WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE JAMES BOND FILM, AND WHY?

 

What is your favorite James Bond film, and why?

I've been on the 007 bandwagon since age 9, when I saw GOLDFINGER on the ABC Sunday Night Movie, back in the pre-cable era when periodic screenings of the Bond films on ABC were a special event, so I have watched the series progress for almost five decades. (My first Bond was seeing DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER at a drive-in with my parents when I was six. The only part that I remember from that viewing was the bit with the moon buggy. Other than that, I believe I slept through everything else.) My tastes in Bond adventures was defined by the Connery era, the first five films specifically (DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER was Connery's return after George Lazenby's one-shot and excellent ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE, by which time Connery clearly no longer gave a shit), and during those early entries was when the formula was finding its way. Bond as we know it now was really codified with the trifecta of GOLDFINGER (1964), THUNDERBALL (1965), and YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE (1967), in which the franchise's tropes of lavish spectacle, dad jokes, outlandish gadgets, ludicrous femme fatale names, travelogue thrills, and nonsense that veered into outright fantasy/science-fiction were carved in stone, with what amounted to remaking GOLDFINGER over and over for decades being the result and becoming a worldwide cultural institution in the process.

Most fans love the more outrageous, over-the-top entries, but I prefer the more down-and-dirty, grounded flavor of Cold War espionage, and for me no other film in the series is as pure in that department as 1963's FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE. Hewing closely to Ian Fleming's novel, it's a taut thriller that will surprise modern viewers with its relative realism, and that, coupled with Connery's finest turn as 007, is why I rank it as the best of the series. It was cold-blooded spyjinx with zero fills and gewgaws, just before the franchise took a hard left into self-parody. Prior to the Daniel Craig era, the only 007 flicks that hold the same appeal to me are ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE and LICENSE TO KILL, so make what you will of that opinion. If you have never seen FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, perhaps dissuaded by its vintage, I urge you to give it a watch. It's like getting hit in the face with a bucket of ice water.

So, what's your favorite and why? Please feel free to elucidate at length in the comments section. 

Seriously, folks, they may have gotten bigger, but never better.

OF MUSICAL BONDAGE

A friend just asked me for my list if the Top 10 James Bond songs, so here is my opinion, and I urge you to give each a listen:

1. Thunderball (Tom Jones) My favorite, for its summation of Bond himself in its lyrics. That and Jones belting it out like his life depended on it. This is the one that I break out on the rare occasions when I got to karaoke.
2. Tomorrow Never Dies (Sheryl Crow) I love the mournful quality of this one, and I cannot restrain myself from wailing along with the chorus. (Yes, I can hit the notes.)
3. You Only Live Twice (Nancy Sinatra) Evocative and haunting, the perfect theme for Bond's adventure in Japan.
4. Goldfinger (Shirley Bassey) Brassy and bombastic, this is perhaps the definitive Bond theme tune, though over the course of almost sixty years it has become something of a self-parody. A classic nonetheless.
5. A View To A Kill (Duran Duran) An absolute banger and arguably the best thing about the movie. The instrumental version on the B-side of the single also slaps.
6. You Know My Name (Chris Cornell) Fraught with tension, the perfect theme tune with which to reboot the franchise.
7. Where Has Everybody Gone (Pretenders) The oft-overlooked song heard during the end credits of THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS, this should have been the lead song rather than that piece of shit titular number by one-hit wonder a-ha.
8. Skyfall (Adele) They had me at Adele, but her gift for heartbreaking vocals lends itself perfectly to one of the more somber entries in the series, especially considering some of the events in the story.
9. Kingston Calypso (Byron Lee and The Dragonaires) One of the many evocative Jamaican numbers from the first Bond outing.
10. We Have All The Time In The World (Louis Armstrong) If you have seen ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE, you know why this made the roster.

SUPERARGO VS DIABOLICUS (1966) - updated

Originally posted in September of 2009.

 

Superargo: carrying on the fine tradition of Italian cinema shamelessly ripping off whatever is currently popular in international entertainment, in this case a gene-splicing of Batman, James, Bond, and Mexican luchador heroes.

