Shu of the South Star White Heron Fist - what will you witness in the end of this century!?

The World Is Not Enough is a good spy caper, but a rubbish Bond film. It's too much about Bond's feelings rather than Bond's doings, and for some reason drags M into the emo nonsense. The action scenes feel a little flat this time around, too, and the best indicator that things aren't firing on all cylinders is probably that the story is about someone restoring the power and influence of their feudal-era heritage and the name of the movie is the Bond family motto (as established in On Her Majesty's Secret Service), yet while these two elements could be organically worked into a conversation to drop the name of the film into the actual script, instead we get Bond simply saying that "the world is not enough" of a payoff to convince him to turn traitor. Oh, and this scene takes place in the city of Istanbul, which lies in lands conquered by Alexander the Great whose epitaph reads "A tomb now suffices him for whom the world was not enough." i think they could have worked something in there given a few minutes of thought, but what's done is done. It's okay, but forgettable.
I didn't think much of Die Another Day at the time thanks largely to negative word of mouth and a damnably awful Madonna theme that I got stuck listening to at work far too often and couldn't face having to sit through without access to a fast forward button, so DAD became the first Bond film I never saw in the cinema. Time has not revised the opinion I formed upon viewing it on local telly when it finally appeared - it's dumb in a bad way. The CGI doesn't help things too much, either, though I'll concede that there's only so many ways to realise someone out-surfing an orbital death laser and none of them are particularly convincing as visuals, probably. Hally Berry is a bit lifeless as Jinx, and Rosamund Pike's not great either, though there's probably few people alive that can give a good reading to lines like "It really is DEATH FOR BREAKFAST!" The villain needing a Power Ranger armor upgrade is also a bit weak as a conceit given he's portrayed from his first appearance as a deadly martial artist and marksman, but I guess what's one more crazy notion on top of invisible cars and orbital death rays? The escape from the burning plane is really badly done, too, but what sticks out is that yet again it's a 'Bond seeks revenge" tale when that's not only been done to death in the franchise already, it's always ended in the same way - Bond knowing revenge gains him nothing. And yet he goes after it yet again? No sale.
It passed the time, I guess, but it's a lacklustre final outing for the character given Casino Royale was a reboot.

While you were gone, the Globetrotters held a press conference informing everyone that I was a jive sucker.

I was really surprised how much I enjoyed the utterly daffy Octopussy, and also the rather unloved View to a Kill, which has some good moments, particularly Christopher Walken's scenery-chewing and the fire truck chase with nearly-sixty Roger Moore doing great but obviously finding the going tough enough that he retired from the role.
The Living Daylights and Licence To Kill represent the much-unloved Timothy Dalton's take on Bond and are both good entries in the series, but Dalton's playing the role closer to the source material alienated many of those brought up on the movie Bond. He's actually pretty great in the role, however, particularly in Licence To Kill where I'm convinced the way he plays it reveals a massive double-bluff being played on the audience with the whole "Bond is out for revenge!" premise, as Dalton's Bond deliberately harks back to the murder of Bond's own wife to forshadow why the character would feel the need for revenge against Robert Davi's Sanchez when regular Bond action-buddy Felix is grievously wounded and unable to exact revenge himself for the death of his bride on their wedding day, yet Bond always found revenge against Blofeld unfulfilling and his quest here thus seems rather unlikely as anything other than a massive ploy to put him in front of his target with a background as an "ex-secret service agent" as the perfect cover, with the added bonus of deniability if the yanks ever come sniffing around wondering why this uppity limey is sticking his nose in their business.
I recall Goldeneye being a lot better than it actually is, though perhaps this was relief at the time that Bond wasn't outdated by the collapse of the Soviet Union as many had suggested, even though the Soviets were never the direct threat in any of the Bond films - even in Goldeneye the true villains are a rogue general and MI6 agent. I also don't quite get what's happening in the pre-credits bit where the general has Bean's character at gunpoint and Bond is in the process of peacefully surrendering when the general shoots Bean so Bond goes back behind cover and the general demands he come out despite the fact he's just shot his only bargaining tool while his demands were being met, and Bean's character we know is a traitor in cahoots with the general who's just shot him, so what is going on there? Do they actually want Bond to escape and tell the world Bean's character is dead? I just didn't follow the plan at all.
There's some great bits like the St Petersburg tank/car chase, but the bit where the Mig crashes into the satellite dish looks like someone's thrown one toy at another. Famke Jansen's Xenia Onatopp is a great turn, and Bean's alright, but plays it too smarmy to be convincing as a threat even though the scraps with him and Bond are brief and brutal.
Tomorrow Never Dies was pretty great, with good action sequences like the motorbike/helicopter chase and pre-credits sequence, but Michelle Yeoh disappoints with the laughably incompetent Wei Lin, who sets off alarms and gets captured by villains with a regrettable ease that undermines her action girl credibility even more than her lacklustre solo fight scene that isn't a patch on what Yeoh's done in her Hong Kong-based film career in flicks like Heroic trio and Police Story 3. The villain is also a bit weak, but at least his motivation - while daffy - is pretty original.

