BADASS WORLD CUP GROUP STAGE: EUROPE

Oh, I bet you all thought these were over and done with and I'd just flaked. Au contraire, homes, we just gettin started. And now we get to the Big Three in terms of cinema: North America (where my sweet home Estados Unidos is), Asia, and today, Europe. This is not to slight Africa, Central/South America, or Australia, they just don't have as vast and well-funded national film industries as the Big Three. And of course, simple math dictates, more cinema, more potential ownage.

Europe is where cinema goes back the longest, too (fuck you, Edison, I'm Team Lumiere). The Czech Republic (and Slovakia, too, I guess, back when they used to be smushed together as Czechoslovakia) and Poland have produced some great pictures, Spain, Germany, Russia, Italy, France, and England a whole fucking lot of 'em. Some of the greatest directors to ever call action—in whatever language—are European, as are some of the greatest actors. It would stand to reason, by this rationale, that the problem in determining who reps Europe in the Badass World Cup should be sifting through all those badass performances. Right?

Actually, surprisingly, no. European cinema suffers from the same problem as South America and Africa do, on a much larger scale: their art cinema is fucking top-notch, but the ownage content of their shamelessly populist stuff is, percentage-wise, a bit low. The one notable exception to this, historically, has been France, because French people have historically had this massive crush on American B-movies, starting from Truffaut and Godard trying to intellectually justify geeking out like little kids over Don Siegel movies where dudes own other dudes with shotguns, on down to the present day of Luc Besson's EuropaCorp, an institution with the highest respect for le cinema d'ownage.

Despite these most valiant efforts by the French, European cinema remains largely a place where people get their asses handed to them by historical forces, fate, and totalitarian governments, rather than one large man with muscles and/or guns. This makes European movies great to drink a glass of wine to, no question, and that's important. We need movies where people grimly contemplate existence, or have secret affairs wherein their long-repressed passions take flight, or where we just sit there for three hours digging how pretty the Alps or the Riviera or the steppes are. Well, maybe we can trim that last kind, but you know what I'm saying. Ownage isn't the only game in town.

However, it is the subject of this competition. So, without any further ado, the also-rans:


6—Count Orlok, Nosferatu, Transylvania

Remember back when vampires weren't pretty hairless twinks who sparkled in the sunlight? Well this motherfucker right here is fucking old school. Max Schreck was a perfectly normal-looking old German dude, but he got in the room with F.W. Murnau, one of the earliest great duckfuckingly insane auteur filmmakers—and I say this with great reverence, F.W. Murnau was fucking crazy—and suddenly it's all like “get in this makeup, Schreck, we gotta make your ass look fuckin disgusting.” Oh man did it work, too. Nosferatu fucking owns if you can get a half-decent print (a big if these days, sadly, mostly due to Bram Stoker suing the shit out of Murnau for copyright infringement because Murnau decided to just steal the shit out of Dracula instead of paying for it). And Count Orlok is one of the all-time great baddies. He loses out in the Cup largely because a) he's a bad guy and b) he dies. Way to waste your immortality, fucko.


5—Vakulinchuk, Potemkin, USSR.

Vakulinchuk (left), some other dude with a dope mustache (right)

Because we need to shout the Russians out when we're talking about cinema. The great thing about Russians, if I may be permitted a little racism leeway to pay the cats a compliment, is their grim determination to soldier on with unglamorous shit. Thus, in the early years of cinema when everyone was figuring out the best ways to light chicks to make them look hot and messing around with visuals, the Russians were like, “fuck it, we're gonna invent editing.” Everyone else, taken aback, was like “okay, you guys do that, we're going to see if Gloria Swanson will show her tits.” (Ed. Note: the one or two women directors in the world were probably figuring out how to light Douglas Fairbanks' package, for a note of equality). But in '25, Sergei Eisenstein dropped Potemkin and everyone else ever since has been cutting based on the way he showed them how.

Now, the important thing to note with this entry is that the fact that one character stood out in Potemkin is a sign that Sergei Eisenstein fucked up. He was trying, and employing every last theoretical and technical bit of genius in his arsenal, to make a film glorifying the Soviet ideal, wherein each was part of an all rather than a unit on their own. Only problem is, he was such a good filmmaker that in the second episode in Potemkin, he ends up revealing how much the sailor leading the mutiny, Vakulinchuk, fucking owns.

The great thing about Vakulinchuk is that he doesn't spout all kinds of incongruous, fully-articulated Marx (like any number of dudes in Soviet movies), he's just like, “Fuck it, this shit's not right. These dudes running shit are assholes. Let's fucking get rid of them, even if it means our lives.” And Vakulinchuk lets himself get owned in the interest of the greater socialist struggle etc etc etc, leading inexorably to the Leninist revolution, but let's not let the fact that it ended up being for a questionable cause count too much against Vakulinchuk. The fucking guy is really cool, and we need to remember he was non-ideological, he was just engaged in a very simple struggle of “These guys are assholes, I'm not, so I'm going to stop them.” I always award style points for fighting the good fight. If this was college basketball, Vakulinchuk would be that one tiny-ass school with no guys who'll ever play in the NBA but who somehow make it to the quarterfinals every year. He doesn't win, but he endures his defeat with dignity and you'll be like “Hey, remember Vakulinchuk?” for a long time afterwards.