After not having seen it since a vaguely recalled viewing on Channel 5 while I was still in the single digits, I finally tracked down SUPERARGO VERSUS DIABOLICUS in a widescreen VHS edition thanks to eBay. (I have since seen it in a gorgeous widescreen transfer via YouTube.) As you may recall from another CINE-MISCREANT posting, its sequel, SUPERARGO AND THE FACELESS GIANTS (1968), is a film so wretched and dull that I still get shit about it from my mother some thirty-seven years after she took me to see it, and I was intrigued to see if the film that spawned such an abomination could have any redeeming merit whatsoever.

SUPERARGO VERSUS DIABOLICUS is yet another of the legion of campy Italian/Spanish 007 and Batman knockoffs made between 1966-1969, this time drawing considerable inspiration from Mexican wrestling flicks of the time (such as WRESTLING WOMEN VERSUS THE AZTEC MUMMY, or EL SANTO VERSUS THE VAMPIRE WOMEN), but with a lot more technical savvy behind the camera (namely the film has such frills as editing, lighting, and a frame that moves). The film looks great and moves with a brisk pace (for a while, anyway), employs a score that is equal parts Ennio Morricone and John Barry, plus the hero is a masked man of mystery, so what’s not to like? 

The movie opens with Superargo (Ken Wood, nee Giovanni Cianfriglia) accidentally killing a friendly opponent in the ring and swearing off his wrestling career forever, but his self-enforced retirement from the world of adventure is cut short when he’s recruited by the government as a spy to take on the evil plans of Diabolicus (Gerard Tichy), a mad scientist bent on — what else? — world domination via uranium theft and turning sea water into gold (?). There are a bunch of fights with thugs, lots of pretty-though-G-rated ladies, super-powers without much by way of explanation, and all manner of mayhem common to this kind of thing, but try as I might I can’t make it through to the end of the film. I have tried four times to get to the end, but about three-quarters of the way through the flick, right about when Superargo ends up in the clutches of Diabolicus, the film hits a wall of sheer boredom brought on by an interminable sequence of Superargo swimming the undersea entrance to the bad guy’s lair. As anyone who’s ever seen the James Bond film THUNDERBALL (1965) can tell you, nothing brings the action to a screeching halt like stuff shot underwater, an environment that slows down the movements of life forms not designed to be there, such as a goofy-looking Italian wrestler in a red leotard and black leather mask.

SUPERARGO VERSUS DIABOLICUS is worth a look for the curious and those in need of a surefire cure for insomnia. I’m sure my collection could have gone without its inclusion, but I had to measure it against its followup. If I actually make it all the way through it I’ll let you know.

ADDENDUM as of Mach 10th, 2022

So, here it is, 13 years after my last abortive attempt to make it all the way through to the end of this film, and I finally managed to complete it. It took me watching it in three staggered segments to get it done, and I have to say that it wasn't worth the effort. I have no idea how or why so many '60's-era Italian superhero/super-spy mashups possess all of the elements that would make such a movie fun, yet somehow nearly always come out boring to the point of utter tedium. I just don't understand it, and it's made all the more tragic by Superargo being a fun and intriguing character who deserved a lot better.

And yes, my mother, a recent 89, still grouses about SUPERARGO AND THE FACELESS GIANTS.

Poster for the Italian theatrical release.

 

Poster for the American theatrical release.

BLACK WIDOW (2021)

                        Natasha (Scarlett Johansson) and Yelena (Florence Pugh): Total badasses.

So, BLACK WIDOW is good enough to have held my attention, but it’s definitely a lesser Marvel flick. Not bad, per se, just lesser.

The plot finally gives us an origin for Natasha, and it's a tragic one, revealing more secrets of the Red Room. It opens with a look at barely-pubescent Natasha and her six-year-old sister, Yelena, living an idyllic life with their mother and father in Ohio. But, this being an espionage story, nothing is as it seems, and soon enough the girls are turned over by their father and drugged, subsequently spirited away for Red Room indoctrination. If you were paying attention to details dropped by Natasha in the AVENGERS films, you have a pretty good idea of what she and Yelena endured while being molded into elite professional killers. The story then skips ahead by 21 years, and we see Natasha still on the run after the events of CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR. After that, I will spoil nothing, other than to state that the now-grown Yelena is still under the mind-control of the Red Room, but not for long...

