What was the last film you watched?

[Mel O'Drama]

The theme song by Sheryl Crow is the least appealing so far, and the only nice thing I have to say is that it will be negatively (thus positively) overshadowed by bigger stinkers in some of the subsequent Bond films.
To add insult to injury, TND has a traditionally magnificent song playing over the end credits. It's downright puzzling.

Yes. k.d. lang's Tomorrow Never Dies was intended to be the opening song, and it really should have been. It was even co-written by the film's composer, David Arnold (along with Don Black, one of the writers of the Diamonds Are Forever and Thunderball themes) who worked the melody into key parts of the score (which can still be heard in the finished film). But then apparently k.d. wasn't considered "commercial" enough by The Powers That Be so her version was hastily retitled Surrender and relegated to the end.

Here's a nice article which covers the song in more detail.

David Arnold got the gig off the back of his 1997 album Shaken And Stirred, and I think his "John Barry On Steroids" sound brings something very special to the franchise that just fits late Nineties Bond perfectly. The intended title track is very much an extension of this, harking back to the Bassey belters while giving it a contemporary polish.

 

[Willie Oleson]

The World Is Not Enough (1999)



A film with a lot of techno-babble. If you put plutonium in X then the result is Y. Well, okay, if Denise Richards says so.
There's something oddly likeable about her clunky expository delivery to get the audience on board with the technical goings-on - and then I still had to take it at face value.
It's a miscast, obviously, but it's an entertaining miscast so I'm going easy on her.

Overall, the dialogue is not the best which makes some scenes unnecessarily cheesy, especially for a late 90s film.
Like GoldenEye, the story's villainous conspiracy is partially rooted in personal revenge and it works out rather well for the plot developments, but James Bond is not really the kind of film to explore psychological drama and so it ends up being a bit undercooked anyway.
I chuckled every time Sophie Marceau as Elektra King mentioned "my people" although it didn't sound much better in Ben Hur when Charlton Heston made a point about his people.
I guess it's one of those phrases that always rubs me the wrong way.

The action sequences in TWINE are serviceable and in my opinion an improvement over Tomorrow Never Dies. I will go as far as saying that it has one of the best pre-opening credits scenes, it's almost like a mini-movie before the movie.
This was an easy and entertaining watch and I consider it one the best lower tier Bonds.
As I mentioned before, the Brosnan era did not produce the most visually pleasing series of films, and I also miss the villain residence with nasty booby-trap exits for disloyal or underperforming assistants. It's the Bond equivalent of the staircase melodrama, isn't it?

I like the theme song but I've noticed that the songs sound a bit muted in the film credits as opposed to hearing the song in isolation on CD or youtube.
I don't know if this is how it was in the theatrical releases or an unfortunate alteration in the streaming version. I don't have this on DVD so I can't compare.
Oh, and one thing I completely misremembered: the execution of Elektra King. I believed it was sort of a Mexican standoff between Bond, Elektra and Christmas Jones and that James in a split-second twist shot Christmas instead of Elektra, thus revealing that character as the treacherous schemer.
Does that happen in another film? If anyone knows please reply (unless it happens in Die Another Day, then I don't want to know).

Roll on Bond film #21. Gosh! Like the Sons & Daughters rewatch this was totally unplanned.
I don't think I can watch all the Daniel Craig films before Monday so I may have to return to prime and beg them to take me back.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

Masterminds (2016)

A blind and spontaneous watch, chosen because it was short, looked lighthearted (from the thumbnail) and is due to leave Prime in a matter of days.

I find it frustrating that contemporary films don't have opening credits as it would be nice not to have to spend time wondering who this actor or that actress is. As I watched I didn't recognise any of the cast apart from Owen Wilson, but I thought the woman might be Jennifer Aniston until I saw a profile and realised this actress had a small, far less distinguished nose and deduced I had not watched her in anything. Turns out it was Kristen Wiig whom I've previously watched in the godawful Ghostbusters reboot and playing a very badly-cast Cheetah in Wonder Woman 1984. Perhaps the no credits thing worked out after all... I enjoyed her very much in this, without the baggage of my previous unpleasant experiences weighing me down.

