGI silliness started to take hold too much in DAD, but I still had fun watching. And if I can't have fun watching a Bond film, then my view is forget it which is why I will never give Licence To Kill another look. To me that was the price paid for caving into uber-Fleming purists who'd spent a decade trying to hang a guilt trip on everyone who ever enjoyed a Moore Bond film (the Raymond Bensons and Bruce Eders come to mind). I will agree Moore should have bowed out after "Octopussy" because in that one he proved that he knew how to play Bond better than Connery did in NSNA which got way too much praise because people fawned over the fact it was Connery again (and Octopussy is a much more entertaining film than NSNA IMO). View To A Kill is an embarrassment and I have more fun with Man With The Golden Gun by contrast.

[Jedbu]

ST. VINCENT 8/10

While not very original in the story department, ST.VINCENT is worth seeing for a number of reasons, #1 being a performance by Bill Murray that bests even his work in LOST IN TRANSLATION and is easily his best work since GROUNDHOG DAY. Why? Because he is playing a character that is not Bill Murray, which is what he has done (with the exception of the Sofia Coppola film and his work with Wes Anderson) ever since 1993 and many times before that.

Newly separated mom Melissa McCarthy (who has a great funny/sad scene with his son's principal) moves next door to misanthrope Murray in Brooklyn with her son (Jaeden Lieberher, in one of the better kid performances I've seen in years) while her movers are damaging Murray's tree and car and just after he has smashed his own fence. After a great welcome to the neighborhood by her new neighbor, McCarthy finds herself in a bind when the son loses his keys and other items to a bully and has to park himself with Murray until she gets home from work. She offers him money to watch the kid for the time being, and since he is in a bit of financial bind due to gambling, a pregnant Russian girlfriend/stripper (Naomi Watts, playing a character that it takes a long time to warm up to) and excursions to a rest home where he takes care of a woman with dementia, he accepts. Of course, he and the kid start to bond, beginning with helping the kid with some neighborhood bullies and the kid helping out with a couple of bets at the local racetrack, and then complications set in-the dad sues for custody of the kid, the ailing woman takes a turn for the worse and Murray's financial problems begin to overwhelm him along with a major medical crisis for him and so on. As I said, not terribly original in its plottings, what makes this film worthy are the characters and the solid performances from McCarthy, Lieberher, Watts, Terrence Howard in a small role, Chris O'Dowd (from BRIDESMAIDS) as Lieberher's Catholic school teacher, but this is Murray's show all the way.

His character in this film is flawed, irascible, mean, petty and just plain rude, but he is also human and as we and and the kid get to know him, we find out more and discover a really decent man and even a good man (he really loves his cat) behind the rough exterior. One thing I did like is that by the end of the film, he is still a curmudgeon and always will be, and will never really change. Yes, he feels pain and there are moments when he is totally devastated, but the next second he still really cannot bring himself to saying grace at a meal and I really love the way he waters his dirt/yard.

There has been a lot of talk about Murray being another good candidate for the Oscar this year, which I would love to see happen. Since I have yet to see a lot of the other performances that are being talked up for Best Actor (Steve Carrell, Benedict Cumberbatch, Bradley Cooper, Eddie Redmayne, Michael Keaton) I cannot say for certain that his work is the best of the year, but it is refreshing to see Murray in a role where I was not seeing his usual schtick at work and really creating and BEING a character.

[Monterey Jack]

The Theory Of Everything (2014): 8.5/10



Moving portrait of Stephen Hawking (the remarkable Eddie Redmayne) and how his charmingly awkward college courtship with future wife Jane (Felicity Jones) is tragically interrupted by the initial symptoms of Motor-Neuron disease. Given only two years to live by his doctor, Hawking nevertheless manages to continue his research about the cosmos and raise a family despite the formidable hurdles he faces as his body continues to wither and deteriorate even as his brilliant intellect and burning resolve remain intact. A beautifully-acted film, filled with affecting and even morbidly humorous scenes, although one wishes that Hawking's own thoughts and feelings about his disease were given more prominence...surely he must have had more moments of despair and self-loathing than the ones we view here almost entirely from his wife's viewpoint (the film is based on her memoir). Still, it's one of the best films I've seen this year, and bonus points for one of the year's prettiest, most melodic scores by Johnan Johansson.