Scarlett Johansson as the Black Widow has only really shined in a handful of the MCU movies, and while I'm sure the scriptwriters and directors instructed her to mostly play Natasha as something of a personality-void badass — with the exception of her turns in CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER and AVENGERS: ENDGAME — the blandness of her standard performance as Natasha makes me sad because I love the character as portrayed on the page, and little or none of what endeared me to her in the first place — 50 (!!!) years ago — has been present onscreen. Instead, this film is utterly stolen by Florence Pugh as Yelena Bolova. Once freed from the stranglehold of the Red Room, she displays personality to burn, which is good because she's clearly being set up to replace Natasha after the events of AVENGERS: ENDGAME. David Harbour and Rachel Weisz are also quite good as Nat and Yelena's parents, and that's all I'll say on that.

The film does not need to be 133 minutes long, and at times it has serious issues with pacing, a state of affairs familiar to anyone who's seen a Bond or Bourne movie over the past 25 years, and it’s needlessly over-long at 133 minutes, nearly ten of which are credits. Other than it being set in the MCU, it’s just another big-budget espionage flick. It takes place immediately after Captain America: Civil War, and it should have been released in sequence. Releasing it now comes as a case of too little too late. The time to strike would have been during the height of Avengers-Mania, when everyone and their parakeet would have shelled out the movie theater ticket price to see it. I was fortunate to have access to a friend's Plex account, and thanks to that I can honestly say that the film is in no way worth the thirty bucks Disney+ wants for it.

Lastly, by now you all know the drill, but I'm saying it anyway: If you do allow yourself to be rooked for thirty bucks, make sure to stay for the stinger at the end. I am intrigued...

Poster for the theatrical release.

MUSINGS ON BONDAGE — 007: FROM WORST TO BEST

 

My Facebook page often ventures into discussion of the James Bond franchise with like-minded buffs, and the discussion often get heated. I prefer the more grounded entries, with a minimum of gadgets and groan-inducing puns and gags, while others eat that stuff up and favor stories where there more outlandish, the better. As NO TIME TO DIE, the pandemic-delayed 25th entry in the series, looms,  I was recently asked about my thoughts on the overall series, so after much pondering and shuffling of placement, here's my ranking of all 24 official James Bond films from Eon Productions, from least-favorite to the cream of the crop. Please write in with comments and your take.

24. DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER (1971) 

 

James Bond: dockside rent boy.
 

 After the excellence of ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE, George Lazenby vacated the role of 007, so the studio lured Sean Connery back by paying him an obscene amount of money, plus other assorted perks. Irredeemably idiotic trash that ignores the tragic events of the previous film's conclusion, this mess moves Bond into the 1970's, and it's a transition that just does not work.  A complete waste of Connery in his last film for the official series, this one includes a pointless moon buggy chase, a pair of acrobat females for Bond to battle, a tandem act of homosexual hitmen, and Charles Gray as a laughable iteration of Blofeld. For completists only. Otherwise, you can skip this and miss nothing.

 

23. A VIEW TO A KILL (1985) 

 

 Musical accompaniment: the Beach Boys' "California Girls." I shit you not.

 

Cringe-worthy garbage featuring a 130-year-old Roger Moore who hot dogs while snowboarding. Not even Christopher Walken and Grace Jones as the baddies can save this disaster. Exceptional theme song, though.

 

22. SPECTRE (2015) 

 

Bond endures the unspeakable torment of sitting through this film.
 

Terrible across the board, with the exception of a stunning opening on the Day of the Dead in Mexico. Wimpiest theme song of the entire run, and the idiotic development regarding Blofeld is worthy of earning the screenwriter a severe caning.

 

21. QUANTUM OF SOLACE (2008) 

 

Bond valiantly attempts to flee from this film, but no such luck.
 

Marred by massive production difficulties, this is more like "Quantum of So What?" Incomprehensible, with headache-inducing editing. That said, I only saw this one once, so I would be willing to give it a second chance, but I fucking hated it upon seeing it on opening weekend.

 

20. THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH (1999) 

 

Bond opts for death by torture, rather than be bored to death like the audience.
 

Mediocrity defined, all involved just phoned it in for this lifeless time-waster. Denise Richards, the human bobblehead, fails to be believable as a scientist, though I have to give it up for Elektra King (Sophie Marceau), the series first female Big Bad.

