Columbo - Columbo goes to the guillotine

 Interesting, not my favourite because this Blake gets too much screen time, much more than Colombo, but it’s a nice episode, a good one. Still, it keeps with the show’s old tradition of having no witnesses at all when he arrests this murderer, so at the trial it will simply be one’s word against the other’s, not exactly “proof”.

This is the episode where ex magician Elliott Blake pretends to be the real thing, to have powers o read thoughts if he tries hard, and they do tests upon tests to show it… (and yet these mind reading people never answer if asked What am I thinking?)

The military bring in Max Dyson to confirm it, he has a magic shop and has written a book on mind-reading and magic, and he also works as a consultant to uncover imposters.

What nobody else knows is that Elliott and Max know each other, have known each other for years, Max was actually Elliott’s mentor, who taught him everything he knew,, so now Max decides to help him and they cheat on the decisive test - the one where three drivers pointon a map using a blindfold and takea picture that he must guess.

Colombo will think hard on this, on how it was possible, but like his little friend, child magician says, if you start from the premise that it’s a trick, you just have to think about it and it’s pretty obvious. It could not have been a random place in the whole big city, it had to be a specific place that he knew about already. It had to.

Still, they are not exactly ok. Max thinks they are, until Elliott shows all his anger, because they were together in Uganda, in prison, and Max got out betraying Elliott’s escape attempt or something like that, so that while Max got out Elliott stayed there for three years.

Elliott hates him for this betrayal, and will never forgive him. He went to meet him at his lab (where Max builds magic tricks) with the idea of shooting him, but then he got another idea, seeing that Max was working on a guillotine, and so Elliott cuts his head off!

Columbo is called in before the body is even seen by anybody, because below  the lab there’s a bar owned by an ex sergeant, who insists on talking to someone from homicide and noone else. Blood is dripping down from above, so they break in by cutting a hole… somewhere, not totally sure where the other entrance was, the lift was totally fine … anyway, it’s not a nice view.

The other magicians loved Max, and Colombo talks to the man working at the magic shop and they even share a drink wearing long pointy magician hats…

Elliott of course insists he never knew Max, only met him like two days before the test, even after Colombo discovers that he was born in Uganda. 

When Colombo ‘asks for his help’, Elliott fakes his powers again saying he feels pain and desperation, hinting at a suicide, but Colombo is sure it couldn’t be because Max had just bought a lot of good meat to eat.So Elliott turns it to mean that the desperation might have worked unconsciously to create an accident… and here Colombo has proof that it wasn’t, because someone put the wrong screwdriver in Max’s hand, but most of all there’s blood on the wooden collar that stucks the head to the guillotine,and the collar was not near. It couldn’t be, of course, if the pretense was an accident while working on it.

So it was all for nothing, it’s Colombo who tells him it was definitely a murder.

Now, I understand the map-of-the-city trick requires a moment to figure out, but the ‘draw a shape and I’ll read in your mind what it is’ does not! Why did Colombo have to explain that? I was actually wondering if Colombo was actually tricking him back by pretending to fall for it, but it turns out he wasn’t, and later he learned ‘the trick’ and was surprised… and I’m shocked, because everyone watching the show could clearly see that he was drawing a circle and then a triangle, how can you not look at the hand doing the drawing?Of course you do, and so it’s obvious which shape it is…

Elliott tries to escape by accepting the offer from the military, a job far away with a totally new identity, but somehow Colombo learned about it and stopped him. He actually did the same test with the maps to show it was a trick, so the military is no more interested in Elliott.

Now Colombo only needs proof. He knows that Max betrayed him, which is excellent motive, he learned (reading Max’s book) how the murderer could have gotten out leaving the place locked from the inside, he knows how the guillotine works… but he still lacks definitive proof that Elliott Blake is a murderer, so he gives Elliott his chance; he accuses him and tells him he’ll never leave him alone and will find out a way to get him because he is sure he did it, and so Elliott tries on him the same guillotine trick that worked on an unsuspecting Max. Of course it doesn’t work and Colombo’s head is still very much attached; this is because he knew it would happen, he worked towards making it happen, to get his proof and be able to arrest him… and this is what I was talking about at the beginning: there’s just the two of them there, nobody sees that Elliott tried to kill Colombo, there’s no cop coming out of hiding to arrest him. It’s just the two of them!

Anyway, busted. Elliott’s face is of shock seeing him still alive, and Colombo takes out a gun with a very long barrel, because instead of a bullet the word Bang comes out :-P

The living daylights - 1987

 Not the best, not the worst, it was okay, quite entertaining, and I rather like Dalton as Bond, but like all the old Bond movies I have no intention of seeing this again.

It has its own title song by A-ha.

Before the title credits we see the 00 secion busy with a test from the Minnistry of Defence: they have to “penetrate the radar installations of Gibraltar” and the sas is ready to intercept them, and they’re using paint-bullets; it seems it’s only three 00agents. One agent betrays: he kills the other agent and two soldiers, I think. Bond gets in his car and they fight a lot and then I think the car full of ammunition blows up killing the agent… or he dies when the car hits the water… not sure  now, but Bond gets away with a parachute… that he used already when they jumped off of M’s plane. So they landed and folded up the parachute? Neat :-)

Credits: “Timothy Dalton as Ian Fleming’s James Bond in The Living Daylights”

Plot in a few words: General Koskov pretends to defect to feed the MI6 false information: that general Pushkin is on a frenzy to kill all British and American agents, hoping they’ll stop him/kill him.

Koskov is working with an arms dealer and stealing state money.

More in details: Bond is in Czechoslovakia at a classical music concert. Saunders is head of Section V in Vienna and has persoally arranged for Kgb Koskov’s defection. Koskov contacted him first, though.

Koskov is supposed to be “under intensive Kgb surveillance” and Bond is there to check that nobody kills him before he can reach them.

At the interval, Koskov gets out from a bathroom window, and he looks up… Bond sees a girl, the pretty blonde cellist, at a window with a rifle, and he hesitates. Instead of killing her, Bond shoots the rifle.

Now Bond takes control, he has Koskov reach Austria via the pipeline, the “trans siberian pipeline” where Rosika Miklos helps them. Q is in Ausstria to receive Koskov and send him on a plane to Britain.

Saunders is angry that Bond “missed her deliberately” but Bond replies he only kills “professionals” and “that girl didn’t know one end of her rifle from the other” so “whoever she was, it must have scared the living daylights out of her”.

At a safe house Koskov feeds them his story against general Leonid Pushkin, his kgb superior, “Gogol’s replacement when he went over to their foreign service”. He says Pushkin hates their “new policy of détente” and has a secret directive: Smert Shpionam which means “death to spies”, it’s “an assassination program with list of targets, British and American agents” and it may start a war “unless Pushkin can be… put away”.

An assassin kills a milkman to enter the safe house with no problems; he kills a man in the kitchen then an agent sees him and calls “Green 4 to base..” and he can’t say more because he has to fight for his life, literally. It was unbearable that during all the long fight we could hear “Green 4 this is Control, where are you? Green 4 do you read me?” On and on and on, what kind of secutiry is that? Totally stupid and useless, one call was enough, no reply you immediately send someone looking for him, if you don’t know where he is you warn more people until he replies, if he does, or until he is found. In this case he will never reply becase in the end he loses. He fought very well and bravely though.

The assassin eventually replies in his place and Control buys every word he says of a ‘gas leak’ and calls for immediate evacuation, making it quite easy for him to take Koskov away with the emergency helicopter come for the injured. 

The Minister saying “we’re the laughing stock of the Intelligence Community” is so right!

Bond doesn’t believe Koskov’s story, but since Smiert Spionom was found where 004 died (first scenes of the film) he’s ordered to ‘terminate’ Pushkin. 

Moneypenny finds Bond’s cellist as requested, Kara. He shows up at her place pretending to be Koskov’s friend.

(I don’t understand why she was carrying a weapon around, it’s been days since that concert; Moneypenny finds she was iinjured ‘last week’.

She confirms that she only pretended to shoot Koskov, using blanks, to make “the British believe his defection was real”; they leave together with only a quick stop to retrieve her cello…

They are chased (the kgb I guess) and they use the cello’s case ot slide down on the snow, and the cello gets a bullet hole! Well, Bond didn’t yet know that cello was a famous Stradivari named The Lady Rose!

In Tangier, Pushkin cancels the order of weapons… Whitaker is a weapon fanatic, and an arms dealer, and is not happy to hear “you’ll return our deposit of $50 million within thte next 48 hours”. (Dollars? Why?)

Pushkin knows Whitaker and Koskov are ‘scheming’ but doesn’t know any details and neither do I, actually.

