The name’s Bond… James Bond.
Dr No (1962) 👍🏼
From Russia With Love (1963) 👍🏼👍🏼
Goldfinger (1964) 👍🏼👍🏼
You Only Live Twice (1967) 👍🏼👍🏼
Casino Royale (1967)
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) 👍🏼👍🏼
Diamonds Are Forever (1971) 👍🏼
The Man With the Golden Gun (1974) 👍🏼
The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) 👍🏼
Octopussy (1983) 👍🏼
A View To a Kill (1985)
The Living Daylight (1987) 👍🏼👍🏼
The World Is Not Enough (1999)
Casino Royale (2006) 👍🏼👍🏼
Quantum of Solace (2008) 👍🏼👍🏼
Skyfall (2012)
Spike Jonze directs Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep and Chris Cooper in this Hollywood satire where Charlie Kaufman, meta-loving screenwriter of Being John Malkovich, agrees to adapt a non-fiction bestseller with no plot and drives himself into a frenzy over his self-doubt, inertia and paranoia.
All the worst feels poured into a cocktail shaker and mixed vigorously into a viciously funny concoction of frustrated humanity. Kaufman’s view of himself is self lacerating but recognisable. We don’t get many feature length presentations on chronic indecision. Yet most of us in life do idle in the middle lane, scared to take risks while wanting to stay authentic to some limiting idea of who we are. Kaufman even invents a twin brother for juxtaposition. Blundering, confident, likeable – Donald has no issues selling out, getting the girl or getting along. Watching Cage play off himself is one of the film’s true delights. The internalised genius and the extroverted achiever grating and caring and trampling over each other produces much of the film’s heart and humour. He’s wonderful in both roles – avoiding the delirious ham that has defined his 21st century career. Strong work too from Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper and the unsung Cara Seymour. Adaptation. is a curious movie. It has it cake and eats it and then shows you the recipe for cake and then ices the pages of the cookery book with everything that is bad for you but delicious. As Charlie sweats and sighs over turning the literary prose about flowers, life and loneliness into something cinematic, we catch accomplished glimpses of a faithful conversion of Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief into big screen release. Then when formulaic and crowd pleasing Donald takes over the process, the final act warps into a rollercoaster of cliches, broken rules and excitement. Art is betrayed but we are entertained. It is a heady, acerbic experience. One final note: Adaptation has one of the best movie trailers ever – it utterly sells the tone and uniqueness of a non-traditional film without being particularly quirky itself.
9
Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk
We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/
Alejandra Márquez Abella directs Ilse Salas, Paulina Gaitan and Flavio Medina in this period satire from Mexico.
The Mexican Economic Crash of 1982 witnessed through the pampered eyes of one trophy wife. Her friends, her servants and her sanity begin to abandon her in that order. We linger over the decadent chic lifestyle and then watch the rot set in. A really attractive, wholemeal two hours.
7
Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk
We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/
Leonard Nimoy directs Tom Selleck, Ted Danson and Steve Guttenberg in this Eighties smash comedy about three Manhattan bachelors struggling with the infant left on their doorstop.
Miami Sound Machine montage heavy and featuring more chest hair than a orangutan enclosure, this fizzy poppy gloss-fest is part of my movie loving DNA. Shame that digital resolution has now robbed us of the dead boy’s ghost urban legend.
7
Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk
We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/
Shane Black directs Robert Downey Jr., Guy Pearce and Gwyneth Paltrow in this superhero sequel where Tony Stark finds himself without his armoured suit of tricks while hunting down The Mandarin.
Now… this one holds up. Tonnes of fun. RDJ is vulnerable rather than smug, witty rather than overbearing. Black doesn’t just inject his usual caustic banter, Christmas setting and zigzag plotting but understands how to make Tony Stark work as a hero. The inhibition of having a genius in an exoskeleton with an app for every crisis is it gets very repetitive seeing that hero merely select the right defence system from inside a secure shell. Here we crack the star out of his tin can so we can savour quirky set pieces involving weaponless Iron Man, powerless Iron Man, DIY low tech Iron Man and ‘just a gauntlet and a boot’ Iron Man. And the director really cooks up quirky dynamics with each variation on this theme. So that by the epic finale when Stark and Co. are jumping from suit to suit hoping to land in the right one at exactly the right moment to stop the murderous bad guy it genuinely is exhilarating. Villian-wise, the now infamous Mandarin twist is clever clever but kind of overshadows Guy Pearce’s main threat – his spurned scientist genuinely seems immoral and unstoppable until the final moments but maybe needed a few more time-outs to register as more than serviceable. The opening act is a wobbly hangover of previous chapters but after IM3 jumps the rails of what you expect it to be, this hit proves itself as more a Shane Black movie than a Marvel one. An hour in and we are riding a breathless, good natured blast right up until the end credits (and beyond). This exceeds all other Stark-centred adventures.
