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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…

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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.

…and then it opened and the audience said “eff the social critique or condemnation aspect…we think the main protagonist is actually kinda cool or at least, you know, engagingly colorful.”

This hqppened to a certain extent with Todd Phillips‘ Joker (’19) — what could have been a D.C. villain’s origin story was artified in a bigger, operatic, more emotionally intense thing, almost certainly in a manner unanticipated by Warner Bros. It became something else.

I knew it had happened with The Wolf of Wall Street (’13) when I saw it with a live whooping dudebro audience at the Zeigfeld, and especially when LexG wrote that he liked Martin Scorsese’s 2013 film “for the wrong reasons.”

It certainly happened with Oliver Stone‘s Wall Street (’87) — intended as a cautionary moral tale, Michael Douglas‘s Gordon Gekko (a character based on Stone’s father) inspired a whole generation of asshole stockbrokers (including Jordan Belfort!) who saw Gekko into a aspirational role model.

I’ve written about Martin Ritt‘s Hud (’63) before in this context, but it remains the ultimate social-criticism flick that was hijacked by audiences and celebrated for its rogue charms.

And it was Pauline Kael who first spptted what had happened, and laid it all out in a 1964 Film Quarterly piece called “Hud, Deep In the Heart of Divided Hollywood.”

Excerpt:

From HE’s “Hud Template,” posted on 1.3.20:

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.

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.

HE readers paid little attention to this 7.16.21 piece about Grace Kelly, and then I paywalled it. So I’m giving it another go:

The thing I’ve always loved about the young Grace Kelly isn’t just her ice-queen beauty, but the blend of her Philadelphia blue-blood lineage and refinement with the many stories (however true or untrue) that suggest she was seriously promiscuous.

Am I allowed to say that Kelly was slutty, or at least that I love the stories that suggest she was? I don’t mean this in a derogatory way — I mean it in the most delicious way imaginable. Kelly in the sack = the stuff that dreams are made of.

Kelly’s father, John B. Kelly, was a hound and so, apparently or reputedly, was she. No shame. It has been my experience that very few women are Grace Kelly-like — they might be randy but they lack the looks and breeding, or they have said qualities but are hesitant and ambivalent when it comes to this or that opportunity. Kelly was reputedly focused and fearless.

I’m not suggesting anything new here. We’ve all read the stories. Whatever the actual truth of things, Kelly is believed to have been right up there with the voracious Tallulah Bankhead, Elizabeth Taylor, Mary Astor, Gene Tierney and Lupe Velez, and the mostly older (and mostly married) fellows Kelly allegedly got down with were all famous, wealthy, top-of-the-line…Frank Sinatra, Gary Cooper, Ray Milland, Clark Gable, Marlon Brando, Bing Crosby, William Holden, (allegedly) JFK, Oleg Cassini.

There were almost certainly more, or at least I hope so.

If you’re delighted by the idea of Kelly tearing at the belt buckles of almost every older guy she costarred with during her five-year film career (between ’52 and ’56), you don’t want to read Donald Spoto‘s “High Society: The Life of Grace Kelly” (’09), as he pours water on just about every sexual allegation and anecdote anyone’s ever shared about her.

You start to get the idea that the more stories about Kelly’s sexual life that Spoto is able to debunk, the better he feels. He doesn’t seem to like the idea of catting around in the slightest.

Whatever the truth of it, Robert Lacey‘s “Grace” (’94) delivers what I want to hear. During a discussion of Kelly’s affair with the married Ray Milland during the shooting of Alfred Hitchcock‘s Dial M For Murder, Skip Hathaway, wife of director Henry Hathaway, who directed Kelly in Fourteen Hours, a 1951 suicide-watch drama, says the following:

“Grace Kelly was a conniving woman. She almost ruined my best friend Mal’s [i.e., Muriel Frances Weber, Milland’s wife of many decades] marriage. Grace Kelly fucked everything in sight. She was worse than any woman I’d ever known.”

Please. Yes. More of this. God.

And yet it appears that Kelly didn’t have it off with her To Catch A Thief costar Cary Grant, or her Rear Window leading man James Stewart. It doesn’t add up but there it is.

Kelly starred or costarred in 11 films between Fourteen Hours (’51) and High Society (’56). Six of them are good — High Noon, Dial M for Murder, Rear Window (her best overall effort), The Country Girl, The Bridges at Toko-Ri and To Catch A Thief.

But you can’t really count Toko-Ri as Kelly’s screen time in that 1954 Korean War film comes to only 12 or 14 minutes, give or take. Her performance as William Holden’s wifey-wifey classes the joint up, but she wasn’t given any scenes that would qualify as meaty or even semi-substantial.