Did they simply want to steal State money? Or was there something more?

Bond and Kara are in Vienna. She calls Koskov “dear Georgi” and says she owes him everything, meaning her scholarship at the “conservatoire” and of course her cello.

Bond informs Saunders that Kara is just Koskov’s gilfriend and no kgb sniper, and Saunders agrees to help him without asking for permission first, since Bond is in a hurry.

Bond takes Kara to a concet, then to an amusement park where they play and laugh a lot, then Bond kisses her on the ferris wheel. Saunders gives Bond the papers for Kara so they can get out of the Country, Bond thanks him and then Saunders is killed by Necros, the assassin working with Koskov and Whitaker, as an incentive for the British to believe his story and have Bond kill Pushkin.

To stop these killings, Bond confronts Pushkin and they plan to fake his death. Of course the guards believe it like veryone ele so he genuinely has to escape, through the roofs of Tangier.

Two girls take Bond to Felix Leiter.

Kara calls Georgi and believes his story that Bond is a kgb agent using her to find him and kill him, so she puts something in Bond’s drink and Koskov takes them away. Koskov turns them in to soldiers stationed in Afghanistan for Pushkin’s murder and for being a defector (Kara).

Bond manages to free both of them (and also prisoner Shah) and now that she knows the whole truth, Kara is all mushy with Bond.

Kamran Shah is the leader of the Mujahideen, the Afghan Resistance, he’s “deputy commander of the Eastrn district”. it turns out Koskov is using the payment for the weapons to buy opium from Shah instead, more profitable, so he’ll still be able to give the weapons promised… something like that.

Now Shah gets his money, Bond hides to put a bomb on the Russian plane and when he’s discovered Shah and his men attack the camp to ehlp him. Kara keeps calling for James and enters the plane he’s on with a jeep. 

Since they’re in it now Bond has to defuse the bomb, but he has to fight Necros first.

Necros falls out and the bomb is defused, but then Bond will throw it down on the bridge to help back the Mujahideen. The plane was damaged, and with no fuel they’re going down, so they get out on the jeep.

Whitaker will call that cargo of opium that Bond destroys “half a billion bucks”.

Bond kills Whitaker then Pushkin tells his men to put Koskov “on the next plane to Moscow, in the diplomatic bag”. Does that mean he’s killed?

Kara is tecnically a defector, but we see her playing her celo in France where Gogol compliments her. Kara now can “come and go as you like”.

Shah also shows up for her, and everyone believes Bond couldn’t make it, but of course he’s hiding in her room for a bit more ‘privacy’… after all he’s not interesting in her music or whatever she does outside that room, probably.

The end.

“James Bond will return”

James Bond is Timothy Dalton

Kara Milovy is Maryam d’Abo

General Georgi Koskov is Jeroen Krabbe

Brad Whitaker is Joe Don Baker

General Leonid Pushkin is John Rhys-Davies

Kamran Shah is Ara Malik

Necros is Andreas Wisniewski

Saunders is Thomas Wheatley

Q isDesmond Llewelyn

M is Robert Brown

General Anatol Gogol is Walter Gotell

Miss Moneypenny is Caroline Bliss

Felix Leiter is John Terry

ITA zona pericolo

Never say never again - 1983

This is a story we’ve seen already, but more modern and with Kim Basinger :-)

Since it’s not officially in the same list of the other movies, for production reasons, the credits are different, there’s no turn-and-shoot for example.

Also, there’s Spectre again.

It starts with a fake mission, Bond is actually doing “war games” as he calls them, drills one might say, to see how well he does, and although “not too shabby” it’s not enough for the new M who has yet never seen him on a real mission. Bond has, apparently, been teaching for a while.

Bond is sent to Shrublands, where he’ll be put in shape by diet and exercise.

Spectre’s “most audacious enterprise” is “the tears of Allah”; American air force officer Captain Jack Petachi “has been introduced” to heroin to now they can make what they want of him: they did surgery on him, a “corneal implant” so his right eye “is now an exact replica of that of the President of the United States”. He also obeys because they dangle the safety of his sister Domino in front of him.

Jack is also at Shrublands to recover from the surgery, with number 12 Fatima taking care of him.

Bond’s diet will not do him much good since he brought vodka, caviar and foie gras with him.

At least in this film he doesn’t ‘force’ anyone, on the contrary it’s his doctor of chiropractic that shows up at his room - after his previous invitation. 

But I don’t appreciate the other doctor’s lack of respect in calling her “Miss Fearing” and not doctor.

A big strong mann tries to kill Bond in the gym because Fatima recognized him spying on Jack. It’s a tough fight.

Jack’s task is to change the “test procedure” replacing the “dummy warheads” with real “w80 thermonuclear device”, using his new eye ot make the machine believe the President gave the order.

After he does that, Fatima kills him. 

The missiles go down the ocean (I think, where in the world are they?) and are retrieved by Spectre. No surprise, Blofeld now blackmails Nato nations: either pay him billions and billions every year, or suffer revenge. M has to use his 00 agents, this 00 agent in fact.

007, who suggests the use of a false eye and is told: “let’s think of a more logical explanation, shall we?” 

This version of Q is called Algernon. Bond goes to Nassau where he meets funny/clumsy Nigel Small-fawcett, British embassy. This is the bit that’s frced, I think. How did Bond know to start investigating in Nassau, that Largo was involved or that he was there? I mean, Blofeld made the blackmail, and officially Maximilian Largo (born Bucharest 1945) is an “industrialist and philanthropist” , with “no known criminal activities” so why start with him? It makes no sense, is it just one of those things we’re supposed to believe they know because they’re spies (meaning in the script) or maybe I missed something?

They have no way of knowing he’s n.1 in Spectre.

Fatima Blush approaches Bond, offers to take him fishing or something, jumps him as soon as they’re alone, and when they’re down scuba diving she leaves him to deal with sharks after she attached to him a device that attracts them. He’s ‘caught’ by a girl actually fishing. She takes him back to the hotel and saves his life, in a way, when they decide to go to her room because Fatima saw him alive and blew up his room.

Bond follows Largo to France, and he meets Felix.

Bond is with a girl and introduces her as… 326? Some agent, I guess. Nicole is her name.

Bond finds out that Largo’s lady is Jack’s sister (Jack who died in a car crash…).

Bond poses as her masseur and learns that Largo is giving a chairty ball for children so he goes. Domino thinks her brother is about to come visit her, and by talking to her Bond attracts Largo’s attention.

They play a me, a computer game called Domination (Largo designed it), and when one loses he suffers pain “in the form of electric shocks”, to “share the pain of our soldiers”, so the bigger the battle, the greater the number of dead soldiers, the more painful the punishment. They play four or five times and Bond loses, and suffers but learns. Domino stands up when Bond falls out of his chair because of the pain, and Largo does not appreciate it.

Bond proposes one lasst game, “for the rest of the world” and this time he does much better, it’s Largo owho suffers, so much Domino calls him more than once to stop and eventually he does. Bond wins $267.000 but chooses to “settle for one dance with Domino”.

Bond says he’s never lost…

I did not like their choreographic tango, I found it fake and boring. While dancing, Bond tells her that her brother is dead and “Largo is the prime suspect”.

Nicole is killed by Fatima after she saw her with Bond. He goes after her until he crashes with his bike and Fatima points a gun at him… and does not shoot.

She takes his gun, informs him that she’s a superior woman and that “you know that making love to Fatima was the greatest pleasure of your life”… speaking about herself… she insists that she’s the best and he must write it down… giviing him the chance to use the special pen Algernon gave him… not yet perfected but still effective if given time, she blows up leaving only her shoes behind…

Bond tries to sneak on the boat but is expected and invited to lunch. 

…

Domino shows him the pendant Largo gave her, “the tears of Allah”. Bond tells her to respond to his kiss “asi f you liked it”, for once not giving it for granted… He wanted a reaction and he gets one, because Largo is watching her from a one-way mirror. This way Bond can send a message unnoticed, that they’re going to North Africa.

Largo is angry with Domino but would “forgive her” and marry here, but she asks about her brother and then yell at his face that she hates him. So he sends her outside to be sold to the highest bidder.

Largo tells Bond of one bomb being “under the President’s feet”. Of course Bond has a laser that frees him of the shackles, so he can escape and take Domino with him.

She’s quite quick to jump on the horse, and then the three of them jump in the water and Felix retrieves them. 

Domino now is “afraid of losing Bond”.

That first bomb of course has been defused, but they need to find the second one. Domino’s pendant marks a place, they go there and get out of the water with a sort of jet-lift, like an open elevator :lol:

If the other Bond had a jet pack he wants one too, lol

They find the cave where Largo’s men are working.

