The World Is Not Enough (1999)

Rating: 55%
Brosnan film #3, here's The World Is Not Enough.

Plot: The film starts off with Bond retrieving money for a billionaire named Sir Robert King only to witness the Swiss Banker getting assassinated in the process before telling any information about the person who killed an M16 agent. But shortly after bringing the money to King, the money turns out to be booby-trapped killing King. So M assigns Bond to protect King's daughter Elektra whom M believes is targeted to be captured and held ransom by former KGB agent Renard.

Okay Brosnan is still doing alright and we still have some nice while not great action scenes. And I kind of liked how they made the villain kind of interesting with how he has a bullet that blocks his senses and stuff like that. I would however agree with other people that the plot was a little confusing, at least in the sense that I wasn't always sure where precisely it was going. But what seems to really hurt this movie and I mean REALLY hurt it is Denise Richards' performance as Dr. Christmas Jones. Her performance apparently hurt this film to the point that she won Worst Supporting Actress at the Razzies and is commonly declared the worst Bond girl, bar none. This has been viewed to be the case for a couple of reasons 1) Just because she's wearing a tank top and short shorts, 2) the line "I thought Christmas only comes once a year." and 3) she wasn't very believable as a nuclear physicist because she's wearing a tank top and such short shorts and just plain her acting. All of this I only MOSTLY agree with. While I wasn't paying attention to her acting a whole lot, I will admit that she wasn't much of a character and I especially get it that even though her character did know nuclear stuff to help give Bond some information at what the antagonists where doing, that still didn't make her convincing seeing as most nuclear physicists probably close to never wear that kind of clothing on the job. But worst bond girl? That's a bit far. Because so far when I think of what falls in line to being a bad bond girl, is how they are bland and mostly forgettable. And what makes some bond girls the absolute worse are the ones that are mainly helpless bimbos/just plain bimbos such as Tiffany Case in Diamonds Are Forever, Mary Goodnight in The Man With The Golden Gun, and Bibi Dahl in For Your Eyes Only. I mean come on guys, I can get disliking Richards' characters because she's suppose to be a nuclear physicist when she's really just a bad actress in clothes that aren't making her convincing, but I ask you; is that really worse then two bumbling, helpless women wearing nothing but their BIKINIS and a kind of annoying teenager sneaking into the hotel room of a guy in his mid-50s expecting to get laid the moment he comes in finding her naked in his bed?

And that's my review for The World Is Not Enough. While I can agree that Richards' characters is one of the worst Bond girls, there's enough from previous girls from these film for the to argue that calling her THE worst is too far. But that aside, it was a Bond film that still has a good Bond and has good action and a kind of interesting villain, it just needed improvement as far has understanding for sure what was happening in the plot during a good portion of the movie. It's not the absolute worst, but it's not the greatest.

Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)

Rating: 65%
Okay Brosnan film #2 and altogether Bond film #18, here's how it turned out for me with Tomorrow Never Dies.

Plot: Media baron Elliot Carver who is the head of the Carver Media Group Network, is making plans to use a GPS encoder to provoke a war between China and United Kingdom in order to gain exclusive broadcast rights. M sends Bond to investigate by trying to get in contact with Paris, Bond's former girlfriends and Carver's trophy wife. But this becomes more difficult when Carver becomes aware of who Bond is and a Chinese spy named Wai Lin continues to interfere despite being on the same case.

Well to this films credits, it does for the most part act and have a lot of aspects to what makes a good Bond film. Brosnan was still doing a fairly good job as Bond, Wai Lin and for the most part Paris were good bond girls while not completely standing out, the action was great - I especially liked how we got more into Bond's car and the gadgets that it has considering that all that introducing from the previous film frankly seemed to have been for nothing. But what makes this film not exactly great is the villain and therefore the story. I'm all for the concept of starting a World War III and all that, but...starting it just for broadcast rights? That's...just...dumb. To be fair, you can argue that it at least makes Carver unique with what his evil plan it and why he's doing it. Heck, in terms of evil plot, one could argue that he's technically, kind of, sort of as unique as Goldfinger when you think about why he's doing it unlike a lot of the other villains. But the fact that it's for broadcast rights...that's just stupid - or at least to me. Granted you can argue that in a way it makes sense and it's interesting at how psychotic he really is, but that's my two cents to I digress.