A lot of the cast are associated with Saturday Night Live, and the director had previously worked on films like Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre. This probably gives a good idea of the film's tone. The broad strokes were quite welcome last night and the gross out aspects of the humour tolerable.

When it was intimated at film's end that it was based on a true story I found myself thinking that it was too ridiculous to be true. But I was wrong again... it is a comic retelling of the October 1997 Loomis Fargo robbery (AKA The Hillbilly Heist).

Art this isn't, but it entertained me nicely for an hour and a half.

 

[Willie Oleson]

Die Another Day (2002)



James Bond and his unknown 00-companions storm onto the set in full soldier mode, three minutes later that set is blown to pieces.
It's a strange way to introduce a spy story and it's even stranger that, after being captured, the opening credits shows a long montage of James Bond being tortured.
He needs to take a good beating every now and then but I don't like to revel in our hero's agony. Madonna's song did absolutely nothing to relieve my distress.
Oh yes, I had a very bad feeling about this, but - to quote myself from a previous post - that's not exactly how things panned out.

Starting with the song, I still don't like it very much but I realised that the pleasantness of a Bassey belter wouldn't work for these opening credits.
If the song is annoying at least it's aptly annoying.
It's our first (and only?) look at Bond with long hair and a beard, still looking hot of course, and after a political exchange of prisoners he ends up in the MI6 hospital.
M is not amused to say the least, and I think it's a bold move to portray the character in the cold and ruthless manner that she sometimes needs to be.
Other Ms have been difficult and demanding but never like this.
On top of everything, his "00" is revoked again but James is determined to avenge the betrayal, possibly from the inside. Shades of Licence To Kill.
I honestly believed that his physical and mental condition made him "die another day" but no, he uses himself as a gadget to fake his own flatlining!
It's so outrageous I don't even know what to say, but it certainly was the moment that made me sit up and pay close attention.

After his escape he quickly moves from Hong Kong to Cuba (as Bonds usely do) where he meets Halle Berry as his soon-to-be Bond girl.
They sneak into a sinister clinic on a sinister island and this part introduces the storyline of DNA restructuring in the style of Face/Off.
Is it too much, is it tearing up the rulebook? No actually it's not because 1970s Blofeld made it possible to clone himself.
Combined with the diamonds and the Icarus satellite it really feels like a Diamonds Are Forever for the 21st century, Christopher Nolan style.
Anyway, combat ensues but James & Jinx find a way to escape, leaving the clinic blown to pieces.

The confrontation with henchman Zao leads to the introduction of another villain: the delightfully despicable egomaniac Gustav Graves.
It doesn't take long before James and the love-to-hate Gustav lock horns, quite literally in an exhilarating swashbuckler scene.
It's funny to see the servants in the background, quietly removing the expensive antiques that were destroyed in the fight.
Nevertheless, Graves invites Bond to his frozen palace in Iceland (move over, Disney) which is exactly the kind of Bond glamour I like to see.
In the meantime, M realises that she may not have seen the bigger picture and tells Bond he's back on the job. No apology, nothing.
NuQ played by John Cleese arms 007 with the latest Secret Intelligence Service gadgets, in fact so secret that James' new car is invisible (!!)
This film is just one non-stop gasp fest.
The other gadget is a ring with the power to break glass and it's used in one of my favourite scenes when all the characters crash through a glass floor, just before one of the "I'm going to execute you but not before I've said my long-winded bla bla" cliffhangers.
Q picks up some MI6 gadgets from the past, but the murderous knife-shoe is actually a Russian invention, not British. Continuity error! Disrespecting the fanbase!

James and Agent Frost (ha) make love as a cover-up and there's a nice little reference to Teri Hatcher's line in Tomorrow Never Dies "Do you still sleep with a gun under your pillow?"
Just when you think the story can't get more outlandish, Gustav Graves is revealed as the body with Colonel Moon's DNA transplant.
Now, to be honest, I had almost forgotten about him and the whole Korea plotline, and in that moment I wished it was the real Gustav who had taken over the role of main villain.
Luckily, the switcheroo pays off big time in the soapy father-son confrontation in the final act. It's sort of Luke Skywalker in reverse.