The men arm the bomb and Largo goes “away with the warhead” so Bond goes after him leaving Felix and his men to stop the others.

Bond stops Largo fighting him underwater but he needs to disarm the bomb. Domino swims to help and kills Largo.

It ends of course, with Bond and the girl. She says “you’ll never give up your old habits” and he replies “you’re wrong, those days are over” meaning he’ll stay with her, when Nigel comes with a plea from M to return and Bond says “never again”.

Nigel falls in the pool and says M sent him “only to plead for your return, sir. M says that without you in the service, he fears for the security of the civilized world”. 

Bond says “never again”, Domino asks “never?”, they kiss and he blinks at the camera…

Because if I remember the story right, when Connery left and Moore became Bond, Connery said he’d never again do another Bond film, and then this happened.

James Bond is Sean Connery

Largo is Klaus Maria Brandauer

Domino is Kim Basinger

Blofeld is Max Von Sydow

Fatima is Barbara Carrera

Leiter is Bernie Casey

Algy (their Q) is Alec McGowen

M is Edward Fox

Miss Moneypenny is Pamela Salem

Small-Fawcett is Rowan Atkinson

Kovacs is Milow Kirek

P.s. Fatima was fun, she enjoyed being evil, too bad she ended like a deranged idiot. 

Largo, I liked him :-) Domino was really good. Small-Fawcett was funny. Blofeld was of no consequence.

Why all the fuss on who can or can’t use this character in the films? Was Blofeld in the books or not?

ITA mai dire mai

Licence to kill - 1989

 

Bond is in a car with Felix and their friend Sharkey when the Dea stop them to ask if Felix wants to join them in arresting Sanchez. Bond joins him while Sharkey explains to Della, Felix’s fiancee who is waiting for him at their wedding… her father is not happy “I told you this was a mistake!” and I’m afraid in a way he was very right, since she won’t live happily for long.

Sanchez is around Bahamas because his girl Lupe escaped with a man, so Sanchez has him killed and he personally whips her and bring her back. Together Felix and Bond get him, then they parachute to the wedding.

Now we have the titles: “Timothy Dalton as Ian Fleming’s James Bond”

Della calls Bond “her best man” and she is radiant in her beautiful dress. 

Felix is glad they caught Sanchez: it was difficult because he never leaves his “homebase” and it’s not possible to have him extradite because “he’s killed, intimidated or bribed half the government officials from here to Chile” - and with here I guess he means Bahamas where he is, where he got married and has his house.

“There’s only one law down there, Sanchez’s law, lead or silver”.

Ed Killifer was with them in getting Sanchez, he comes to say hello and kiss the bride. While taking Sanchez to Quantico that same day, Killifer betrays and shoots the driver: he frees Sanchez because he promised two million dollars to “anyone who springs me”.

Della gives Bond a gift, a lighter with an inscription: “James love always, Della and Felix” and tells him “we love you” giving him a kiss on the cheek. She didn’t know he was married once, though.

Right after Bond leaves - everone else is already gone - Sanchez’s men get Felix and have a shark eat bits of him “his left leg’sgone below the knee. They might be able to save his arm”. Della is murdered.

When Bond heard at the airport that “some big drug dealer just escaped” he ran immediately back to Felix, but could only call an ambulance for him. The police can’t do anything now, because “he’s out of our jurisdiction”. Sanchez now has “all of Leiter’s files”. Of course Bond doesn’t let it go and starts searching with Sharkey. They start with places that can have sharks and he gets suspicious of Milton Krest’s place. When he looks around, Killifer stops him revealing his treachery. Bond sends Killifer and his two millions to get eaten by the sharks.

M wants him back to England-related missions, and since Bond won’t leave America and let it go, he resigns and escapes and keeps at it.

Disguised as a Manta ray, Bond gets on Krest’s ship - this might be my favourite costume of all  :-D

Lupe meets him but doesn’t tell on him. Krest gives money to people on a plane and gets drugs in return… or probably hte other way around… 

Bond retrieves a disc he saw Felix hide and sees that all the people who gave him information on Sanchez are dead but one. P.Bouvier, pilot, turns out to be a pretty girl .They help each other in fighting Sanchez’s men, come to kill them, and then she kisses him. They agree to work together. 

Isthmus city, she poses as his secretary because “we’re south of the border. It’s a man’s world” as opposed to his world where women have such important roles… spoken by James Bond…

He gives her money to buy clothes to “better look the part”. Moneypenny is very worried about him so she sends Q to him. Bond meets Sanchez and pretends to be unemployed - well, he did resign so in a way he is - so when he’s taken by Kwan of Hong Kong narcotics and his team who was infiltrating Sanchez’s drug dealing associates, and freed by chance by Sanchez himself when he attacks them, the man believes Bond’s story that they were a hit team. Bond tells him “I used to work for the British Government” and “they were afraid I’d warn you, spoil their plans”. It’s actually Bond who tried to kil Sanchez with explosives, but now he thinks it was them, and wonders “who would do such a thing?” And this is how Bond convinces him that “someone close to you” betrayed him, because “they were well-briefed, obviously by someone on the inside” and that they were expecting payment by someone arriving “tonight” so of course Sanchez thinks of Milton Krest. 

When Sanchez is told that Bond was an agent, he can say he knew it already.

Sanchez insists Bond stays there and Lupe helps Bond get away unnoticed. 

He suspects Pam (the pretty pilot) because he saw her with Heller, one of Sanchez’s men, but she was carrying out Felix’s plan but it didn’t work.

Pam and Q did not leave when Bond told them to, of course. Instead they stay and help. Pam helps him come aboard Krest’s ship so he can plant money for Sanchez to find and believe Krest tried to keep it from him. Sanchez kills Krest.

Bond tells Q and Pam to go away, again, because “I’ll be safer on my own”. 

Bond is in room at Sanchez’s place when he goes to check and to tell him “I got the guy who set me up” and Bond tries it again “only one guy?”

Bond secures the door and thn sleeps with Lupe who wants him to take her away. Then Lupe goes to Pam believing her to be Bond’s assistant or something, and tells her that Bond is in danger and hasn’t gone away because he spent the night with her… Lupe tells them to help Bond because Sanchez is taking him on a trip… and that she’s so worried because she loves James so much… and now Pam is so jealous and angry!

Q spies on Sanchez with a fake broom/transmitter.. and then he throws it away… and he’s the one always complaining about how Bond treats him equipment!!! Why throw it away?!?

Sanchez takes Bond to a “Meditation Institute”: a cover for a drug laboratory. Sanchez shows his associates his methods, asking 100 millions from each of the to become partners, or something, just like Zorin. 

They accept and Truman-Lodge is in charge of the money/bonds.

Sanchez’s best man Dario saw Bond with Pam when they first met, so he knows him as an informer; Bond starts a fire in the lab and it gets out of control. Pam sneaked into the institute and is just in time to save him. Not very efficiently but she does.

He killed Dario by himself though. This was one of the worst scenes ever, he’s about to be crushed by some machine and she asks if he’s alright… and has to be told to “switch the bloody machine off” Such a stupid scene.

Sanchez kills Heller because he thinks he wants to steal his stingers. Everyone hurries out before it all blows up.

Pam and Bond follow Sanchez on a plane, Bond jumps on a truck/tanker full of drugs; there’s chasing, shooting guns, shooting stingers (like hand-missiles), tankers exploding, the plane throwing stuff or whatever she did to help, and when Bond and Sanchez fight, the man gets covered in gasoline, so Bond can reveal why he did all this by showing to him Della’s gift: a lighter that lights him up like a torch.

It ends with a party scene: Leiter tells Bond that M might have a job for him and Lupe kisses him and asks him to stay with her, but he goes after jealous Pam instead and kisses her.

James Bond is Timothy Dalton

Pam Bouvier is Carey Lowell

Franz Sanchez is Robert Davi

Lupe Lamora is Talisa Soto

Milton Krest is Anthony Zerbe

Sharkey is Fran McRae

Dario is Benicio del Toro

Q is Desmond Llewelyn

Felix Leiter is David Hedison

Della Churchill is Priscilla Barnes

M is Robert Brown

Miss Moneypenny is Caroline Bliss

Kwang is Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa

“James Bond will return”

ITA vendetta privata

Thunderball - 1965

Yeah, still not a fan of these old Bond movies, so superficially macho, where girls are objects, the fate of non-leading characters is left untold, many things are willingly repetitive and therefore boring so to appease the macho-audience… and I keep seeing a lack of credits at the end, so back then not even the non-leading real people were considered important enough to even write their name at the end…

So, I’ll write here what this film is about, everthing I think is of any consequence, and then… to never watch it again.