And that's my review for Tomorrow Never Dies, it was great in terms of the Bond girls, the action and the gadgets, I just think the story and the motivation for the villain to be a little goofy despite how at the same time it makes him come out as a more memorable villain in a way. It's not the best, but it's still a nice action-packed Bond film.

Goldeneye (1995)

Rating: 80%With only seven more Bond films to watch, let's get started with Pierce Brosnan's films with Bond film #17, Goldeneye.

Plot: Xenia Onatopp steals a Eurocopter Tiger - which is designed to stand an electromagnetic pulse - and uses it to escape when she and General Arkady Ourumov use it to escape when they kill the staff of a bunker in Severnaya and steal the control disc to the Goldeneye satellite weapons. So the new M has sent Bond to stop them with the help of the only survivor from the bunker, Natalya Simonova.

 This movie easily puts Pierce Brosnan at a good start with his Bond. While Brosnan is no Connery anymore then the rest of the other Bonds, he fit the bill a lot closer then his predecessors. He was more action packed, he was more charming, and most noticeable to me, had a more younger look too James Bond then most of the other Bonds. Also Judi Dench turns out to become the new M for the franchise and she's starting off to a very strong start too. She's stronger, more strict, and isn't afraid to tell Bond how little tolerance she takes over who he really is. The action to this movie is also great as per usual, though where was an unique, amusing moment where Bond is chasing the bad guys with a tank. And it does have some gadgets to show us while there isn't an awful lot...though why the heck did they introduce the car with Q and actually never really use any of its features? The Bond girls were good for the most part - Natalya did start off as something of a damsel in distress, but she did get better as she was actually helping Bond. Xenia was...weird. Because the unique characteristic about her is that she gets sexual satisfaction from killing and torturing people. Again, that is a unique characteristic to her credit and makes her more memorable as a Bond girl, but...sheesh that woman was nuts. The villains for the most part were not completely memorable except for Sean Bean who I'm starting to wonder why he seems to be a villain in almost everything I've seen of him outside of The Lord of the Rings. Anyway, while his backstory wasn't done too incredibly well, it was something different from most of the other bond films, which is naturally something I often appreciate when it comes to a lot of the villains.  Finally, while I don't talk about the title sequences to these films an awful lot, this particular one was awesome! the sang, the visuals, it was just really entertaining.

And that's my review for Goldeneye. It had great action, a great new M, a Bond that's off to a fairly good start, two very good Bond girl even if one is particularly memorable for a very weird reason in my opinion, and it was an enjoyable film altogether

X-Men 3: The Last Stand

Rating: 55%
Alright everyone, we finally come to the last film for the X-men marathon. Let's finish going through all these films to date with X-Men: The Last Stand.

Plot: After the events of the second film, the government has become allies with the X-Men - helping with chasing Magneto and Mystique, and not going after the mutant population as a whole. But when a young mutant boy possess the power to take away, Worthington Labs uses him to develop a cure that can suppress the powers of the mutants, offering to cure anyone who wants it. Meanwhile, the X-Men find Jean Grey alive but becoming dangerous to everyone around her resulting in her accidentally killing Cyclops and joining forces with Magneto.

Now as far as what generally happens in the movie, it's fairly good. Because with this movie we see the world of mutants expand more then it ever did in X2, some characters like Colossus and Kitty Pride a.k.a. Shadowcat (but I think most of us like calling her just Kitty Pryde) get more screen time, we finally get the war that Magneto and Professor X have been talking about throughout the last two films, we even go into Jean Grey with her alternate personality known as Phoenix. All of this and a little more shows that X-Men: The Last Stand for the most part has the right story to make a great, effective film to finish the X-Men trilogy. Unfortunetly, how they execute it, doesn't leave people quite as satisfied as everybody would really like it to be. The more common reason why is that while it all wasn't done in a  "oh dear heaven no!" kind of bad way, it ended up lacking the atmosphere, emotion and all around soul that the first two movies had. Matthew Vaughn especially who was originally suppose to direct the movie pointed out that he did the script and all that before he dropped out and that his version of The Last Stand would've been 40 minutes longer and would've had more emotion and heart and that this one didn't really let the drama and the emotions just play. This was something that I more or less felt when I first saw this movie a couple of years ago. And while I wasn't too much into X-Men at the time, even after seeing this again where I've become a little more into it in term of both comics and TV, I was left admitting that it was lacking in the right kind of atmosphere and emotion that otherwise would've made this film a really big finale. One of the reasons I felt this way had to with the characters. Now while I do feel that there was development to some of them that worked or was done fairly well such as Wolverine, Beast and Storm, and how they interacted with each other, what was happening to everyone else among the X-Men was kind of off or not necessary. Main examples would be 1) Cyclops for one didn't really get much of a death. 2) Kitty and Cyclops sadly enough didn't have a whole lot of development even though they've become new members of the X-Men and it seemed like the right thing to do, to go into them even more after they were more noticeably introduced in X2. 3) throughout the film, there is a love triangle between Iceman, Kitty and Rouge that came out of no where, made little sense considering Rouge and Iceman's relationship during the second film, and was altogether not very emotional and kind of forced, and 4) the last scene with Professor X should've been really emotional, but with the lack of emotion and even music left what happened as something to just look at and go "Well alight then." then really having an emotion for it. Oh and just on a more personal note, I dislike what they did with Juggernaut with him not really acting serious and how his costume looked really stupid - especially with the helmet. The other reason is the climax at the very end which for the most part had great action, but not only did it not have a lot of emotion, it was a little confusing at what was happening during the first half of the final battle.

