My aching left leg joint no longer aches. Cordless Robocop massage pistol arrived a day ago. It makes me feel like a gunslinger. I decided against ordering an optional black leather holster…kidding.

If you know anything about the Sean Connery James Bond films, of which there were seven, you know that the only true-blues were Dr. No (’62) and From Russia With Love (’63) — tough, taut, character-driven, semi-realistic and modestly scaled, at least compared to the installments that followed.

Goldfinger was the first explosively popular Connery, of course, and a huge financial success. But while the first half was relatively lean and engaging, the second half was ludicrously plotted, and it was clear that the Bond producers had decided to weaken the focus on character and double-down on high-tech gadgetry, especially in the case of 007’s Aston Martin.

The opening sequence of Thunderball (’65) made it clear that the silliness was intensifying and that gadgetry was more or less running the show, especially when Connery escaped from a threatening situation with a flying air harness or jetpack, complete with an idiotic-looking crash helmet.

Compare this uninspired intro with the one that opened Goldfinger (planting explosives, white tuxedo under wet suit, bar scene, electrocuting an assailant in a bathtub) or the From Russia With Love opener — a moonlit cat-and-mouse duel between Connery (actually a guy in a Connery mask) and Robert Shaw‘e SPECTRE assassin. The bloom was clearly off the rose, and for purists Thunderball was the beginning of the downturn.

There were three more Connerys — You Only Live Twice (’67) and Diamonds Are Forever (’71), neither being much good. Connery’s final Bond was the relatively decent. Never Say Never Again (’83).

I’m summarizing the Connery-Bond history because three days ago Collider‘s Liam Gaughan, who’s been writing about film for roughly a decade, posted an article and a video essay that insisted the silly Thunderball opener was brilliant. The title was “These Are Hands-Down the Most Intense 10 Minutes in a Sean Connery James Bond Movie.”

“Thunderball is widely remembered as one of Connery’s best Bond films,” Gaughan began, “especially in comparison to its three predecessors.” WHAT??

“Dr. No was a sexy romance that introduced audiences to the character”, he continued. Bullshit. There was some flirting between Connery and Ursulq Andress on Crab Key but not much else, as the film mostly portrayed Bond as an ice-water operative who had the steel to shoot a bad guy in cold blood.

Gaughan then called From Russia With Love “an action-packed Cold War adventure,” an apparent suggestion that it’s too many decades old to be relevant or gripping, and Goldfinger “a culturally redefining classic that introduced recurring elements that would appear within subsequent entries in the series” — gadgetry, he means. An accurate statement.

“However, the thrilling opening sequence of Thunderball set the standard for what the James Bond franchise’s action could look like going forward,” Gaughan wrote. Allow mw to reiterate that the Thunderball openly flirts with self-parody, and that the jetpack flying sequence invites derisive laughter.

Correction: The most intense 10 minutes in a Sean Connery James Bond movie is the train compartment stand-off and slugfest between Connery and Shaw in From Russia With Love.

…when it comes to woke-trans stuff?

I don’t know that he is on my side, so to speak. If he holds opposing views, fine. But something tells me this dude and I park our cars in the same garage.

@the_reasons_i_drink ♬ original sound – the_reasons_i_drink

I’m okay with Harris Dickinson playing John Lennon in Sam Mendes’ forthcoming quartet of Beatles films (due in ‘27), and I don’t know enough about Charlie Rowe to squawk about Mendes having cast him as George Harrison.

But a rumored decision to cast HE’s two all-time biggest pet-peeve actors — Paul Mescal and Barry beestung-nose Keoghan — as Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr is giving me heart palpitations.

I can only hope and pray that Jeff Sneider’s reporting is somehow mistaken or, if correct, is up in the air as far as Mescal-Keoghan are concerned. Please God, I’m begging you…

The Criterion Channel is currently celebrating Paul Schrader, whose latest film, Oh, Canada, I saw and quite admired two or three weeks ago in Cannes. But one of the Schrader films Criterion is currently streaming is Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters…hoo boy.