I watched all Bond movies after many years, before they get out of Netflix; I watched them in order but I’m afraid I’m not copying them in order on here… still, there’s the “Bond” page where they are listed in order. 

Once again, it starts before the opening credits, with basically the end of Bond’s previous mission before the main one. A certain Colonel Bouvar killed some agents and Bond was after him, but we see Bond at the man’s funeral, not happy he had no hand in his death… but he notices he’s still alive, disguised as his own widow, because he opened his car door by himself, so they fight and Bond kills him for real.

BBond escapes with a jet-pack… is this where this ridiculous mania started?

Well, in 1965 it was probably cool.

Bouvar was “Spectre number 6”.

This film is again against Spectre: they plan to steal “two atomic bombs” and ask for many millions in exchange. The stealing part goes perfectly according to plan: they have a guy name Angelo undergo plastic surgery to look just as pilot Derval so to take his place, kill the others and bringn the plane where they’re waiting for him. Angelo made the mistake of asking or much more money so after he’s done his part he’s left to die.

Spectre agent Count Lippe is not really important, he exchanges bad pranks with Bond that only lead to Bond having his way with the girl working at that health clinic, worried she might lose her job, so he not very graciously informs her that his silence has a price … :-/  of course he’s Bond so we see her falling for him afterwards, but that’s too bad because of course he’ll leave her shortly afterwards.

It’s at the clinic that the real Derval is killed and Angelo takes his uniform and stuff.

Lippe and the bad guy should have either taken the body away at night or guard it somehow, but no, they let Bond see the man’s face, so when all 00 agents are informed of the blackmail (money or the bombs will explode somewhere in England or the US), Bond can see the pilot’s face in a picture and know where to start. The operation’s “code name” is of course Thunderball.

Bond’s first move is to approach Derval’s sister Domino, who quite conveniently for him is with Largo, Spectre number 2 and leader of this operation project. He approaches her while she’s snorkeling or something and is his usual ‘charming self’ :-/   “Most girls just paddle around, you swim like a man” :-/

She is “uncooperative” at first but she’s around unpleasant company all the time, Emilio Largo’s men and he himself. She calls herself Largo’s niece or mistress, calls him her guardian and mentions that she once found him attractive, meaning that now she has not much choice anymore, she’s watched all the time and has to stay with him. So Bond has it easy enough in the end.

Bond approaches Largo at the cards table, of course Bond wins, we know luck is what makes the hero, and Bond taunts him: “I thought I saw  a specter at your shoulder” - “what do you mean?” “the specter of defeat”.

There is Felix again, and a girl naemd Paula, an agent they keep around to do assistant work. Until she’s captured and tortured for information and she dies by suicide, swallowing poison. 

Q appears for today’s dose of gadgets: “I must say, I find this business of equipping you in the field, on the run, as it were, highly irregular” and of course he always appeals to Bond to treat his gadgets well.

The Spectre wants to be paid in “blue-white flawless diamonds between 3 and 8 carats”.

Largo has a swimming pool with sharks and is as careless as his men when it’s to do with killing Bond off. He sees Bond and another man fighting in the pool and orders to close it and let the sharks in: it’s not difficult for Bond to injure the man so all sharks head for the blood while Bond escapes from where they came.

His men also don’t check, after a night search in the water, they go “we must have hit him with the propeller” and go back, even though they saw no hint of a body or blood.

There’s a woman: Fiona Volpe (Franci Walker in Italy, for whatever reason) who is on Largo’s side and does not fall for Bond’s charm. She takes him hostage with Largo’s men but the bad guys are never the clever ones, and they take a car on the night of the festival, so they don’t go far. Bond uses whisky and a lighter to set them on fire and escape (really? So… if one smokes while drinking whisky he can internally combust? Or a live flame is necessary? These films…)

He should have been able to disappear with so much people and chaos and noise, but they catch him. The bad guys stay hidden while she approaches him and dances with him. Bond understands there’s a gun far behind him and his sixth sense tells him exactly when the guy is going to fire, so he can turn in time to have the girl shot and not himself.

Bond needs to find the bombs and he asks for Domino’s help who does understand indeed that “that’s why you made love to me” but she helps anyway because she loved her brother and he died because of Largo. She’s closely watched, so of course she’s found out and tortured by Largo.

Bond finds the bombs. There’s a long underwater battle between Largo’s men and US marines, I suppose, conveniently in red so we can sort the good guys form the bad. Largo escapes though, with his boat Disco Volante who can separate like the Enterprise, leaving the battle part behind while he speeds away. Somehow Bond manages to get in, I saw no way how he could achieve that but he does.

He fights Largo and his men and is about to lose when Largo grabs a gun, but Domino appears behind him and kills him with a harpoon. 

The boat is out of control so they jump in the water. The two of them but also Kutze, the scientist who handled the bombs for Largo but appeared forced into it. He freed Domino saving them all, and he rendered the bomb safe because he “threw the arming device into the sea” so that “the bomb cannot be exploded now”. He sort of saved the day, but at the end Bond hands him a life buoy because he can’t swim and forgets about him. Bond and Domino are rescued and taken away by a helicopter, but not him, we see nothing of him, he’s been completely forgotten. This is because a Bond movie must end with him with the pretty girl in his arms, reward for a job well done, and there was no space I guess for the less-pretty man who made it possible. It’s not really encouraging to do the right thing, is it?

There is no word in the ending credits of a future film, this time.

James Bond is Sean Connery

Domino is Claudine Auger

Largo is Adolfo Celi

Fiona is Luciana Paluzzi

Felix Leiter is Rik Van Nutter

Paula is Martine Beswick

M is Bernard Lee

Q is Desmond Llewelyn

Moneypenny is Lois Maxwell

Kutze is George Pravda

ITA agente 007 thunderball - opereazione tuono

The man with the golden gun - 1974

Not bad, for a 007 film, I mean, there are the usual ‘let’s give Bond every chance to escape we can instead of just killing him’ scenes, and it’s chilling how Bond never looks sorry when the poor girl-of-the-moment gets killed - after all he already slept with her :-/ .

In this one there’s also a blond agent called Goodnight who eagerly waits for ‘her turn’ with Bond - his exact words are “your turn will come, I promise” and it will, Bond movies usually end with him sleeping with a girl, but otherwise she’s almost completely incompetent. She’s also the one that told him she didn’t want to kill “a few hours as one of your passing fancies” only to turn up half naked in his room minutes later, and then she stays two hours hidden in the wardrobe while Bond collects his payment by Miss Anders… A brave girl, maybe, but she’s more trouble than help.This is how Bond movies liked their girls: pretty objects whose only purpose in life is to sleep with Bond once and die young, and be forgotten because who cared about girls back then…

On the other end, this time we also have two schoolgirls hwo are real kick-ass and protect Bond instead of the opposite - not sure where they were here, China or Thailand or Macau or Hong Kong, or something around there.

There’s no Spectre at all here, just an assassin, the best there is, he himself is sure of this. We start the film meeting him: we see he’s got three nipples and watch him defeat another killer provided by his faithful Nic Nac, because apparently it’s something they like to do, Scaramanga’s very own game, he has fun that way.

Once again: “Roger Moore as Jamews Bond - 007” is in the opening credits right before the title. I was not happy to also see “Clifton James as J.W.Pepper” because he was the sheriff in the previous movie and I don’t like him, so loud and arrogant and annoying (to be clear, I mean the character).

Bond knows Scaramanga by fame, of course, “the man with the golden gun. Born in a circu. Father, the ringmaster, possibly Cuban. Mother, English, a snake charmer. He was a spectacular trick-shot artist by the time he was 10 and a local Rio gunman at 15. The Kgb recruited him there and trained him in Europe where became an overworked, underpaid assassi. He went independent in the late ‘50s. Current price, $1 million a hit. No photograph on file, but he does have one distinguishing feature, however. A superfluous papilla” The third nipple, as I said. I wonder how people know about that…

M says they received a golden bullet with 007 carved in it but Bond doesn’t seem impressed. “Who would pay a million dollars to have me killed?” - M: “jealous husbands, outraged chefs, humiliated tailors, the list is endless”. 

