Discuss and Rate the Last Film You Watched

[Johnny Novgorod]

The Living Daylights

Maybe the best Bond movie not to feel particularly like a Bond movie, for better and worse. This is a tight, slick, expensive-looking action-adventure epic and I can't quite believe it's (still) from John Glen. This makes Moonraker look like he shot it in his backyard for lunch money. But the plot hews closer to what would eventually become the Mission Impossible movies moreso than a Bond film (ironically, the first act with the snipers is probably the closest 1:1 adaptation of the source material yet). And Timothy Dalton, while not a bad lead, never feels like James Bond. He has the charm, but isn't suave and doesn't appear worldly. He's pragmatic but he's on edge the whole time. He's handsome but has zero chemistry with the Bond girl. He seems mostly irritated by her. He's not a rogue, he's just angry all the time. He's a fine action hero, but he's not Bond.

But man if the movie isn't a lot of fun. The action's never looked better, the stunts are thrilling and the set-pieces evolve in fun exciting ways. The opening scene pulls a few effective bait and switches (it's a dangerous mission... no, it's just a training mission... but there's a bad guy using the mission as cover... and Bond's dead... no, wait, that's not Bond...) that become emblematic of the rest of the movie, which hinges on quite a few betrayals and deceptions. The plot isn't complicated and it's actually relatively low stakes but manages to be engaging. There's a fun Hitman mission from the perspective of the bad guys. There's a pretty exciting Hitchcockian set-piece involving an escape from behind the Iron Curtain (props to 1987). There's a sequence that doesn't quite match Indiana Jones/Uncharted but is close enough in energy and creativity.

Desmond Llewellyn as Q is basically the only main holdover at this point. There's a new and improved Moneypenny who still has the hopelessly flirty rapport with James but I guess in order to give her a bit of dignity now pulls double duty as a computer whiz. Robert Brown still plays replacement M (Bernard Lee passed after Moonraker) and he never really grew on me. He's too fussy and avuncular. He's usually accompanied by the gruff, no-nonsense Geoffrey Keen as the Ministry of Defense, maybe because Keen looks and behaves so much like the real M (why didn't they just cast him instead?). And Gogol, who's been M's KGB counterpart for a few movies by now, gets one last appearance at the end.

Fun observations -

1. This is the first of two movies in two consecutive years to glorify the Afghan mujahideen in their fight against the Soviets and have the hero join forces with then. Thankfully the movie doesn't end with a dedication to them.

2. I never realized how many actors (and ideas?) Spielberg cribbed from Bond for Indiana Jones. In The Last Crusade he would eventually cast Julian Glover (villain from For Your Eyes Only), Alison Doody (henchwoman from A View to a Kill) and John Rhys Davies (Pushkin from Living Daylights; obviously he was already Sallah in Raiders). And of course there's that eerie overlap between Octopussy and Temple of Doom.

3. The Felix Leiter and Moneypenny from Goldfinger play the doctor and nurse that appear at the end of Kubrick's Lolita. The Leiter from this movie appeared in Full Metal Jacket. Incidentally, the movies never really figured out Leiter, huh? So far it's always a different actor, the character disappears for half a dozen movies at a time and there's no consistency in the look, portrayal or dynamic with Bond.

4. 002 and 004 are killed in the intro. 003 was killed in the previous movie (James finds his frozen body in Siberia), as was 009 (the clown) in the one before. What a wealth of 00s! We're just missing 001, 005 and 008. Sean Bean eventually plays 006 in GoldenEye.

 

[thebobmaster]

A ★★★½ review of The Company of Wolves (1984)

"And if there's a beast in men, it meets its match in women too." The plot of this film is focused on Rosalee (Sarah Patterson). Mostly taking place in a dream world set in about the 18th century, she spends her time with her grandmother (Angela Lansbury), to the disapproval of her father (David...

letterboxd.com

 

[thebobmaster]

The Living Daylights

Maybe the best Bond movie not to feel particularly like a Bond movie, for better and worse. This is a tight, slick, expensive-looking action-adventure epic and I can't quite believe it's (still) from John Glen. This makes Moonraker look like he shot it in his backyard for lunch money. But the plot hews closer to what would eventually become the Mission Impossible movies moreso than a Bond film (ironically, the first act with the snipers is probably the closest 1:1 adaptation of the source material yet). And Timothy Dalton, while not a bad lead, never feels like James Bond. He has the charm, but isn't suave and doesn't appear worldly. He's pragmatic but he's on edge the whole time. He's handsome but has zero chemistry with the Bond girl. He seems mostly irritated by her. He's not a rogue, he's just angry all the time. He's a fine action hero, but he's not Bond.

