Shadow of the Vampire (2000)

Director: E. Elias Merhige

Cast: John Malkovich, Willem Dafoe, Cary Elwes, Suzy Eddie Izzard

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. It’s hard to think of a movie in this era that was more coming for me directly than this one. It’s a little strange to think that it has taken this long for us to get around to it on Beyond the Cabin in the Woods. That being said, it’s weird to admit that my DVD has quite possibly not seen the light of day since I originally bought it in 2001.

Did I Like It: There’s a lot to like here, but not without some disappointments. Dafoe is swinging for the fences with his performance, and chewing scenes in the best possible way. Of particular delight is the scene where Schreck/Orlock is on his own and manages to take in a rush of a sunrise, and is absolutely transfixed by the mere possibility of film. It reminds me of a scene in Chaplin (1992) where Robert Downey Jr. is similarly transfixed by the celluloid possibilities in front of him, and even that scene had to be propped up by voice over narration. It also reminds me of the sequence in Interview with the Vampire (1994) where Brad Pitt is similarly distracted by the possibilities of going to the movies. Here, all we are given is Dafoe’s face, and the film of the sun. The point is made all the same, and honestly gives the only good argument for vampirism that I’ve yet to hear. Somebody comes around and tells me they have a way for me to see films released even beyond my lifetime, I’m going to need someone to talk me down.

And yet, there’s something so singular about his face that the great makeup job can’t quite erase Dafoe from the character he is playing, like the makeup job in the 1920s did for the real (or is he?) Max Schreck in Nosferatu (1922). It’s a minor complaint, given that Dafoe’s face is almost a special effect in its own way. Just try to continue staring at the hypnotic opening titles that tries to make something human out of Dafoe’s face and Art Deco elements. It’s easily the most unnerving sequences of this or any horror movie.

My real reservation about the film is structural, though. Searching for a new cinematographer after their first one is waylaid by the downsides of vampirism, Murnau (Malkovich, playing himself) disappears from the movie for some time. This renders the second more than a little aimless and disorganized, robbing the film of its central tension between Murnau and Schreck when it could use it the most.

Die Hard 2 (1990)

Director: Renny Harlin

Cast: Bruce Willis, Bonnie Bedelia, William Atherton, Reginald VelJohnson*

Have I Seen it Before: Sure, I mean, I’m not stopping everything around certain major holidays to force whoever is in my proximity to watch it like certain other films. But I’ve probably seen it twice or so over the years.

Did I Like It: Oddly, yes? Sure, this might not be the little sequel that could that became Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995). There are parts that are a rehash of the original, sure, but there is an obligatory and appropriate expanding of the scope here. Where Die Hard (1988) is an oftentimes claustrophobic journey up and down the Nakatomi Tower, this spreads out the action and raises the stakes.

The cast surrounding Willis—a little more dour, as somebody bothered to tell him he’s a movie star—is also a delight, with the main threat coming from William Sadler and John Amos, two actors I’m bound to be delightfully surprised to see in things. The Grim Reaper and Chairman Fitzwallace causing trouble for John McClane and America? That’s pitch enough for a movie.

I’m even willing to overlook the fact that most of the plot hinges on the image quality of faxed fingerprints. I think I am, anyway. At least this isn’t one of the bloated, inept sequels almost completely unrelated to the original that we got in more recent years.

*Right out of the gate, this review is already running havoc with the in house style here on the site. You might want to call the movie Die Harder, but that’s not the real title of the movie. Also, the first three cast members credited after Willis appear in the film for a combined 15 minutes and each appears less interested in being in the same place with Willis for longer than they have to for more than 30 seconds.

Star Trek: Section 31 (2025)

Director: Olatunde Osunsanmi

Cast: Michelle Yeoh, Omari Hardwick, Sam Richardson, Kacey Rohl

Have I Seen it Before: Never. Brand new. Weird moment when for a day or so—although it happens more and more frequently these last few years—when somebody could ask me “Have you seen all of Star Trek” and I have to answer “not yet.” Even weirder still is the brief moment  when someone can ask me, “Have you seen all of the Star Trek movies?” and I have to say I’m working on it.

Did I Like It: Assessing any Star Trek movie begs more than a few questions, although as I continue to write this review I find those questions to be more than a little bit inter-related. First—and this question really ought to be used to judge any film—does it succeed on its own terms? On this front, yes, I think it does. It wants to be a fun, light adventure a la Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), and while one might be able to quibble with just how naturally a bunch of goofballs on a heist format onto Roddenberry’s utopia, it’s clear that the movie has decided what it wants to be and follows through on that.

Second question: Does the movie work for someone who isn’t already steeped in the lore of Trek? Frankly, all of the great Trek films straddle the line, bringing in elements of what came before but making it accessible to a wider audience. Here, Section 31 works pretty well. Explaining just who Georgiou (Yeoh) is and her previous activities is dispensed with as quickly as possible without just directing viewers to the first three seasons of Star Trek: Discovery. But other than that, these are new characters who we are just getting to know. A fan like myself will see Rachel Garrett (Rohl) and know fate will take her in the future*, but Joe Everybody off the street will just be able to see her as the archetypical Starfleet officer, futilely trying to bring order to the chaos on display. This might be something I would recommend to someone just coming in to the franchise.