Let’s note, just for a laugh, that he didn’t mentioned abandoned women… either because he thinks no girl has enough money or because all they want is to have him back alive and functional, nobody knows…

M takes him out of any assignment to avoid Scaramanga ruining their operations, so Bond goes looking for him instead. Agent 002 Bill  Fairbanks was killed by Scaramanga but it was never confirmed because the bullet was not found, and yet when Bond goes to Beirut to see the dancer that was with Bill when he died, there it is, in her bellybutton. He died in 69 and she still dances with it; it appears that all 00-agents are rather successful with the girls, and also that the police investigating Bill’s death didn’t do a good job since the bullet’s been there for everyone to see all this time.

She doesn’t even hide what it is, she calls it her “lucky charm”, and “never dance without it”… macabre idea, since it went through the neck of the man she was hugging… or maybe lucky because she lived…

Boss kisses her trying to take it. Even though they’re interrupted by men, Bond takes it and goes away after knocking out all those men and wrecking her changing room - but is it or was it really that easy in these clubs to go backstage and into the girls’ changing rooms?

The girl: “I’ve lost my charm!” - Bond: “Not from where I’m standing” 

I wonder, where all the girls in Bond’s era treated so badly that they were starving for compliments, and his silly words were enough to have them fall at his feet?

Anyway, Bond took the charm/bullet with his mouth and the fight made him swallow it, so he goes to a pharmacy…

He takes the bulleet to be examined by Q and Colthorpe, and learns who made it. It’s a 4.2 millimeter, quite unusual but “Q-branch have been making unregular calibers for most unusual purposes” and was made by specialist Lazar, a Portuguese who lives in Macau. From him Bond learns where he’ll make the next delivery so Bond can follow the woman.

The first time he talkst o Miss Anders he hits her to get some information, “he may even use one of those little golden bullets on you. That would be a pity, because they’re very expensive”; the second time she tells him she’s the one who sent hte bullet because she wanted him involved, because she hates Scaramanga and since “you don’t walk out on Scaramanga” she wants 007 to kill him. She thinks he’s the only oen who can because of “the way Scaramanga speaks about you”. So: “name your price, anything, I’ll pay it, you can have me too, if you like” and he accepts, which is so very low, but that’s James Bond for you.

Bond goes where he thinks he’ll find him, and he’s there alright, hidden somewhere to take aim, but he doesn’t shoot Bond, he kills the target of his contract, the same man Bond was looking for before all this golden bullet stuff.

The Agency somehow knows who hired Scaramanga: rich man Hai Fat, so Bond goes there with a fake third nipple, pretending to be Scaramanga of course, not knowing that the man himself is there and watching him.

Later, Bond will be stopped by two sumo players and knocked out by Nic Nac but of course he gets stopped before he can kill him. Of course.

Hai Fat says “take Mr Bond to school” where Bond is dressed appropriately for martial arts and taken care of by girls until the school assembles. Two guys fight with swords and one is killed, but no swords with Bond, of course. When it’s clear they won’t let him go he escapes, and quite easily too, but all those presents go after him. Bond’s ally and his two nieces come to help him, and when Bond stands in front of them saying “stand back, girls”, they move in front instead and fight everyone quite proficiently. What I don’t understand is why they drive away without him, having come here to get him… it makes no sense to me, why were they here if not to get him?

So, it’s another long boat-chase scene. Hai Fai finds “nothing remotely amusing about Mr Bond’s escape”, the silly man, and goes on being even sillier by giving Scaramanga orders like a servant and reminding him that Scaramanga works for him… well, Scaramanga kills him, and the rich man was surprised, as if it weren’t what killers do.

When Bond goes to meet Miss Anders and take the “solex agitator” the Agency is after, he finds her already dead; he doesn’t bat an eye and starts looking for the solex. Scaramanga sits next to him and tells him he won’t find it because he also looked for it… and yet Bond finds it right there on the floor. Scaramanga calls it “a very great pleasure” to meet him, he feels like he knows Bond… yeah yeah.

Scaramanga says about Miss Anders: “A mistress cannot serve two masters” and “a difficult shot but most gratifying”. Bond: “well, we all  get our jollies one way or another” with her dead next to him. 

Goodnight now has the solex and the brilliant idea to follow Nic Nac. She’s seen and taken away by Scaramanga, of course, whwo will also take the solex. To chase after her, Bond steals a new car and finds himself next to Sheriff Pepper.. :-/

They follow the car until it turns into an airplane and flies away. The car with wings attached on its roof. 

TheAgency finds her because she was wearing special Q buttons with a home device and Bond flies to Scaramanga’s island. Nic Nac welcomes him with a Don Perignon bottle that Scaramanga opens by shooting at it. And I mean ‘opens’, the bottle is perfectly intact.

Apparently Scaramanga is “so delighted to see you again” he thinks they “have so much in common”; he shows Bond around: his solar-energy station to power his very modern house, and also his powerful ray that he uses to destroy Bond’s plane. “Like every great artist, I want to creatae an indisputable masterpiece once in my lifetime, the death of 007. Mano a mano. Face to face” … does he know mano a mano means hand to hand? What’s its meaning here? It’s not a fist fight, it’s a duel that they start on the beach but continue in the place where Scaramanga always plays. It’s not even that difficult for Bond to kill him, because unlike everyone else when he has the shot he takes it, he doesn’t warn him beforehand… Bond goes to take the solex then he and Goodnight try to escape because the place is blowing up - because of something she did, pushing a man to his death into a pool of some liquid helium that must remain at “absolute zero”, but the man’s body rises the temperature or something. Not sure where the guy was taking her or what he was doing, but it doesn’t matter. 

Quite convenientlythere’s an old-looking ship they can use to escape the island.

No surprise, Nic Nac shows up trying to kill him but Bond traps him inside a huge suitcase and then traps him in a rome cage up the ship’s mast. 

So now Bond and Goodnight can finally sleep together.

Although they already did two years before, they said that a few times.

James Bond is Roger Moore

Scaramanga is Saruman… sorry I mean Christopher Lee

Goodnight is Britt Ekland

Andrea is Maud Adams (… is this Miss Anders?)

Nic Nac is Herve Villechaize

JW Pepper is Clifton James

Hai Fat is Richard Loo

M is Bernard Lee

Moneypenny is Lois Maxwell

Lazar is Marne Maitland

Q is Desmond Llewelyn

Saida is Carmen Sautoy (the dancer in Beirut)

“The end of The man with the Golden gun”

“James Bond will return in The spy who loved me”.

P.s. Wait, it was a golden gun, not made of gold then, just covered in gold, then? Oh, that’s a bit disappointing, and I’m only just realizing now… :-/ because the Italian title says it’s gold so I always though it was made of gold, not just yellow…

ITA L’uomo dalla pistola d’oro

Casino Royale - 2006

A good movie, a good Bond, more real, human; Giannini is a very welcomed addition but I’m really not a fan of Eva Green, so this Vesper story didn’t feel as touching as it should have been. 

This Bond is more “real”, meaning that he gets tired, he gets hurt, he ruins his clothes, he can get so annoyed that he doesn’t care anymore if his drink is shaken or stirred, he gets poisoned and tortured and feels it… nothing like the perfect, indestructible Bonds of the past, their shirts were always white and ironed…

The only thing about this movie that didn’t get to me was the love story, I was actually taken by surprise when he turned out to be truly in love with her… but again, maybe it’s because I couldn’t ‘feel’ this Vesper’s emotions like I should have.

No title song, credits run under the song ‘you know my name’. 

“Daniel Craig as Ian Fleming’s James Bond 007 in Casino Royale”

Are there more details about her betrayal? We ever see this boyfriend or hear anything about it? In this film, I mean… 

Anyway, the plot.

Bond is sent to Prague to kill Dryden, a corrupted Department chief who has been selling secrets. To become a 00 agent, he had to kill two people but I’m not sure if Dryden was the second or the third…

It seems like he was the second, so M did not, in fact, send a 00 agent to kill him, only an aspiring one :lol

In Uganda, Mr White and his organization introduce Le Chiffre to a “freedom fighter”, and the latter trusts him with his money, something like 3 cases full of it, cash. Le Chiffre is a “private banker to the world’s terrorists. He invested their money and gave them access to it wherever they wanted”, in M’s words.

Now, I’m no stock broker and I don’t want to be, so if anyone will ever read this might explain one point to me ,if you can do it in simple words: I know that Le Chiffre wanted to sell stocks now knowing they’d go down so he’d buy them back cheap, and I seem to understand that he doesn’t actually have the stocks himself. He borrows them? From people who know about it or is it between him and the bank or stock market? Is it stocks he was managing for his clients? Le Chiffre waits to have the Uganda’s millions to call what I think is a bank to sell “another million shares of Skyfleet stock”, is this because the bank wants the money as insurance? Will they wait to see that the money is actually accredited before selling? And keep it when he loses it? Still, where do the stocks come from?

