What I'm watching

#201 Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore

A hotshot police dog (James Marsden) is recruited to be part of a secret dog spy organisation protecting the world against cats. A crazy cat named Kitty Galore (Bette Midler) is going to unleash a radio-wave which will turn all dogs against humans unless she can be stopped. Running out of options it looks like the dogs might have to team up with their greatest rivals in order to avert this crisis: cats.

Honestly, I rather enjoyed the first Cats & Dogs when I was a kid so I wanted to check this one out to see if it was the same stupid humour or if it was just a cash in on the franchise. It’s a little of both.

If you like puns you have come to the right place. I honestly don’t think they let a single one by, regardless of how good it was. Some of them worked and some of them are as forced as all the rock ones on the Flintstones were.

For the action present in this it was alright for the family adventure type film it is. It stays with the dogs/cats more this time which is good. The biggest failing of the original was that it centred too heavily on the human characters nobody cared about. It doesn’t fall into that same trap here.

A bit of a mixed bag voice talent-wise. Alec Baldwin doesn’t return as the mentor dog Butch and Nick Notle replaces him making the character sound like he’s been smoking non-stop for the 10 years between films. You’ve got Marsden doing fine as the lead and Christina Applegate as the lead cat providing a nice enough turn as well. Midler is ok as Kitty Galore but she’s no Mr Tinkles (who has a great little silence of the lambs style cameo).

Basic silly kiddy film with a lot of puns. There’s nothing really offensively bad about it but it’s not really going to touch the hearts and the minds of millions either. It’s a fairly innocuous little film 2/5

Also Roger Moore as a cat in a James Bond’s M type role trading insults with Neil Patrick Harris as a dog in a similar role. That gave me kind of a kick to watch.

#129 Die Another Day

(Rewatch)

After fears of him cracking under torture, James Bond (Pierce Brosnan) is freed from a North Korean prison and taken into custody by the British. Being unable to trust him, MI6 sidelines him and Bond has to go rouge once more to clear his name and find out who in MI6 set him up. On top of this a new multimillionaire, Gustave Graves (Toby Stevens), is using conflict diamonds for some nefarious purpose and he might hold the truth to Bond’s betrayal/imprisonment.

This is Brosnan’s final turn as Bond and, much like Roger Moore, he goes out on a sour note. DAD is bad. It’s up there with the worst of the series and it’s a horrible way to leave the series before the reboot of the franchise.

I think my main problem with this film is that it tries to cram way to much self referential elements into this film because it’s the 20th film and (at time of release) 40 years on from Dr No. There was a lot of pressure on this film even from the get go, and they just fumbled it. It’s been said that elements of all 19 previous films have been incorporated into the film (because of the series landmark it was going to be) and all that ended up doing was creating this hodge podge mess.

Now the film is not all bad. The story works well for maybe the first 40(ish) minutes. The pre-credit sequence is still pretty good and the intrigue of the betrayal from within and the long term imprisonment angles were good. I’d say everything in North Korea and Hong Kong works really well. It’s when the film gets to Cuba that the film begins to fall apart and it’s unsalvageable by the time Graves and Iceland are brought in.

I’d say Graves and his henchman Zao (Rick Yune), are probably the series worst villains. They are just too stupid and to far outside the stretch of believability that the viewer rejects them as a credible threat. It doesn’t help that Stevens is pretty poor actor as well. Yune isn’t bad, but his character (basically an albino North Korean with diamonds embedded in his face) is just ridiculous. He makes Jaws or Nick Nack seems like a real world possibility by comparison.

The girls this time around are Halle Berry as Jinx and Rosamund Pike as Miranda Frost. Berry has a good introduction (emerging from the sea in a nod to Ursula Andress in Dr No) but quickly establishes herself to have some of the most terrible dialogue in the film/series. Monster’s Ball this ain’t. Pike is pretty one note and forgotten for most of the film and therefore almost as forgettable to the viewer.

This film also uses an over abundance of CGI and it does not work. One of the main draws of a Bond film has always been the stunts. Relying on computers to do them in this film just jars with the rest of the series. One of the better parts of this film is a car chase between Zao and Bond which has Bond righting his car after it was flipped, by firing his ejector seat at the ground. That was pretty cool because it actually happens. Not long before it Bond windsurfed away from a tidal wave caused by an ice sheet falling away after outrunning a giant solar beams and no-one cared or talks about because it all looks incredibly fake.