Finally, and this question can plague many of the other Trek films: Is it worthy of being a feature-length story, or is it really an extended episode? Star Trek Insurrection (1998) is often maligned for being an extended episode and Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) started life as a pilot to an eventually abandoned second series with the original crew, and never quite outruns the gravity of those constrictions. This, too, was originally to be the first episode of a spinoff starring Yeoh, but after she won the Oscar, cooler head prevailed, and we are left only with this “event movie.” There’s room to check in with this rag-tag team in the future if this film works, but it definitely feels like a pilot for things that will never come. I was prepared to answer this question and only view Section 31 as something of a mixed bag, but then I remembered what this really means for the future of Trek. After a whirlwind few years where we were treated to a number of series, the streaming wars appear to have ended with no real winners. By committing not to multi-year series with inevitably diminishing numbers of viewers, changing the way Star Trek comes to us may yet widen the lens. We could see more 24th Century stories a la the hinted Picard sequel, Legacy. Indeed, the limits of what could be done may no longer exist. If that ends up being the case, Section 31 may end up being a noble experiment, indeed.

*In addition to being the only real clue that this story takes place roughly forty years after Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991) and about forty years before the beginning of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Tommy Boy (1995)

Director: Peter Segal

Cast: Chris Farley, David Spade, Bo Derek, Brian Dennehy

Have I Seen it Before: Experiencing the main crux of my adolescence in the mid-90s, it was essentially required viewing. At some point, I had recorded an airing off of HBO, and I probably watched it more than I strictly had to.

Then again, I have the strongest memory of being no more than twelve, seeing Farley during an appearance on The Tonight Show and saying out loud. “Well, he’s not going to live very long.”

I was a weird kid, though.

Did I Like It: Generally accepted to be Farley’s greatest movie, I couldn’t help but wonder if that said more about the shortness of his career than anything else. Could it hold up after all of these years? Could anything?

Probably not. The film is 90 minutes of warmed over Capra-esque aww-shucks-ness with a few moments of Farley being Farley to fill the trailers and get the opening weekend grosses up. Farley can be funny, but after being on a bit of a Saturday Night Live jag lately after the one-two punch of the show’s 50th anniversary coupled with last year’s Saturday Night (2024) I think I’ve come to the conclusion that Farley’s manic energy could never be correctly captured by a feature film. It needed to be on display in live TV, where one could see him become a tornado, and then have to ask themselves whether or not they really saw what they just saw. Farley excelled at that. It’s what elevated him from just another featured player on the show, and that quality might have had some part in killing him.

Then again, I could be wrong. Had he lived, Farley might have found layers we never knew he had. If that had been the case, this film might have been forgotten altogether. It certainly wouldn’t hold up.

Funny Farm (1988)

Director: George Roy Hill

Cast: Chevy Chase, Madolyn Smith, Joseph Maher, Jack Gilpin

Have I Seen It Before: Yes, and to a weird degree. When I was a kid and fancied myself a novelist (not to be confused with the various times in my 20s and 30s that I’ve done the same thing) I actually managed to finagle an interview with Jay Cronley, author of the novel. By then he had become a weekly columnist for the local paper. He was nice and enthusiastic, far nicer and more enthusiastic about Mac Boyle: Novelist than he had any obligation to be to a 15-year-old kid who took some time out of his day. Even so, there was a bit of world-weariness to him that made me always fairly certain that the story was a self-insert. Andy Farmer is Cronley. Cronley is Andy Farmer.

Did I Like It: As I watch it now, the thing I’m most struck by is less the fundamental Cronley-ness of Chase as Farmer but that this might be the perfect vehicle for Chase at his prime. You might prefer him as Clark Griswold in the Vacation films, but me and mine will always prefer him in Fletch (1985)*, Andy Farmer seems to be the perfect blend of those two disparate poles of Chase’s on-screen persona**. Oddly enough, when he’s his most manic, he’s tapping into his Griswold side, and when he’s more wry and detached from the absurdity transpiring around him, he’s more Fletch.

It may, indeed, be the ultimate 80s Chevy Chase movie.

*Even if Jon Hamm played him more like Gregory MacDonald wrote him, but that’s a matter for other reviews. Also I think that Bill Murray would have been better casting for the role back int the 80s… I know, I know. Different review.

**The third pole of Chase is his off screen persona, which tends to be what he plays more now. On yet another unrelated note, when are we getting that Community movie?

Dirty Harry (1971)

Director: Don Siegel

Cast: Clint Eastwood, Andy Robinson, Harry Guardino, John Vernon

Have I Seen It Before: Yes, at some point. Although I’ll admit that I was drawn to the film less for Eastwood’s iconic portrayal of Callahan, and more as an avowed Deep Space Nine fan, I showed up for Andy Robinson’s (Andrew J. Robinson, to his friends) turn as “the killer.”

Is that the most desperately nerdy reason to watch an Eastwood film? It might be, but I also can’t imagine I’m the only one that came to the film that way.