 

19. DIE ANOTHER DAY (2002)  

 

James, please... Invisible car or not, we see you trying to sneak out of this idiotic turd.
 

A festival of bad tropes with an awful theme song, an invisible car, a Chinese villain who turns into a white man, the unwelcome presence of Madonna as a fencing instructor (!!!), and Bond parasailing while surfing atop a tidal wave. Redeeming factor: Halle Berry as Jinx, rocking a nod to the Ursula Andress DR. NO bikini.

 

18. THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS (1987) 

 

Though surrounded by a bevy of beauties, 007 fights to stay awake.

 

Great opening sequence that returns Bond to gritty basics, let down by every other aspect being boring and painfully overlong. Wholly unmemorable theme song by a-ha...SERIOUSLY???

 

17. LIVE AND LET DIE (1973) 

 

Surprisingly, not a scene from MANDINGO.

 

Bond and blaxploitation do not mix. Embarrassingly racially offensive, even when it came out, it also features possibly the most overrated theme song out of the lot — Yeah, I said it! Come at me! — and the noxious presence of "comic relief" redneck stereotype Sheriff J.W. Pepper (Clifton James). For a long time, before I rewatched the majority of the series, this ranked at the bottom of my list. Redeeming features: Jayne Seymour as the toothsome Solitaire, and the hilarious/ridiculous demise of Mr. Big.

 

16. MOONRAKER (1979) 

 

When 007 joined the Rebel Alliance in the struggle against the Empire.

 

Like LIVE AND LET DIE, this is the tragic result of the Bond series attempting to cash in on trends instead of setting them. Having nothing to do with the source novel aside from some character names, this is 007 in the wake of the ultra-blockbuster box office success of STAR WARS (1977) and by this point the series was too jokey and outlandish for its own good. Balls-out awful, but hilarious if approached as a piss-take.

 

15. OCTOPUSSY (1983) 

 

The tears of a clown in the employ of MI-6.

 

Barely passable, ridiculous plot, forgettable theme song, and Bond un-ironically disguised as a circus clown. (see above) Acceptable if you have nothing better to do on a rainy afternoon.

 

14. GOLDENEYE (1995) 

 

007 meets Xenia Onatopp and her homicidal vagina.
 

Decent but overlong and occasionally dull, but somewhat redeemed by the homicidal hilarity of Xenia Onatopp (Famke Janssen).

 

13. THE SPY WHO LOVED ME (1977) 

 

Having banged every female on the planet, Bond explores new horizons.
 

 I'm gonna get shit for this, but this one is simply far too '70's/disco era for my tastes, plus its an almost beat-for-beat remake of YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE, which struck me as the height of creative laziness. I also was not fond of Jaws (Richard Kiel), a hulking assassin who's pretty much a cartoonish "upgrade" of GOLDFINGER's Oddjob.

 

12. THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN (1974) 

 

It was 1974 and everybody was kung fu fightin', even in a James Bond movie.

 

Admittedly mediocre/bad, but mindless fun, this was released the year after ENTER THE DRAGON and Bruce Lee captivated the common zeitgeist, so, much like it had done with blaxploitation in LIVE AND LET DIE, the franchise again mined a popular trend, this time the then-still-exotic East and chopsocky ass-whuppin'. Bond travels to (among other locales) Bangkok, where he almost gets his ass handed to him by an entire martial arts school, until his bacon is saved by the most badassed pair of schoolgirls you have ever seen (see above). The rest of the story is mostly an excuse for another travelogue, but come on. It's all about Bond versus Christopher Lee. It's one of the few times when I genuinely rooted for the bad guy to win. Extra points for introducing the world to Herve Villechaise as the diminutive henchman Nick Nack. However, points majorly detracted for the unwelcome return of Sheriff J.W. Pepper, and the unforgivable inclusion of a slide whistle sound effect over an otherwise spectacular car stunt.

 

11. THUNDERBALL (1965) 

 

She's a man, baby!

 

One of the definitive entries, sometimes for all the wrong reasons, (which I have discussed at length here) this  is the first of the extravagant 007 travelogue spectacles, as well as being the first overlong installment, which is in no way helped by the turgid pacing. Features two of the all-time hottest Bond girls — Fiona Volpe (Luciana Paluzzi) and Dominque "Domino" Derval (Claudine Auger) — a terrific opening sequence, a villain who's as cool as 007 (Emilio Largo, played by Adolfo Celi), and my pick for the best of the theme songs. Tom Jones reportedly fainted after hitting that incredible sustained final note, and I totally believe it.

