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(NOTE: As this review heavily references ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE, I have revised and reposted my long essay about that film as well.) After a series of production false-starts, headaches, and then a global pandemic, No Time To Die, the twenty-fifth James Bond film and the last one featuring Daniel Craig as Agent 007, finally arrived in late 2021. For a while it seemed like the movie would never get here: Craig’s reluctance to return after the grueling SPECTRE shoot, and then a troubled development phase with scripts being reworked and writers and the original director coming and going, and then delays inDown the rabbit hole….

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A repost, with some revisions and additions throughout, to accompany my review of NO TIME TO DIE, which is coming tomorrow. I wrote this more than ten years ago, and if anything, my esteem for ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE has only increased since then. I rewatched the film on one leg of our recent journey from Buffalo to Honolulu, and the film still holds up. Here we go. Additions to the post’s original text will be in blockquoted offsets. Far up! Far out! Far more!!! Sometimes I change my mind about movies. Sometimes I don’t. Some movies meant aDown the rabbit hole….

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John Williams was born ninety years ago today. I’ve written many times in the years I’ve been blogging about John Williams’s influence on my creative world. He has been a central figure in the cinematic stories that shaped my life and stamped their print on my storytelling soul, all the way back to when I was five years old. Williams is, of course, best known for his many filmscores to some of the most prominent movie franchises of the last fifty years: Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Harry Potter, and more. The Winter Olympics are going on right now, so I’m sure we’reDown the rabbit hole….

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Longtime readers may remember that I was a big fan of the show Magnum PI back in the day. That is, the original show, the one that ran in the 1980s, and not the new reboot show that is running, well, now. (Nothing against the current incarnation, which I’ve watched a couple of times; it seems like a perfectly acceptable procedural show, but it’s never going to replace the original for me.) Being in Hawaii, where Magnum was set, gave me a chance to see some familiar locations from the show up close. The biggest draw for an old Magnum fan would almost certainlyDown the rabbit hole….

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So here we go: the first half of my person Top Ten James Bond movies! Let’s refresh our rankings to this point: Part One: 26. LIVE AND LET DIE 25. DIE ANOTHER DAY 24. THE SPY WHO LOVED ME 23. GOLDFINGER 22. DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER 21. A VIEW TO A KILL Part Two: 20. TOMORROW NEVER DIES 19. QUANTUM OF SOLACE 18. THUNDERBALL 17. YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE 16. SPECTRE Part Three: 15. THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN 14. NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN 13. THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH 12. DR. NO 11. MOONRAKER With lists like this, the ones at the top probably end up as vexing as the ones at the bottom, especiallyDown the rabbit hole….

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With this entry, we move from my bottom half of the Bond rankings into the top half. It’s worth remembering that this is all relative: there’s only one movie, Live and Let Die, that I find basically unwatchable. Every one of these movies entertains me on some level, so when I throw rocks at a particular movie, one shouldn’t assume I’m throwing particularly large or hard rocks, or that my aim is very good. By way of refresher, here’s my ranking as we enter this post (nos. 21-26 here, nos. 16-20 here): 26. LIVE AND LET DIE 25. DIE ANOTHER DAY 24. THE SPY WHODown the rabbit hole….

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Continuing my Official And Correct Ranking of the James Bond films! This time we will go from Number 20 to Number 16. Our first entry contained the one Bond film I outright dislike, followed by several that just don’t do a whole lot for me and which are almost never my flick of choice when I decide I want to watch a Bond movie. With this list, we start getting into “Not my favorite, but watchable and sometimes I’ll turn it on for fun” territory. Here’s the ranking thus far: 26. LIVE AND LET DIE 25. DIE ANOTHER DAY 24. THE SPY WHODown the rabbit hole….

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Starting my ranking of all the James Bond movies (here’s the introduction to this exercise), starting at the bottom and working our way up to my favorite Bond movie of all time! Without ado, here we go: 26: LIVE AND LET DIE This is the only Bond movie, the only one, of which I will say: “I do not like this movie.” I do not even own a copy of Live and Let Die, and any instincts I have toward completeness are insufficient to make me even want to get a copy of this movie. I find it a slow,Down the rabbit hole….

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It’s only natural that with the arrival of a new James Bond movie, the eternal cottage industry of ranking all of the movies up to that point revs up production again. I’ve seen a whole lot of these articles popping up the last month or two, and as I start writing this I’m listening to a podcast that is generating a ranked list of the Bond films via a “draft” like a sports draft. That particular podcast is taking its sweet time: two episodes, each of which is more than four hours long! So we have a group of peopleDown the rabbit hole….

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So last weekend was Nickel City Con, which is Western New York’s biggest annual pop culture-related gathering. This particular con only started a few years ago, and there have been hiccups along the way (this year saw an unfortunate rash of cancellations by the booked celebrity guests), but I’ve had a great time at each event. HOWEVER! The last couple of times I’ve attended as a paying attendee, while this year I was able to attend on an “official” basis as part of The Geekiverse‘s entourage. And even better than that, I was able to set up a stand andDown the rabbit hole….