Did I Like It: And there is certainly something to be said for that performance. Robinson is cowardly, dastardly, sniveling, and any other adjective you might use to describe a cartoon heavy, all with still making the Killer always seem as if he is some kind of horrid mutation of a human, but human nonetheless. The pitch-black soul he brings to the film makes a misanthrope like Harry (Eastwood) never seem like he is anything other than the bad guy.

Is Harry Callahan a complete misanthrope? Characters around him certainly seem to think so. But he is kind to his partner and his wife, even though he never really wanted the partner around to begin with. He doesn’t have a chip on his shoulder reflexively, every chip was placed there by someone looking for an easy way out of responsibility. All of that preceding paragraph may start to make one think that I’m somehow going to change my own politics and start talking to empty chairs onstage. Let me assure you, if Harry could get over his own dick for a moment, he might have avoided an honest screw up by putting the heat on the Killer without a search warrant or probable cause, allowing him to be released. Harry is really dumb, but he means well. I offer into evidence his final action in the film, chucking his badge into the water. How does Magnum Force (1973) begin? Him fishing for a badge? Only one way to find out, I suppose.

Trap (2024)

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Cast: Josh Hartnett, Ariel Donoghue, Saleka Night Shyamalan, Hayley Mills

Have I Seen It Before: Never. If it doesn’t play at Circle, and it isn’t on the schedule for Beyond the Cabin in the Woods, I’m going to have to make a real effort to catch it in theaters.

Did I Like It: Lora said the best thing about this film, and I have not seen the thought expressed anywhere else. So, it needs to be shared:

The real twist in the film is that they got Hayley Mills out of retirement to spring a trap on a parent.

Now everybody can see why I married her.

But to the question of just what the twist is. There are a couple of minor turns of fate that change the course of the movie, but no real moment where the entirety of the movie you’ve just been watching suddenly becomes an entirely different movie. Maybe the minor debacle of Glass (2019) scared him off thing that made his famous, but I couldn’t help but think it showed a great degree of restraint to not make it so that the killer’s wife (Allison Pill) was in on the killings the whole time, or the whole family, or FBI profiler Josephine Grant (Mills, trapping parents left and right) was actually Cooper’s (Hartnett) mother… Or, I don’t know… The whole concert was populated by aliens. I applaud M. Night from moving on from this construction. Now if only I as a viewer could get out of the mode where I’m trying to second guess the plot as it unfurls. It’s the least I could do for him, but that would be the precise moment he drops a new twist ending on us.

Hartnett is the film’s real secret strength. Channeling the right amount of at-his-peak John Ritter, he feels perfectly harmless for the film’s opening act, and the performance increasingly makes him seem both terrifying and brilliant in the implementation of that terror.

And it’s good that Hartnett’s performance makes him seem smart, because the plot reflexively swings for lucky breaks as opposed to deserving—even in a sick sort of way—to get out of his predicament. It’s truly a merely serviceable screenplay that keeps this from being great.

Nosferatu (2024)

Director: Robert Eggers

Cast: Bill Skarsgård, Nicholas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp, Aaron Taylor-Johnson

Have I Seen it Before: Nope. Brand new movie. First episode of a new season of Beyond the Cabin in the Woods. Interesting enough, a day before actually sitting down to watch the movie, I was volunteering at the theater and had to help somebody kick out some pathologically disruptive kids from a screening. So, I can cross that one off my bucket list?

Did I Like It: There’s probably not a whole lot new one can do with an adaptation of Dracula. The tentacles of that story seep into so much that if you’re alive in any way, you could probably guess where the story is going. There’s not even that much new anyone can do as a riff to Nosferatu (1922). Nothing will ever be quite as unnerving as the sight of Max Shreck as Count Orlock, especially when it was abundantly clear that there was no special effects as we understand them to convert a man into some kind of unspeakable creature of the night.

That all being said, Eggers immediately makes the case for his version of the story to need to exist. It is filled with atmosphere and the kind of concerted visual filmmaking that made up the best of the silent films, and is almost uniformly not on the menu for newly made movies.

Much has been made of the film’s disinterest in offering a riff on the original Orlock. Some say that the character as he appears in this film has little to do with what we have traditionally come to imagine when presented with vampires, but honest to God those people aren’t thinking things through very much. This Orlock is the first—with the possible exception of some early scenes with Gary Oldman in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)—that looks like he might have once lived as Vlad the Impaler. That would be enough to consider the film something of a fascinating experience, but I also can’t get over Skarsgård’s performance in this film. There is no trace of Pennywise or any of his other performances here, so much so that I honestly didn’t realize it was Skarsgård until the end credits. Even Karloff and Lugosi ended up playing mild variations of a static screen persona in their varied careers. We may have found a new master of horror, who can disappear so completely into a role. What can’t he play?

The Blues Brothers (1980)

Director: John Landis

Cast: John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, James Brown, Cab Calloway

Have I Seen It Before: Oh, sure. Having parents who hailed from Mount Prospect, the BluesMobile was always a delightful chuckle growing up. Also put it in my mind that buying an old police car at auction would be a great way to get a vehicle that doesn’t look like much, but still has all the best parts and maintenance.

