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They were on my extended iist but both got cut eventually. Two super flicks.
Goldfinger (Guy Hamilton, 1964)
Goldfinger certainly ranks as one of the best Bond flicks and definitely Sean Connery's best. I've gone back-and-forth in my thoughts about this through the years, but last night, it seemed REALLY good, with an incredibly fast pace, Bond's use and abuse of women almost gleefully on display, two terrific villains, Goldfinger (Gert Fröbe) and his henchman Oddjob (Harold Sakata), and three great Bond girls, Jill Masterson (Shirley Eaton), her revenge-seeking sister Tilly (Tania Mallet) and the enigmatic Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman). When you add in Shirley Bassey's exuberant version of the title song, you've got terrific escapist entertainment. What else could help make this the Best Bond? Well, 007 gets to use his super tricked-out Aston Martin for the first time, and Bond gets to piss off his adversary several times at the beginning of the film using wit and ingenuity before ever having to resort to violent action. There's also the first use of a real laser in film history when Bond just about loses his "shortcomings". I still think that for spectacular action set pieces that On Her Majesty's Secret Service may just top Goldfinger, but it's extremely close if it does because Goldfinger is almost wall-to-wall with action, whether it's by land, sea or air.
Goldfinger certainly ranks as one of the best Bond flicks and definitely Sean Connery's best. I've gone back-and-forth in my thoughts about this through the years, but last night, it seemed REALLY good, with an incredibly fast pace, Bond's use and abuse of women almost gleefully on display, two terrific villains, Goldfinger (Gert Fröbe) and his henchman Oddjob (Harold Sakata), and three great Bond girls, Jill Masterson (Shirley Eaton), her revenge-seeking sister Tilly (Tania Mallet) and the enigmatic Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman). When you add in Shirley Bassey's exuberant version of the title song, you've got terrific escapist entertainment. What else could help make this the Best Bond? Well, 007 gets to use his super tricked-out Aston Martin for the first time, and Bond gets to piss off his adversary several times at the beginning of the film using wit and ingenuity before ever having to resort to violent action. There's also the first use of a real laser in film history when Bond just about loses his "shortcomings". I still think that for spectacular action set pieces that On Her Majesty's Secret Service may just top Goldfinger, but it's extremely close if it does because Goldfinger is almost wall-to-wall with action, whether it's by land, sea or air.
Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967)
Arthur Penn's second consecutive homage to the French New Wave hits paydirt in a spectacular character study/black comedy/social satire utilizing Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow as a commentary on not only what they represented in the 1930s, but more importantly, what film and hero worship represented in the 1960s. Penn reunites with Beatty, the protagonist of his artsy-fartsy existential gangster flick, Mickey One, and turns that film's abstractions and pretentiousness into commercial gold. Relative newcomer Faye Dunaway proves to be a perfect foil for Beatty, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Bonnie and Clyde is one of those essential films which arrived at the right place and at the right time. It signaled, along with Mike Nichols' Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Graduate, a new frankness in American films which could never be "fully" contained by a Code and could never turn back to the Old Days. Bonnie and Clyde was certainly the most violent mainstream film made before The Wild Bunch, and while the latter was rated R, the former was originally released with no rating whatsoever.
Not only did the film turn Faye Dunaway into an immediate star, it reignited Warren Beatty's career which was actually on a downslide. Add in the fact that Estelle Parsons won an Oscar for her second role, Gene Hackman and Michael J. Pollard were rightfully nominated for two of their earliest roles, and Gene Wilder was a laugh riot in his first feature, and it's easy to see how significant Bonnie and Clyde was at its time of release and how important the effects of its success continue on to this day.
Arthur Penn's second consecutive homage to the French New Wave hits paydirt in a spectacular character study/black comedy/social satire utilizing Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow as a commentary on not only what they represented in the 1930s, but more importantly, what film and hero worship represented in the 1960s. Penn reunites with Beatty, the protagonist of his artsy-fartsy existential gangster flick, Mickey One, and turns that film's abstractions and pretentiousness into commercial gold. Relative newcomer Faye Dunaway proves to be a perfect foil for Beatty, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Bonnie and Clyde is one of those essential films which arrived at the right place and at the right time. It signaled, along with Mike Nichols' Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Graduate, a new frankness in American films which could never be "fully" contained by a Code and could never turn back to the Old Days. Bonnie and Clyde was certainly the most violent mainstream film made before The Wild Bunch, and while the latter was rated R, the former was originally released with no rating whatsoever.
Not only did the film turn Faye Dunaway into an immediate star, it reignited Warren Beatty's career which was actually on a downslide. Add in the fact that Estelle Parsons won an Oscar for her second role, Gene Hackman and Michael J. Pollard were rightfully nominated for two of their earliest roles, and Gene Wilder was a laugh riot in his first feature, and it's easy to see how significant Bonnie and Clyde was at its time of release and how important the effects of its success continue on to this day.
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It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page
It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page