4—Michel, A bout de souffle, France

Okay, now we get to a more conventional portrayal of conventional ownage. You can't be talking about ownage in Europe without talking about Jean-Paul Belmondo, one of the great purveyors of same to ever breathe. Even if, in this, he's out of breath! BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! (Ed. Note: fuck y'all, that was funny)

Michel owns a cop, fucks Jean Seberg, smokes a lot of cigarettes, does that awesome lip thing, and when he walks by the Bogart poster, he adjusts his shit to make sure his swag is tight. He's Jean-Paul Belfuckingmondo, people. There really ain't much more to say about the cat other than that he owns in just about the Frenchest way possible, which is ultimately why he's not repping Europe, because owning Frenchly means you get killed in the end, and although he dies one of the dopest deaths anyone ever pointed a camera at, still. Death is a bad move if you want to advance.


3—Bryan Mills, Taken, Ireland

Sure, they say he's American, but Liam Neeson was too busy killing the shit out of everything in sight to meet up with the dialect coach, which is why he gets to fly the green, white, and orange in this Cup. I needn't rehash all the reasons laid out in this post, so refer to that in case you somehow forgot how goddamn great Taken is, and how much ass Liam Neeson kicks in it.

So, you may be asking, why is he not the guy for all of Europe? Because the top two also-rans and the champion are just that fucking cool. So prepare to get your socks knocked off.


2—Jacques Mesrine (“C'est prononcé 'MAY-REEN' vous enculés!”), Mesrine, France

Ah, Vincent Cassel. He fucks shit up in just about everything he's ever been in, playing villains and heroes with equal skill, though he takes particular relish in being bad. Which is probably why he's so spectacular as Mesrine. It took two movies and four hours that were basically just an episodic account of thunderously badass (if occasionally embroidered) deeds, to tell Mesrine's story. Not all of it is pretty—him being a shitbag woman-beater is his eventual undoing in the Cup—but the number of times and ways the motherfucker broke out of prison, it's like he's a French version of the velociraptors in Jurassic Park.

He's more badass in the first part of Mesrine, “Killer Instinct,” than in the second, “Public Enemy No. 1,” but that's largely due to the director having to—I guess—return his tripod to the shop after filming the first part, because there's too much bullshit shaky-cam shit in part two, which suffers from being both more of the same from part one but being darker, since it's when Mesrine confronts his own mortality and decides he wants to be a leftist. Which is fine, I mean heaven knows we could use an actual Left in America, but when you're some dude who robs banks with his dick out and beats his wives, you might want to chill with the insurrectionary rhetoric. Sometimes you're not a resistance fighter, sometimes you just steal shit. And as the cops reminded Mesrine at the end of the picture, by lighting his ass the fuck up in broad daylight, they were in charge.

All that negativity should serve to point up the fact that the fucking prison break near the end of part one must have been tight as fuck (Ed. Note: the fucking prison break near the end of part one was tight as fuck) because that alone vaults him this high in the rankings. Also, he's Vincent Cassel. I like Vincent Cassel.


1—James Bond, various, United Kingdom

The odds-on favorite to win worldwide, 007's shocking upset in the Europe group stage set the cinematic sporting press aflutter, with many hailing this as the most surprising defeat in the history of sport. Or, you know, it would be if this was a real thing.

Whence 007's defeat? Playing him made Sean Connery a star, for which we should all be grateful, made Pierce Brosnan a star, for which we should all be . . . well, not as grateful. And it gave us Daniel Craig, and Daniel Craig fucking rocks. It's not his fault Cowboys & Aliens sucked balls, and that The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is probably going to be gloomy whack-off-in-your-hat bullshit despite his and David Fincher's best efforts. But James Bond never has that problem, right? He's always awesome, consistently shaken-not-stirred, always wins in the end, always gets the finest specimens womanhood has to offer . . . right?

Alas, even James Bond has his Achilles heel. In this case, it's the Roger Moore/Timothy Dalton years, which collectively consist of almost half the franchise's duration. During those years, Bond was a fucking dick (the Moore years) and a pussy (the Dalton years), the Bond girls were bland, and Bond was a fucking asshole to them. Let's break it down:

Connery—old-country chauvinist, but only hit women when they tried to kill him.
Lazenby—goofball, kind of the Ringo of the Bond franchise, but props for landing Diana Rigg.
Brosnan—charming cocksman, more of an ex-boyfriend than anything else.
Craig—tortured romantic, comparatively progressive though still quite the horndog.
Dalton—eunuch
Moore—psychopathic misogynist

It'd be one thing if it were possible to go strictly by the character and toss the actors out of the equation, but the character of Bond changed inexorably with every actor who played him. The Connery Bond owns all in his path, and if the franchise had ended with Connery we wouldn't even need a Cup. The Craig Bond isn't as sure a bet, since he's only done two, and the Quantum of Soporifics sucked, but Casino Royale is, no exaggeration, one of the best action pictures ever made and stands side by side with the best of the Connery years. Brosnan coasted on the fact that at least he wasn't Roger Moore. But goddamn. The Roger Moore years were really, really bad. Bad enough to be the stumbling block for James Bond's quest for the Cup. (By the way, I know I kid around a lot on this blog, but I'm dead serious about this: if you cross swords with me on the Roger Moore question, we are at war). This is basically the equivalent of a soccer player losing the game by scoring five own-goals, on purpose, to lose the game 5-4. For the non-soccer fans out there, doing that will get you killed in every country on earth other than the United States. Fucking Roger Moore . . .