 

10. DR. NO (1962) 

 

Meet James Bond (Sean Connery).

 

It all had to start somewhere, and while it has its moments, it's primitive, basic, and has aged/dated rather badly, but we do get the introduction of the Sean Connery Bond, and he is nothing less than mesmerizing. The classic James Bond theme instrumental is introduced, and the film is pretty much stolen by Ursula Andress in what can only be described as an era-defining bikini. An unexpected hit that spawned a franchise which continues just shy of sixty years later.

 

9. YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE (1967) 

 

What the...?!!!? Where's 007? And who the hell is this Japanese guy???
 

 Bond fakes his death (for no good reason), goes to Japan to investigate SPECTRE stealing space capsules in a bid to ignite WWIII, flies the awesome Little Nellie (an autogyro with more ordnance than your average battleship), gets married, and receives plastic surgery that turns him into the least-convincing Japanese man this side of Mickey Rooney in BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S. Sporting a great theme song from Nancy Sinatra and some incredible sets by Ken Adam, this is one of the definitive entries whose tropes are frequently parodied. (The first Austin Powers movie cribs heavily from this.) It's a lot of fun, if occasionally sluggish at points, despite it coming off like a lavish episode of THUNDERBIRDS and Sean Connery very obviously fed up with being in these films.

 

8. TOMORROW NEVER DIES (1997)  

 

HK action legend Michelle Yeoh as secret agent Wai Lin: as badassed as 007.

 

My pick as Pierce Brosnan's most fun effort as Bond, this features memorable set pieces, a terrific theme song from Cheryl Crow, and, Michelle Yeoh as the coolest and toughest Bond girl of the lot.

 

7. LICENCE TO KILL (1989) 

 

Worst wedding day ever.
 

Bond is at his most savage and Flemingesque as he goes off the reservation to avenge the mutilation-by-shark of friend and colleague Felix Leiter (David Hedison), whose wife was also gang-raped and murdered (on their wedding day no less). This one polarizes Bond fans thanks to its hard edge and shockingly vicious violence, but I'm a reader of the Fleming novels, so I found most of the films up to this point to be lacking the sadistic nastiness of Bond's creator, therefore I dug this. It has a great SCARFACE-influenced villain played by Robert Davi and bears a sense of tension throughout as 007 pursues his vendetta without the approval of MI-6. Very good until the weak final third and the questionable inclusion of Wayne Newton as a superfluous minor villain.

 

6. FOR YOUR EYES ONLY (1981) 

 

Bond, ridding himself of a pesky assassin.
 

After the cartoonish excesses of MOONRAKER, it was back to basics, resulting in what is hands down Moore's best Bond effort. Minimal gadgets and quips, plus a nastier edge that evokes Fleming. A bit '80's-dated but still very good.

 

5. GOLDFINGER (1964)  

 

BOND: Do you expect me to talk?

GOLDFINGER (jovially): No, Mister Bond...I expect you to DIE."

 

Arguably the most iconic film in the series, Its every aspect carved the basic Bond template in stone, which was a bad thing because they more or less repeatedly remade it for the next two decades. It's also something of an oddity because Bond spends the majority of the running time a prisoner of the superb title villain, but that's offset by classic characters like Pussy Galore, Oddjob, the rolling arsenal that is the legendary Q Division Aston Martin DB5, John Barry's stellar score, and Shirley Bassey's indelible title song. This is the goods, kids, and if your mom saw it when it came out, Sean Connery in this made her wetter than a swamp.

 

4. SKYFALL (2012) 

 

London calling.
 

The second-best of Daniel Craig's run and a high point for the franchise. After the disappointment of QUANTUM OF SOLACE, I went to this with the lowest of expectations, but what I got was a superb modern entry and one of the very finest of the series. Solid plot, tough-as-nails 007, a great villain whose revenge plot against Judi Densch's M is understandable, and the full-force return of the Aston Martin DB5.

 

3. ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE (1969) 

 

Sean Connery is out. Enter George Lazenby.
 