Anyone explaining simply tis practical detail will receive a heartfelt thank you  ^_^

So, even if he’s told that he’s “betting against the market” because this stock will surely go up, Le Chiffre insists because he plans to ensure it will go down.

In Madagascar, Bond works with a rookie or something because this Carter keeps touching his ear to hear Bond so the bomb maker they’re trying to capture realizes they’re onto him and runs. It’s a long chase, a bit of an athletic challenge, and it was a fun moment when the guy tried to shoot Bond but it clicked empty so he threw the now useless weapon at Bond’s face but Bond swiftly caches it with his right hand and throws it right back at his head :lol:

The chase goes on, the guy knows his parkour moves and he actually reaches the “Nambutu embassy” before Bond can catch him. Bond follows him anyway and tries to get him out of it, but when he’s cornered, Bond shoots him dead and blows up part of the Embassy to escape. Problem: he was caught on camera, of course, it was an Embassy, and the papers write “British Government agent kills unarmed prisoner” and there’s even a picture. M is of course quite upset, both with the Ministers or whoever it was questioning her, the Committee: “who the hell do they think they are? I report ot the Prime Minister, and even he’s smart enough not to ask me what we do”, and she calls them “self-righteous arse-covering prigs”, and also with Bond: “I give him double-0 status and he celebrates by shooting up an embassy” and “in the old days, if an agent did something that embarrassing, he’d have the good sense to deflect. Christ, I miss the cold war” :lol: but she only calls Bond stupid and deranged :-)

Bond found a phone in the bombmaker’s bag. He shows up at M’s place (M is her real initial, Bond knows her name). Following the phone’s lead, he goes to Nassau. At the Ocean Club, a rude guy takes him for a parking valet so he parks the man’s car by crashing into another car… he should have crashed its front, not the back. At the club, they keep disks of the security camera recordings, and he finds who answered the bomb maker’s call. Seeing his car on the video he asks the receptionist for the guy’s name with an excuse: it’s Mr Dimitrios. Bond not only found out M’s name and address, but also her password to access the agency’s “secure website”. Why is Le Chiffre listed as deceased?

Bond joins Dimitrios’ poker table and wins it all, even Dimitrios car. An Aston Martin.

Le Chiffre is upset that Bond killed the bomb maker because he had to do a job for him but Dimitrios can find him another guy. Bond seduces Solange, Dimitrios’ wife, to get information and to have fun with a married woman, “it keeps things simple”… for him, I’m sure.

But he doesn’t do much, I think, he leaves her alone to go after her husband… but how can Bond get to the Miami airport at the same time? If Dimitrios was already on the plane while he was with Solange?

Well, he is there, they see each other, Dimitrios has a knife, Bond uses it to kill him. Bond follows the guy that took Dimitrios’ bag, he finds out that Skyfleet’s new airplane, the largest in the world, is being unveiled at Miami’s airport. Bond’s guy should blow it up but he stops him and the guy blows himself up instead. Le Chiffre lost 101.206.000 dollars.

Solange was tortured and killed, Le Chiffre wanted to know who talked and ruined his plan, and she was the only one alive. M tells Bond that Dimitrios worked a lot with Le Chiffre, “a bit of mathematical genius and liked to prove it by playing poker”. A chip or whatever is put into Bond’s arm. M says Le Chiffre has set up “a high-stakes poker game at Casino Royale in Montenegro, ten players, $10 million buy-in, five million rebuy, winner takes all. Potentially 150 million”

And Le Chiffre doesn’t have all that money, but he needs it because he’s “been playing the stock market with his clients’ funds” and of course “they’re not gonna be too happy when they find out it’s gone”.

So they need him to lose, so to give him sanctuary and interrogate him.

Right now Bond is totally “emotionally detached”, showing no remorse for Solange’s death. He goes to Montenegro. He meets Vesper Lynd from the British Treasury, the one with the money. Bond states he’s very good at reading people. He tries to read her, but I have no confirmation he did it right. 

Bond is an orphan and she says “that makes perfect sense, since MI6 looks for maladjusted young men that give little thought to sacrificing others in order to protect Queen and Country”. 

They banter on the plane and again in the taxi; Bond disregards his cover and gives the hotel his real name. I think M sends him a car because he came by taxi but when a woman says something’s been left for him, he opens a car and finds files and an emergency kit. And a gun too.

He meets his contact Rene Mathis, who faked proof to get the Chief of police arrested because he was in Le Chiffre’s pocket. Bond gives Vesper a dress, and she did the same, giving him a better dinner jacket. Bond: “How… it’s tailored” - Vesper:”I seized you up the moment we met”.

Each player must set a password, so if he wins he’ll authorize the transfer of money to the account he chooses. 

Bond and Vesper keep bickering because he starts losing, but he says “it was worth it to discover his tell”. 4 hours playing, they take a 1hour break. Bond puts a ‘bug’ in Le Chiffre’s inhaler. Le Chiffre is attacked by two terrorists from Uganda, who threaten to cut his girl’s arm : “not a word of protest, you should find a new boyfriend”. She will not.

Bond and Vesper try to hide when the men go out giving Le Chiffre another day to give the money back, but when the men see Bond’s earpiece the fight starts. It’s long and brutal, Bond kills them and tells Vesper to call Mathis to ‘clean up’. 

Bond also has to clean up, himself, and changehis shirt to keep playing. When he goes back to his room, he finds Vesper in the shower, still with the dress on, sitting down and hugging her knees, still in shock, very shaken for the deaths she witnessed. Of course. He sits with her under the water, only loosening his tie (a real papillon, not a clip-on, of course). He hugs her a bit, trying to comfort her.

One of Le Chiffre’s men is arrested because Mathis put the bodies in his car. Bond and Le Chiffre bet everything, and Le Chiffre wins, he played on his ‘tell’ on purpose to make Bond believe he was bluffing.

Vesper refuses Bond the money to rebuy his way in, so Bond takes a knife and goes after Le Chiffre. A player stops him, he’s Felix Leiter, cia, and offers to give Bond his place because Bond is a better player. Vesper does not look happy.

And they’re all so focused on other things that nobody watches what it is that they’re drinking. Le Chiffre’s blonde girl put poison in Bond’s cocktail, and as soon as he notices he goes to the bathroom to throw up, but it’s not enough. He rushes to the car and links his microchip, the one in his arm, so MI6 knows about his problem. They monitor his values, tell him to get a shot against the poison and then to use the defibrillator to help his heart but it doesn’t work because one of its things was not attached, and it’s too late, he’s out… but Vesper arrives and sees what’s going on and saves his life. He opens his eyes and asks her how she is…

He does not go to the hospital because he has a game to finish. Le Chiffre had a very good hand, but Bond’s got the highest and wins.

Bond dines with Vesper then she goes out and he follows her, to see her abducted. Bond takes the car and chases at high speed, so when he finds her tied up on the road he has to avoid her and his car turns and turns many times.

Le Chiffre takes both to an abandoned place - a ship? A container? Something.

He tortures Bond, hurts him a lot poor guy, but Bond won’t give up, not to save himself or to save Vesper. Le Chiffre wants the money, needs it, and Bond tries to play on that, saying that if he dies he’ll never get the money. It’s really a nasty situation, but then Mr White comes in and shoots LeChiffre in the head. Dead dead.

Bond wakes up at a clinic, he has the agency take Mathis away, he thinks Mathis betrayed him, telling Le Chiffre about ‘his tell’, about their conversation.

Vesper is all sweet now, and when they transfer the money she is very surprised to learn that he chose her name as the password.

She says he’s a real man and their story starts getting real.

When they can leave, they leave together. He says he’ll change life for her and resigns.

In Venice, he sends his letter of resignation. They are happy and in love.

When Vesper goes out, she leaves her phone in their room on purpose. When M calls him that the money hasn’t arrived, he sees in her phone that she went to meet someone. With the money in a case, she took it from a bank - are you telling me that in a bank in Venice they put millions in cash in a case, just like that? A normal person can’t even get a few thousands and she can get millions and millions just like that???

Bond runs after her and interferes with the exchange. Shots are exchanged instead, a building is demolished under water, some men are killed, she is locked in an old elevator. Mr White goes away with the money, Bond tries to save Vesper but he can’t, she dies.

M tells him they found out Vesper was being blackmailed, Mr White’s organization said they’d kill her boyfriend unless she made Bond lose the game, which might be why she refused him the money to reenter the game. But M also says that if they got out alive while Le Chiffre was killed is because Vesper made a deal, the money in exchange for his life. Well, their lives, but she left her phone behind for him, and also took the elevator’s key, she knew she’d die.

