The View From The Mountain

I got this moon buggy toy from the movie Diamonds Are Forever back when I was a little spud around when the movie first came out. But I recall being annoyed upon seeing, instead of an astronaut, it had a guy in a suit driving it. Not realizing this was supposed to be 007 (I had never even heard of James Bond at that point in my young life), I removed the silly guy in the suit and always pretended that the moon buggy was driven by a proper astronaut. The arms are folded in front of it because they can no longer hold a pose. But the radar dish still spins when you roll it along.

Daniel Craig exploded onto the scene as James Bond in 2006’s Casino Royale. And, after four 007 adventures, he calls it a day with No Time To Die, a film that was supposed to have been released back in 2020 but was pushed back for a year and a half, thanks to the pandemic. Apple and Netflix made multi-million dollar offers to the 007 people to air NTTD on their streaming services, but the Bond producers held out for a theatrical release, which they finally got in the fall of 2021. The irony here is that MGM, which releases the Bond films, was bought out by Amazon, which owns its own streaming service. James Bond is happily retired from spy craft and happily living with Madeleine (Léa Seydoux) in Italy--until their extended honeymoon is disrupted by the usual assassins who come out of the woodwork gunning for Bond. It turns out that Spectre, the criminal organization that Bond previously tangled with, is still very much active--and it looks as if Madeleine aided i...

Warning: this review contains spoilers. Twenty years ago, back in 1999, The World Is Not Enough was released. The third James Bond film that starred Pierce Brosnan as 007, the internationally famous (or infamous, depending on your POV) British secret agent, TWINE has Bond trying to protect Elektra King, an oil heiress (played by French actress Sophie Marceau) from a terrorist named Renard (Robert Carlyle) who had kidnapped her years earlier. King had escaped from Renard’s captivity after shooting dead two of his men. But when Elektra’s father is assassinated by Renard, Bond suspects the terrorist is now coming after her for further revenge. TWINE was a different Bond film right out of the gate with the selection of Michael Apted as the director. Apted is most famous for the “7 Up” documentary series, which follows a group of British people starting from age seven and revisiting them every seven years onward. He’s also directed Sigourney Weaver to a Best Actress Oscar in Gorillas i...