(Ed. Note: Apparently he's a sweetheart IRL, so there's that. But holy Christ his Bond movies suck.)


And, finally, our surprising winner, the Cinderella of the Cup so far . . .


Moses, Attack The Block, United Kingdom

Since on the surface this looks like a case of something I saw recently seeming better because I just saw it, let's look at the objective merits of both this character and the movie itself. First, there aren't a lot of good SF movies in Europe, though “good” is a hard quality to pin down when dealing with some of the fucking insanely bad but extremely fun SF pictures made in Italy (side note, if Italian Spiderman was real, he'd have been #1 on this list no question.) Second, even in the handful of good SF movies in Europe (can anyone think of another one besides Tarkovsky's Solaris and Stalker, or maaaaaybe von Trier's The Element of Crime . . .?) there aren't a whole lot of own-or-get-owned showdowns with vicious carnivorous aliens. Third, even if Moses didn't own the bejesus out of an entire battalion of vicious carnivorous aliens single-handed, there's the added bonus of the fact that a black guy representing Europe will make racists' heads explode.

The thing that makes Moses so great is that he starts out at a place where he could very easily slip into a life defined by anger at his circumstances, taking his revenge on society at large until he got so deep in the game that there would be no way out except death. But Attack The Block catches him right at the brink, where his intelligence and ferocious tenacity can be channeled into the cause of saving Earth. Because, seriously? Those wolf-gorilla motherfucker aliens could have posed a threat to the entire planet. It's Moses, Pest, Sam, Ron, the hipster stoner dude, the girls, and the rest of them whose resolute defiance stops the thread from spreading, and Moses who stands out from the pack by being the one who lures the wolf-gorilla motherfuckers to their ultimate doom.

Look, what I'm trying to say is that the second Attack The Block hits DVD and groups of friends can smoke weed to it, it is going to take on once-in-a-generation classic status. Remember how The Big Lebowski tanked at the box office and became a cult hit on home video? Or Fight Club? Chances are, you barely do, because those pictures are regarded as two of the finest of their decade, and endure as classics to this day. I'm saying this right now and posting it online where everyone can see it, so if I'm wrong you all can laugh at me, but I'm not wrong. Attack The Block is going to be regarded as one of the classic movies of this generation the second people can smoke weed to it. I haven't smoked weed in well over a year and probably won't again for well over another, if ever, but I remember it (reasonably) accurately. And I remember this: people like SF when they're high, they like horror when they're high, and they like comedy when they're high, and Attack The Block is an unstoppable and seamless blend of all three. One of the biggest reasons why is because of its hero. And that's why Moses reps Europe.

Commentator: “Moses, how do you feel about representing Europe in the Cup?”
Moses (not making eye contact, smiling shyly): “Allow it.”

Trust.

3D: THREAT OR MENACE?

Consider this: there have been a total of three movies that have even justified the existence of 3D. They are Avatar (which, a couple nice visuals aside, sucked elongated hippie Smurf dick), Tron: Legacy (which was barely more than something to smoke a joint to), and Transformers: Dark of the Moon (which I covered in all its shamefully entertaining glory over at Tor). None of these, if suddenly removed in one of those Stalin-era proto-PhotoShop “nah, fuck that guy, he never existed, who are you talking about?” maneuvers, would be missed in the slightest. And yet, 3D persists.

Yesterday I went to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. I did this because I wanted to see the movie, as one usually does when going to see a movie. Note the repetition of the word “see.” So I'd heard that David Yates had shot this one in 3D because . . . well, I never found that part out. It was being shown in 3D but also 2D, so I was hoping the Pavilion, my local neighborhood movie theater, was offering the choice. But they weren't, so the ticket lady handed me my 3D glasses and I sighed and said, “well, let's hope for the best.” (It should be noted that they didn't charge me a marked-up price, they charged the plain old bargain matinee rate, so I won't be ranting about the expense. This time.)

You know how back in the day, when they'd project a movie onto a screen, they'd use . . . what was that shit called . . . oh, right, “light”? None of that faggotry for our friends the 3D Borg, they use some sort of ooze distilled from the blackened, avaricious hearts of executives. The result is, there is no fucking light in the fucking movie theater at all. So when I walked into the theater in which Harry was playing, I had no idea where to sit, because they'd started the coming attractions ten minutes early and so the dim projection was giving off no light at all. The result was, I almost sat on some poor woman before hastily repairing to the row behind her. So I missed the Dark Knight Rises trailer, if they even showed it (whatever, it's not like Chris Nolan would reveal anything from one of his pictures, he doesn't even give out a plot synopsis until the fucking thing comes out on DVD, practically). And then I spent the next couple hours holding the stupid glasses on my face, dropping them once, missing the occasional scene because THERE WAS NO FUCKING LIGHT, and failing to be moved by a single one of the 3D effects in the movie. (The movie itself was fucking awesome, let's be clear, I just wish I could have watched it in 2D with actual light).

What's the 3D experience? It's like when you were in college and the good drug dealers were all at Burning Man or a Phish concert or something and you had to cop a couple tabs from that one skeevy little child molester looking townie motherfucker and you took them and realized “shit, either this isn't acid or it's fucking weak as fuck” and then you decided for reasons of sheer perversity to watch a bad movie underwater with your sunglasses on, just as a fuck you to the universe for giving you this shitty acid that had all the skin griminess and none of the “holy shit the color red is my friend” fun stuff.

