Leezy's Movie Reviews

Welcome everyone. This blog mainly exists as a way of tracking all the movies I've been watching and some of the initial thoughts and general feelings I've had about them.

Rating System

5/5 - Fantastic movies; movies which need to be seen and enjoyed by everyone.

4/5 - Movies which are very good but don’t have that spark which compels you to make others watch them as well.

3/5 - Average movies; watchable and enjoyable, but nothing which elevates them higher. The baseline all movies are given before watching.

2/5 - Can be watched but really bland and forgettable.

1/5 - Minimal to no reason to watch these films. It may have some redeeming factors e.g. it’s so bad it’s good or there’s one character that’s awesome enough to make it not a total waste of time.

0/5- Total waste of time. Nothing redeemable about these films.

As with every review blog/site, this is all my own personal opinion so feel free to take everything with a grain of salt.

Also I'm Scottish so all reviews will be in UK English. Get used to theatre, colour and words ending in -ised.

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Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor

 

My Top 10 Villains/Henchmen from the James Bond Series #1 Oddjob (Goldfinger) #2 Auric Goldfinger (Goldfinger) #3 Red Grant (From Russia With Love) #4 Ernst Stavro Blofeld (You Only Live Twice) #5 Jaws (The Spy Who Loved Me, Moonraker) #6 Francisco Scaramanga (The Man With The Golden Gun) #7 Hugo Drax (Moonraker) #8 Xenia Onatopp (Goldeneye) #9 Alex Trevelyan aka 006 aka Janis (Goldeneye) #10 Karl Stromberg (The Spy Who Loved Me)

My Top 10 Villains/Henchmen from the James Bond Series

#1 Oddjob (Goldfinger)

#2 Auric Goldfinger (Goldfinger)

#3 Red Grant (From Russia With Love)

#4 Ernst Stavro Blofeld (You Only Live Twice)

#5 Jaws (The Spy Who Loved Me, Moonraker)

#6 Francisco Scaramanga (The Man With The Golden Gun)

#7 Hugo Drax (Moonraker)

#8 Xenia Onatopp (Goldeneye)

#9 Alex Trevelyan aka 006 aka Janis (Goldeneye)

#10 Karl Stromberg (The Spy Who Loved Me)

#105 Moonraker (Rewatch) After the space shuttle Moonraker, on loan to the British from the Americans, is hijacked mid-flight everyone is understandably on high alert. James Bond (Roger Moore) is called in to talk to Hugh Drax (Michael Lonsdale), the man who built the shuttles, in hopes he can figure out who stole it. Soon Bond begins to suspect Drax of the theft itself and something far more sinister concerning nerve gas. Originally For Your Eyes Only was supposed to follow on from The Spy Who Loved Me but the extreme success of Star Wars meant that it was time for Bond to shoot off into space as well. This is where the Moore era Bond movies begin to wane for me a little. There are a lot of good elements to this film but it all becomes just a little too jokey and liberal with the puns. The story is quite farfetched but it feels grand enough to be a James Bond adventure so i’m able to suspend my disbelief and accept that a space station could be completely constructed without anyone noticing and that Q branch has invented laser guns. Our leading lady this time around is Dr Holly Goodhead (Lois Chiles), CIA agent and trained astronaut. Chiles performance is ok but after the impression made by Barbara Bach in the previous installment she comes off as fairly one note and bland. There’s nothing wrong with her; there’s just no overwhelming elegance, flair or character trait (other than a silly name) which makes her stand out amongst the Bond girls. For me Drax’s pilot Corinne Dufour (Corinne Clery) makes much more of an impression as one of Bond’s conquests due to her likeable character and allure. She also has one of the more brutal deaths of the series (ripped apart by dogs) to leave her mark. Drax makes a good villain. He must have some of the best villain monologues from the entire series and it’s all acted really well. It could have been really easy to make killer orchids being launched from a space station to allow for a repopulate of the Earth with a master race seem very stupid but the serious way in which Lonsdale delivers his performance has you believing every word of it. As stated Jaws (Richard Kiel) is back in this installment. He’s played up for laughs a lot more but that doesn’t really bother me. I also like that he finds love and turns good in the end. What’s even better, is the reasoning behind it makes sense within the confines of the plot. Other films will just have people switch sides because they’ve become a fan favourite but here you can see the cogs working as he figures out he and his girlfriend will not fit into the master race if the plan succeeds and he reacts accordingly. Stunt wise the opening sequence, yet again, succeeds in delivering a superb action set piece in which Bond is tossed out of a plan with no parachute. It might actually be the highlight of the film. It took 88 sky dives to get correct but they definitely nailed it. How they managed to simulate the weightlessness of space with so many extras in the station is also a great effect and pretty impressive considering the time period. We’re moving down the slippery slope of Bond getting sillier with each passing film, but, despite this, Moonraker is still an enjoyable film to watch and always worth a look 3/5