Also the car turns invisible. I’m sure it was amazing to the kids watching but to everyone else it was really stupid. Q branch = wacky yet plausible gadgets. You could theoretically make a car turn into a sub, or be remote controlled, but you can’t turn it invisible and still claim this is set in a somewhat realistic world.

I’m not quite sure where this one rates overall from the 22 films for me, but it’s definitely in the 20’s that’s for sure. 1/5

A young Dolph Lundgren (left corner) in A View to a Kill.

Originally not supposed to be in the film but visiting his then girlfriend, Grace Jones (May Day), on set he filled in for an extra which was injured and unable to perform.

Another interesting cameo is Maud Adams returning for a 3rd time to the series as one of the crowd members during the fisherman’s wharf scene. She was also only visiting the set, this time to meet her friend Roger Moore, and was included in a scene.

As well as Roger Moore’s final film, View to a Kill would mark the 14th and final time Lois Maxwell would play the part of Miss Moneypenny. Having been present since Dr No she would only be out done by Desmond Llewelyn in the part of Q in number of total films present in but is still the longest running recurring character in terms of uninterrupted films (Llewelyn wasn’t present in Dr No or Live and Let Die). She would leave the producer Albert Broccoli as the only remaining participant in the series which had been present since Dr No.

Maxwell asked that her character be killed off but Broccoli was against it, instead recasting Caroline Bliss in the role for the Living Daylights.

In Octopussy a new secretary to Moneypenny, Penelope Smallbone (Michaela Clavell), was introduced in a seemingly similar role to Moneypenny’s in order to interact with a new younger Bond once Moore left but was never seen or dealt with following the film.

#112 A View to a Kill

(Rewatch)

After recovering a microchip from a dead 00 agent, James Bond (Roger Moore) is assigned the task of looking into Max Zorin (Christopher Walken) and his industrial empire. It appears Zorin and his faithful associate May Day (Grace Jones) are up to something in California and it’s up to Bond to discover and stop it before it’s to late.

And so we come to the end of Moore’s run as 007. Does it end with a bang or with a whimper? Unfortunately the latter. Until Die Another Day came out this was considered by many to be the worst of the Bond films and that is not without merit. Personally I rank OHMSS and Octopussy both lower than this film but it is in no way the example I would use to try and introduce someone to the series.

If Moore was looking old in the previous two installments he looks ancient in this one. Even Moore himself has said that he was too old in this film and if he had the chance to do it over again would have stopped after Octopussy. His interactions with the ladies in this film have moved from awkward to creepy. He’s like that Uncle who hits on his niece’s friends at parties. It’s just not right.

Tanya Roberts plays the Bond girl Stacey Sutton this time around and she is by far the worst of them all. She starts off somewhat acceptable playing a slightly aloof guest of Zorin who rebukes Bond’s advances and leaves for about 1/2 hour. As soon as she’s given any real screen time however, she quickly displays how far we’ve fallen for the smart and elegant Bond girls of the previous films. She and Moore have no chemistry and half of her lines are either screaming or saying “Oh James!” in a really high pitched yell. She’s also not believable in the role. She’s supposed to be a geologist but she’s as convincing as the women playing the palaeontologist in Shark Attack 3. 

Walken as a villain and Jones as a henchwomen are actually probably the saving grace of this film. Walken is the first of Bond’s villains to purely be a psychopath. Others have been crazy but they’ve always been able to keep it together to conduct their plan. Zorin just does things because they feel good at the time. Walken has a certain charisma about himself anyway so it just lends itself to the role.

Jones is a bit nuts as well and she makes for an interesting character. Unlike Jaws however, when she turns on Zorin in the end if feels tacked on and we as an audience feel cheated because we didn’t get to see her and Bond go at it in some crazy final battle.

In terms of stunts and cool gadgets there aren’t really any this time around. There are action sequences for sure but none of them are really anything to write home about.

Overall, this film has most of the worst attributes of Moore’s type of Bond and it showed the desperate need for some fresh blood in the role 1/5

#109 Octopussy

(Rewatch)

After 009 is found dead in a clown costume holding a fake Faberge egg, James Bond (Roger Moore) is put on the case in an effort to discover the killer and what 009 had discovered. What he finds is a rouge Soviet general attempting to start World War III, a jewellery thief and a cult of circus performers led by the beautiful, yet deadly, Octopussy (Maud Adams).

If FYEO was the more serious return to form, then Octopussy is a step backwards towards the more silly nature of Moonraker. The plot of this film is all over the place in terms of narrative, making it harder to hold onto what Bond’s overall goal is. We are given the death of a 00, a smuggling ring, a cult of women, a woman with links to Bond’s past, an exiled Afghan prince turned jewel thief/collector, a tiger hunt, a Soviet plot, a circus attack on a stronghold and an aerial battle. A lot of this is all happening at the same time and it takes some thinking to actually figure out who’s doing what and why. I’m going to blame the fact that this film is inspired by several short stories by Fleming rather than a full novel.

Moore is getting tired in this one. He’s looking older and just less interesting in the role. All of his puns seem forced this time around. He had been making rumblings of leaving the series since Moonraker but returned for this one after Never Say Never Again was green lit and it was known that Connery would be returning as Bond. Producers wanted a known actor in the EON series Bond to compete against Connery.

Maud Adams returns, after previously playing Francisco Scaramanga’s mistress Andreas Anders in TMWTGG, to play the role of Octopussy. Adams works a lot better than the previous installments girls because she is more age appropriate for Moore. Octopussy as a character is ok but again doesn’t seem that needed.

Kamal Khan (Louis Jourdan) is probably the best thing about this film. He is a proper Bond villain right down to his vague threats and his almost mute henchman Gobinda (Kabir Bedi). Everything he does denotes how slimy and evil he is and you’ve just got to love that. Both his and Gobinda’s death are really weak however. We’ve had this giant threatening Indian man crushing die and glaring at Bond the entire film. We expect a big Oddjob style brawl with a cool final kill but what we get is an aerial to the face knocking him off an in flight plane. Weak. The Living Daylights will have a similar situation but a much more satisfying outcome.

A lot of people decry the gorilla suit, the clown costume, the fake crocodile and the Tarzan swinging scene and i’d be lying if I said I didn’t think they were stupid. It makes it seem more like a pink panther film than a Bond one.

Like OHMSS i will give it it’s dues however and point out some of it’s better attributes after all the bad. As stated the villains are both good, Bond’s ally Vinjay (Vinjay Amritraj) is funny, Bond’s fight with the knife thrower in the woods works well, the Tuk Tuk chase through the Indian market is entertaining (and some what similar to the Indiana Jones films) and Q (Desmond Llewelyn) gets a bigger part to play this time around allowing for more interactions with Bond (which are always a pleasure to watch).

I would say this is my least favourite of Roger Moore’s Bond movies. View to a Kill is definitely a worst film but it is a more entertaining to watch. 1/5

Initial unsure if Roger Moore would return to the role for another film, the writers of FYEO wrote this pre-title sequence, in which Bond lays flowers on his wife’s grave, in order to cement the idea that a new actor in the role would be connected to the past. Eventually it turned out Moore would return but this sequence was kept anyway.

#107 For Your Eyes Only

(Rewatch)

After one of the British spy ships is taken down by an old WWII mine in Greece the race is on for the British to recapture their ATAC device before the Soviets can. A British archaeologist is set the task of discreetly finding the wreckage but he and his wife are killed before anything can be unearthed. With time being of the essence, MI6 decides to send in Bond (Roger Moore) and with the help of the couples daughter Melina (Carole Bouquet) begins the hunt. 

After Moonraker, it was felt that Bond should return more to his roots this time around. As such this film focuses more on a simpler spy thriller than saving the world and significantly tones down the gadgets and cars.

This is the film I consider the tipping point for Moore in the role of Bond. Although older than Connery in even his first outing as Bond he looked significantly younger throughout his first 4 films. Here his age is beginning to show and it’s becoming weirder and weirder to see him bedding the women he does (especially with the level of infatuation Bibi (Lynn-Holly Johnson) shows him (he was 54 during filming) and then later considers the villain Kristatos (Julian Glover) much to old for her (he was 46 during filming)).

Kristatos, while not the most interesting of villains, did play the duel role of trusted ally/double agent rather well. Both he and Milos Columbo (Chaim Topol) each excelled as being both good and evil at different points in the film.

Bouquet as Melina was both beautiful and correct for the role but overall a largely uninteresting Bond girl. Her desire for revenge on her parents killers seems almost tacked on in places and she’s just there for the ride because we are expected to have a main Bond girl doing that.

The stunt work and locations are where this film really shines however. The mountain monastery at St Cyril’s and the whole final lead up, especially the tension filled scene when Bond is dropped off the cliff, are the best parts of the film. Additionally, the underwater dragging scene over shark infested waters with sharp coral beneath, also makes for an exciting action sequence.

It has its moments but nothing really spectacular compared with the rest of the series. 2/5