And that's my review for X-Men: The Last Stand. It had the right story and had some decent action, but it was made without the right atmosphere and emotion to let everything that happens concerning drama, characters or the climax just let it go and sink in and therefore make the whole thing a great way to finish the trilogy. Some people like Doug Walker will consider that it does anyway and view it as a guilty pleasure, but it's otherwise the weakest of the trilogy, and the second weakest X-Men film all around (unless you're among the people who treat Wolverine Origins like it doesn't exist at all.)

So that's all the X-Men films to date reviewed. Watching all of them again inducing First Class, it's a very mixed but otherwise enjoyable franchise. The trilogy on a whole was a well done way to introduce the whole world of X-Men despite whatever flaws each film had, Wolverine Origins had one or two interesting ideas but was otherwise just clumsy, and First Class has a couple of things that leave you confused about how it's suppose to connect with the trilogy but is otherwise a very smart and thought of prequel that succeeded in expanding the X-Men universe in film a little bit more. And now during the next 11 months we have The Wolverine during the end of July and X-Men: Days of Future Past as a sequel to First Class and technically The Last Stand. Both upcoming films can be great ways to help X-Men give us great films again as First Class started to do for the most part - while also becoming great parts of phase two of Marvel's films in general. But will they succeed? Tune in a month from now as we will begin to find out with The Wolverine.  

The Deer Hunter (1978)

Rating: 95%
The third to last best picture winner and the second to last one from the 70's, here's The Deer Hunter.

Plot: Mike, Nicky and Steven are Russian American steel mill workers who are drafted to fight in Vietnam. Shortly before this, Steven gets married to his pregnant girlfriend Angela, and the three friends along with their other friends Stanley, Axel and John go on one last deer hunt. What happens after that...I'll keep my mouth shut on.

I was told that this movie was good, but that didn't stop me from being surprised at how specifically good it was. The story was very well told, the acting was great, the choice of cast was rather remarkable in a way. I mean we have Robert De Niro, Meryl Streep, John Cazale, even Christopher Walken was in this film giving a pretty good and likable performance, and I don't say that often when it comes to that guy to be frank. I should also note that this is sadly the last film John Cazale performed in before he died. He had terminal cancer and the studio had to be convinced by the director, Michael Cimino and Meryl Streep whom he was dating at the time (yeah I know right? who would've thought?) to be allowed to perform in the project and he sadly didn't live to see the film. But anyway, one of the main complaint people will have about this film is how in Vietnam, the Vietnamese are using Russian roulette with their POW's when it's been reported that there wasn't even a shred of that in the actual war. But other people like Roger Ebert argued - to which I agree with - it worked better that this film had that because it gave a really good symbolism that gives an ideal about war in general, not just Vietnam. And as the film progresses, it went much more into what war does in both symbolic and literal ways. However it there is one down I would find it that the film is a little bit too long. Not so much that a huge chunk should've been let out, but it still could've been a slight bit shorter.

And that's my review for The Deer Hunter. it's not recommended if you're after a historically accurate view of Vietnam, but it still tells a great story with excellent acting, very good symbolism, and is just a great film altogether with little wonder that it won best picture.  

