Above Average Joe Blogs

Goldfinger Review In many ways, this is "the" Bond film. This is the film where the various archetypal elements that had been on and off in the previous two films, all come together in a lightning in a bottle moment, that all subsequent films have tried to replace or subvert in order to match it. This is the film that was so popular that it broke box offices records around the world, at one point was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the fastest grossing film of all time, and even required a cinema in a New York to remain open 24 hours a day. The plot hews particularly close to that of the novel: through an act of happenstance, Bond becomes involved in a minor bit of card cheating by the gold magnate Auric Goldfinger, which then puts him on the road to a more significant criminal enterprise headed by the villain, which will see him travel to Switzerland, Kentucky USA and Fort Knox. For the first time in the series, we have the true, traditional pre-cred...

From Russia With Love  Week two and it is a review of the second Bond film and adaptation of one of JFK's favourite books, From Russia With Love. Acting on the foundation laid by Dr No, yet spinning a more grounded tale of cloak and dagger espionage, FRWL (as it will continue to be referred to) finds Bond the target of a revenge plot from SPECTRE, whilst he goes about what appears to be standard spy business in the labyrinthine Turkey before realising that things are not as they seem. Somewhat contrary to perceived wisdom with sequels, whilst the budget of the film was vastly increased from Dr No to FRWL, the scope and action are more grounded. Where in Dr No we had underground lairs, here we have sleuthing in the backstreets of Turkey. Dr No had metallic hands, whereas FRWL's villains are fairly non-descript in appearance, encompassing the shrouded first appearance of Blofeld (with hair at this point in time, but also with white Persian cat), the deceptively diminutiv...

Dr No - Review Well this was a bit unexpected. If 2020 had just decided to settle down and not throw nightmare after nightmare at us, the review you would be reading at this point in time would have been No Time to Die. But 2020 and COVID-19 had other ideas, with the film being one of the first, if not the first, major film to get ahead of the curve and knock back the release date from early April to November. Coupling this lack of my Bond fix, and my new found isolation, I've decided to take my reviews back to the start of Bond. So over the next 24 weeks, pandemic ending or not, I'll be rewatching the Bond films in order and reviewing each one. Dr No was actually the sixth Bond novel published by Ian Fleming, releasing to less than glowing reviews by British press (infamously being labelled "Sex, snobbery, and sadism"). At first glance, it may be curious as to why producers Harry Saltzman and Cubby Broccoli chose this over the first novel, Casino Royale but ...