#105 Moonraker

(Rewatch)

After the space shuttle Moonraker, on loan to the British from the Americans, is hijacked mid-flight everyone is understandably on high alert. James Bond (Roger Moore) is called in to talk to Hugh Drax (Michael Lonsdale), the man who built the shuttles, in hopes he can figure out who stole it. Soon Bond begins to suspect Drax of the theft itself and something far more sinister concerning nerve gas.

Originally For Your Eyes Only was supposed to follow on from The Spy Who Loved Me but the extreme success of Star Wars meant that it was time for Bond to shoot off into space as well.

This is where the Moore era Bond movies begin to wane for me a little. There are a lot of good elements to this film but it all becomes just a little too jokey and liberal with the puns.

The story is quite farfetched but it feels grand enough to be a James Bond adventure so i’m able to suspend my disbelief and accept that a space station could be completely constructed without anyone noticing and that Q branch has invented laser guns.

Our leading lady this time around is Dr Holly Goodhead (Lois Chiles), CIA agent and trained astronaut. Chiles performance is ok but after the impression made by Barbara Bach in the previous installment she comes off as fairly one note and bland. There’s nothing wrong with her; there’s just no overwhelming elegance, flair or character trait (other than a silly name) which makes her stand out amongst the Bond girls. For me Drax’s pilot Corinne Dufour (Corinne Clery) makes much more of an impression as one of Bond’s conquests due to her likeable character and allure. She also has one of the more brutal deaths of the series (ripped apart by dogs) to leave her mark.

Drax makes a good villain. He must have some of the best villain monologues from the entire series and it’s all acted really well. It could have been really easy to make killer orchids being launched from a space station to allow for a repopulate of the Earth with a master race seem very stupid but the serious way in which Lonsdale delivers his performance has you believing every word of it.

As stated Jaws (Richard Kiel) is back in this installment. He’s played up for laughs a lot more but that doesn’t really bother me. I also like that he finds love and turns good in the end. What’s even better, is the reasoning behind it makes sense within the confines of the plot. Other films will just have people switch sides because they’ve become a fan favourite but here you can see the cogs working as he figures out he and his girlfriend will not fit into the master race if the plan succeeds and he reacts accordingly.

Stunt wise the opening sequence, yet again, succeeds in delivering a superb action set piece in which Bond is tossed out of a plan with no parachute. It might actually be the highlight of the film. It took 88 sky dives to get correct but they definitely nailed it. How they managed to simulate the weightlessness of space with so many extras in the station is also a great effect and pretty impressive considering the time period.

We’re moving down the slippery slope of Bond getting sillier with each passing film, but, despite this, Moonraker is still an enjoyable film to watch and always worth a look 3/5