If the previous paragraph is something you can't really relate to and you think it's kind of dumb and pointless and not all that funny, then congratu-fuckin-lations my perceptive friend, you've found the hidden meaning: 3D is something no one can relate to because of the biological process by which the eye sees things and passes them along to the brain, it's extremely dumb and fucking pointless, and it's no fun. If we were on a spaceship and you gave me the choice to airlock James Cameron, Rupert Murdoch, or The Alien, I'd have a long moment of deep moral dilemma before using Murdoch as bait to lure The Alien over to the airlock door, because fuck man, Jim Cameron really fucked us up with this 3D thing this time around. It sure would be nice if it just fucking went away.

But no plague just goes away without doing something proactive. I propose that we think of 3D as a physical villain, or at least the diabolical plot of a villain. And you know what happens when you got a villain running around. You need a hero to show up and dispense ownage. So here's a list of possible ways I'd like to violently murder the very notion of 3D, and the avatars (BOOM! Take it and like it, Cameron!) of said ownage:

John Matrix, Commando

Method: Explosions, machine guns, impalement, wit.

Why this among all the plethora of classic Arnold performances? Because you don't want to waste one of Arnold's better movies on something as retarded as vanquishing 3D, and because frankly, in his entire filmography, Commando is the one picture that exists entirely to have Arnold strut around owning bad guys. There's no other purpose to that movie whatsoever. And it is a fucking classic. John Matrix would kill 3D dead and then Austrianly say something demeaning and the universe would right itself once more.

James Bond, Any Bond Movie That Actually Exists

Method: English/Scottishness, sex, everything in Arnold's arsenal.

James Bond's bread and butter is going after villains with dumb, diabolical ideas for world domination, which certainly describes 3D. James Bond could go in wearing a tux, order a really cool cocktail, beat 3D at cards, fuck 3D's wife, garrot 3D's henchmen with the wife's underwear, have a showdown with 3D on top of the Golden Gate bridge or Seattle space needle, and then sail off into the sunset with 3D's widow, her sister, Moneypenny, and Helen Mirren.

The Doctor, Doctor Who

Method: English/Scottishness, pure positivity.

3D is, let's face it, the kind of thing only a Dalek could think was a good idea: “YOU HUMANS HAVE BEEN ENJOYING MOVIES FOR TOO LONG! WE MUST EXTEEERMINAAAAAAAATE!”Also, the Doctor is so cool playing him turned David Tennant into a sex symbol (though if anyone who knows more about being attracted to dudes wants to argue that this is a chicken-and-egg thing I'd probably have to concede, but much like Doctor Who there's a lot I don't know about that).

Andy Garcia, The Untouchables

Method: “I got him.”

Cuz Andy Garcia's got this motherfucker. Believe.

Harry Potter, Harry Potter

Method: magic, lots of redheads and nerds on his side.

Bringing things full circle, Harry beat Voldemort (SPOILER ALERT!) and 3D is some shit Voldemort would come up with after establishing his National Socialist Wizard's Party and having Dumbledore whacked and so forth. “We will force the Mudbloods to watch movies in a pointless, stupid, often expensive format; soon their will to live will escape them, much like a Dementor's Kiss only even more cruel.” Voldemort's not the type to punctuate that with a villainous laugh, but maybe he'd arbitrarily kill one of his subordinates just because he could (that was one of my favorite moments in Deathly Hallows 2; after Harry destroyed one of the last Horcruxes—the repositories in which Voldemort keeps parts of his soul in order to ensure immortality—Voldemort turned to the first flunky he saw and just straight dropped his ass with a Killing Curse . . . now that's a fucking villain, by Christ).


I know there isn't anything we can do about it. 3D is here until it stops making money. My position is basically, until we have direct-to-brain, all-senses virtual reality, we do not need bullshit half-measures that serve only to pull moviegoers out of the experience. Granted, once direct-to-brain VR is introduced, that's a whole new can of worms, but we'll cross that bridge in about 25 years. Until then, if Roger Ebert is the Don Corleone of this shit, I'll be Luca Brasi: let's make 3D an offer they can't refuse. In the back of the fucking head.

THE NAME IS BOND . . . JAMES BOND

And then there was Bond. Originating in print, springing forth from the mind of Ian Fleming, British spy James Bond has become the ultimate expression of a particular form of masculinity: sophisticated, lusty, ruthlessly competent, often at odds with titular superiors. The popularity of Fleming’s novels inevitably led to their being adapted into movies, and as of 2006—with the “straight” adaptation of Casino Royale, previously spoofed in 1967—all of them have now been done, with Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, and Daniel Craig all playing the iconic lead (with David Niven, Fleming’s original first choice, playing him in the spoof Casino Royale).

With so many different actors, all of them quite distinct from each other, playing Bond, the canon is a difficult study. Some prefer a holistic approach: Bond is Bond, regardless of his portrayer. Some others, like me, are more selective, and simplify our study of the Bond universe by deciding, in a manner that may seem arbitrary to an outside observer, that certain entries in the series simply do not exist.