The first Bond without Sean Connery, this has one of the strongest plots in the run, and newcomer George Lazenby does an adequate job as 007 in what would be his sole turn in the role. Too bad he didn't stick around, because he likely would have improved had he done more entries. The plot hews close to the source novel and this would have taken the #1 slot on my list if Connery had starred, but that minor quibble is made up for by brisk direction and incredible cinematography, a quick pace that belies its long running time, Telly Savalas as arguably the most formidable iteration of Blofeld, and Diana Rigg as the most tragic of the Bond women. The instrumental title theme is one of John Barry's best, and he kind of ripped himself off when more or less remaking it as the theme for the posthumous Bruce Lee film, GAME OF DEATH (1978).

 

2. CASINO ROYALE (2006) 

 

Enter the blonde Bond.

 

A superb, shattering modernization of the first Bond novel, as well as a soft reboot for the series, with not a missed note in the whole endeavor. Basically Bond's origin story, this one's so good, you won't care that Bond has a face like a bulldog and is a blonde. All of the elements fire on all cylinders, resulting in a top-notch 007 thriller.

 

1. FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE (1963)  

 

The rarest of the rare: an immediate sequel that far exceeds its predecessor. 

 

The second in the series and the most no-bullshit Bond of the entire run, as well as one of the best spy films ever made. This Hitchcock-influenced effort hews close to the source novel, largely eschews over-the-top gadgets and quips, and gives us a solid Cold War-era straight espionage thriller with excellent villains and arguably the best/most realistic fight scene in the entire series. Though it may come off kind of slow by modern standards, the strength here is the plot and the performances, all of which are top shelf. Especially memorable are Bond's Turkish ally, Ali Kerim Bey (Pedro Armendariz), Istanbul's more fun answer to MI-6's M; terrifying ultra-butch Russian SPECTRE agent Rosa Klebb (Lotte Lenya), whose overtly predatory dykiness must have been quite shocking some sixty years ago; psycho hitman Red Grant (Robert Shaw), and the lovely honey pot Soviet agent Tatiana Romanova (Daniella Bianchi), who is unwittingly played by SPECTRE and ends up in it way over her head. Simply put, this is everything a Cold War-era populist spy thriller should be, and it is in every an improvement on its predecessor. The apex of classic Bond and Sean Connery's favorite of the lot.

And here's hoping that NO TIME TO DIE ends the Daniel Craig era with a bang, rather than a whimper!

From "8 James Bomb Bomb Movies" (MAD MAGAZINE #165, March 1974)

 

THUNDERBALL (1965)

Let's talk about THUNDERBALL (1965), the James Bond film released during the height of the 1960's super-spy boom, and the 007 movie released the year I was born.

Thanks to the unexpected runaway success of the third Bond outing, GOLDFINGER (1964), the next Bond film was afforded a then-massive budget of $9,000,000 and was shot in widescreen, with much of the action taking place in picturesque Jamaican locations. If the public wanted more 007, then that's what the studio would give them, so THUNDERBALL featured more violence, more sexy women, more outrageous gadgets, more quipping, more you name it, all crammed into two hours plus. Too bad they paid little or no attention to providing a decent script, fine-tuned editing, and a pace faster than that achieved on a belly full of Lorazepam.

With all of that said, let's go through the movie with my observations, culminating in a final verdict.

 

• THUNDERBALL sports my favorite Bond theme song. My go-to for karaoke, I nail the rest of the song surprisingly beautifully, but nailing that final note and sustaining it? Yeah, I am NOT Tom Jones. (Alas.)

