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.