2022 rewatch: THE SPY WHO LOVED ME

 Oh, come on, after The Man With the Golden Gun, we needed something, you know, good.

The Spy Who Loved Me is Roger Moore's third outing as James Bond, his first in Proper Cinematic Widescreen (2.35:1), his first "shaken not stirred" (although of course he doesn't get to say it), and the first time the Bond actor is credited as "Ian Fleming's James Bond" (definitely a lie, it's Roger Moore), has his face appear in the titles, or wears a tuxedo in the gunbarrel. Other than that, it's You Only Live Twice, right down to the choice of director, only now performed through the medium of underwater ballet and Bond doesn't "die" in it. No, wait, I take that back. He does in fact get fake-shot in both.

It's okay that it's not Ian Fleming's James Bond and it's okay that it's Roger Moore. For the third film in a row, he's the only Bond who could pull this nonsense off. I've said before that a franchise broad enough to encompass both Moonraker and Quantum of Solace is a very weird beast, and it's largely Moore's fault that it lasted long enough to do either. (Very annoying that all three of his successors have gone, with varying degrees of sincerity, the Connery/Fleming route instead of the far more entertaining Moore/Gilbert one. Yes, it's true that a Daniel Craig movie with Baron Samedi in it would have been nigh incomprehensible, but so was Spectre, and this would at least be more fun.)

Along for the ride are Curt Jurgens as this entry's Notfeld, Barbara Bach as the cleavage, and Richard Kiel as Jaws. It involves things that are long and hard and full of seamen and Ms. Bach ends up thoroughly wet.

2022 rewatch: GoldenEye

 GoldenEye was the first Bond Film starring Pierce Brosnan and the first made after a six-year hiatus. It was the second attempt to get Brosnan on-board (cheeky reference thereto in the opening - yes, I wonder what else might possibly have happened in 1986, and BrosBond's activities therein utterly bosh the timeline, no point in not making the reboot clearer - oh yes, I know they kept Q around, so what? They kept M around for the first three Craigs) and the first of two directed by Martin Campbell, the Bond Director whose name I am most likely to forget (but not most likely to misspell - I could make a crack here at the expense of Mr. Tamahori or Mr. Fukunaga, and will instead settle for the safe option of belittling Mr. Spottiswoode). It is also, trivia fans, the only entry in the Bond canon to mention "safe sex."

Is it great? No. Does it do what it needed to do, take a 60s British staple that had lain dormant since 1989 and bring him back in the mid-nineties in a sort of greatest-hits mishmash that buggers up the continuity? A smidge better than Doctor Who: The Movie, that's for certain.

2022 rewatch: The Man With The Golden Gun

 The Man With the Golden Gun (1974) has some redeeming qualities. For example, the film never subjects us to a shootout where Bond survives unscathed despite being absurdly outnumbered by men with automatic weapons (see, off the top of my head, The Spy Who Loved Me, The Living Daylights, No Time To Die* - all of which I think are super in spite of this glaring break in "realism" - as well as all the Brosnans, which, um, exist). Instead, the climax features Britt Ekland in a bikini. Brilliant trade 10/10.

*Look, it's not an automatic weapon that gets him, so it counts, shut up.

It stars Roger Moore as James Bond, except the script seems to be a recycled Connery in terms of his characterization (not the last time one of an actor's weakest Bond films looks like it was written for his predecessor - looking at you, Skyfall). It also stars Christopher Lee as the badhat and Maud Adams as the Other Girl - she'll be back in Octolowerlips, and he'll be in two turn-of-the-millennium trilogies where he's a former good wizard turned evil secondary villain who's quickly killed off at the start of the third film. Which is weird that that happened twice. The villain's name is some variant on Francis, which is weird because that happens again, twice (Licence to Kill and Spectre, in case you tried to forget).

2022 rewatch: LIVE AND LET DIE

 Live and Let Die is Roger Moore's first outing as James Bond. It features Yaphet Kotto as the eminently watchable Dr. Kananga (really, when they get around to The Historic First Black Blofeld*, I'm just going to throw this in their faces) and "introduces" (a lie; this was her fourth film role) Jane Seymour (not Henry the Eighth's third wife (as far as we know - there is voodoo in this movie, after all) or the Canadian actress of the same name) as a Tarot card reader who loses her powers once she has sex. This is only the second most bizarre supernatural occurrence in this film. It stars, however, Geoffrey Holder as Baron Samedi, against whom the rest of the cast demonstrates their prodigious acting skill by not simply fading into the background in the face of this madness.