• Next to MOONRAKER's skydiving sequence, THUNDERBALL features the best  of the series'  pre-credits mini-adventures. Bond killing the in-drag and allegedly dead Colonel Bouvard is a realistic and savage fight that ends in what can only be called cold-blooded murder. It's the Bond of the novels. 
• The direction by Terence Young is pedestrian at best. (No, I will NOT go into the whole story about Kevin McClory's involvement with this film and the legal battles connected to it. There's actually an entire book on the whole convoluted mess.) 
• The SPECTRE briefing after the opening looks fantastic, and set the standard for all such scenes in cinema going forward. The Ken Adam set design is a big reason for this. 
• Our villain, Emilio Largo, explains part of SPECTRE's plot to steal two nuclear warheads, and the details are filled in as we see the operation, which is tediously depicted with setup involving SPECTRE agents engaging in shenanigans with 007, who's conveniently at a health spa located next to a military base, and the first of many, MANY slow-moving underwater sequences. 
• Bond's relentless sexual harassment of spa physiotherapist Molly Peters is annoyingly, obnoxiously laddish and absolutely unacceptable in the year 2020, but the fact that he blackmails her into having sex with him places Bond firmly in the category of sexual predator. (Do NOT get me started on the barn scene in GOLDFINGER. I'll just leave it at "That was rape.") 
• The pacing of the entire film is turgid. 
• John Barry's score is one of the film's few saving graces. Very moody and evocative. 
• With the exception of a few scenes, this is where Connery's Bond is at his blandest. Surpassed in this respect only by his performance in YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE, where it's obvious he'd rather be anywhere else. 
• I had not seen this film in its entirety in a while, so for decades Emilio Largo held the title as my favorite Bond villain, simply because he's just so suave, cool, and old school Italian. Looking at him today, he doesn't really do much and is rather a personality-void bore. His sense of menace is nowhere near what I remembered it being. 
• Bond arriving late to the massive 00 briefing on Operation: Thunderball at MI-6 headquarters and M's reaction is classic. 
• Among the other agents at the briefing, a female can clearly be seen. Fuck this boring slog, what's her story? What would the adventures of a female 00 agent in the 1960's be like? I WANT THAT MOVIE. 
• The MI-6 briefing on Operation Thunderball is boring and, worse, it's totally redundant, as we, the audience, witnessed Largo's crew pull off the nuclear heist. WE know all of the details before the good guys do, so it's now the good guys catching up with us. 
• The mission itself must be accomplished within four days, and does not actually begin until well over a half-hour into the film. The setup to get to it is all just boring and could have been told in five minutes so we can get to the point. I get that they wanted to take advantage of the new widescreen format and colossal budget, but give us a meaty story to fill up the time instead of a load of bullshit. 
• Once the story's action shifts to Jamaica, the film has the look and feel of a bland travelogue or someone's vintage home movies of their summer vacation. 
• Domino, while a feast for the eyes, has zero personality. 
• How the hell do you fuck underwater in a coral reef with full scuba gear on? Seriously, exactly HOW THE HELL DOES THAT WORK? 
• There's a hell of a lot of nothing going on once we get to Jamaica. 
• Luciana Paluzzi as SPECTRE femme fatale Fiona Volpe is arguably the best and liveliest character in the entire film. Too bad she was stuck in this specific entry. 
• I liked Rik Van Nutter as Felix Leiter, but he has little to do here, and the character was recast for his next appearance anyway. 
• Martine Beswick as Paula, Bond's assistant in Jamaica, is wasted, as her character quite literally has no reason to be in the story other than to look stunning. (Beswick was last seen as one of the two battling gypsy chicks in FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, the second and best James Bond film ever made.) 
• THUNDERBALL really only gets by because it stars Sean Connery as Bond. If any of the other Bond actors had swapped places with him in this film, it would universally rank toward the bottom of the roster. 
• Gratuitous items: the beloved Aston-Martin DB-5 (seen at the beginning), a ridiculously-placed rocket pack (how did it get there with no one noting Bond hauling it up to that exact, necessary location?), Largo's pet sharks, loads of boring flying around in helicopters, Bond's pointless super-scuba tank. 
• Clocking in at two hours and ten minutes, THUNDERBALL was the first of the lavish, bloated Bonds, and could easily have been trimmed by 45 minutes without losing anything of narrative value. 
• The sequence at the junkanoo is chaotic and feels like it was edited with a weed whacker. Too much going on and no real cinematic management of the parade's chaos. Consequently, though Bond is clearly in danger, there is zero suspense. 
• How Bond disposes of Fiona's corpse is a classic gag. Bond's dispatching of Vargas and the subsequent one-liner. (chef's kiss) 
• The famous underwater melee between MI-6 (in orange scuba gear) and Largo's forces (in black) is a boring mess and visual nightmare, as dozens of agents kill each other beneath the waves. Due to how we land creatures move when hampered by being submerged, everything is sloooooow. The presence of a random shark or lobster does nothing to liven the proceedings. 
• ANIMAL CRUELTY ALERT: During the underwater fight, there's a moment where a shark enters the fray and a SPECTRE frogman wrestles a speargun away from an MI-6 agent to shoot the deep-sea predator. We see — for real — the speargun discharge and send a spear through the shark's head and out the other side. It's an odd angle but there it is. We see other sharks get speared but this was a through-the-head shot. This was the 1960's, when this kind of thing could be included in a movie without a second thought. Poor wee sharks... 
• The climax takes forever and, no matter how hard it tried, it just wasn't thrilling. Maybe in 1965, but definitely not now. 
• Dud sequence or not, the Disco Volante is a cool yacht. 
• Largo's right hand man's heel turn comes from out of nowhere, and he was such a minor character that the viewer could be forgiven for having no idea who the hell he is when he releases a tied-up Domino.