Going My Way (1944)

Rating: 90%
Okay. Only four more best picture winners to go, let's get to the second to last winner to review from the 40's, Going My Way.

Plot: St. Dominic's is a catholic church that for the past 45 years (46 in October *drum Rimshot*) has been under the leadership and care of Father Fitzgibbon. When the church is facing financial problems, the bishop assigns Father Chuck O'Malley to help. But O'Malley goes on a rough head start when his informal appearance and attitude gets him into trouble. Nevertheless, O'Malley uses his charm and cleverness to try to transform the church and the people in the town for the better.

This is another film that's very light, charming and simple. But this one may have more charm, emotion, wit and dramatic moments then You Can't Take It With You at certain points. Bing Crosby as Father O'Malley was a very likable guy with his charming sort of optimism and cleverness on how to change the way things went in St. Dominic's and tries to help what's happening to Father Fitzgibbon and the townspeople. Bing Crosby's performance has been known to have been so good that he unsurprisingly won Best Actor for his performance for this film and also played the same character in The Bells of St. Mary's where he was at least nominated again for the same category. Now one argument against this film that I kind of noticed when I saw this movie again for reviewing is that O'Malley might not necessarily be a particularly well done character. That in the rough words of one audience reviewer in Rotten Tomatoes, Jim Hunter, he's not entirely good as a character because he's too perfect. And I can see that; he wasn't really challenged buy what was happening and there wasn't really a side that was any different from him appearing as anything less then practically flawless. But with this kind of movie, he's not really suppose to be. Even if some of the things he does is arguably too simplistic and some solutions to some problems are practically handed to him with ease, that doesn't exactly make him and therefore the film bad. Because even if that is the case, they handle it really well, sometimes with really good wit or charm, but otherwise with some really good emotional moments too. And there isn't exactly no conflict at all - there's one turn during the last half hour or so of the movie that for the most part was pretty dramatic and well timed. And it's not just O'Malley to pay attention to. Some of the other characters like Fitzgibbon and also Father O'Dowd were also very enjoyable. In fact Barry Fitzgerald was nominated for both leading and supporting role for being Fitzgibbon and won supposting. (Yeah I don't know how being nominated for both worked either.)

And that's my review for Going My Way it's a charming and witting film that despite some arguments, does have a fair amount of emotion and drama at some points and has some memorable characters, but most notably Bing Crosby as Father O'Malley. It's not the most conflicting or complex film, but it doesn't need to be to be a particularly enjoyable film. 

You Cant' Take It With You (1938)

Rating: 85%
Alright so finally I get to the last best picture winner to review from the 30's. So let's finish this decade with You Can't Take It With You.

Plot: Tony is the son of a wealthy banker, Anthony P. Kirby who has fallen in love with his secretary, Alice. Alice tries to arrange to have Tony's parents meet her eccentric family, but they all find out that her grandfather, Grandpa Vanderhof is the person responsible for stopping Anthony from destroying his neighborhood for a large deal.

This movie is kind of hard to review because it's definitely one of the very nice, very charming kind of films that are a little hard to find anything particularly unlikable about it. While it can be a little slow and more or less predictable at what happens at the end, it's for the most part a light and simple film with charming characters, a great cast to perform them, some cute comedy that's rarely used but is still done pretty well, and a good fun simple story all around. The most notable actors/characters are Lional Barrymore as Grandpa Vanderhof with his optimism, wit and wisdom, (though I can't believe that's the same guy that plays Mr. Potter in It's A Wonderful Life), Mischa Auer as Kolenkhov mostly because of how her delivers his lines for whenever he says that something stinks, and of coarse James Stewart as Tony. Why? BECAUSE IT'S FRICKING JA-...you know what? Most of you regular viewers out there have probably read my review for The Greatest Show on Earth, so you know how I feel about the guy. Anyway, the only real complaint with this film that some people seem to have is how it's message can seem preachy. And I can see why people would feel that way with how it plays a bit more into the 'money can't buy you happiness" kind of theme more or less, but for the most part, that's what make this film so simple, it leaves a good message that is a cliche today but isn't necessarily less important then it was back them it came out. Plus they told it in a rather unique way considering how particularly eccentric the Vanderhof family are, and that's a good thing to have I think with such a message.

And that's my review for You Can't Take It With You. Even if it's somewhat slow and predictable and has a message you've probably hear before, it still has a fun cast, with unique characters, and a story that make this a nice, simple enjoyable film to watch.