7
Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk
We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/
Harry Kümel directs Delphine Seyrig, Danielle Ouimet and John Karlen in this softcore lesbian vampire horror where a pair of newlyweds share a deserted Belgian resort with an immortal queen of the night.
A lot of arty tease, very little actual sex and even less violence. Until the final five minutes when things kick into bloody overdrive. Seyrig makes the whole listless, wispy enterprise worth watching. Her class and outlandish wardrobe overwhelm the coy seductions and slightly queasy suggestions of the supernatural. As recommended in Mark Gatiss’ brilliant documentary Horror Europa.
5
Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk
We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/
Philip Noyce directs Harrison Ford, Willem Dafoe and Donald Moffat in this Jack Ryan thriller where the CIA boy scout finds himself caught in a conspiracy involving a Columbia drug lord and a President sanctioning a secret war.
The best of the Jack Ryan adaptations. At its finest when teeing up the complex conspiracy and corporate confrontations. Although the action is pretty compelling when it interrupts the sinuous cable of subplots that bind the whole thing together. Probably telling that the most gripping moment in the entire franchise involves Harrison racing to refill his printer paper rather than sequences involving RPGs and smart missiles. Willem Dafoe has larks as the covert man of action, John Clark, and his bonus mini-movie captures the gung-ho flavour of one of Clancy’s massive timekiller tomes better than any other attempt. Ford eventually gets to be part of the fun in the final hour. Racing around behind enemy lines in a nice bit of Blue Harbour menswear and flashing his CIA business card like it is a Jedi mind trick. The mature, intelligent lead fits into the big finale organically without betraying his character’s less dynamic origins as a staid desk jockey. Ford then gets his true moment of triumph, and its a corker, when he faces down the dirty POTUS with grit and fortitude. What felt like a pretty standard summer studio release 25 years ago now feels like a type of blockbuster they just don’t bother with anymore. Shame that!
7
Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk
We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/
Henri-Georges Clouzot directs Pierre Fresnay, Micheline Francey and Pierre Larquey in this French thriller where a town is corrupted by a campaign of anonymous letters that reveals everyone’s secrets leading to deaths, accusations and lynch mobs.
A delightfully bleak pre-noir crime. Works perfectly well as a detective mystery or a damning allegory. Not only is the true story it is based around fascinating but the reaction to it from the Occupying Nazi forces at the time and the French government post-Liberation too. Even without knowing its twisted backstory, this is a compelling and acidic takedown of a community and humanity in general. Ginette Leclerc is memorable as a bedridden bad girl. The visuals are continually stark and playful. Genre delight for misanthropes.
9
Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk
We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/
Gore Verbinski directs Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley in this pirate adventure romp where a desperate Jack Sparrow tries to outwit and outrun a curse with the East India Trading Company also plotting his downfall.
Not as boring as I remember in the cinema. It goes on for way too long but Depp’s Jack is still fine value and the set-pieces he is actively involved in have a cartoonish physics to them. A threeway sword duel on a runaway miller’s wheel is particularly inventive. Every fifth or sixth scene seems to be a forced recap of the plot… almost as if Disney was already well aware the drooling masses who embraced this franchise were too dull eyed to keep up with all the triple crosses and mystic macguffins.
6
Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk
We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/
Philip Noyce directs Harrison Ford, Sean Bean and Anne Archer in this espionage thriller where former-CIA family man Jack Ryan angers a crazy IRA terrorist when he foils an assassination attempt on holiday.
One or two action sequences short of being impressive. What excitement there is is emotionally engaging rather than particularly eventful. That is down to Ford’s star power being so dependably exploited as the lead and Noyce zipping through the doorstep airport novel’s reams of subplots with a nimble confidence. Faultless but nothing special.
6
Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk
We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/
Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary 