The Spy Who Liked Me (leaving October 31)
To start with: Carly Simon’s”No one Does It Much better “is the most effective James Bond motif, as well as to hell with anyone that says otherwise. Second of all, the movie it’s attached to, 1977’s The Spy That Enjoyed Me, may be just as excellent, one of the definitive instances of what a Bond flick can do when it’s shooting on all cyndrical tubes. Roger Moore took control of for Connery with Live And Allow Pass Awayin 1973 and also his 3rd Bond movie, The Spy That Liked Me, included a few of the extra newfangled unwanteds of Live And also Let Die as well as The Guy With The Golden Weapon while leaving the eager genre-aping (unless the genre being aped below was simply “Bond films”). Like From Russia With Love, Spy flawlessly harmonizes its Cold War backdrop with mushy avoidance, matching 007 versus Barbara Bach’s sexy KGB representative and also Curd Jürgens’ Stromberg, a supervillain bent on making a brand-new underwater people. It likewise presents Richard Kiel as fan favorite mini-boss Jaws, a titan with steel teeth whose twin deformities make him legally menacing.As in the best Bond images, the trekking in between countries(Austria to Egypt to Italy to Stromberg’s subaquatic haven)offers the film with a real feeling of selection, while Marvin Hamlisch’s funked-up score (consisting of a reworked theme )brings Bond out of the swinging, surf-rock ’60s as well as square right into the disco daze of 1977. Moore was never ever as talented a physical actor as Connery(or Craig, or Lazenby), yet Spy sees him at his own, distinctly Moore-ish peak form: making bold, rear-projected alpine gets away, playing it cucumber-cool with his miscellaneous female consorts, as well as developing some reliable chemistry with Bach’s conniving rival agent. The Spy That Liked Me is Moore-vintage Bond at its best.Read the remainder of our 2012 Guide on the James Bond franchise