#102 The Spy Who Loved Me (Rewatch) After British and Soviet nuclear submarines are both abducted, MI6 and their Russian counterparts decide to team up super spies James Bond (Roger Moore) and Agent Triple X (Barbara Bach). Can these two get along long enough to track down the vessels or will old missions come back to complicate matters? This is arguably the high point of Moore’s tenure as Bond and my personal favourite of his. Everything about this film just seemed to come together in the right way to make a truly enjoyable spy thriller. Moore is comical yet still really physical in the role and a little dark in places (example knocking the bald guy from holding his tie to his death). On top of this, Moore’s chemistry with Bach is probably the best of any Bond/Bond girl in the series. Bach is beautiful and charming while at the same time can also be ruthless and cold. She’s every bit the Russian 007, Bond’s equal in every way, and as such makes for a much better dynamic between the pair. The stunts/gadgets in this film are fantastic as well. It has one of the best pre-title sections of any of the Bond films and then ending with the union Jack parachute is just the icing on the cake. It could have been really tacky but somehow it just works. The battle on board the tanker is also really good. It’s the first real big scale action scene we’ve seen where Bond has had some back up since You Only Live Twice (who’s director also directed this film). Then there’s the Lotus Espirt, the submersible car. No other car outside the original Aston Martin DB5, is more closely associated with the Bond franchise. As a kid this was the greatest thing in the world. Adding the wings to a car in The Man with the Golden Gun was just silly but turning it into a submarine was just a stoke of genius on someones part. I’m still proud to this day that when I was younger that I got to touch the actual car at a Bond memorabilia exhibit (even though you weren’t supposed to, little rebel that I was). The main villain of this piece, Karl Stromberg (Curd Jurgens), is menacing enough but lacks the charisma to make him a really great Bond villain. His henchman Jaws (Richard Kiel), on the other hand, is the most iconic from the entire film series. He appears in the next film Moonraker as well but it is here that we grow to love him. He’s a giant mute with metal teeth that he uses to kill people. Bond takes him out like 5 times over the course of the 2 films and he just keeps coming back for more. Like the car, as a kid, he was the coolest thing on the planet and as an adult…he’s still pretty damn cool. The only real thing that brings this film down for me is that the music is all heavily mixed with disco music because it was popular at the time. It really dates the film considerably just by its inclusion. Not a deal breaker but lamentable all the same. Great film and probably the one i’d be most likely just to pick up and watch if I wasn’t working my way through the series. 4.5/5

#102 The Spy Who Loved Me

(Rewatch)

After British and Soviet nuclear submarines are both abducted, MI6 and their Russian counterparts decide to team up super spies James Bond (Roger Moore) and Agent Triple X (Barbara Bach). Can these two get along long enough to track down the vessels or will old missions come back to complicate matters?

This is arguably the high point of Moore’s tenure as Bond and my personal favourite of his. Everything about this film just seemed to come together in the right way to make a truly enjoyable spy thriller. Moore is comical yet still really physical in the role and a little dark in places (example knocking the bald guy from holding his tie to his death). On top of this, Moore’s chemistry with Bach is probably the best of any Bond/Bond girl in the series.

Bach is beautiful and charming while at the same time can also be ruthless and cold. She’s every bit the Russian 007, Bond’s equal in every way, and as such makes for a much better dynamic between the pair.

The stunts/gadgets in this film are fantastic as well. It has one of the best pre-title sections of any of the Bond films and then ending with the union Jack parachute is just the icing on the cake. It could have been really tacky but somehow it just works. The battle on board the tanker is also really good. It’s the first real big scale action scene we’ve seen where Bond has had some back up since You Only Live Twice (who’s director also directed this film).

Then there’s the Lotus Espirt, the submersible car. No other car outside the original Aston Martin DB5, is more closely associated with the Bond franchise. As a kid this was the greatest thing in the world. Adding the wings to a car in The Man with the Golden Gun was just silly but turning it into a submarine was just a stoke of genius on someones part. I’m still proud to this day that when I was younger that I got to touch the actual car at a Bond memorabilia exhibit (even though you weren’t supposed to, little rebel that I was).

The main villain of this piece, Karl Stromberg (Curd Jurgens), is menacing enough but lacks the charisma to make him a really great Bond villain. His henchman Jaws (Richard Kiel), on the other hand, is the most iconic from the entire film series. He appears in the next film Moonraker as well but it is here that we grow to love him. He’s a giant mute with metal teeth that he uses to kill people. Bond takes him out like 5 times over the course of the 2 films and he just keeps coming back for more. Like the car, as a kid, he was the coolest thing on the planet and as an adult…he’s still pretty damn cool.

The only real thing that brings this film down for me is that the music is all heavily mixed with disco music because it was popular at the time. It really dates the film considerably just by its inclusion. Not a deal breaker but lamentable all the same.

Great film and probably the one i’d be most likely just to pick up and watch if I wasn’t working my way through the series. 4.5/5