From the melting ice castle disaster to the cargo plane showdown in which Halle Berry has to pull a Sandra Bullock, including the long overdue Bond girls catfight, Die Another Day simply never lets you catch your breath. It's the Pump Up The James of Bond films and a very worthy bookend to the classic Bond series.
I consider it a Bond "climax" film, a culmination of what had gone before. On Her Majesty's Secret Service has that same quality, and Moonraker ended Bond's 1970s pop culture trend with the biggest and long-lasting blockbuster genre, the space opera.
The epilogue shows what I've been waiting for my whole life: the passionate kiss between Bond and Moneypenny. But oh fek it, it turns out to be Q's virtual reality trickery.
Well at least it's not as disastrous as the previous virtual reality scene in which Bond finds Moneypenny assassinated on the job, which literally made me scream "No, it cannot be!"
Still, changing the Bond vs. Moneypenny agreement would have been fitting for this particular film, and the scene even got me a little misty-eyed, the poor romantic sod that I am.
Of course the real romantic epilogue happens between James & Jinx, and my final thought during this film was "American slut !"

In a Fifth Bond retrospection I will say that it was the most innovative era since sixties Bond, albeit with very mixed results.
It is unquestionably the era with the best double entendres and Pierce Brosnan does it so cool and understated that it wouldn't surprise if I have missed some.
"I have been known to keep my tip up" is my favourite from DAD (hm, that sounds weird).

Unfortunately I also have to highlight the extreme low point that is the infamously CGI'd ice surfing scene. Not only is it badly executed - one moment he's hanging on an ice rock, next moment he's alread down - but it looks painfully ugly. And I don't consider myself very demanding when it comes to vintage special effects.
It's so bad it took me out of the fantasy just like the plane dive in GoldenEye did.
I am vehemently against A.I. tampering with art but I'd make an exception if they could "clean up" this mess.
Still, it's top tier 007 for me and I have it ranked between Licence To Kill and Dr. No, which is a very good place to be for a 21stC Bond film.

And speaking of wishful alternatives, wouldn't it be great if the theme song had been this perfectly on-topic piece of pop perfection?

I think I'm going to save Daniel Craig's NuBond for another time. I'd have to watch 5 films in two days and I imagine that the Bond fatigue would kick in pretty fast which could impact my impression of these films. Besides, I'm still reeling from Die Another Day and I like the feeling.

 

[Crimson]

I saw GOLDENEYE in theaters when it was released with a friend who was a hardcore James Bond fan. As we left, she dismissed it as a "Bond film for people who don't like Bond films". I couldn't say what she meant, but I couldn't disagree. I dislike Bond films and I like(d) GOLDENEYE; the only JB film I've ever particularly enjoyed and the only that I've found rewatchable.

It probably helped that Brosnan is the only Bond to resonate with me. I grew up with Moore and Dalton. I don't recall watching the films but I was at least aware of them. Brosnan seemed like a good balance between Moore's campiness and Dalton's flintiness. Even still, I didn't enjoy his other movies as much, finding them to be, at best, minor entertainments. Connery is overall my favorite of the Bond actors, but I didn't like any of his Bond films I've seen.

As for the theme songs, the only two I have really liked are Tina Turner and Madonna's but they might just be due to liking Tina Turner and Madonna. I think "Die Another Day" is one of her better songs and I'm still amused at how much the crusty old Bond fans hated it.

There's some evidence that Bond, like the other franchises that have been kicking around since the 60s to the 80s, isn't connecting with younger audiences. To that I say, Good! The embalmed nostalgia of Gen X and Millenials have resulted in decades of cultural stagnation. I hope Gens Z and Alpha reject all of them -- Bond, Star Trek, Star Wars, Ghostbusters, Dr. Who, Marvel, Dc. Let all those tired corporate IPs finally die.

 

[Willie Oleson]

I think "Die Another Day" is one of her better songs and I'm still amused at how much the crusty old Bond fans hated it.

It's no big deal if the "crusty old Bond fans" hate it as a pop song or Madonna song, it's another thing when that song of all songs becomes the Bond theme.
Bond is not a music chart, that theme song only happens a few times per decade so I can understand that they're hoping for a somewhat traditional song that they're going to like.