FINAL VERDICT: After careful consideration, and even taking into account that it was for some reason a favorite during my youth, I have to rank THUNDERBALL somewhere among the weakest efforts in the series. It has too much going for it to consider it a total loss, but this is the exact moment when the Bond films became lavish, bloated, overlong, and, in many cases, tedious. They also became beat-for-beat remakes of GOLDFINGER, with the corporate thinking being "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," which led to Bond movies mostly becoming rote self-parodies with wildly-varying degrees of quality.

If one approached THUNDERBALL without any prior knowledge of James Bond, Sean Connery, or the cultural impact of the franchise and observed it from a purely objective standpoint, it's a middling thriller at best, whose over-length and dreary directing are its undoing. I won't be returning to it again, and my DVD will join the stack of films eventually to be sold off for cash or Japanese import toys at Book-Off in Midtown.

THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. (2015)

Yet another classic/cult TV series gets the big screen treatment and I'm assuming there is some hope that it may have legs enough to offer competition to the 007, Bourne, and MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE franchises. There's a lot of love and nostalgia for THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E., 1960's TV's most direct answer to the era's massively popular James Bond boom, but I honestly wonder how much of that love is bolstered by memories dating back by as much as five decades. I sat through the show's entire run about a year and a half ago and I can honestly say that the first two seasons offered fun and intentionally tongue-in-cheek spy shenanigans before the series ill-advisedly dove headfirst into over-the-top brain-dead camp in the wake of the ratings juggernaut that was Adam West's iconic BATMAN program. The show became truly dreadful and downright embarrassing to watch, and a shift to a back-to-basics tone for its truncated final season proved to be not enough to stave off cancellation. Depending on where you lived, THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. may or may not have played in syndicated reruns, though some of the foreign-released theatrical "films" cobbled together from episodes did occasionally turn up on local TV as filler in assorted movie showcase slots. In other words, THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E.  was a show  whose rep was bolstered mostly by nostalgia and not by rerun ubiquity, so it was in many ways more big screen reboot-ready than many of the more familiar television mainstays that made the leap from the small screen over the past three decades of Hollywood mining the glass teat for ideas.

To be fair, THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. movie was a lot better than I expected and the fact that it was set in 1963 added to its charm. As this is a spy movie with the usual twists, turns, and surprises in its plot, I won't give away any of the details, other than to say that womanizing CIA spook Napoleon Solo (Henry Cavill) remained pretty much the same character we've known since 1964 (though with a skill set cribbed from IT TAKES A THIEF's Alexander Mundy), while quiet intellectual KGB operative Illya Kuryakin (Armie Hammer) is needlessly reinvented with borderline-psycho anger management issues. Nontheless, the strength of the film relies on the interplay between Solo and Kuryakin in what would otherwise be a slightly-better-realized-than-average yet generic Cold War-era spy adventure. The biggest drawback is that the filmmakers unnecessarily decided to give the men from U.N.C.L.E. an origin story that shows how they met and overcame their immediate dislike of one another. The TV series simply dropped us headfirst into their world with them already established as top international operatives, and we were trusted to be smart enough to keep up. Lastly, the show's main hook, the dropping of an innocent civilian into the shadow world of international espionage that exists hidden within our mundane world and seeing how they fare when involved with Solo and Kuryakin, is totally absent here. 

BOTTOM LINE: A fun way to fill two hours but you can wait for cable. And for those who care, the classic U.N.C.L.E. theme tune — the Hugo Montengro soundtrack album version — is only heard in a three-second snippet as Solo searches for something to listen to on a truck's radio.