Let's make this a proper family reunion. Give me your gun.

Fist King, do you control even death?!

What benevolent god would ask such things of men?

I shall reject love - for I bear the cursed star of death!

Only getting around to today's Bond movie now, For Your Eyes Only, and I'm a bit baffled by the callback to On Her Majesty's Secret Service in the pre-credits sequence, but like the idea that every year on the anniversary of his wife's death Bond kills the man responsible all over again like a little ritual, and that through this they're acknowledging that Bond is an agent getting on in years - Moore was 45 when he started playing the role. Only 20-odd minutes in so far and I can see they're setting up the whole "revenge is hollow" plot, but it seems a bit odd to be coming from Moore's Bond less than half an hour after he looked really pleased with himself about getting revenge on a cripple by murdering him unnecessarily, but I'll probably like this one as I love Moore enough to even overlook the fact that he's a Tory.

Tremble as you sleep, villains in the Valley of Night Fog!

Still watching my way chronologically through the Bond series, and of You Only Live twice I have vague memories of the film igniting a fascination with Japan that still endures, and Kissy Suzuki is one hot tamale. I love how Bond undergoes advanced Japanese surgical techniques to make him look Japanese and at the end comes out looking exactly the same except for a bowl haircut. Also, from this point in the series, Bond is officially a ninja.
On Her majesty's Secret Service - my main issue with this is only that it's too long. It's a bit Austin Powers in Bond's dress and he seems to have achieved a lot of fame for a "secret" agent, but there's a great bobsleigh chase - because obviously if you have to escape a mountain a bobsleigh is your first choice of vehicle - and Diana Rigg is good, especially when she's threatened by a nameless thug and tries to slice his face off with a broken bottle before pulling him through a wall, or when she looks less than bothered to have driven her car into a stock car race. Neat pre-credits sequence, too.
Diamonds Are Forever - upping the slapstick a bit too much, there's also no getting away from the odd plot point of Bond working in the interests of South African diamond miners circa the mid-70s. A couple of potentially great setpieces (Bambi/Thumper and the oil rig assault) are wasted with pedestrian direction and editing. Nice Moon Buggy chase.
Live and Let Die - great for all the wrong reasons, especially Bond smoking a cigar while hang gliding and lines like "great disguise you got there - a white face in Harlem" and "I saw those cards on the way up - spades, James." not helping things. It's also pretty low-tech until about fifteen minutes from the end when Bond just stumbles into a secret underground base complete with shark tank and bullet train. And "Pimpmobile" is an actual make of car according to the CIA. Which is fantastic.
The Man With The Golden Gun - Christopher Lee! My only memory of this one is of the little person Nick Nack, the breathtaking scenery of "China" - which is apparently actually Thailand - and Christopher Lee voicing Scaramanga in the game Goldeneye: Rogue Agent as a dark alternate to Q, providing your anti-Bond super-assassin with his fancy gadgets so he can track down and kill Pussy Galore and Dr No and the like for SPECTRE. The film is a little different from the usual Bond as it's basically about him versus the world's greatest assassin, and although there's some international intrigue shoehorned in with a super-efficient solar conversion cell that will change the world somehow, I didn't like it much despite all the good stuff like Britt Ekland looking great, a pretty good car stunt and Bond fighting a little person as it's basically a couple of great moments in a still-overlong outing.
The Spy Who Loved Me - held up as the greatest film of all time by Alan Partridge, this is probably not that. It features some pretty memorable moments like the first appearance of Jaws and a car so fantastic it could only be better if it was a robot and made of money, but from here things get a bit outrageous for the franchise for better or worse. Great model work (remember that before CGI came along?) and a daffy plot that seems more at home in a pastiche of Bond than in an actual Bond film make for a memorable outing, though.
Moonraker takes things to illogical heights with US marines making an assault on an orbital space station, but I remember this being up there with Star Wars when I were a nipper - then I remember that I wasn't really that into Star Wars and this is no recommendation at all. Still good fun, but Bond driving a hovercraft gondola around Venice complete with funny-noises double-takes from disbelieving pigeons is a bit too far into parody territory even if Moore admirably plays the whole thing deadly serious. The villain is a bit boring and the whole thing is far too long for my liking, but as badly dated sci-fi matinees go this one's still pretty watchable.