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Non-Review Review: Die Another Day

This post is part of James Bond January, being organised by the wonderful Paragraph Films. I will have reviews of all twenty-two official Bond films going on-line over the next month, and a treat or two every once in a while.

A new watch. Your twentieth, I believe.

How time flies.

– Q and Bond go all meta on us

I next joined Pierce and co at the premiere of Die Another Day in 2002, which marked the 40th anniversary of the series. When asked later what I thought of the film, I merely said “interesting”. In truth I thought it just went too far – and that’s from me, the first Bond in space! Invisible cars and dodgy CGI footage? Please! They gave the public what they wanted, though maybe they too realised there was only so far they could push it before Bond became a caricature of himself, and the funeral directors were called in.

– Sir Roger Moore, who seems like a lovely guy

Truth be told, Die Another Day doesn’t quite deserve the reputation that it has earned over the years. But, then again, I can appreciate A View to a Kill, so what do I know?

Close, but no cigar...

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Captain America? &%#$ No! Thoughts on the Naming Controversy…

Last year, I remarked that – although it was perhaps the least likely of Marvel’s movies to be awesome – Captain America: The First Avenger was going to be the most interesting movie on their slate to follow, at least when it comes to international markets. Predictably enough, Marvel have decided that not everyone on the planet is going to be cool with a movie about a literal American super-patriot. They will be dropping the title “Captain America” completely, simply selling it as “The First Avenger” in Russia, the Ukraine and South Korea. I, for one, am quite disappointed.

Walk tall... and carry a star-spangled shield...

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Non-Review Review: Licence to Kill

This post is part of James Bond January, being organised by the wonderful Paragraph Films. I will have reviews of all twenty-two official Bond films going on-line over the next month, and a treat or two every once in a while.

Licence to Kill is the Bond movie that almost killed the franchise. The gap between the release of this movie in 1989 and GoldenEye in 1995 is the longest period that the film series has been left dormant. Although the legal issues surrounding the series hardly helped ensure the British secret agent’s return to the big screen, there’s also the fact that this movie was something of a box office dud in the States. (Although it was quite successful elsewhere.) Licence to Kill is perhaps the most divisive of the Bond movies – even more so than On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Detractors see it as a poor attempt to emulate Miami Vice, indulging in ridiculously over-the-top violence and darkness for the sake of darkness. Fans argue that the movie is a lot closer to Ian Fleming’s original novels, and feels more like the recent relaunch of the franchise – it’s a perfect bedfellow with Casino Royale or Quantum of Solace. My opinion is somewhere in the middle.

Bond always uses protection in bed…

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Non-Review Review: A View to a Kill

This post is part of James Bond January, being organised by the wonderful Paragraph Films. I will have reviews of all twenty-two official Bond films going on-line over the next month, and a treat or two every once in a while.

A View to A Kill is not fondly remembered. In fact, it frequently finds itself listed amongst the dregs of the Bond films when the time comes to rank the worst of the British secret agent’s on-screen adventures. Truth be told, I find that rather harsh – I’d argue that it’s a significantly stronger effort than The Man With The Golden Gun, at least – as well as possibly Octopussy and Moonraker. After all, both Roger Moore and Christopher Walken look like they are having such a ridiculously good time.

Not quite a towering accomplishment…

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Non-Review Review: Octopussy

This post is part of James Bond January, being organised by the wonderful Paragraph Films. I will have reviews of all twenty-two official Bond films going on-line over the next month, and a treat or two every once in a while.

Despite having quite possibly the most awkwardly unfortunate name in the history of the English language, the most enduring image from Octopussy is Roger Moore, flailing wildly and trying to be taken seriously, while dressed as a clown. Oddly appropriate, eh?

Moore, Moore, Mo- Too Much!

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The Devil Eire Effect: Historical Films and Villains…

I wrote a little while ago about how suspicious I am concerning “true stories” that make it to the big screen. Truth be told, life doesn’t exactly fit into the three act structure or one-hundred-and-twenty minutes of screen time – I understand that changes need to be made. Real life characters are often boiled down or reduced to mere collections of quirks, the hero faces a more streamlined obstacle than they did in real life and sometimes even ends up a far better person for it. However, I was sitting down watching The King’s Speech at the weekend and I couldn’t help wondering if we really needed for Albert’s elder brother David and his American fiancée Wallis to be portrayed as nothing more than scheming villains, just because we needed to root for Albert a little more.

The Simpsons?

Note: The ever-wonderful TV Tropes describe this as a “Historical Villain Upgrade” if you’re looking for more examples of what I am talking about…

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X-Men: Second Coming (Review/Retrospective)

This is the sixteenth in a series of comic book reviews that will look at the direction of Marvel’s shared universe (particularly their “Avengers” franchise) over the past five or so years, as they’ve been attempting to position the property at the heart of their fictional universe. With The Avengers planned for a cinematic release in 2012, I thought I’d bring myself up to speed by taking a look at Marvel’s tangled web of continuity.

Second Coming is the culmination of about five years of X-Men plots. In fairness, the finale was pretty obvious from the moment that the Scarlet Witch rather infamously muttered “no more mutants” at the climax of the muddled House of M. When mutants were rendered an “endangered species” we always knew the saga would come down to one gigantic confrontation between mutants and the humans who would seek to exterminate them – while at the same time lifting the weight of extinction from the shoulders of the mutant franchise. Reflecting on the events within the Marvel universe, Cyclops comments, “Osborn is gone. The Avengers are back. And the X-Men… we can stand for something again.” And perhaps that’s the best thing to come out of all of this – the return to the status quo. If that sounds disappointing, it probably is.

Cable's gunning for the record for most kills by a one-armed mutant ever...

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Non-Review Review: G.I. Joe – The Rise of Cobra

I never grew up with G.I. Joe. For me it was Batman: The Animated Series or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. To me, this franchise was just a bunch of generic toy soldiers – in fact, I didn’t even know that they had separate names or defining characteristics. So I come to this movie without a sense of nostalgia or a familiarity with the core product. So, Stephen Sommers’ adaptation of the popular multi-media franchise to the big screen is my first major exposure to the product, and it left me feeling like I’d spent two hours watching a guy playing with toys, rather than making a movie. One of the characters even has a “kung-fu grip”.

It's a black-and-white world...

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Is Classism Alive And Well At The Box Office?

Richard Nixon introduced the phrase “the silent majority” into the popular lexicon, referring to those people who weren’t out protesting or stirring up a storm, but quietly and strongly sanctioning his actions. Since then the term has become almost synonymous with “middle America” or the “the big red middle”, the clear indication that liberalism and activism were traditionally associated with the coasts of the country – specifically concentrated around Washington, New York and California. Whenever loud and vocal protests arise in these regions, expect the more conservative politicians to speak about the silent majority of decent middle-class folks in “flyover country” who don’t make big deals of things and vote with their feet. These are the people, these politicians will tell you, who save their public political expressions for the election day. And so, it would seem, this central part of the country has voted on The Social Network. And silence was certainly there in spades.

The Silent Majority turned down The Social Network's Friend Request...

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Non-Review Review: The Last Exorcism

The fundamental problem with The Last Exorcism is that it tries to be too many things, while being unwilling to completely invest in any of them. Is it an exploration of the culture of “showy exorcisms” (where the preacher himself refers to it as “a sham”)? Is it a jerky, handheld homage to The Exorcism, filtered through Paranormal Activity? Is it an indictment of small insular communities and the sinister ideas which may underpin them, as in The Wicker Man? It seems to be all three at once, which is a problem, as the three don’t gel together too well in a two-hour film.

The movie certainly isn't a blessing...

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