Bond wants to be cold, to feel nothing, tells M it’s over, the beach is dead, you know what I mean.

He looks at her phone and there’s a mesage for him, Mr White’s number, so Bond can go there and get the money back. Probably kill him too, but we don’t see that.

James Bond is Daniel Craig

Vesper Lynd is Eva Green

Le Chiffre is Mads Mikkelsen

M is Judy Dench

Felix Leiter is Jeffrey Wright

Mathis is Giancarlo Giannini

Solangeis Caterina Murino

Carlos is Claudio Santamaria

Mr White is Jesper Christensen

Manhattan murder mystery - 1993

I’m not a big fan of the man Woody Allen, but I admit some of his movies are good ideas. I am however a fan of Diane Keaton, and also a fan of Rear window, the Hichcock movie, so it was a pleasant watch, yes.

Larry and Carol Lipton meet Mr and Mrs House in the elevator, he talks about stamps and she talks about baking. The next day they hear she died of a heart attack.When they meet him, Carol thinks he’s too cheerful to be so recently widowed. Their friend Ted wonders if it might be a murder.

Carol brings Mr House a cake as promised, and she goes to put some coffee on and she finds an urn with the woman’s ashes. Mr House had spoken about her being buried.

She nicks the keys to House’s apartment from the basementand spies around. She finds some tickets but not for the trip he talked to them about, these tickets are for Paris with a certain Helen, and then a woman phones. Carol believes that Mr House murdered his wife either for money or for this woman.

At a wine tasting event, she looks outside and sees Mrs House on a bus, very much alive. 

Larry believes that their marriage is going through a crisis, and that she’s more in tune with Ted (who indeed likes her) than with him, so he accepts to go with her to check what she saw and indeed they both see her! She’s entering a small hotel, so they go in as well and they find her on the floor, dead!

They call the police but there’s nothing to see there now. 

They keep investigating, of course. They go back to the small hotel, get stuck in the elevator, they try to get out and they find Mrs House’s body. They see Mr House disposing of the body, there’s a big furnace and he wants to burn the body. 

Mr House’s alibi for when they found the body at the hotel is his friend Gladys.

Larry and Carol talk with Ted and Marsha -a brilliant writer that Lary set up with Ted. Marsha has a theory: a woman resembling Mrs House dies of a heart attack with dining with them, so they take their chance and dress her in Mrs House’s clothes and pretend it’s her. Then of course he kills her too because he has another woman, Helen… and the four of them talk out loud while dining out, with people looking at them weirdly and they don’t even notice :-/

Larry is jealous of Ted who is so much more similar to Carol, and Carol is jealous of Marsha, much more similar to Larry, he even lent her a book that he never lent Carol because he said she doesn’t like ‘light readings’. 

They call young actress Helen for an audition, because Ted has a theatre or something like that, then they edit her voice and use it to call House and tell him that his neighbours have his wife’s  body and they want money. This causes Mr House to enter their house and tie Carol up, since she was there alone.

Larry phones because of the blackmail but House tells him: bring Lillian’s body if you want your wife back.

“There’s no way she could’ve survived that vat of molten steel”; he ckecks the car but of course there’s no body. House has a gun, they fight and Larry runs towards the cinema where House has Carol prisoner. It’s his cinema, I think he wanted to renovate the place or something. 

Gladys comes, she’s tired of his lies because he made her lots of promises and then he got together with that Helen girl.

They both start shooting around, and it’s Gladys who manages to shoot him. Larry finds Carol and frees her, then they call the police. 

Ted doesn’t understand so Marsha explains it to him: Lillian had a sister but Ted had checked this already and said: no sisters; this is because she moved to England and changed her name when she married. Now a widow, a rich one. Mr and Mrs House knew they were not in her will so they pretended that Lillian died so Lillian could take her place. The sister is cremated. Lillian “check in to a fleabag joint” and takes all her sister’s money “closing her accounts, liquidating her assets”… but Lillian knew of her husband and Helen, the young model and wannabe actress. So her husband kills her to keep the money. Gladys was covering for him because she loved him, but she didn’t know that he was a murderer, because she didn’t know a murder had been committed in the first place. 

After sharing this adventure, now Larry and Carol are again happy together, they keep saying they love each other and there’s nobody to be jealous of. Ted keeps dating Marcia, and they are good together. 

Of course they are, it’s basically another couple Larry-Carol.

Larry Lipton is Woody Allen

Carol Lipton is Diane Keaton

Paul House is Jerry Adler

Lillian House is Lynn Cohen

Sy is Ron Rifkin, a friend

Ted is Alan Alda

Marcia Fox is Anjelica Huston

Helen Moss is Melanie Norris

Nick Lipton is Zach Braff - that I know from Scrubs

The idea of the audition to get her voice, Larry took it from the book he and Marcia read and loved, called Murder in Manhattan di Max Schindler.

ITA Misterioso omicidio a Manhattan

Reunion - 2022

Not a bad movie at all, it’s no masterpiece for sure but it was a nice evening, entertaining, it was pleasant and I liked it enough. It was a curious mix between crime and funny, and it rather worked. The ‘funny’ part was not too silly or too low, thanks, and the ‘crime’ part made sense enough. It’s no masterpiece in either genres, but its’ nice nonetheless and I enjoyed watching it and would recommend it. 

The story is simple: there’s a reunion, indeed, of al 2001 classmates. They all gather at Mathew’s house, a big place rather isolated. They chat and drink and dance. Mathew’s wife Lisa is at her parents’ house or something, but greets them all on the phone, warning them to be safe and don’t drive drunk. The only ones so drunk they’ll stay the night are policeman Evan West and his friend since childhood Ray, Jasmine the journalist, Amanda the politician, Mr Buckley the professor and Vivian the creepy girl nobody remembered. At some point the lights go off and Evan and Mathew go check, and Mathew shows Evan the mascot costume he nicked in school, and that he plans to wear that night.

Ray sees his ex girlfriend Meagan who, he says, broke his heart, and behaves like a kid around her, to get her attention. Ray seems to still act like he did in school, even Evan tells him this: he still has the same part-time job and wears the same clothes he wore in school. He doesn’t try to defend himself, it seems to me that he likes his life the way it is.

Meagan, for her part, wants nothing to do with him and instead flirts with Mathew. 

When they wake up the next morning, Jasmine goes searching for Mathew - not sure why but it’s his house, so whatever she wanted, be it breakfast or to go home or whatever else, she needed to check with him first, even just to tell him she did take a room and stay the night.

She finds him dead, murdered. She screams, and for once it is indeed the most efficient way to react, because the other five arrive immediately. Jasmine and Amanda both say he sent them a picture at 4 am. It snowed heavily during the night and the roads are closed. There are no footprints at all outside. The phones have no reception, so they’re to stay there until someone comes. 

It’s clear that whoever did it is still there, one of them. 

Amanda blames Vivian because she was hostile and hated all her classmates. Not Evan, he was in her ‘good ones’ short list. She told Evan and Jasmine the night before that there was going to be a ‘show’ and then all she did was a little speech: you kept telling me I would amount to nothing and now here I am, successful with 62$ shoes at my feet :lol: 

When they catch Amanda stealing a vhs and trying to destroy it, they learn she was blackmailed into coming to the party. At school, she put a girl into a coma to become president in some school election - the poor girl, her competition, wa allergic to peanuts and she smeared her face with peanut butter or something. It’s a good thing the poor girl didn’t die at least. Amanda shows no remorse, says she’s tested lacking empathy whatsoever. She actually never says she should be elected (now I mean) because she’s better, but because the other one is apparently much much worse. 

Mathew was found on the bed, but there’s also a bullet hole in the wardrobe. Ray hides a earring because , he’ll explain later, he knew it was Meagan’s and he didn’t want anybody suspecting her because he knows she’d never kill anybody.

Jasmine is found searching Mathew’s computer at night, because she’s investigating him, and she discovers even the professor had a motive: he gave all his money to Mathew and lost it, so he can’t retire and must keep working. 

We had already heard the reason for Evan’s hate. While in school, Mathew injured him badly, smashed his knee during practise, so he couldn’t play anymore and lost his scholarship; it seems like the only one without a motive or anything to do with Mathew might be Ray, but then Vivian notices one of the cars outside has an open trunk. Inside it they find a dead Meagan, shot like Mathew. Now Ray seems to be the one with the strongest motive, since they kept fighting and he couldn’t leave her alone.

Evan checks the prints outside and they match Ray’s shoes, so everybody calls for his arrest. Ray lets Evan put him in handcuffs. When the phone works again, Lisa calls home. When the roads are cleared, Lisa arrives with the police and the staff to take the bodies away. 