In conducting one’s study in such a manner, it certainly helps to be an asshole. Fortunately the fine philosophy of Assholism is not only subjective, but enables the practitioners thereof to happily ignore all dissent, or at the very best react to dissent with dismissive condescension. I personally take it as a point of philosophical pride to engage with a subject on its own terms, and James Bond—contain your gasps and accusations of blasphemy—is kind of an asshole. He drives way too fast, kills people, is constantly giving his bosses hypertension with his blithe disregard for proper procedure, and just about every woman who sleeps with him ends up dead within fifteen minutes. (And he never fucks poor Moneypenny . . .) However, and without any contradiction whatsoever, these are among the many reasons why Bond is so cool. He can do all this blatantly irresponsible shit because he’s fictional, and an avatar for our transgressive desires. This iconic status enables him to be the exception to the rule that the protagonist needs to be someone the audience can relate to. No one can relate to James Bond, except maybe Zeus.

Lest it appear that I’m being negative or overly PC in deconstructing Bond, I want to make one thing clear: I think James Bond is fucking awesome. There’s a very particular mood in which none other than Bond hits the spot for me, and I rewatch favorite Bond movies with high frequency. I don’t subscribe to the philosophy that heroes need to be flawless, and I have a nuanced enough intellect to compartmentalize negatives, because the human mind is never entirely one thing ever.

However, before we begin our trip through the cinema of Bond, let’s return for a second to the idea of selective existence. Some—quite a few, actually—Bond movies don’t really exist. These will, naturally, be skipped. Or, if a thing doesn’t exist, can it really be skipped? Scratch your beard to that one for a moment, why don’t you.

Dr. No (1962)—Exists

In which Bond investigates the murder of an intelligence official, discovers malfeasance perpetrated by the reclusive title villain, and ravishes the almost supernaturally gorgeous Honey Ryder. We don’t see Sean Connery earn his double-0 or in any way portray Bond as anything other than a fully-formed, complete entity, an invincible force of nature. In spite of this complete absence of character development, Connery pulls it off, because he’s Sean Connery. And he is James Bond. You best believe.

From Russia With Love (1963)—Exists

Bond does a bit more globe-hopping here, hitting up Turkey, Croatia, and Italy. The fascinating idea of a near-equal is introduced, in Robert Shaw (just about the only guy alive who could pull off something so apparently ridiculous). Bond and Robert Shaw beat the living shit out of each other in a train compartment in a really well-filmed—and long—fight scene a ways into the picture; Robert Shaw is so cool in this that you’re almost not certain Bond will win, which is particularly impressive. Lotte Lenya (hey, don’t look at me) shows up as a particularly nasty villain with knives in her shoes, and who furthermore puts moves on half-ass KGB mole Daniela Bianchi (who, while very hot, looks about as Russian as a Ferrari). Bond’s ability to turn women from evil to good through his fierce Scottish sexuality is introduced, enabling Daniela Bianchi to resist Lotte Lenya and embrace the West. Also, since 1991, has been funny because the big gadget Bond has to make sure the Commies (or SPECTRE or SMERSH who whoever the fuck they are) don’t get their hands on is called the Lektor. You know, because of Silence of the Lambs. Okay, my sense of humor is retarded sometimes. Moving on.

Goldfinger (1964)—Hell yes it exists

My personal favorite of the bunch, for a lot of occasionally idiosyncratic reasons:

--The hottest Bond girls. The tragically short-lived Masterson sisters are both stunners, and I’ve always had a thing for Pussy Galore (“My name is Pussy Galore.” “I musht be dreaming . . .”) in no small part because of her initial arctic, repressed, pantsuited impression, to which Bond naturally lays waste and pulls off the evil-to-good sex maneuver once again, even more impressively this time because Pussy Galore was more enthusiastically aligned with the bad guys than the wishy-washy KGB girl the last time around.

--Goldfinger’s motive? “There has been a masterpiece in every human endeavor . . . EXCEPT CRIME!” Fuckin-a right, Auric, do your thing, baby.

--“Do you expect me to talk, Goldfinger?”
“No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die.”

--Goldfinger cheats at golf and Bond still kicks his ass. Golf is fucking ridiculous, and I would bulldoze every golf course in the world and put up a nature preserve or low-cost housing if given half a chance, but it’s important that Bond is good at golf, not just because Connery Bond is Scottish, but the kind of guy Bond is has to be good at golf.

--Oddjob is to henchmen what Bond is to cocksmen.

--The guy from the Gold Office or wherever who offers Bond that “rather disappointing brandy” has the coolest English accent ever. Well, until Michael Fassbender said, “Well, if this is it, old boy, I for one am going to go out speaking the King’s” in Inglourious Basterds, but records are meant to be broken.

--A very limited group of people can get away with the shit Bond talks about the Beatles right after he fucks Jill Masterson. Bond can because he’s Bond, and Sean Connery. My parents can because they liked the Stones, Kinks, Animals, and Dylan more, and it must have been mildly annoying having the Beatles on the radio all the time back then.

This whole movie has enormous balls. Goldfinger wants to rip off Fort Knox, for fuck’s sake. He’s playing in the majors. And it’s very important that at the end, Bond disarms the bomb just as the readout says “007.” Not because it’s a stupid joke and prefigures some of the more unfortunate detours into campy humor that the Bond movies would later make, but because Bond doesn’t break a sweat. What kind of cut-rate second-rater is lame enough that he has to leave it until the last second? People perspire that way. Bond has things so well in hand that he can save the day completely on his own terms. And bad jokes aren’t bad jokes when cool and/or sexy people tell them. That’s just the way it is.


