I’ve never watched any James Bond movie and recently Netflix added all of them so I decided why not finally binge em all.
Just finished You Only Live Twice. They are…
Whew they really are old damnnn.I don’t really enjoy them that much, and I can’t wait to get to the more modern movies.
Old movies are really theatrical in their acting which I don’t really enjoy, and deaths function kinda on a tagging system (I.e. one stab or bullet instantly kills) which breaks my immersion quite a lot. I know that that was just the style at the time but omgg it just makes most deaths hilarious.
While I do think there’s are some sly bits of movie magic to be gained from the early Bonds, you’re bang on the money that it’s hard to view them with modern eyes as the balls to the wall action movies they were intended to be.
Still, as every expensive travelogues of fancy locales frozen in amber, they’re pretty neat. The slow editing pace helps with that. I’m thinking of one of the Istanbul scenes in From Russia with Love in particular. If I remember right, the camera is plunked down on a tripod, and, in an unbroken take, we see Bond and Bond Girl enter a hotel, walk across the lobby, check in at the front desk, and then walk to the elevators. For better or for worse, this scene would be chopped to bits in a modern movie. But, in 1963, you have all the time in the world to look around at the architecture and costumes and extra business going on in the periphery. Admittedly, I’m a history geek, so I understand that this may sound like, “oh you’re bored by watching paint dry? Have you tried watching grass grow?”, but it works for me!
I somewhat disagree that such a long take would be chopped to bits in a modern movie. There are contemporary examples of great long takes and I think this really comes down to the creatives behind the movie. If anything, modern technology has made long takes even better (see 1917 as an example), they just go underutilized.
Yes, modern movies do occasionally employ oners, but they are usually employed for specific stylistic or narrative reasons. I’ve not seen 1917, but I have seen Children of Men, which I believe has similar rationale behind the choice, i.e. the characters are in intense, overwhelming, violent and chaotic situations, and the technique is to allow the audience to experience the environment in a way which approximates how the characters are perceiving it. Even if you don’t buy my back-of-napkin film theory, you can surely agree that memorable oners from modern movies typically keep the audience’s interest by having lots of stuff happen in-frame, managing energy through blocking rather than editing.
Notably, modern oners aren’t typically done by rooting the camera in place, and having a mundane scene play out with minimal movement, intrigue, or information being communicated. It’s not unheard of, see Zemeckis’ Here, or It Follows, but in both cases that decision is informed by the movies’ premises. In the case of the latter, it actually wrings tension out of the mundane by using dramatic irony to show things to the audience that the characters are unaware of, and the long takes let you marinate in dread.
However, this is not the case in From Russia with Love. In the scene I mentioned, I don’t recall any serious exposition being delivered, or anything of note being shown off by the decision to not cut. Instead you’re just watching Bond check into a hotel from the middle of the lobby. Rather it was just the style of the time to let scenes play, regardless of whether or not it was serving the story. In a modern movie, you would accomplish the same thing with an establishing shot of an Aston Martin pulling up to swanky hotel, a cut to Bond and Girl at the counter for perhaps a bit of witty repartee, and then a cut to them in the room. If there’s no narrative or stylistic reason for the audience to see the logistics of how characters get from here to there, it’s excised.
Like I said, I like em, but it’s because these choices make it feel like I’m watching somebody’s grandparents’ Uber expensive home movie from a vacation they took in the 60s.
Anaconda (2025)
I don’t know why but tried to watch it yesterday while eating lunch and its not good. I did leave it on to finish so maybe it’s not bad but more like a 4/10 rating.
Agreed. I had a little bit of fun with it, just cause I’ll always find the premise of “a movie about idiots making movies” to be fun, but I don’t feel like they made good on it. Not that a comedy lega-sequel needs to be a serious metatextual analysis, but I hoped more of the humor would derive from low budget movie making. The whole thing was like a lukewarm TV dinner. I’m not above it…but I’m also not enthused about any portion of it other than the two tablespoons of overly sweet apple crumble for dessert (this would be the cameo at the end, which was pandering and ridiculous, but also kinda funny).
Also, “Buffalo Sober” got a real good laugh out of me.
Blade Runner - Final Cut
Picked up the 4K HDR release as a “treat yourself” Christmas gift.
In my sea of geeky qualities, chief among them is the fact I let out an audible “Oh, wow…” after the opening cut to the LA skyline. Stunning is the only adjective I can think of to describe the visual feast the movie lays out, and this new transfer captures aspects of the sets, costuming, and overall texture which I’ve never noticed before. In fact, the degree of clarity is such that it belies the constructed nature of the world at times. You can see micro-inconsistencies in scale which reveal buildings to be miniatures, and the seams between said miniature cityscapes and matte paintings are easily detectable. Not that any of that matters. By the time the Tyrell Corporation headquarters is revealed, I had become fully immersed in the cyberpunk future of 2019.
However.
While this is undoubtedly the best the movie has ever looked, I’m also beginning to understand what Harrison Ford meant when he said (of the director’s cut version in 2000) “They haven’t put anything in, so it’s still an exercise in design.” Previously, it was easy to chalk that up to Harrison Ford being a grump, but, on this viewing, it became clear how little energy the film spends on developing Rachel’s character, which, in turn, makes Deckard’s whole arc fall flat. Granted, ambiguity is a big theme of the movie, so we were never going to get these characters to sit down and have a forthright conversation with one another about their wants and needs. I can sort of sketch in some details about why Rachel might latch onto Deckard, but it feels more like idle speculation than textual interpretation, and I have even less to go off of for Deckard’s interest in Rachel. Not to mention the slap-slap/kiss-kiss dynamic they have early on. I get that Scott is playing with film noir tropes and what not, but some things should stay in the 1940s.
So, as far as it goes as an “exercise in design”, its 5/5, top tier, awe-inspiring stuff. As a narrative feature, well, it’s got flaws, but they’re well-worth pushing past to enjoy everything else.
Final tidbit: Rutger Hauer is just amazing here. Some of the things he is asked to say are so navel-gazey and maudlin, but he manages to pull it off (with assistance from the movie’s elegiac tone, which helps the pretension go down).
I saw Amadeus (1984), which I never had watched before.
It was incredible; give it a watch if you haven’t seen it. Of course it’s largely Mozart fan fiction, but the sets, costumes, drama, acting, and (naturally) music are such a delight.
That’s a good one.
I watched Marty Supreme.
Even though it was a busy movie with lots of crazy adventures, it just seemed too long.
I’d still recommend it.
Documentary about a bunch of artists who got kicked out of their space when mall developers bought up the land they lived on. A few of them went back to the mall after it finished construction and found a hidden unused space inside the mall and created a living space there.
They had electricity, furniture, and a whole fake wall built to better hide it and everything. A really fascinating watch!
Door Lock (2018) - didn’t know going in that this was a sort of rework of a (better) movie that i had already seen. it was watchable for my late nite trash purposes but i probably would not recommend it.
Within the Pines (2024) - cool premise & nicely shot & great sound design but not enough happening for the length.
The Hitch-Hiker (1953) - finally getting around to this one and it was quite a banger, the only one from this week that i actually do recommend.
Redux Redux (2025) - started out very strong but lost me once the pace slowed down & people started talking more. but i’m always happy to give some lo-fi scifi a go.
Rewatching some oldies: Fear with Marky Mark Thelma & Louise