Before they can take him away too, Ray takes the new cop’s gun and wants everybody to stay there while they all think this through. He says it was weird that someone left Mathew’s window open, since it was freezing cold, so it probably meant they didn’t want anyone being able to say how long he’d been dead. Ray keeps talking and getting to the truth, the solution of the mystery. Lisa had access to all Mathew’s stuff so she found the vhs and blackmailed Amanda into switching off the lights at a specific time, so that she could enter unnoticed and go up to Mathew’s room. Before she could wear the costume, she shot him. Meagan was there to flirt with Mathew, she hid in the wardrobe and Lisa shot her too. She wore the mascot costume and went out to dance with the others, to pretend he was still alive, then she left before the storm hit. 

I think I got it all right…

When they searched the room, it was Evan who looked under the bed saying there was nothing there, but there was Meagan’s body. That night, he took it and wore Ray’s shoes to go out and put the body in the car. Ray noticed that Evan uses the same cologne as Mathew because it’s Lisa’s favourite. Also, on his social media page they can see the two of them together, although wearing masks they’re still recognizable.

So yeah, Evan and Lisa are arrested instead of him. Much relieved, the remaining 5 ask a woman to take a picture of them and Jasmine suggests Ray should try for an investigative job at her… job place. I’m not sure what paper she writes for, anyway: The end. :-)

Ray Hammond is Lil Rel Howery

Evan West is Billy Magnussen

Jasmine Park is Jamie Chung

Mathew Danbury is Chace Crawford

Vivian Chase is Jillian Bell

Theodore Buckley is Michael Hitchcock

Meagan Cooper is Cassandra Blair

Amanda Tanner is Nina Dobrev

Lisa Danbury is Dianne Doan

Jumanji the next level - 2019

I liked it, it’s fun, entertaining :-) Of course I don’t like all the characters, just like last time, but all in all it was fun and enjoyable, and I wish they’ll do another one.

A word about the actors:

I liked Kevin Hart when he played Milo, and Dwayne Johnson was rather good at playing both Eddie and Spencer, but I wouldn’t have known who was Jack Black if they hadn’t said it aloud. Awkwaina was good, it was clear from the start what character was Ming at all times.

In a way this should be one of the most important aspects of this movie , and they should pay more attention to this, more care, and it was fun to see the actors playing different characters throughout the movie, I was even sorry to see them go back to what they were in the first, but only a little bit.

A word about the characters:

Grandfather Eddie was annoying, sorry but it’s true. I understand how he feels, but it also seems like he doesn’t think about what others feel. He misses the times when he had his own restaurant, until his friend Milo decided to retire and therefore made him retire as well. He just had hip surgery and yet his daughter and Spencer find him up a ladder changing a bulb… inside the game, he fights random people just because he’s stronger, causes their death more than once, but he never seems sorry about anything, nothing is ever his fault.

Fridge in the game was as annoying as always, although outside the game he was better. In the game, he was not only loud, but also stupid, a real idiot. The way he acts when he has Ruby as his avatar for a minute, then he has to start jumping and doing acrobatics, and loses it, but most of all the way he almost has himself and Bethany killed because he didn’t want to admit that his character was an eunuch… maybe it was funny for some people, I don’t know, I simply thought it was the stupidest thing of the entire movie.

Plot in details:

Months have passed since the end of the first movie (how long… I’m not sure, I guess a year, I don’t remember it being specified), and Spencer attends a university in New York. His relationship with Martha suffered from the distance, mostly because Spencer felt alone and thought that she was happy without him at her new school and sort of broke up with her.

(She thinks they’re taking a break, but he told his grandpa they broke up)

Bethany, Fridge and Martha meet at Nora’s restaurant in town, but Spencer doesn’t go, instead he goes downstairs where he kept the jumanji game and goes back in, to feel powerful again. 

When he doesn’t show up, they go to his house and when they see the game running they understand what happened and want to help, only for some strange reason the game doesn’t need them to touch the console on the controllers this time, no, it sucks in the people it wants, so Bethany is left out but Eddie and his old friend Milo (who were still upstairs) get trapped inside.

Only Martha is her old character Ruby Roundhouse, but the others are all different: Fridge this time is professor Oberon (although from the way Black acted I wouldn’t have known that); Eddie has Bravestone as his avatar, while Milo is Mouse - now these were funny, both of them, and I really appreciated that for once Hart had a different role, slow and poised and serious, it was great.

They are told that Jurgen the Brutal stole a precious, magical stone and they need to retrieve it to save Jumanji (same as last time, more or less, but this stone is red, not green). 

Outside Jumanji, Bethany doesn’t know what to do, she’s alone, so she goes to Alex for help.

The group starts out in a desert where they have to escape a herd of ostriches, very angry and aggressive.

They follow the clues and see Jurgen, and also Ming, a thief who stole the key to the box that supposedly holds the stone, but when Jurgen calls her a thief Eddie stops her and Jurgen kills her. (Really, Eddie? Helping the big bad guy whom you just listened to while he said how he killed someone? Really? Thief or no thief, how could you hand someone over to such a murderer?)

Martha realises that’s Spencer and they join him when he comes back, quite annoyed that he didn’t get to be Bravestone this time (it’s not known why, the game was supposed to only have five characters, didn’t it?).

Spencer and Milo steal some camels - Milo can talk to animals - while Eddie was supposed to keep an eye out for trouble but also to stay out of it, but when he realises how strong he is he starts beating up everyone, attracting lots of attention, so later they will all get killed by Switchblade with a rocket or something.

Ruby and Oberon go to take the Jumanji Berry, and there’s a sort of electric water that allows characters to switch players, so for a little time Fridge is Ruby and Martha is Oberon, but he’s so excited to have an athletic body again that he acts silly and they end up switching again.

Eddie keeps fighting with Milo, angry that he sold their diner, but honestly seeing how stubborn Eddie is he would have never allowed it and Milo was tired of working and wanted to retire…

Then they talk and it turns out that Milo doesn’t have much time left to live, and wanted to make peace with his old friend before the end, so they stop fighting. (What a nice character, this Eddie, it took his friend dying to convince him that maybe he should stop acting like an asshole).

Bethany and Alex show up to help, only Alex is his old character, while Bethany is another new one, a magical horse.

Finally they find a river with the same kind of green waters that Martha and Fridge saw before, so now they can all exchange avatars . Now Spencer is again Bravestone, Fridge is Mouse and Bethany is Oberon. Eddie becomes Ming and Milo becomes the horse, and the two of them get captured.

Eddie and Milo are taken to the Zhatmire Stronghold so they must rescue them. They split. Alexenters, Bethany and Fridge follow him but are mistaken for the Kababik brothers and welcomed in. Spencerand Martha climb the Ice Wall to get to the dungeon and Eddie. They all have just one life left. Spencer and Martha find Eddie and they try to find the jewel, but Jurgen the Brutal has it. Martha and Spencer rescue Fridge and Bethany but Jurgen is super strong too. So Martha saves them, and Spencer goes alone after him and the jewel. Alex frees horse-Milo, and it turns out it’s a flying horse, so Eddie rides him to save Spencer, but Spencer throws the jewel to him and they fly high to show it to the sun, and then they all shout Jumanji and they are all to safety, but still in Jumanji. It’s over, and they’re all ready ot go but Milo wants to stay. He won’t be able to get to the real world again, but here he can fly. So he stays.

They all go back to the real world, and their real bodies. Spercer and Martha are together again. They all go to the restaurant that was once Eddie and Milo’s, and is now Nora’s. Fridge can’t bear to eat cake anymore :-p Nora needs help at the restaurant, and Eddie offers to help, and she gladly accepts. The team is all friends, and they promise to stay so for life. 

At the end, a heater-repair-man enters Spencer’s house, mom shows him where the problem is and he is curious about the game and wants to touch it. The team sees the ostrychs running outside the restaurant.

The end.

I don’t know what that means exactly, but in the 90s movie it was like that, nobody else entered the jumanji world, but the jumanji characters, creatures and Alan came out in this world.

Milo is Danny Glover

Bravestone is Dwayne Johnson

Mouse is Kevin Hart

Oberon is Jack Black

Ruby is Karen Gillian

Ming is Awkwafina

Seaplane is Nick Jonas

Spencer is Alex Wolff

Martha is Morgan Turner

Bethany is Madison Iseman

Fridge is Ser’Darius Blain

Eddie is Danny deVito

Jurgen the Brutal is Rory McCann

Nora is Bebe Neuwirth

Heater repair man is LaMorne Morris