Neon Napalm

I guess this is going to be kind of the default for the Roger Moore movies. Overall, it's fine. It follows the formula that's emerged for these movies, and does an OK job. However, it has a lot of issues. First, we've got "comedy" that they think is funnier than it is. I can't believe that they used a slide whistle for the best car stunt the series has done yet, and then followed it with a car turning into a plane. Next, broad racial stereotypes. We have a Chinese crime lord in Thailand who has a bunch of sumo wrestlers working for him, and every other named Chinese character knows karate (and it's specifically karate, not a Chinese martial art). Not that it's impossible for a Chinese person to know karate but in this movie it really feels like the writers just didn't bother to research any of the cultures they built their movie around. I think the thing I find most unappealing about the Moore Bond films so far is that they're convinced they're hilarious while also being easily the most mean-spirited films of the lot. Moore is intentionally cruel, torturing Andrea for information, constantly harassing Goodnight, and even throwing a Thai child trying to sell him a tchotchke off of a boat and into the path of their pursuers in a moment that feels like it's meant to be a laugh. Plus, for reasons that escape me, we see the return of Sherriff JW Pepper (Louisiana State Police), who gets tied up in two separate chase sequences Bond goes through. This character was bad enough last movie, but bringing him back here really pissed me off. Last movie was really bad making light of the way he and his boys have absolutely lynched Black men before, so bringing him back just to yell weird slurs at Asian people this time didn't feel great. The women in this movie are handled disappointingly too. Andrea goes through hell and not a single character ever bothers to give a damn about her even after she's killed. Goodnight, meanwhile, gets harassed constantly and every single decision she makes on her own is shown to be stupid and incorrect. Again, the shining high point of the film for me is the villains. Scaramanga is delightful, and Christopher Lee makes him an immediately captivating character. But for me, the shining star of the film is Nick Nack, who is a delight in every scene and who should have gotten to inherit Scaramanga's island. I can never forgive Goodnight for destroying that house. #justicefornicknack

That was a lot of fun! Liam Neeson was better at comedy than I expected, Pamela Anderson was delightful, and it was a really solid, funny movie! It just didn't really reach past that for me, but I had a good time.

Ooof. I guess I'll start with what I liked: Gay Blofeld is fun, I love that he makes a getaway by becoming Gene Hackman at the end of the Birdcage, and I love that Tiffany has a wardrobe with a big retro computer to run fingerprints in it. On the bad front... Sean Connery is back (boo! boo! A hail of tomatoes!) and looks so old. I know he's going to look older later and he's younger than Roger Moore who's next but damn does he look too old for this. The plot isn't great either, it involves our hero James Bond stepping in to help the De Beers diamond company during apartheid, and we're still supposed to root for him. Then he goes to Amsterdam, fights a guy in a bizarre elevator that has got to be an OSHA violation, and gets in good with Tiffany Case, diamond crime lady. Then, naturally, he flies from Amsterdam to LA so he can drive to Vegas. Vegas-themed nonsense ensues. I feel like this movie is falling into the trap of trying to make a bad-good silly movie, which is in my opinion impossible to do on purpose. The bad-good silly movie has to be an accident, meant to be a legitimately good thing but made so ineptly that it can only inspire derision. Bond drives a moon buggy. And makes about 40 LVPD cars crash into each other (which, admittedly, is cool and good). And parachutes into the gulf of California in a zorb. Also, he straight up calls Tiffany Case a bitch, which is cover at the time but is delivered in a way that made me feel terrible for every woman who's ever worked with him. This film makes me miss OHMSS so much, it's crazy.

Oh no! Someone told the people who write the Bond movies about the criminal conspiracy all Black people are involved in and they put it in this movie! Oh my god what a nightmare of a film. There are exactly 3 things I liked about this movie: the iconic theme song, the way Yaphet Kotto gives an amazing performance in spite of a jaw-droppingly racist script, and that this movie not only introduces the idea of a New Orleans jazz funeral procession that waits for someone to ask who died, says "you", and then stabs them and puts them in the coffin, but clearly and irrefutably establishes that they do this regularly and following a choreographed routine. The rest of this movie is weird, incredibly racist, and stars Roger Moore, whose Bond is somehow even more odious and predatory-feeling than Connery. This movie is, I feel pretty sure, the worst Bond movie I've seen. The worst Bond movie I've seen so far, anyway...