For Your Eyes Only

Sunday 11th May

Blofeld is back, and so is the cat. Now I have to say that although I welcomed the absence of SPECTRE’s number one but with the recent tedious inevitability of the last few films I’ll admit I did smile when that fluffy little feline came on the screen.  The nostalgia is short-lived as Bond makes quick work of escaping from his hijacked helicopter and returns to head office unharmed.

Bond accidently teams up with Melina, a recently orphaned young woman trying to avenge her parents’ death; they start on separate missions to kill the same man.  Their friendship is short-lived, mostly because Bond is unimpressed by her little yellow car.

Q’s latest gadget, the identigraph is a very odd version of the software you use to build your own person at the start of the SIMS but this one also gives your character a nice little back story. This send James off to Italy for skiing and to meet Luigi, you have to admire Bond’s resilience given the amount of times he’s almost been killed out on the slopes it never seems to put him off.  After abandoning his new over-enthusiastic friend Bibi; Bond is chased around the resort by an Olympic skier with a gun, several people on motorbikes and a man in a funny hat managing to ruin a skiing lesson and several people’s lunch in the process.

Back with Melina in Greece and Bond soon abandons her for a Scouse girl that’s pretending to be a French countess, unfortunately she doesn’t last long and is dead before breakfast. On the flip side it does mean Bond finally gets to meet Columbo only to learn he’s chased down the wrong man; to celebrate their new found friendship the pair go on an adventure to track down the man with the funny hat, Bond finally manages to push him down a cliff in a car which is a very noisy way to die.

After this little adventure he rejoins Melina in an overly cheesy underwater diving scene complete with plinky plonky soundtrack to highlight their reunion. Still determined to track down her parents’ killer they enlist the help of Max the parrot and head off in a submarine which ends which them both being dragged behind a boat and hunted by sharks.  Once they’ve escaped it’s the parrot which turns out to have all the answers that leads them to the bad guys who all get killed before Bond destroys the ATAC machine and they all live happily ever after. Moral of the story – if possible always check with the parrot first.

I’ll be honest it’s taken me weeks to watch this and I’ve sat through the first forty minutes about four times.  I’ve forced myself through it so as to not ruin this challenge despite nearly stopping it several times. That in itself should highlight my opinion here; least favourite so far, by quite a way though it’s difficult to say why exactly. Lack of original plot? Defiantly! Lack of humour? Yep. Lack of decent characters? The parrot was my favourite. Also I think the opening scenes set decent expectations that just weren’t met by any of it so pretty disappointed by this one!

Moonraker

Sunday 30th March

So the last film was a misplaced submarine, well the clumsy theme continues as Moonraker explores the fate of a lost rocket, stolen whilst attached to the back of a British aircraft.

Starting off as we so often do James is one moment in the arms of a yound stewardess, the next she has a gun to his head – one has to admire Bond’s faith in humanity, a lesser man would have written off women by now considering how many either try to kill him or get killed following their encounters.

James travels to California to stay with Frenchman Dr Drax in an attempt to apologise for the misplacement of his rocket. Here Bond meets NASA trained Dr Holly Goodhead and avoids getting killed in a flight simulator using a tranquiliser dart. After seducing Drax’s PA in exchange for information Bond makes a swift escape to Italy; chasing down his new lead and coincidently, Dr Goodhead.

Though it would seem Bond’s enemies have also chased him to Venice, thankfully he has with him a turbo powered chitty chitty bang bang version of a gondola to outrun them in. A bit more detective work leads James to a secret lab where he manages to hijack a vial of clear liquid which as demonstrated shortly after has the ability to kill humans in less than a minute if inhaled. In a very sensible move James leaves the highly sensitive glass vial in his pocket while he has a quick fight with a ninja in a museum.

Further jetsetting sees Bond head over to Rio on ‘holiday’ but it seems when James goes on holiday the British secret service offices relocate with him and it’s not long before M and Q are sending him into the middle of the Brazilian jungle, where he discovers Drax’s secret space pad.

Jaws is back, he really is seemingly indestructible – though he does find himself a little girlfriend in this film, which is quite the heart-warming little subplot.

Drax is a pretty interesting villain, with a pretty eerie goal – to grow a new handpicked human super race in space whilst destroying all human life left on earth using a flower. Then return to Earth, assumedly head of the new super-race.   All this talk of perfection seems to get to Jaws, he’s not perfect but now he has his new girlfriend he has no desire to be eliminated and in a rather odd twist he actually teams up with Bond and Goodhead helping them send Drax on a little spacewalk.

If I’m honest, I’ve not been enjoying the Roger Moore films as much as the Sean Connery ones they’re overrun with clichés and cheesy lines which just make me cringe!