But man if the movie isn't a lot of fun. The action's never looked better, the stunts are thrilling and the set-pieces evolve in fun exciting ways. The opening scene pulls a few effective bait and switches (it's a dangerous mission... no, it's just a training mission... but there's a bad guy using the mission as cover... and Bond's dead... no, wait, that's not Bond...) that become emblematic of the rest of the movie, which hinges on quite a few betrayals and deceptions. The plot isn't complicated and it's actually relatively low stakes but manages to be engaging. There's a fun Hitman mission from the perspective of the bad guys. There's a pretty exciting Hitchcockian set-piece involving an escape from behind the Iron Curtain (props to 1987). There's a sequence that doesn't quite match Indiana Jones/Uncharted but is close enough in energy and creativity.

Desmond Llewellyn as Q is basically the only main holdover at this point. There's a new and improved Moneypenny who still has the hopelessly flirty rapport with James but I guess in order to give her a bit of dignity now pulls double duty as a computer whiz. Robert Brown still plays replacement M (Bernard Lee passed after Moonraker) and he never really grew on me. He's too fussy and avuncular. He's usually accompanied by the gruff, no-nonsense Geoffrey Keen as the Ministry of Defense, maybe because Keen looks and behaves so much like the real M (why didn't they just cast him instead?). And Gogol, who's been M's KGB counterpart for a few movies by now, gets one last appearance at the end.

Fun observations -

1. This is the first of two movies in two consecutive years to glorify the Afghan mujahideen in their fight against the Soviets and have the hero join forces with then. Thankfully the movie doesn't end with a dedication to them.

2. I never realized how many actors (and ideas?) Spielberg cribbed from Bond for Indiana Jones. In The Last Crusade he would eventually cast Julian Glover (villain from For Your Eyes Only), Alison Doody (henchwoman from A View to a Kill) and John Rhys Davies (Pushkin from Living Daylights; obviously he was already Sallah in Raiders). And of course there's that eerie overlap between Octopussy and Temple of Doom.

3. The Felix Leiter and Moneypenny from Goldfinger play the doctor and nurse that appear at the end of Kubrick's Lolita. The Leiter from this movie appeared in Full Metal Jacket. Incidentally, the movies never really figured out Leiter, huh? So far it's always a different actor, the character disappears for half a dozen movies at a time and there's no consistency in the look, portrayal or dynamic with Bond.

4. 002 and 004 are killed in the intro. 003 was killed in the previous movie (James finds his frozen body in Siberia), as was 009 (the clown) in the one before. What a wealth of 00s! We're just missing 001, 005 and 008. Sean Bean eventually plays 006 in GoldenEye.

008 was mentioned in Goldfinger, at least, when Bond is being threatened by the laser and suggests they'll send 008 in if something happens to Bond, and I think this one actually mentions him as well when M threatens to send 008 after Pushkin if Bond won't do it.

And yes, I love this movie. Necros is probably my all-time favorite Red Grant follow-up for henchmen. This also stands out as the last Bond movie that could only have been made during the Cold War.

ETA: Also, it's funny you mention the Felix Leiter recasting constantly, because the next Bond film, Licence to Kill, is the first time that someone actually came back to play Felix Leiter.

 

[Thaluikhain]

This also stands out as the last Bond movie that could only have been made during the Cold War.

Well...the movie after the one after this makes a big fuss about being post Cold War, so that's not a huge surprise.

And yeah, Necros is pretty impressive, and has his own theme.

 

[thebobmaster]

Well...the movie after the one after this makes a big fuss about being post Cold War, so that's not a huge surprise.

And yeah, Necros is pretty impressive, and has his own theme.

