Jan 2025 – JG Judgementally Comments…

Thunderball

After redefining what a Bond movie could do with Goldfinger, can Thunderball keep up the momentum or is it a bit of a damp squb?

Pre-existing Prejudices: None. I remember next to nothing about Thunderball, beyond Tom Jones’s attempts to drown out timpani on the theme song (“so he strikes! DUH-DUH-DUH-DA-DUUUUUH! Like Thunnnnnnnnnnnderball!”), and the inevitable fact that it’s the one with all the underwater action sequences. So a fairly clean slate, then. Let’s see how it goes!

The Actual Movie

We open on a funeral, which is at least a new start for a Bond movie. Bond appears to actually be on point here, and it’s a reasonable fake-out that the flag covering the coffin has the initials JB on it – but not Our Mr Bond, of course, but instead SPECTRE agent Jaques Bouvar (yes, we’re in France). Cut to – country house and Bond guessing that Bouvar’s “widow” is actually the man himself in widow’s clothes after faking his own death… Bond works this out because he opens the car door himself, whereas the widow would have waited to have it opened for her. What, women can’t open car doors? What the fuck, Thunderball?

The Fall Guy

Another old TV show gets dragged out of the past with a big remake but can The Fall Guy provide the requisite thrills and spills? Er…

What’s The Movie? The Ryan Gosling-starring The Fall Guy

What’s It All About, JG? Dunno. Oh all right, Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling) is a stuntman who doubles for famous action star Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and who is pining after cameraperson Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt). When a stunt goes wrong and he breaks his back, Colt vanishes in shame and Jody goes on to become a big-shot director. Eighteen months later, he’s persuaded back into his old job for a sci-fi epic being shot in Sydney and directed by Jody. Under the (false) impression she asked for him, he heads over, only to find the real reason he’s been brought to the set is that Tom has fallen in with a bad crowd and has gone missing and Jody’s film is over budget and in danger of being closed down. Mmm. Anyway, Colt investigates while slowly getting back together with Jody (often very slowly) until he finds out Tom accidentally killed someone and wants to use Colt as the fall guy (heh) to take the blame. The rest of the film is just Tom getting caught by Colt, incriminating himself and producer Gail Myer (Hannah Waddingham), who was in on the conspiracy. And of course, Colt and Jody reconcile. The movie is finished, Jason Mamoa becomes the replacement star in what is presumably meant to be a funny moment, and that’s your lot apart from the inevitable mid-credits scene where Lee Majors and Heather Thomas from the original show crop up for a cameo.

Goldfinger

It’s Goldfinger! But does the movie live up to it’s totemic reputation?

Pre-existing prejudices: It’s Goldfinger. Also, for reasons best kept to myself, I’m aware that Fleming named the bad guy in the book after the Brutalist/modernist architect Erno Goldfinger because Fleming so despised his concrete buildings. And obviously, this contains a string of clichés even someone who has never seen a Bond movie would know – Pussy Galore, Odd-Job, “No, Mr Bond, I expect you to die!” and so forth. Whatever else you can say about this film, its place as part of the cultural lexicon is unshakeable, and that must mean something. Let’s find out what!

The Actual Movie:

As with From Russia With Love, we immediately start with the gun barrel opening still where it should be, and with the appropriate theme.

And as with the last film, we get a pre-credits sequence, though unlike the last film this one has absolutely no relevance to the movie whatsoever. Bond swims into a harbour with a duck on his head – not the perfect disguise, and more than a little dignity-stripping. Still, there’s no obfuscation here as there was with From Russia With Love, and the Bond theme has piped up before the two-minute mark (and again to delineate action, which is now its sole use). But we’re all action here as Bond breaks into the wherever-he-is and plans to blow it up. His bomb clock timer is rather sweet, an alarm clock with a big square battery, attached to Big Red Barrels of Nitro.