The second of three exits for Connery but is this one any better than his first effort to leave the role?
Connery’s back! After Lazenby’s attack of ego / poor management advise-inspired decision to turn down a contract for several more Bond movies, Connery steps back into the role after having a metric fucktonne of money thrown at him to persuade him to do so. But now the first Bond has returned to the role, will the movie sparkle as brightly as the titular diamonds?
Continue reading “Diamonds Are Forever”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?
Continue reading “Thunderball”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.
Continue reading “Goldfinger”
JG Judgementally Comments... 