Actually, the next movie is Licence to Kill, which was still during the Cold War, it just...doesn't really address the Cold War due to its plot.

 

[Bartholen]

Braveheart, 6/10

I was curious about this, because prior to LOTR this was basically the high watermark of big battle scenes in movies. It's pretty good in terms of pure entertainment value, but it's complete silly nonsense. There is legitimately great stuff in it: the score and the cinematography are fantastic, the battle scenes do have the proper wow factor for such spectacle, and as is expected of Gibson's movies it's properly grungy and brutal. In terms of pure filmmaking it's an easy 8/10, maybe even 9/10.

But as it's known, it's let down by its script, which is like a sledgehammer of cheese to the nuts. It could honestly work as over the top camp, but it plays itself completely serious and straight, ending up camp only unintentionally. I was honesly surprised at how much I was enjoying the first 20-odd minutes, because it was nowhere near as cheesy as I'd heard, and it reminded me of movies like Conan the Barbarian and The Northman. But then Mel Gibson shows up as grownup William Wallace, and the movie turns into the cheesiest, most melodramatic bombardment of Hollywood-isms you can imagine, and that's before you even get to the rampant historical inaccuracy. It's honestly pretty much Team America level at points, it's so over the top. Gibson's enarmorment with Jesus imagery certainly doesn't help, but it's not like taking that out would make the movie any less ridiculous. The scenes with Longshanks might as well have him strangling kittens and talking how much he enjoys setting orphans on fire. Every dramatic moment goes to the absolute extreme for maximum impact, and Wallace himself might as well be walking on water with how much the movie idolizes him.

It's an incredibly macho movie. It's all about big burly honorable underdogs fighting scheming plotters and being unfairly screwed by weak politicians. Wallace is an unflappable, righteous, stoic badass who inspires men everywhere he goes and effortlessly woos women. It's the very definition of a movie that elicits "man tears" with its exultation of heroic death for a noble cause. I guess some people can take that seriously, but it just feels like self-parody in a post-Game of Thrones world. But on the other hand I can't help but admit that it works at least to some extent. It's like James Cameron movies: it's so relentlessly committed and sincere in its bombast and melodrama that it's hard to not get caught up in it. The aforementioned, genuinely fantastic score goes a long way to help with that and the acting is overall pretty good, sans the wonky scottish accents. So I'm glad to have at least watched it.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Braveheart, 6/10

I was curious about this, because prior to LOTR this was basically the high watermark of big battle scenes in movies.

That is quite a claim. Zulu, A Bridge too Far, and epic Charlton Heston films come to mind.

 

[Ag3ma]

That is quite a claim. Zulu, A Bridge too Far, and epic Charlton Heston films come to mind.

If we mean getting (via extras or CGI) a lot of people onto a a screen for a battle, Spartacus (which I presume is what you mean by Charlton Heston), or Sergei Bondarchuk's Waterloo, 60s/70s are prime examples. Also better than Zulu in this sense would probably be the prequel, Zulu Dawn, which tells the story of the Zulu victory at Isandhlwana which led to the battle of Rourke's Drift.

It doesn't always hold so true of WW2 movies, because you're actually looking at relatively small operations more around squad/platoon level which may then be assembled together to represent a major battle, but without every truly having the same sense of epic scope. Indeed, given that it is well past the era of mass, close-order formations, I'm not sure you could meaningfully represent that sort of epic scale.

However, I think Bartholen's point holds. In the old days, this had to be done with extras: paying for, assembling and choreographing that many extras was incredibly difficult. Spartacus and Waterloo are astonishing accomplishments in that sense, but they are better viewed as exceptions.

But then Mel Gibson shows up as grownup William Wallace,

That would be Sir William Wallace, lowland lower nobility, for some inexplicable reason grubbing around like a peasant in highland mud.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Spartacus (which I presume is what you mean by Charlton Heston),

Was thinking of 55 Days at Peking. Khartoum and Ben-Hur were also massive ("Bigger than Ben-Hur" used to be a phrase for a reason), but can't remember if they had battle scenes that were also massive.

Oh, The Longest Day as well. And, IIRC, Theirs is the Glory.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Actually, the next movie is Licence to Kill, which was still during the Cold War, it just...doesn't really address the Cold War due to its plot.

