James Bond 007 film-by-film thread

It's all downhill after this( just about).

 

I dare not be the one to start Diamonds Are Forever.

 

Too be honest i can't get that enthusiastic with any of them after OHMSS.

 

OHMSS is a top 3 Bond flick for me. I really wish Connery had done this one. I do find Lazenby's lack of acting experience to be a detriment. The film succeeds in spite of that. But he had a lot of guts.

 

i really like Diamonds Are Forever. it's kitschy and cheesy and i like it. Jill St John looks great and has a lot of fun with her role. great song too. i wouldn't rank it high on my favorite Bond list but i think it's a fun movie and that's where it sparkles (couldn't resist...see, cheesy )

 

Sean Connery looked ancient in it.
Ditto ..if he appeared in OHMSS.

 

Diamonds Are Forever starts out strong. I always got a kick out of that funeral home scene where Bond escapes being cremated. The fight in the elevator is almost, but not quite, as good as the fight in the train in From Russia With Love.

However, it loses steam a little past the half-way point. Plus you can't miss that Connery seems to have aged 15 years in the 4 years since You Only Live Twice. But I do like his performance, for the most part. He seems to be having a little bit of fun.

I could live without Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd as they were portrayed. And Charles Gray was a peculiar choice to play Blofeld, but I thought he did a decent job.

This was the first of the self-parody style Bond films that would define the Roger Moore years. I, for one, did not mind this aspect when it was restrained. DAF hasn't really aged well, but I still think it's a fun watch, at least for about the first half and sporadically afterwards. 6/10.

 

I saw a good bio on George Lazenby called Becoming Bond. It’s exclusive to Hulu I think.

Becoming Bond

It has some corny re-enactments but the interviews with Lazenby are extremely insightful.

 

Here’s a BBC radio drama of OHMSS

 

Lazenby and Jill St John, 'rehearsing'

 

Diamond script.

 

Tracking down some good stiff, dbz.

 

Thanks, always thought it was weird Lazenby and St. John dating. Or ironic.

 

Lazenby i presume thought he was getting a head start.

 

Would have preferred Peter Hunt /George Lazenby Diamonds Are Forever.

 

Diamonds Are Forever (1971)

James Bond (Sean Connery) investigates diamond smuggling.

It's a fairly silly movie with a few logic hiccups here and there but otherwise it’s a pretty solid film with a few creative action scenes. There's a bit of natural flow to it without too many contrivances to keep the story going. The scale is nicely small for the first half as Bond keeps his eyes on just the one shipment of diamonds. It was enjoyable nonsense. Some of the special effects were a bit comically crude.

Good


My review of the 2012 audiobook I was given for free:

I tried the audiobook version of On Her Majesty's Secret Service. I lasted about 40 minutes. It was so stodgy and overwritten. Really just awful and annoying. Unfortunately I ordered this at the same time. My expectations were not through the roof.

Much to my surprise it was...not too bad. I didn't think it was good, but I didn't find it to be like wading through the thickest, stodgiest writing ever committed to paper. The start was a bit hard going. The description of the helicopter taking off was insanely long - really the words, 'The helicopter took off,' would have covered it as every reader can imagine that in their mind without further assistance.

Once it got passed the first five minutes it was a low-level, ho-hum, rather banal tale. It wasn't a struggle to listen to it.

I completed the first three discs and was feeling okay about the rest of it. I was imagining a generous three star review. There was a slight hint of black and white detective/gangster films to it. Such as Kiss Me Deadly (1955) or The Killing (1956), instead of the glitzy Bond films they went on to make.

I came back to it after about a week and a half away.

I thought disc four was so sleep inducing that I actually slept through the end of it. I didn't bother backtracking to clarify what I missed due to a lack of interest.

I really hated the in-depth description of how casinos operate. If you've seen the 1995 film Casino, then Fleming isn't telling you anything new or interesting (this is an unreasonable complaint I know, as this predates that film by four decades).

Disc five was a slog. It's just no fun. At all.

Disc six was murder. You know it's the end but still he finds time to take forever and meander on that cruise ship. Do we really need to know so much about gambling laws on ships? I seriously considered abandoning the thing so close to the end as I really, really, really didn't care about gambling laws at this point in the story.

The amount of over the top detail and overwriting is ridiculous, and turns reading or listening to this into seriously hard work. It's more than a little annoying. If I was reading it I would have been skipping paragraphs, or even whole pages in order to just GET ON WITH IT. As it was an audiobook I was stuck with its maddening pace.

Overall I hated it. It wasn't enjoyable and it wasn't worth the effort.

The interview with Damian Lewis at the end was disappointing as it was only two and a half minutes. He said he loved how in-depth the set pieces were with so much rich detail.

He was an okay reader. His accents and female voices were a bit iffy, but he was a big improvement over David Tennant who read On Her Majesty's Secret Service. He was terrible.

There is no substantial connection between this 1956 novel and the 1971 film they made under its title. The character name Tiffany Case; to some small extent the idea of the killers Mr Wint and Mr Kidd, along with the cruise ship finale setting; and the use of a mud-bath, are the only things I recognised in both of them.

1 out of 5


Best to worst IMO (films ranked as I watched them so this list has some weight to it)

Live and Let Die (1973)

The Living Daylights (1987)

Diamonds Are Forever (1971)

Licence to Kill (1989)

Goldfinger (1964)

Dr No (1962)

Thunderball (1965)

The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)

Moonraker (1979)

The World is Not Enough (1999)

Goldeneye (1995)

Octopussy (1983)

On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)

Casino Royale (2006)

For Your Eyes Only (1981)

Never Say Never Again (1983)

Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)

Die Another Day (2002)

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

You Only Live Twice (1967)

Skyfall (2012)

Spectre (2015)

Quantum of Solace (2008)

A View to a Kill (1985)

From Russia with Love (1963)

 

Sean looked so damn OLD. The moon vehicle chase was silly. The car on two wheels was a great stunt.'
I was never a big Jill fan, for some reason. She was decent with Frank; you sensed some chemistry there.

 

Sean, tired? Once you've had pussygalore ..I'm not surprised.

 

On Her Majesty's Secret Service is certainly one of the better films in the series. What I think makes it worth watching is that it essentially gets down to basic spy stuff and action, and has a fairly solid storyline. However, it doesn't make it into my Top 10 Bond films for a couple of reasons.

I'm sure Lazenby is a decent actor, but I don't think he ever really pulls off the Bond persona convincingly. There's something soft about the character that needs a certain edge, at least in this context. To me, he's never "James Bond"; the result makes his performance, and the film to some extent, a bit generic.

Also, the film is just too long for the story being told. Not that I don't or can't appreciate an long running movie, but in this case it could have used a good bit of editing to liven up the pace of the film. That whole romantic interlude sequence with JB & Tracy just kills the momentum and comes across like some sort of commercial for air freshener or bathroom tissue. Jeez...

So, good spy movie, but a little short as a "Bond flick".

 

To give the fellow a little credit he only made one Bond movie, maybe if he'd have stuck around for a few more films I'm sure he would have got better.

 

Diamonds Are Forever is another of my favorites. Except for the two wheel part, I like everything about it. Especially Jill.

 

DAF.
Best thing about it was the John Barry theme tune.

 

Sorry but Jill beats John any day.

 

But I would argue that all the other actors did fine with Bond right from the start. Why should Lazenby be given the opportunity to "get better"? It's his job to play Bond well. My impression is that a lot of folks felt the same way.

 

I thought he did a fine job. Remember, Lazenby had NEVER acted before. Ever.