Borderlands 3

 Alas, there is no Vault Hunter whose sole role is KILL MAIM BURN this time around, that was fun.

The plot of Borderlands 3 could be summarized thusly:

The villain is a superpowered individual with a god complex springing forth from the circumstances of their upbringing and their less-than-stellar relationship with their opposite-sex parent. The identity of the villain's father is a late-game plot twist, and the villain's father dies around the time the final act starts. The villain's goal is to become a god and consume the universe. The villain merges with an alien entity and transforms into a monster for the final boss fight. One of the playable characters, a former soldier for a corporation, has a crush on another playable character, a buff girl with an exposed midriff.

Did I miss anything? Ah, yes, the cruel murder of a White Magician Girl halfway through the story.

What an original concept.

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.

NO TIME TO DIE review

 Before we begin, I think you should probably revisit the following posts, as they will inform much that follows:

In which I explain why On Her Majesty's Secret Service is the best Bond film ever. (10/10 on a curve)

In which I watch and reevaluate the chaotic mess that is Quantum of Solace. (5/10 on the curve)

In which I give Skyfall more attention than it deserves. (3/10 on the curve)

In which I give Spectre less than half the tongue-lashing it deserves. (0/10 on the curve)

You will note that I've never bothered to do a review of Casino Royale because it's a mishmash of the novel and OHMSS. And if you read the Skyfall and Spectre reviews, you'll note that I got increasingly pissed off at the films' superficial lip service to OHMSS. Given that No Time To Die is a mishmash of OHMSS the movie (surprise?) and You Only Live Twice the book (actual surprise, unless you knew the working title was Shatterhand), you might think I'm done here.

Oh no.

I'm not. 

The short version is this: Okay. Congratulations. After five attempts, you’ve finally made the superlative, quintessential homage/remake of OHMSS. Didn't think you had it in you. 8/10; now please never do this again.

(SPOILERS. SERIOUSLY. GO WATCH THIS MOVIE BEFORE YOU READ THIS REVIEW. IT'S GOOD, HONEST, I KNOW THAT'S HARD TO BELIEVE GIVEN ITS IMMEDIATE PREDECESSORS, BUT YOU OWE IT TO YOURSELF TO BE BOGGLED BY THE FACT THAT THEY MADE THIS FILM)

(I will also casually spoil certain terrible Star Trek and Star Wars films. You may be able to guess which two if you've seen NTTD already.)

BSG: Water (2021 re-review)

 The Great 2022 Rewatch of Battlestar Galactica has begun. In this, my primary goal is to review all the episodes I didn't review on my first pass, and to re-do a few reviews where I have since changed my mind.

And what better place to start than with "Water." In my original review, I ranked it at the bottom of the Season 1 episodes for me, and that's just not true. ("Six Degrees of Separation" is unquestionably the worst S1 episode, followed by the unimpressive conclusion to "Litmus" and the tonal misfire that is "Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down.")

When you gaze into the abyss, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die: a look at Bond's villains

 I began plotting this idea out in my head that I would review each of the main villains of the Bond series and then rank them. And then I thought that was too much work because I don't particularly want to sit through Diamonds Are Forever or, God help us, Spectre again. And as much as I love love LOVE The Living Daylights, its villains are the whitest of whitebread. 

So then I thought, "hang on, lemme do one on the best villain of each Bond incarnation." Of course, Lazenby only has the one, and Dalton really only has the one (see my comment about TLD above), so those wouldn't be terribly interesting. 

But the answers for "who was the best villain of the Connery Era" and "who was the best villain of the Moore Era" are pretty damn obvious - there's really only one candidate and one obvious runner-up for each, and no, Donald Pleasance and Christopher Lee are not on those lists - and I began thinking about them, and how they relate to Bond, and how their qualities are reflected in the Dalton, Brosnan, and Craig eras, and that brings me to the title of this post.

Everything Old is New Again

 With Doctor Who circling the drain (because you need more than The First Female Doctor to attract fans, you need good writing and less preachiness), the BBC have gone back in their own time machine and hired Russell T. Davies (RTD) to resurrect the show.

Again.

Babylon 5 4x09 "Atonement"

 The One That Makes Delenn Flirting With Sinclair In Season One Super Awkward

Babylon 5 4x07 "Epiphanies"

 The One Where The Drakh Leave Their Old Home And Make A New Friend