Thunderball (1965)—Exists, conditionally

A lot of people love Thunderball, and Connery even remade it in 1983 as Never Say Never Again (which, although not an official Bond movie, also conditionally exists), but I find it kind of boring. I have a hard time keeping track of which Bond girl is Domino and which is the other one, and Emilio Largo is kind of cool, but not really. After Auric Goldfinger wanted to wreck the world economy basically for aesthetic reasons (god I love that guy), here’s this eye-patch wearing douchebag saying, “Hey, give me some money or I’ll totally nuke you. Seriously, I'm not kidding!” A real villain would have at least nuked Paris and then said, “Pay me or London’s next, bitch.”

It still conditionally exists, because when I’m able to compartmentalize and not compare Emilio Largo to Goldfinger, it is good. The opening sequence with the transvesto-villain was massive cool. And even though I can never sort out Domino and the other one, they are sisters, so that’s understandable, and they’re both hot.


You Only Live Twice (1967)—Exists

In which Bond goes to Japan, prevents World War III, fucks the girl from What’s Up Tiger Lily?, and first meets Blofeld. Written by Roald Dahl, which I always find funny, and is the reason I was once almost slapped for calling this “James and the Giant Budget.”

A source of great personal frustration to me for a really long time, when I was buying up all the Connery Bonds on VHS, because they weren’t selling any of them as standalones, they were all parts of six-tape sets which always included a couple of the shitty Roger Moore ones and one of the Timothy Dalton ones. Finally, after surrendering my desire and submitting to the void, I found it in a bargain bin for $5 and happily took it home. Fortunately it is pretty good, even though the series was getting overblown and borderline full of shit by this point. The action sequences are top-notch.


Casino Royale (1967)—Exists, is cool, but belongs in a different discussion entirely


On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)—Kind of exists

I mean, it’s a serviceable action picture. But it’s not Bond. George Lazenby’s good in the lead . . . but he’s not Bond. He even breaks the fourth wall and admits he’s not Sean Connery. Bond concedes alpha status to no one! Diana Rigg, on her own merits, is easily a top-three Bond Girl . . . but she marries Bond, and Bond doesn’t get married! Sure, she gets killed, but come on, man.

George Lazenby seems like a nice guy, but he doesn’t get to exist out of pity, he gets to exist because this is a pretty good movie if you can elbow the 800 lb gorilla out of the way—the one wearing the “this isn’t a real Bond movie” t-shirt—and enjoy it on its own merits. Also, Telly Savalas as Blofeld is a funny enough idea to carry one through the non-Bondness.


Diamonds are Forever (1971)—Exists, but shouldn’t push its luck

A lot of being able to enjoy this one hinges on one’s tolerance for Tiffany Case (Jill St. John) being kind of a hoi polloi Bond Girl. First of all, she’s American. Sure, she’s got attitude, and she’s got pulchritude, but still. We don’t home-grow exotic in the land of the free and the home of the brave, we import it. So, she’s got a major handicap. But there’s something about her line reading when she says, “Holy smokes, you just killed James Bond!” to James Bond that makes me unable to keep picking nits. Maybe she's not exotic, but she's got something.

There’s a lot of goofy shit in Diamonds are Forever. Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd are great. It’s got the best car chase in the Bond oeuvre (Sean Connery popping double wheelies in Vegas, as pure and good as any concept yet hatched in Western thought). Plenty O’Toole is plenty o’hot. Blofeld has hench-beauties named Bambi and Thumper, which is really stupid, but they manage to transcend the faulty nomenclature.

The climax is big, loud, and a little protracted, but ultimately exciting. Much like the movie, which in the end is worth it, but really stretches patience.


Live and Let Die (1973)—Just barely exists

Now we get to Roger Moore. Apropos of his debut, which cynically capitalizes on the then-fashionable genre of blaxploitation, I turn you over to Avon Barksdale: “You only do two days [in prison], the day you get in, and the day you get out.” Which is why the only two Roger Moore Bond movies that exist are his first, and his last.

There’s nothing empirically wrong with Roger Moore. As Roger Moore, he’s pretty cool (see Cannonball Run), and has a unique sense of style, in a square-ass kinda way. But the direction the Roger Moore Bond pictures took was sickening: Bond became a comedian under Roger Moore’s watch, which is unacceptable in itself. But Bond becoming a brutal misogynist is the last straw, and the reason why most of the Roger Moore movies don’t exist. There’s a big difference between a guy who gets laid a lot and a guy who has contempt for his conquests, and smacks them around, and basically carries on like a fucking pig. Sure, Connery smacked a couple women, but they were trying to kill him (the one by the pool in Goldfinger whose ass he playfully smacked and to whom he said, “Run along, man talk,” doesn’t count; although not the high point in the history of progressive gender relations, he was just messing around). Roger Moore’s Bond was a bloated, sybaritic gargoyle. Again, I don’t blame him. He didn’t write the scripts. He didn’t direct the movies. Then again, he didn’t seem to resist much either.

Anyway, Live and Let Die gets to exist conditionally because otherwise, Yaphet Kotto never would have gotten to be a Bond villain, and Yaphet Kotto goddamn deserves to be a Bond villain (which is probably what sustained him through putting up with Robert De Niro’s character’s bullshit in Midnight Run).