Yeah, it's drug dealers isn't it? I already do miss the more exotic villains but A View to a Kill wasn't very good so I can't complain.

And yes, Necros is a great henchman/dragon. He definitely takes after Red Grant. His intro was great as was the Uncharted 3 set-piece leading to his death.

 

[BrawlMan]

Saw Monkey Man. A great action/revenge flick. This is not a Wick clone some people were assuming and I am happy. If anything, it takes more elements from The Raid movies, but still does it's own unique thing and sense of style. The actions scenes are great, though they do bop the camera around a bit, but nothing like the Bourne movies/clones. Movie gets an A+ for me.

​

 

[thebobmaster]

A ★★½ review of Baghead (2023)

"You can't kill it, you can't let it out." This film follows a British lass named Iris (Freya Allan), who has inherited a pub from her estranged father (Peter Mullan) after he burned to death. This pub, however, has a secret: a woman in the basement who can take on the appearance and memories of...

letterboxd.com

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

License to Kill

And that's it. I've watched every Bond movie, except the one where they kill him off. Save the lamest for last.

License to Kill is another fine action thriller that doesn't particularly feel like a Bond movie, and again neither does Timothy Dalton feel like James. The plot focuses on a multi-layered drug operation in the Caribbean, with the action taking place between the Bahamas and Panama but involving syndicates and agencies from around the world. Cutting through all of this is Bond's personal revenge over the maiming of Felix Leiter, which gives the movie a neo-noir feel to it - the plot thickens every way with characters, subplots and surprise conflict as the hero stumbles around his own obsessive, kinda single-minded quest. And Dalton's Bond was obsessive, if nothing else. He never comes cacross as particularly skilled or adept at anything. He's running on Indy fumes - improv and dumb luck.

Ironically the crime aspect here is so petty and mundane (drug lords, crooked cops and DEA stings: basically Miami Vice with a budget) it makes Living Daylights, with its tense Cold War setting and globetrotting selection, feel like an archetypal Bond movie. And it's darker yet for all the blood (the brutal maiming of Leiter) and body horror (a dude reenacts that scene from Scanners) but also just the way Bond treats people around him, even his allies. You know how Arkham Batman keeps telling his friends to fuck off? He's particularly curt and decidedly nasty with the ladies, too.

Some observations

1. David Hedison is back as Leiter from Live and Let Die, despite him being Moore's Leiter (just for that one movie, 16 years apart) and Dalton already sharing scenes with his own much more age-appropriate Leiter in Living Daylights. Why not just cast John Terry again? Even if people recognized Hedison (I wouldn't) would his maiming really make for a more compelling inciting incident?

2. Q gets to be part of the adventure again since Octopussy. Moneypenny helps him from behind the scenes too - Q and Moneypenny helping Bond behind M's back is something that will recur through the Craig era. M is barely in this and we're missing the scene where he reinstates 007. In any case Robert Brown as M never seemed to have much authority over Dalton, or Moore for that matter.

3. Funny how some set-pieces are no less ridiculous than the Roger Moore era, yet manage to play out more or less plausibly simply because of the way they're framed. See Bond shooting a harpoon gun underwater, somehow managing to pierce a speeding biplane, jet-skiing behind it (on his bare feet), somehow catching up to the plane and then pulling up into it unnoticed before stealing the plane. Later a bad guy recounts this theft step by step and of course the boss doesn't believe him.

4. This is the first Bond movie to not only have both Bond girls alive and well by the end (the righteous action companion and the moll with a heart of gold) but also toy with whether James "chooses" one or the other.

5. Funny seeing the bad guy from Goonies, Ed from Twin Peaks, The Jimmy from Seinfeld and a glorified extra by the name of Benicio del Toro in cahoots over drug money being laundered by... Wayne Newton? Sure.

 

[thebobmaster]

Quick point of correction: while it's filmed in Panama, the banana republic in Licence to Kill is meant to be just an unnamed banana republic, to avoid pissing off actual banana republics.