[Eric Paddon]

Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) 7.5 of 10

-In honor of December 7, 1941. This was the first time I saw the 'extended" version which has two additional scenes from the Japanese side, one showing Admiral Yamamoto at the Imperial Palace about to see the Emperor, and the other a pure comic relief scene of two Japanese cooks with one trying to explain the International Date Line to the other. Easy to see why that one wouldn't have made the US cut.

I think it still remains an outstanding docudrama but I have to agree with a point made in the liner notes that it might have helped if there'd been one bona fide star on the US side in one part to give the American side a bit more gravitas. The entire American side consists of character actors, all of them good but none with the gravitas that say a Stewart, Fonda, Kirk Douglas might have given the film though admittedly that would have raised the budget higher. I've also felt the film should have ended with a depiction or a recording of FDR's "Day Of Infamy" speech to a cheering Congress.

One effective touch was Goldsmith going silent through the attack sequences. Today no composer would be allowed by a director to show that kind of restraint.

[mkaroly]

EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS - 2/10. Visually impressive, theologically empty. Very disappointed as it seems the filmmakers chose to basically use the Old Testament as an outline and jettison the rest. There is a lot I had problems with; I realize Scott is an atheist (at least I believe he is last time I checked), but the way the PRIMARY source material was treated (Exodus in the Old Testament) was just uncalled for. To explain what I mean I have to give a couple of "spoilers": for example, first off, Moses' encounter with God at the burning bush comes about due to a landslide that knocks Moses out...was what he saw really God or just a "delusion"? It's actually a funny scene because he is encased in mud with a broken leg and can't move. Upon somehow being found and retrieved from the mountain, his wife tells him whatever he thought he saw on the mountain was a "delusion". Ultimately Moses is portrayed as a somewhat emotionally unstable person, perhaps a bit schizophrenic (something I must admit liberal scholarship has a tendency to do...read some of what people have said of Ezekiel).

Secondly, Moses comes across as a product of the Enlightenment (anachronistic to the hilt); and his faith doesn't come to fruition until the Red Sea. In addition, there is a lack of relationship with God (who, by the way, manifests Himself as a little child) - yes, they have discussions here and there but in the Biblical account the relationship Yahweh develops with Moses is one where Moses learns to trust Him and in the process becomes a leader - that was all missed in the film (and there is other stuff I had problems with there but I will let that go for now). Thirdly, the plagues that come about have nothing to do with Moses confronting Pharaoh (he does so twice in the movie) and Pharaoh hardening his heart; nor is the whole Ancient Near Eastern "honor challenges" between gods (Yahweh and Pharaoh who was considered a god) present; rather, God brings the plagues it seems as a means of building up Moses' faith as well as bringing Pharaoh down. Unfortunately, it just doesn't work well in the film and is somewhat confusing. The "miraculous" aspect of it is missing because there are no confrontations between Moses and Pharaoh, except in dark stables and empty throne rooms.

All of that I can sit through and just roll my eyes and move on. However, the biggest offense of the film is its making Moses out to be a "terrorist" (as well as Yahweh); once Moses receives his "commissioning" from Yahweh he goes back to Egypt (without his new wife and son) and engages in guerilla warfare, training the Israelites how to fight (and how to blow up things). Much of it brought to mind pictures of training camps over in the Middle East; maybe I am dead wrong on that, but the whole thing just felt uneasy and inappropriate. Once the Israelites have their freedom, there is no sense of joy; frankly, there is no sense of joy at all in this film. To repeat, I realize who made the film and I was not expecting another TEN COMMANDMENTS by any means; however, the latter film AT LEAST took the PRIMARY source material (the Old Testament) and reverently incorporated it into its narrative with a result that was respectful to Judaism and Christianity. This film was neither in my opinion, and it's a shame. Maybe I am overreacting, but it was very disappointing.