[2] John Carpenter has given us a handful of gems over the years, but Ghosts of Mars is not one of them. The movie’s too exotic for its own good. It starts with some quick but tedious exposition, then plops us off in a confusing, alienating environment with little to latch onto. The story has something to do with ghosts and a bunch of leftover …
[6] The stakes are lower than usual and the action in short supply, but Roger Moore’s second outing as James Bond almost makes up for it in character. The colorful supporting cast includes Christopher Lee as a three-nippled baddie and diminutive Hervé Villechaize (TV’s Fantasy Island) as his lethal handy-man. Britt Ekland and Maud Adams are the Bond girls this time around, and I’d rank both of …
[6] This may be Roger Moore’s quintessential outing as James Bond, but The Spy Who Loved Me suffers from a wretched co-starring performance from Barbara Bach (Mrs. Ringo Starr) and a boisterous, sloppily choreographed climax on the sea. This is also the Bond that begins to tilt the franchise’s tone from ‘tongue-in-cheek’ to slapstick, thanks primarily to the introduction of the goofy Jaws (Richard Kiel) …
[5] James Bond (Roger Moore) goes into outer space to stop a bad guy’s plot to… you know, destroy the world. While Moonraker packs more action than most other Bond films, it’s also sillier than most. Richard Kiel’s ridiculous Jaws character makes an unwelcome return and the final act aboard the space station is laughably inappropriate for the franchise. At one point, after Bond has …
[3] A detective and a rookie cop team up to find a bad guy. I know. How original. Charlie Sheen gets my nomination for least charismatic performance in a motion picture here. The word “driftwood” comes to mind. The Rookie is hokey in a bad way, probably the worst Eastwood-directed movie I’ve ever seen. The whole thing feels like a studio’s desperate attempt to come …
[5] After the unbridled silliness of Moonraker, For Your Eyes Only makes an effort to dial down the franchise’s more comic-book qualities. After an unceremonious pre-title demise of long-time supervillain Blofeld, For Your Eyes Only achieves that goal, but it struggles to forge a unique identity in the series. With yet another villain seeking nuclear power and a rehash of skiing and underwater stunts from …
[7] Robert Rodriquez and Frank Miller join forces, with a little help from guest director Quentin Tarantino, to bring Miller’s much-loved Sin City to the screen. The result is less a film adaptation than a graphic novel come to life. The color palette is restrained, usually resorting to faithful recreations of Miller’s black and white panel work. The hyper-stylized approach works well for a movie …
[8] A dorky teenager (Aaron Johnson) decides to dress up like a superhero and help people in need. He encounters a few other kids with similar ambitions, and before you know it, you have a hyper-violent, low-rent, joyous abomination of the superhero flick. Director and co-screenwriter Matthew Vaughn (Layer Cake) takes some unpredictable turns, railing against our expectations to create some terrific edge-of-your-seat moments. Nothing …
[6] Roger Moore is looking worse for wear in his penultimate outing as James Bond, but Octopussy still satisfies on most levels. This time around, Bond is trying to uncover a global jewel-smuggling operation that ends up being a cover for a nuclear attack against NATO forces. I like that Desmond Llewelyn, as curmudgeonly Q, has a larger part this time around, and I’m also …
[8] A psychotic businessman (Christopher Walken) plans to plunge Silicon Valley into the ocean to create a worldwide microchip monopoly for himself in Roger Moore’s final outing as James Bond. A View to Kill is more aggressively paced than other Bond films, and features more than its fair share of set pieces and stunts, including a parachute jump off the Eiffel Tower and a climactic gunfight atop …
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