Maybe I took the wrong things away from this one.

Did I Like It: I look at a movie directed (and in this case largely written) by John Landis, and my immediate instinct is to not like. It sure helps that he hasn’t really made a watchable movie in thirty years, but his early stuff sure does throw me for a loop. You might come to his defense for what happened on the set of Twlight Zone: The Movie (1982), but giving the maximum weight to any kind of acquittal, the man always seemed to be so full of himself, so supremely confident that the movie he is making at that moment is worthy of any (and I do mean any) sacrifice that it gives the entire catalog a sour taste.

And then there’s the whole exercise that is The Blues Brothers. I remember reading in George Carlin’s final book that he had a wide-ranging apathy for a lot of the Saturday Night Live crowd, as he (and I’m wildly paraphrasing) couldn’t see why a bunch of white guys had anything about which to sing the blues. I would have counted myself among the fans of the film up until the moment I read that, and afterwards, wondering if that was part of the problem.

Then, finally, there is the question of whether or not any sketch from SNL should ever be flattened to the point that it runs over 90 minutes. To say nothing of the more than 120 minutes this asks us to endure. Wayne’s World (1992) works, but does anything else really work?

All of that comes together, and I should be firmly ambivalent about the film these days. And yet, the thing moves along at a clip and is a delight. It helps that Belushi and Aykroyd often take a back seat to other legendary musicians as things unfurl. It’s not quite as funny as I might have remembered, but it has more than enough attitude to compensate.

Octopussy (1983)

Director: John Glen

Cast: Roger Moore, Maud Adams, Louis Jourdan, Kristina Wayborn

Have/ I Seen it Before: Sure. TBS, the 90s. That whole bit. Felt a little bit weird writing down the title on a VHS label, but that’s how one started to amass their movie collection with a $5.00 allowance.

I sometimes wonder if re-watching some of these films on those VHS recordings might have a little charm to them. Would it be a delight to take a bathroom break in the middle of this film to see a commercial for the Bigfoot Pizza and In The Mouth of Madness (1995). I may never again see a movie that way again. I’m oddly wistful about that in this moment.

Did I Like It: I’m stalling, aren’t I? There’s a lot of this film that works. Moore in his element, doing switcheroos on Fabregé and making googly eyes at a woman far classier than him. There are several mildly funny digs at the state of the competition—namely Never Say Never Again (1983)—although I may have been reading too much into the “REAL BOND” sign oddly hanging over Moore’s head at one point, and it seems like they’re using about twenty percent more of the Monty Norman theme than the average.

Then there’s the clown thing. I’ve made no secret of how little I think of shooting Ian Fleming’s borderline sociopathic spy into space. It was such a dimly-considered chase of where the movies were in that moment. But in this one, the man gets out of a sticky situation with a nuclear bomb by dressing as a god damned clown. In Moonraker (1979) he tries to take a page out of Luke Skywalker. Here, for no other reason than Moore is a little bored in the role*, decides to start saving the world using Charlie Chaplin’s playbook.

I do dislike that more than the space thing. Sorry, Sir Roger.

*And might have been well-advised to bow-out after the far superior For Your Eyes Only (1981).

Never Say Never Again (1983)

Director: Irvin Kershner

Cast: Sean Connery, Klaus Maria Brandauer, Max von Sydow, Kim Basinger

Have I Seen It Before: Although largely ignored in the canon—what with it being the strangest bit of counter-programming ever committed to screen—I have the strongest memory of picking up a VHS copy* from Suncoast** and marveling that there could be a lost Sean Connery Bond to marvel at…

Did I Like It: And then I didn’t think much of it. I’ve often wondered if my initial reaction to a Bond film is largely dominated not by the star at hand, or the villain with which he grapples, but instead the music on display. I can forgive a lot from A View to Kill (1985) because it is propelled forward by Duran Duran, but never quite sign on board with The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) because Carly Simon’s song brings the series into a fitful romantic mode, despite never realizing that there is almost nothing romantic about the protagonist of these films. Here, not only am I robbed of any sort of memorable tune, but (for clearly understandable reasons) there is no gun barrel and no Monty Norman in earshot. It never quite feels right.

In subsequent years, I’ve revisited the film and found it—despite my knee-jerk reactions to its deficiencies—to be above average for this era of Bond films. Connery is good, his late-period heyday just over the horizon and his eventual somnambulism in the final years of his career still a good ways off. Had fate been reversed and Roger Moore had starred in this film, it would be far easier to dismiss.

And then we become to the real crux of the matter. It can be a little easy to offer film criticism by way of comparison, but this film exists only to be compared to other films. It is a remake of possibly Connery’s weakest canonical film, Thunderball (1965), and was released within a few months of Octopussy (1983). So, where does Never rank among this traffic jam of movies? It’s a faster-paced movie than Thunderball, which counts for some. Is it better than Octopussy? Well, Sean Connery never dresses as a clown in this film. Hell, he could have dusted off the weird outfit from Zardoz (1974) and he still wouldn’t have done what Roger did that year.

But that’s probably a discussion for a different review.

*Kids, ask your parents.

**Kids, ask your parents, and weep for how good you could have had it.

Casino Royale (1967)

Director: John Huston, Ken Hughes, Val Guest, Robert Parrish, Joe McGrath

Cast: Peter Sellers, Ursula Andress, David Niven, Woody Allen, Orson Welles*

Have I Seen It Before: Yes, as one of those rogue Bond-films (I’m using each of those three words rather generously) it wasn’t one of those that I was exposed to on regular TBS Bond-a-thons, but somewhere along the way curiosity alone brought me to it. I remember my mother had a fondness for it, but I’m prepared to write that off mostly to Burt Bacharach. I thought at the time that there were a few laughs, but the whole thing dragged on far too long, which wasn’t especially damning. As a child I thought that about plenty of comedies of the era.

It's entirely possible I didn’t stick around to the end. In fact, that ending being what it is, I’m pretty sure I didn’t. Years later I came back to it. Now I know.

Did I Like It: Let’s start with the positive. A farce revolving around the idea that the world so desperately needs a James Bond that they’ll hand the name and number out to just about anybody isn’t a bad concept. Twenty years ago, if you had asked me what film desperately needed to be remade, I’d put this at the top of the list. Now that we live in a world where Casino Royale (2006) exists, one might think the case would be closed. But a conceptual remake is aching to be done, too. Just leave the Fleming canon right where it is, thank you.

What else… What else? Oh. The DVD includes a 1954 episode of the anthology series Climax!** which was the first attempt to adapt the first Fleming novel. It’s not especially good, either, but is ultimately fascinating. A completist like myself would be incomplete without both of these on his shelf.

That’d be about it. There are a fitful few laughs on display here. I’m even trying to remember them now, and they slip away the moment the film is over. Woody Allen as one of many Bond’s isn’t a bad pitch for 1967, but even that one ought to stay on the shelf in the here and now. Thin material culminates in a brief epilogue taking place in heaven, when one of the Bonds gets his final revenge on the villain of the piece. I’d say I wouldn’t identify the turn here for the sake of spoilers, but you probably wouldn’t believe me if I decided to go the other way.

This may be the most overwrought, overproduced film to be unleashed from an editing bay. I may start petitioning for the retirement of the phrase “too many cooks” and replace it with “too many directors making Royale.” It’s more words, but it feels like more descriptive. I’m paraphrasing, but Gene Siskel once described a good test of the worth of a movie is whether or not you’d rather see a documentary of the same cast having lunch. With Welles and Sellers, that’s an automatic decision from me. The movie may well have been doomed from the start.

*If I’m going to have to list five separate directors, I really ought to be allowed to list a fifth actor. Especially that one.

**Try getting that one by the censors today.

Die Another Day (2002)

Director: Lee Tamahori

Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Halle Berry, Toby Stephens, Rosamund Pike

Have I Seen It Before: Yes, but you know what? I’m reasonably sure this was the only Bond film since Goldeneye (1995) that I didn’t see in the theater. I actually followed the production a little bit, it coming about in that era when one could passively take an interest in a developing film. And yet, when the film came out, I was probably dealing with just a little bit too much disappointment and heartache that winter—I’m looking in your direction, Star Trek Nemesis (2002)--to even bring myself to a second-run theater.

Did I Like It: It’s Brosnan’s worst film, right? One could make an argument for The World Is Not Enough (1999) but all of those arguments feel wrong. But as much as I can complain about the film and lament it as a dissonant note for the Irishman to leave on, there is plenty to like here.

The opening plot developments—which see 007 (Brosnan) captured on a mission to North Korea—are pretty brilliant on two fronts. First, it lays Bond low so that he can spend the rest of the film clawing his way back. Right there you have some forward momentum that can separate the pretty good Bond adventures from the positively dreary ones. Second, without dwelling on the matter too much, it gives a rationale for a post-9/11 Bond story by implying he was a prisoner during that moment in time.

His eventual release from the North Korean prison gives Brosnan some of his best moments as the character. Never has a man had such (embarrassingly aspirational) swagger as when he uses the power of his mind to overcome long-term scorpion venom exposure, very real PTSD, and malnutrition to escape a British prison and check in to the finest hotel in Hong Kong while still dripping wet and wearing hospital clothes. There is something so quintessentially Bond about him walking into that hotel like he owns the place that I’m almost prepared to view the whole film positively.

But then things go differently. The film’s in a spot of trouble by the time we get a needle drop of “London Calling” (I tend to imagine a British audience rolling their eyes, and I am right there with them). A scene with Q (John Cleese) serves more as a wacky obituary for Desmond Llewelyn. Then there’s Madonna. I don’t get Madonna. I never have. I’ve certainly never bought her in any film role outside of maybe A League of Their Own (1992). I even kind of like her theme song—and feeling the theme song will paper over large parts of some other films in the series—but the moment she shows up in the film as a fencing instructor, we are firmly in Roger Moore territory. Then there’s an Ice Hotel, an invisible car, and a parasailing sequence that I can’t imagine anyone would have been happy with twenty-plus years ago. It was almost as if Joel Schumacher had directed the whole thing*.

Which is right about when this film becomes clear in my head. The first half is a pretty good Fleming-heavy Connery film made with some allowances for modern audiences. The second half is a love-fest for Moore, which was never going to play with me. That’s not the worst notion to have when considering how to celebrate the series 40th anniversary. If they could have only managed to blend the two elements a bit better, the film wouldn’t feel as if it were lurching in tone. As EON looks to Bond 26, there’s room for flashes of Moore-fun in the post-Craig era. Just leave the parasailing behind. Please.

*I’m strangely not reflexively opposed to the impossible idea of Schumacher directing a Moore film in the 80s…

Moonraker (1979)

Director: Lewis Gilbert

Cast: Roger Moore, Lois Chiles, Michael Lonsdale, Richard Kiel

Have I Seen It Before: Yes. Yes, I have. Must I say more?

I just checked with the proprietor of the site and yes, apparently, I must say more.

I must have first seen it during a TBS marathon of the films, which I dutifully recorded on VHS, and clearly didn’t think much of it even back in the far-flung 90s because my strongest recollection of the film is that I labeled that VHS tape (I think I used an LP tape) along with License to Kill (1989) “Moonwaker.” Thirty years later, I still think that’s a better title. All of eleven years old, and I’ve already got notes for improvements.

Did I Like It: Where to begin? Let’s start with the positive. Almost none of the Bond films have missed the mark with their pre-title sequence. And the skydiving duel between Bond (Moore, looking as if he’s just about ready to check out of the role, despite the fact that he’s going to do three more) and Jaws (Kiel, more on him later) is about as good as any of Moore’s openings.

Now that we have that out of the way. Bond is in space. Space. Spaaace. Fleming would rise from the grave and have a heart attack all over again. And the only reason Bond becomes Britain’s first man in space, is because Star Wars – Episode IV: A New Hope (1977) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)* made huge money and there are moments where Cubby Broccoli had all the creativity of a mimicking parrot.

Some might applaud the visuals during the film’s inexplicable third act, but aside from Ken Adam’s always delightful set design, all this film can offer is a barely warmed over riff on Star Wars. That film was a symphony of sounds that still dominates genre filmmaking, but the laser fire on display here is one step removed from someone dubbing in “Pew!” sounds.

And then there’s Jaws. One of the most menacing villains in the movies not only finds love (I’m not opposed to it) but it turns him into an ally because… well, the film has to have some kind of an ending, right?

The rest of the film is a humdrum Bond adventure, painted by largely by numbers. Where it isn’t baffling bad, it’s content to be middle-quality. I might be more mad about that than anything else.

But you want to know what really struck me on this viewing? I look at the sight of a megalomaniacal industrialist in love with rockets and space travel, bedraggled by what he sees as humanity’s twilight, which will only lead him to be the MC for the apocalypse. And then I start watching the movie. It’s not possible that old what’s his name saw this movie as a child and decided that was all he ever wanted to be… Right? It could be, though. What have we done?

*Urban legend insists that Spielberg himself campaigned hard to direct this one, only to get nowhere with EON. Could you imagine? They’d have reined him in and it would have been just as much of a disaster, but he might have been spared the indignity of 1941 (1979).

The World Is Not Enough (1999)

Director: Michael Apted

Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Sophie Marceau, Robert Carlyle, Denise Richards

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. It was twenty-five years ago, and I can’t remember the precise details about that Christmas season, but I do have the distinct memory of being stuck at the mall for a number of hours, and managed to pull away from whatever was going on to go catch a screening.

Did I Like It: As with most of the Pierce Brosnan Bond films, twenty-five years ago I remember thinking that the post-gun barrel pre-title sequence was a well-crafted little thriller. The succeeding film meanders through perfunctory scenes, punctuated by an occasional ambition to give some depth to Bond that was never going to be fully realized until they were able to re-boot things entirely with Casino Royale (2006).

I’m pretty much feeling that same way now. Renard (Carlyle) is an interesting villain, but oddly enough may have worked better in a novel than it does in film. Having him already essentially dead might have fueled several good chapters trying to get into the head of someone who has already died but is losing sensation after sensation as he slowly loses consciousness. In a film, it removes any sort of pretense to tension, and makes him essentially invulnerable for those moments where he has to exchange blows with Brosnan.

Dame Judi Dench clearly wielded her power well going into this film. Having a number of juicy scenes to play in Goldeneye (1995), she spent most of Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) doing control-room schtick that wouldn’t have challenged Bernard Lee or Robert Brown in earlier films. Here, she has a very real role in the story and even plays into the action as it unfolds. Yet another example of the series’ ambitions that were waiting for Craig.

On the “Bond Girl”* front, it is a mixed bag. Sophie Marceau plays an interesting character, archly named in the best Bond tradition. She is full of as close to surprises as this era of the franchise is likely to get, and Marceau clearly understand the best parts of the assignment at hand. Then there’s Denise Richards. Whoo, boy. It’s not so much that she’s bad casting for a nuclear scientist (she is, but at least she has a good sense of humor about it, as evidence by her later appearances on 30 Rock), but it is that her performance is so perfunctory that she makes Britt Eklund and Tanya Roberts look like possible heirs to… Well, Dame Judi Dench, now that I think about it.