I admired many things about Mishima — the super-disciplined direction, Ken Ogata‘s lead performance, John Bailey‘s cinematography, Phillip Glass‘s score and the way it goaded me into reading several samples of Yukio Mishima‘s writing and to meditate about the meaning of Mishima’s fierce life…the life of a very serious hombre…a bisexual rightwing superstar-artist who committed ritual suicide at age 45.

If Mishima hadn’t offed himself so flamboyantly — if he hadn’t disemboweled himself on 11.26.70 and had Masakatsu Morita, a friend and political ally, cut his head off (he actually failed after three tries, prompting Masayoshi Koga, another ally, to finish the job) — would Schrader have made this 1985 film?

Certainly not, but that results in a big question: who did Schrader hope to reach with Mishima?

We all understand that conservative Japanese culture is queer for swords and reveres the idea of seppuku or harikari, but I, while respecting this reverence as much as I’m able, find it deeply appalling and repugnant.

Which is how I felt about the essence of Mishima as a whole. Beautifully done but what the living fuck was wrong with this guy?

I saw Mishima at the Harmony Gold screening room sometime in September or ’85, and when it was over I muttered to myself “okay, I’ve done my duty…I’ve shown respect for a major filmmmaker by giving his latest film my full, focused attention, but I will never, EVER watch this film again. I will endeavor, in fact, to put it out of my mind as completely as possible.”

Which is what I did for nearly 30 years. Until Criterion put it back in last weekend.

Hitler: “The Rosenbergs went to the electric chair for less than what Trump did [in terms of damaging the U.S.].”

Jordan Peele is no one’s idea of a brand-level visionary. He’s certainly no Spike Lee or Rod Serling or anyone in that grade-A realm. He’s basically a guy who mainly produces and occasionally dabbles in feature-film directing.

Peele got lucky once with Get Out (’17), but he’ll never breathe that kind of rarified air again. (Bob Strauss knows this but will never admit to having absurdly over-praised that racially-stamped Stepford Wives.) Us was agreeably creepy and unsettling but didn’t seem to add up to much. Nope felt portentous but was also patchy and splotchy and WTF-ish.

I’ve always regarded Peele as a well-liked, moderately talented industry hyphenate (director, producer, project hustler) who jumps into or attaches himself to anything that’s shaking (like that 2019 Twilight Zone series, which was nothing). Peele is a likable guy and fine as far as he goes, but he’s basically a hack. (And that’s not a felonious offense.) It seems as if Jeff Sneider is entertaining a similar assessment.

It took me a full month to see Wes Ball and Josh Friedman‘s Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (20th Century, 5.2), mainly because I’ve been off the Apes barge for many years now. I just don’t care any more. My investment is nil.

But I’m glad I finally sat down with it as Kingdom is obviously a first-rate, well-produced, technically excellent effort — as good as this sort of thing gets. As far as it went I respected the passion and exactitude that everyone apparently invested top to bottom, especially as it contains the most realistically rendered, subtly expressive CG simians I’ve ever seen.

Plus I found the performances uniformly excellent — Owen Teague, Freya Allan, Kevin Durand, Peter Macon, William H. Macy, etc.

Plus I loved, incidentally, the re-appearance of those ape hide scarecrows, which I haven’t seen since Franklin Schaffner’e 1968 original.

But at the end of the day I felt completely untouched and indifferent. Respectful but also relieved when it finally ended. Yes, I was annoyed by the 145-minute length, but all features are too long these days. It’s a plague.

Zoomers are entitled, I suppose, to revel in their own reptilian space alien “no one can hear you scream” face-hugger flick…a seemingly rote, fairly primitive revisiting of all the “terrifying” Alien franchise basics.

The key phrase is “set between the events of Alien (’79) and Aliens (’86).” So Sigourney Weaver‘s Ripley exists somewhere in the realm of Fede Álvarez’s film, which is titled Alien: Romulus and opens on 8.16.

Perhaps the main Romulus protagonists are aware of the loss of the Nostromo but don’t know any specifics…who knows?

The Romulus cast members are all Zoomers (born in the late ’90s or early aughts). Alvarez, born in ’78, is a codger in their midst, relatively speaking. The close-to-dwarf-sized Cailee Spaeny (Civil War, Priscilla) is the hot-shit star.