The Man With the Golden Gun (1974)—Doesn’t exist (which is a shame, because it’d have been nice to see Christopher Lee as a Bond villain in a real Bond movie)

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)—Doesn’t exist (though, oddly, its theme song does)

Moonraker (1979)—Doesn’t exist, even though the “Ben Affleck is THE MOONRAPER” joke in Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back does.

For Your Eyes Only (1981)—Almost exists, they did try, but ultimately sunk by Roger Moore.

Octopussy (1983)—Can go fuck itself. Actually, it can’t go fuck itself, it doesn’t exist.

A View To A Kill (1985)—Exists, but not entirely on its merits.

Has the distinction of being the first Bond movie I actually saw. The Duran Duran theme song is stellar (though the video is fucking obnoxious even by their “good-looking broads on a yacht with cocaine and ennui bleeding out the eyeballs” standards). The only thing wrong with Christopher Walken being a Bond villain is that he was a little too young here. Frank White would have been a great Bond villain, even though Walken only had five more years of grizzle and idiosyncrasy on him at that point. Grace Jones fascinated the six-year-old me, and may be personally responsible for me being so warped sexually today; in spite of this movie being three-quarters a piece of shit, she ranks with the great Villainous Bond Girls.
Although it’s waaaaaaaay too long and really boring whenever Walken and/or Grace Jones is absent, the climactic Golden Gate bridge sequence is fairly kick-ass. Also, since this is the last Roger Moore one, it gets to exist so we can tell him not to let the door hit his ass on the way out of the series.

The Living Daylights (1987)—Doesn’t exist; the Timothy Dalton experiment, while conducted for the noble reason of washing the cyanide Roger Moore taste out of the audience’s mouth, chose the wrong antidote

License to Kill (1989)—Doesn’t exist, for the same reason.

GoldenEye (1995)—Exists!

Of all the people to restore faith in Bond . . . Pierce Brosnan? He wasn’t Connery, because no one is, but not being Roger Moore or Timothy Dalton was a big part of it. Brosnan was plausible with the ladies, acquitted himself nicely in the action scenes, and had a sense of humor that definitely held the vermouth. Interestingly, Brosnan had been the first choice of the producers when they ended up going with Timothy Dalton, but hemmed and hawed and didn’t really want to go with a damaged-goods franchise (the toxicity of Roger Moore’s impact cannot be overstated) but ultimately appeared to decide that enough time had past and the contract had enough zeroes following an appropriately high numeral that he could give it a shot this time around.

GoldenEye was the result of a couple very smart choices by the producers. The first being, get a suitable Bond, which they did, but the second was the clincher: actually make a kick-ass action movie. Don’t take it for granted that a modern audience that has forgotten how to take Bond (kind of) seriously will just go to a Bond movie unless it holds up on its own merits. At the same time, though, making an action movie where the hero just happens to be named James Bond won’t do either. We’re going to need a few things, each of which simultaneously pay tribute to the past and look forward:

--A domme villainess who crushes men to death with her thighs? Yup (Xenia Onatopp, modernizing Pussy Galore but without the ultimate redemption, since Bond’s ability to de-evil women with his dick died with Sean Connery.)
--A genuinely exotic and hot Russian ingénue played by an Italian model? Sure, why not (Izzy Scorupco, per Daniela Bianchi in From Russia With Love)
--Alan Cumming playing a greaseball computer nerd? Hell yeah. This has nothing to do with Bond history, it’s just kinda cool, and man is he slimy in this.
--Judi Dench is so good as M that Bernard Lee starts to fade from the memory, which has more to do with Judi Dench being Dame Judi than it has to do with Bernard Lee being weak.

The greatest asset GoldenEye has going for it, though, is its new-school villain: 006. First off, Sean Bean would be badass saying Merry Christmas to his grandmother. But the idea of a 00 going bad raises the interesting question: how far can Bond be pushed? And how much more of a moral exemplar will Bond appear by not cracking?

(Also, GoldenEye inspired one of the better video games of all time, and began a tradition of top-notch Bond video games, one of which inspired my biggest “if I ever have a couple hundred million bucks” filmmaking desires: to shoot a car chase without visible cuts. Sure, there’d have to be some digital compositing, but the idea of doing a car chase as a tracking shot makes me geek out nearly psychotically.)

Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)—Exists

Doesn’t really hold up as well as GoldenEye, but when it came out this movie was fucking awesome. I saw this with my cousin in a freezing night in the middle of nowhere in Massachussetts and she was rendered rather weak-kneed by Jonathan Pryce’s Eurotrash lead henchman (but not so weak-kneed that she couldn’t utter a perfect summation of action cinema: “Violent movies are only cool when people are getting killed,” apropos of her calling me a nerd for liking Starship Troopers).

While I thought the Eurotrash bad guy was cool, Michelle Yeoh was more my type. Michelle Yeoh’s character in this was a tremendously risky gamble by the Bond producers: how to introduce a female equal for Bond who he still fucks senseless, but who he doesn’t have to save when the shit comes down. They kind of fucked up because she’s still all tied up and helpless at the end—horrendous bullshit considering the metric tons of ass she kicks earlier in the picture—but erring on the side of gender regressivism rather than PC is the more acceptable error for a Bond movie (since Bond movies exist in a bubble outside conventional morality).