*It almost feels like that term should be trademarked, no?

The Man With the Golden Gun (1974)

Director: Guy Hamilton

Cast: Roger Moore, Christopher Lee, Britt Ekland, Maud Adams

Have I Seen It Before: Oh, sure. Oddly enough, I think this may be the film in the canon I’ve seen the least. (Octopussy (1983) may be in close competition).

Did I Like It: I’m honestly not sure why that’s the case, as I tend to be a bit of a contrarian about Moore’s time in the tuxedo and Walther PPK. This is almost universally reviled as Moore’s worst at-bat (usually uttered in the same breath with A View To A Kill (1985).

But I really like (well… sort of like) A View To A Kill, and dare I say I liked large swaths of this one, too. It might be the villain at the center of it all. Christophers Walken and Lee were born to play Bond villains, and acquit themselves well. Throw in the fact that Lee’s Scaramanga has a ruthless, simple ambition and plan (at least in the first half of the film) that makes it one of the more solid Fleming adaptations starring Moore.

Even when the film settles into the old hoary Bond cliches, it’s not all bad. There’s a Macguffin of a device that makes solar power work which is somehow simultaneously silly on its own and so of-the-moment that it must have felt passe by the time The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) arrived in theaters. I may owe Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) an apology for the side-eye I gave it when I remembered that the whole plot hinged on a GPS device.

The theme song, sung by Lulu and with music by the Bond music GOAT John Barry is dismissed so perpetually (even by Barry himself) but after having the other Bond themes on regular re-play, I found it one oddly fresh again. Sure, it’s lyrics are a listing of various plot elements, but that can be fun, too. If we didn’t have this title theme, we might not have had the various rap tracks recounting movie plots throughout the 80s and 90s. Lulu walked so Partners in Kryme could run. If you know, you know.

I’m honestly not entirely sure why both View and this one are consistently ranked at the bottom of Moore’s efforts.

Then I see Sherriff J.W. Pepper (Clifton James). Again, apparently. Where he might have made sense in Live and Let Die (1973) (I’m being generous here) it’s a real bummer to find him becoming not only a recurring character here, but just a little bit of a partner in crime (or kryme) for a moment. I can’t explain away Pepper, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t crack a smile when his wife (Jay Sidow) wants to buy a Hong Kong Elephant trinket and he grumbles “Elephants! We’re Democrats, Maybelle.”

I didn’t think I would be this forgiving as I march through Moore’s films. Could this possibly hold up? Oh, no… (checks notes) I’m going to have to review Moonraker (1979) now, aren’t I?

Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)

Director: Roger Spottiswoode

Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Jonathan Pryce, Michelle Yeoh, Teri Hatcher

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, yes. In that far flung winter of 1997, I actually lost ten bucks to Ben Owen, when I bet him that this would be the bigger film than the other wide release that weekend, beating out a little film that already had a reputation of going significantly over budget and being delayed by the studio.

The movie was Titanic (1997).

I bet against Cameron, and I got what I deserved. But you’re damned right I was in the theater for this one on opening weekend, for all the good it did me.

Did I Like It: I’ve kind of soured on Brosnan’s films in the series in recent years. The more interesting parts of his four films were greatly improved on by Daniel Craig’s films, and the worst impulses adopted too much of Roger Moore for my taste. It was entirely possible that this era of the series best contributions would be to video games more than anything else. I’ll be honest that I thought I would just have this movie on in the background*, but I found the pre-title sequence to be a delight and was drawn into the film.

But then I kind of lost interest in a mishmash of truly terrible CGI and Teri Hatcher. I was getting a little bored. This wasn’t helped very much by the occasional diving sequence, which can absolutely suck the life out of otherwise great Bond films. Just ask Thunderball (1965). That is probably pretty close to the review I would have given the film in the 90s.

But the film is not without its charms. And by that I mean Michelle Yeoh. She more than equals Brosnan’s swagger and ability. All of the times the Eon powers that be threatened to offer Bond spinoffs, I really wish they would have pulled the trigger here. More Yeoh is good for everyone.

*I’d probably be first in line to see if the film re-entered theaters for any spell of time. I could win that ten bucks back yet.

Diamonds Are Forever (1971)

Director: Guy Hamilton

Cast: Sean Connery, Jill St. John, Charles Gray, Lana Wood

Have I Seen it Before: Sure.

Did I Like It: There’s a moment in the TV series Timeless, which I didn’t really enjoy, where the timeline gets altered and there are more Sean Connery-starring Bond movies than there were in our timeline. That part I found delightful. So, it is supremely strange that I find myself in the strange position of wishing that Connery had been in the series more, and somehow wishing that he had been in one less entry.

The movie already runs at a bit of a deficit, as it is trying even harder than most to ape the singular success of Goldfinger (1964). It probably isn’t nearly as egregious as A View to A Kill (1985) in that regard—that movie nearly did a find and replace of Goldfinger’s script—but it is a terrible impulse of the franchise to imitate the the third entry.

