James Bond Edition
As many of you know, I am a fan of Amazon Prime video selections. Each month they publish their upcoming video selection on their site, but what is worth seeing?
This month, Amazon brought back a ton of the James Bond movies onto Prime, so I’m going to go through some of my favorites!!! ALL THE BOND MOVIES BELOW ARE FREE RIGHT NOW ON AMAZON PRIME!
Here’s a list of my picks for the month:
I decided I’m going to go in roughly the order of my favorite first and move on from there. This is a highly controversial first pick, but I love On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969). Why? Well, it’s not George Lazenby, though he isn’t as bad as he is often made out to be. In fact, his lack of true acting ability and kind of stone cold aspect fits what you would expect from an assassin with a license to kill. It also is not Telly Savalas, who is probably my favorite actor to play Blofeld. Yes, Donald Pleasance has the creepy factor, but Telly Savalas seems more a match for him. No, the reason is Diana Rigg and the glorious stunts. Before CGI, kiddies, real stunt people took their lives into their hands to give us all a fun thrill. The snow bound stunts of this flick are incredible. If you’ve avoided this one because of Lazenby, put that aside and give it a try. There’s a reason the producers wanted to sign Lazenby in a multi-picture deal…the movie is truly superb.
Here’s another pick to drive people nuts: 1977’s The Spy Who Loved Me. The Roger Moore movies certainly were the most uneven. Some entries featured fantastic villains like Christopher Lee in The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), some had the sexiest Bond women like Jane Seymour in Live and Let Die (1973) some were gritty before that was fashionable like 1981’s For Your Eyes Only (1981)…and then there was silly nonsense like Moonraker (1979) and A View to a Kill (1985). However, The Spy Who Loved Me was about as perfect as they get. Great villain with an iconic heavy of Richard Kiel as Jaws, future wife of Ringo Starr, Barbara Bach as a Soviet superspy and some of the best action sequences of the series. And let’s not forget that Lotus that doubles as a submarine!
I now turn to my third favorite and third time I piss off the James Bond bigots…let’s hear it for Timothy Dalton. Dalton is in two of the best Bond movies made: The Living Daylights (1987) and License to Kill (1989). The Living Daylights was the return to grit that Daniel Craig’s Casino Royale (2006-not free right now) was always lauded for…but it was ahead of its time. License to Kill is simply James Bond making an 80’s action film like Die Hard (1988-not free on prime) (the villain was even in Die Hard : Robert Davi). They really let Dalton cut loose, get violent, and muss his hair once in a while. It even kills of Felix Leitner by way of shark attack! I saw both of these in the cinema and at the time, people in the theater loved them. BUT they always wanted Pierce Brosnan. I can’t explain why they were turned off of Dalton…but they were and it is a shame. Great flicks!
Now most will tell you Goldfinger (1965) is Sean Connery’s finest Bond outing, and they may be right, but let me build the case for From Russia With Love (1964). Why? Because the fight with Robert Shaw as a psychotic steel cold bloodless blue eyes….like a doll’s eyes…in the train is just IMPOSSIBLE to beat. They build it quietly throughout the film so when it actually happens it is like the lid is blown off. –If you are looking for a Connery film often overlooked, Diamonds Are Forever (1971) is pretty darn good and features the recently departed Sid Haig…and two very funny killers: Mr. Kidd and Mr. Wind. Want to see the worst James Bond film? Sean Connery made it twice! Thunderball (1965) and Never Say Never Again (1983). Both can help you catch up on your sleep. At least when Roger Moore was making bad Bonds, they were fun to watch!
That leads us to Pierce Brosnan, who had a checkered Bond career as well (kind of a theme) . Though I loved GoldenEye (1995-not free right now) as his premiere in the role, I’m going to defend the honor of The World Is Not Enough (1999). Robert Carlyle in his pre-Rumpelstiltskin days, was a wonderfully maniacal villain, Sophie Marceau was a smoking hot Bond girl….or is she? and Denise Richards is good for looking at. The action is strong in this one and the final confrontation is one of the better fights of the entire series. Get past how good that nuclear scientist in the midriff showing T-Shirt looks, and you have a solid thriller with some actual surprises…not bad for a series that spans back to when people could smoke cigarettes in restaurants…and airplanes!