Brian's Thoughts on Movies

“Spectre (is) a particular treat for 007 nerds and a businesslike blast for everyone else” (Variety, November 2015) SPECTRE was the criminal organization that served as the primary antagonist in the 60s Bond films (and three of the Fleming books), and was headed by Ernst Stavro Blofeld, who became James Bond’s archenemy.   Despite several casting changes (in the Eon films four different Blofelds faced off with three different Bonds) Blofeld still had the greatest impact.   Blofeld’s offscreen performances in from Russia With Love and Thunderball (in which viewers did not see his face) were the most terrifying.   Of his onscreen performances I thought Telly Savalas (in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service) was the best. After the title was announced in December 2014, I expected the return of Blofeld since the Eon producers recently recovered the rights to the character and Spectre after several decades (I am not sure they ever really lost them but Kevin McClory s...

“I never should have got out of the car.” Chuck Noland (Tom Hanks) in Cast Away Cast Away is my favorite Tom Hanks film.   Hanks’ second collaboration with director Robert Zemeckis tells the story of a Federal Express system engineer named Chuck Noland who is stranded on a desert island in the South Pacific.   I am naturally drawn to survival stories that show normal people who confront unexpected situations. The Edge, All Is Lost, Life of Pi, and The Martian have some similar themes that I also enjoy. As always I will be discussing the third act of the film in detail so please consider this a spoiler alert. Time is a key theme of the film.   Except for the opening shots in the Texas panhandle, the first act of the film is swift as Chuck rushes from a Fedex hub in Moscow (one of his first lines is “tick-tock, tick tock”) lecturing the employees on increasing productivity, to Red Square, then through Paris to Memphis for an all too short Christmas dinner,...

Every time a James Bond film is released many media outlets release a ranked list of the films.  Bond fans also love to create lists of their favorite elements of the series on different sites.  In the spirit of such lists I have created an overall list of my Bond films ranked in order of preference.   Additionally, I have listed several categories below but most of them are broken down by leading man (actor who played Bond) since each actor represents his own era of films and I felt it more fair to judge these elements within their own generation rather than against the whole.  I did not include the non-Eon Bond films, Never Say Never Again (1983) or the 1953 or 1967 versions of Casino Royale.  I also excluded George Lazenby from most of the categories since he is only in one film so there was no other point of comparison. This is just a personal list and is by no means supposed to represent anyone’s opinion other than my own.   Ther...