But that’s not the real problem. The problem is Connery himself. Lore around the movie indicated that Connery didn’t want to be there, despite the huge payday, and its difficult to not see that in his listless final (authorized, non-video game) performance as the superspy. He looks tired, and significantly older than he did in You Only Live Twice (1967) and even later in Never Say Never Again (1983).

Then again, the film’s screenplay doesn’t give him much to work with. The opening—usually the best part of even the worst films in the series—at least seems nominally propelled from the ending of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) with Bond (Connery) searching for revenge against Blofeld (Gray). Anything less would have felt like a cheat, but when it turns out that Blofeld survived Bond’s ministrations in the third act of the film, it isn’t a horrifying revelation for Bond. It’s barely a plot point.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)

Director: Peter R. Hunt

Cast: George Lazenby, Diana Rigg, Telly Savalas, Bernard Lee

Have I Seen It Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: If you’ve seen the film, or any of the Bond series, you probably have some vague opinion about this one, even if you haven’t seen it. Is it any good, being an aberration in the series? Is George Lazenby worth watching? Does the ending even work?

Take away the storytelling aberration of having three different Bonds in successive films, and this film manages to succeed where so many other of the films struggle. It’s a solid adaptation of Fleming’s original novel. It is low on gadgets, high on plot, and feels of a piece with a longer story told about a man who has a very strange job and doesn’t think he’s going to live very long. It is a sweeping action epic, careening towards an understanded, but inevitable tragic ending. It is also the one key argument against the whole “James Bond is just a code name, and each time the actor changes, it is a new character” theory*, before Skyfall (2012) closed the book on it forever.

I’ll admit that I’ve even proffered an opinion or two on the topic of the one and done Bond, and I’m surprised to admit some of my opinions may have changed. I’ve always said that if Sean Connery has stuck it out through this film, it would have been the best in the series, even besting From Russia With Love (1963). I’m not so sure that I believe that anymore. I believe in the final act that Lazneby’s Bond loves Tracy (Rigg). He treats her tenderly, even if there is a fundamental layer of condescending chauvinism to his affections that is true to the characters, sort of like when I have beaming pride that my cat’s meows have a growing and meaningful vocabulary behind them. Connery’s whole screen presence couldn’t have hoped to reach for that pathos. It would have played as a comedy, and an awkward one at that.

By the same token, Lazenby is at points earlier in the film awkward in the role. He’s not quite so suave, so untroubled by the insanity of the world around him. Just as Connery couldn’t have played the final scene in this movie, Lazenby would have been hopelessly at sea trying to sell the character with the same level of movie star gravitas as Connery did in the opening scenes of Dr. No (1962).

The problem with the film, ultimately, is Lazenby’s short tenure with the role. Had he stuck around, he very well might have grown into his role both as Bond and as a movie star generally**. Thankfully, this longing for someone to bring that tragedy to ruthless life is sated when Daniel Craig covered large parts of the material in Spectre (2015) and especially in No Time To Die (2021).

*How so? I’m so glad you asked, and a little hesitant to include it in the review proper. Tracy dies at the end of the film. In For Your Eyes Only (1981) Moore’s Bond visits Tracy’s grave. That’s the big one. There are a number of references beyond that that are less specific. I imagine I’ll have more to say about that in my immediately forthcoming review for Diamonds Are Forever (1971).

**Although him in Moonraker (1979) would still be a chore in any universe.

Thunderball (1965)

Director: Terence Young

Cast: Sean Connery, Claudine Auger, Adolfo Celi, Luciana Paluzzi

Have I Seen It Before: Oh, sure. I even remember being a little guy and trying to build a version of the miniature rebreather out of Lego, being disappointed that it didn’t really work, and then slowly realizing that the real one probably didn’t work either.

Did I Like It: I want to like it far better than I do. Connery is here, which improves matters more than a little bit, and he’s even young and fit, which should move the film ahead of Diamonds are Forever (1971) and Never Say Never Again (1983). Sure, the film is a little slavishly devoted to Goldfinger (1964), when I personally prefer From Russia With Love (1963). But that should all lead to a bit of fun, right?

There might be an impulse to view the film through some jaundiced eyes, as the byzantine nature of the rights associated with many of this film’s concepts quickly doomed everything after the Connery era to the episodic buffoonery that have proved to be the series’ worst impulses over the years. If there was one book in the Fleming canon to wait for years to see adaptation, I might have preferred this one wallow for years—certainly not be adapted twice—and we get a Casino Royale with Connery*.

But judging a film based on the studio politics and litigation surrounding it is kind of like dismissing Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man (2002) because we could have gotten a James Cameron version of the film**. I think it’s just that the film is so water-logged that it occasionally forgets to be an action film. We can marvel at some underwater photography, but scuba-based fist- and gunfights are a trifle bore. John Barry’s score is pulling extra duty, having to occasionally go up tempo to remind us we ought to be thrilled when the footage forgot, and even that sweeping music gets exhausted and settles into a cozy, and unremarkable nap.

*Yes, that would mean we probably would not have Casino Royale (2006), or worse yet a Craig-starring Thunderball, but you’ll note I said I might have preferred it that way.

**I mean, I would like to see that, but Raimi will more than do in a pinch.