Also, Robert Davi's portrayal of Sanchez was so well received in...certain circles that Pablo Escobar actually arranged to meet him personally to congratulate him on his accurate portrayal. Davi said that meeting is one of the scariest things he's ever experienced.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Quick point of correction: while it's filmed in Panama, the banana republic in Licence to Kill is meant to be just an unnamed banana republic, to avoid pissing off actual banana republics.

Also, Robert Davi's portrayal of Sanchez was so well received in...certain circles that Pablo Escobar actually arranged to meet him personally to congratulate him on his accurate portrayal. Davi said that meeting is one of the scariest things he's ever experienced.

Yeah they keep mentioning Isthmus City, I assumed that was code for Panama.

Davi is great in the part. Also isn't this the first time where the villain is revealed in the first scene (and caught) and he's around for the whole movie, no bigger bad behind him?

One thing I didn't get is why does Sanchez know about Leiter but not Bond. Both Bond and Leiter buddy cop him at the beginning but Sanchez only gets his revenge against Leiter and when Bond confronts him later he doesn't even know who he is. Maybe I missed something.

 

[Piscian]

Knox Goes Away

This is a strange one. Watching the trailers might lead you to believe its some kinda geezer teaser. Its led by two aging actors Keaton and Pacino, both long out of the spot. Its written by..uum the guy wrote The Lion King II? Its even distributed by Saban whos make a career out of funding projects no one else wants.

So it comes a bit of a surprise thats getting fairly positive reviews and...its pretty good.

Ill make no beans the screenplay is strange. The dialog is lowrent and at times puzzling. Like I think I could write better dialog and Im just some asshole.

That said the meat and potatoes of the film, that being the story and acting is really solid.

The films cheats. I won't spoil it by drawing comparisons, but theres a big twist. What on the surface looks like some procedural old killer running out of time, actually has layers. Whomever actually the story, not the dialog got real clever.

So it has a payoff and its a real "well fuck me" conclusion.

This ones a solid 7.5 /10. I won't remember it a year from now, no pun intended, but it hit hard. Im not looking for a refund.

 

[thebobmaster]

Yeah they keep mentioning Isthmus City, I assumed that was code for Panama.

Davi is great in the part. Also isn't this the first time where the villain is revealed in the first scene (and caught) and he's around for the whole movie, no bigger bad behind him?

One thing I didn't get is why does Sanchez know about Leiter but not Bond. Both Bond and Leiter buddy cop him at the beginning but Sanchez only gets his revenge against Leiter and when Bond confronts him later he doesn't even know who he is. Maybe I missed something.

My best guess is that when Killifer turned traitor, Sanchez was being interrogated by Leiter and Killifer at the time, so he connected Leiter more strongly to his capture than the guy he might not have gotten a good look at dangling out of the helicopter.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

They do bop camera bit

What's that mean?

 

[BrawlMan]

What's that mean?

They use some shaky cam. The good thing is that the shaky cam is actually used with purpose and you can still tell what's going on.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

No Time to Die

For the first time in 60 years Bond gets a whole movie dedicated to sending off not just his actor, but also wrapping up his corresponding saga. Is it satisfying? Not really. It's the longest Bond movie to date and simply doesn't have enough time (lol) to tie up everything with a nice bow. We have to jump through the hoops of Vesper (it's been four movies man, get the fuck over it), Blofeld, SPECTRE and Madeline Swann's family history apparently having more chapters than The Silmarillion before we even get to the meat and potatoes of this movie's particularly convoluted plot. The whole time I was watching No Time to Die it felt as if the movie was checking boxes and crossing out names and whenever something finally paid off or wrapped up it was with a sense of, Was that it? Including Ana de Armas' lone contribution to the plot, a 10 minute episode that felt like a backdoor pilot to a series that will never happen.

There's some solidly made action, although the movie never quite tops the intro. This is really emblematic of the Craig era: I never thought any of his movies topped the first one. But overall... eh, I didn't hate it. This one isn't a mess like Quantum of Solace and nowhere near as bland as Spectre. Truth be told I never liked Craig's thuggish, overly morose Bond. Maybe if he'd grown out of it over the movies; instead he seemed to get more miserable and joyless with every new one. But hey, I still have to watch a genuinely bad James Bond movie. And there's 27 of them!