Brosnan again is solid, and Jonathan Pryce basically plays Rupert Murdoch as Bond villain, which is brilliant since Rupert Murdoch is one of the rare real guys who basically are Bond villains. (Dick Cheney is, of course, the best: that sneer, and he actually fucking has a secret villainous lair! The next Bond movie should be Daniel Craig and some six-foot-one Brazilian model in a short skirt kicking Dick Cheney in the balls with nuclear weapons . . .) Even though this isn’t the most memorable entry in the series, it still has enough pluses to be allowed to exist, and as per the You Only Live Twice corollary, the fact that it apparently started as a treatment by Donald Westlake (??????) gives it sufficient goofball cred to ensure continued existence.

The World Is Not Enough (1999)—Doesn’t exist. In fact, the only two Denise Richards movies that exist are Starship Troopers and Wild Things, and neither owes their existence to her.

Die Another Day (2002)—Exists

The idea of 00s being pushed to the breaking point, first introduced in GoldenEye, is revisited here, with Bond getting thrown in a North Korean prison for a couple years and growing a Lebowski-esque beard in the process. Of course, Bond being Bond, he doesn't break. This leads to a glorious sequence wherein Bond, bearded and dressed in soaking-wet pajamas fresh off an escape from a yacht, strolls into the finest hotel in Hong Kong and calmly asks for a suite, a tailor, and some room service. Fuck what you heard, Brosnan pulled that off? He gets to be Bond.

The rest of the movie is largely over-the-top, with a lot of borderline blasphemous touches (Bond ordering a mojito and having “London Calling” playing as Bond touches down in the UK are both okay as far as I’m concerned, because who the fuck drinks martinis in Cuba, first of all, and second of all, Bond’s stability as a cultural icon is shaky enough due to all the hits it’s taken over the years that he needs to be diplomatic with the Clash, a disparate but similarly important cultural entity). Halle Berry fails miserably in the “hurf durf let’s give Bond a female ‘equal’ but let’s forget to three-dimensionalize her character” role, but it’s not entirely her fault, and she is sufficiently decorative. Miranda Frost, though, she’s my girl in this one—not only does she have that cold repressed thing going on (part of what makes her so sexy in that fencing outfit), but she be baaaaaad. (If you’re keeping score at home, yes, the sexiest movie of all time would feature nothing but tall, thin, emotionless women in glasses and tweed. Who chase each other in cars.)

The villain appears to be kind of a weak sister in this, when you think he’s Maggie Smith’s ginger son, but after the Scooby-Doo moment when we realize he’s really the North Korean guy, all is once again well. And he has a palace made of ice, which you really can’t fuck with, and Pierce Brosnan drives a car through it as it melts, which is pretty far out.


Casino Royale (2006)—Exists with extreme prejudice

I almost can’t sit still to write about this movie. A couple overheated, possibly ridiculous statements:

--Daniel Craig is as cool as Sean Connery. Daniel Craig is the English Steve McQueen.
--Eva Green as Vesper Lynd is on that Honey Ryder/Pussy Galore level.
--Any movie where the villain cries tears of blood is motherfucking on point.
---The Madagascar chase scene where Daniel Craig is huffing and puffing after the parkour guy is the single best foot chase scene in the history of cinema, period, point-blank, fuck off.

It’s hard to imagine a reboot being pulled off better than this. They even managed to make Bond a flawed, imperfect human being without dulling his edge as a badass in the slightest. Since this is an origin story, it’s important to see how Bond learned to be the Bond we’d previously known for 12 movies (remember, a bunch of them don’t actually exist), and part of that means he has to fuck up a couple times to learn from his mistakes.

The biggest issue I had with Casino Royale is microscopic, and so dorky I should probably be put to death. While since no one plays baccarat anymore, having Bond take down Le Chiffre at Texas Hold ‘Em instead makes sense, on the surface, since thanks to Rounders and ESPN everybody knows what turns, rivers, flops, cowboys, rockets, and the like are. But they play a lot more Omaha Hold ‘Em in Europe, so while Le Chiffre would probably be good at both, a tournament in Europe would probably have been Omaha rather than plain old Hold ‘Em. The point is this: if I’m stooping to these depths to find anything to criticize about this movie, it’s very good indeed.


Quantum of Solace (2008)—Bitch please

Goddammit, people, stop fucking shooting car chases with handheld cameras. It’s like heroin, doing it doesn’t make you cool. It makes you a fucking asshole. Mount the goddamn thing on something.

And please, for the love of Christ, don’t just cast a French guy as the villain and think that that’s enough. You’d think having a Swiss guy directing this one would have obviated that kind of silliness, but no. The bad guy isn’t doing anything all that bad in this; he’s barely even doing anything illegal. I guess Bond has to whomp on some Frogs on general principle due to producer fiat, or because the WGA strike didn’t give Paul Haggis enough time to finish the script . . . or because fucking Paul Haggis wrote the goddamn thing.

Unfortunately Quantum of Solace exists due to reasons beyond my control. As the most recent movie in the series, it’s the last one everyone saw, and we need at least a one-movie buffer before practicing our aesthetic Stalinism on the undesirables.


And Q. And Shaken Not Stirred. And the Aston Martin. And the music. And on and on til the break of dawn. Long live Bond!