Hello Bond fans & those of you who know me in real life! I’ve long talked about watching every James Bond movie in order and reviewing them all on a blog. Now that I’m done with grad school, I’m running out of excuses for delaying this project any longer.
I have always enjoyed James Bond movies, but there are more that I haven’t seen than those I have seen. In addition, my James Bond cultural literacy is very spotty – I’ve seen Goldfinger but not Dr. No (!), I’ve seen every Daniel Craig title, but none of Pierce Brosnan’s. I’m also a big fan of year-long projects (a couple of years ago, I took a picture every day for a year). So, over the next year, I’ll be watching and reviewing every Bond movie, in order, mostly on Sundays (hence the Church of Bond moniker).
A lot of people who don’t know me very well are SHOCKED!! to find out I’m such a fan of Bond movies. I guess I don’t strike many people as a Bond fan because I’m a pretty unapologetic feminist. I don’t think the two are mutually exclusive, but I am interested in exploring how Bond movies depict different themes throughout time. I work in library-land, and am blessed to have abundant access to lots of scholarly sources. James Bond is a surprisingly interdisciplinary subject, with many articles on Bond coming from fields as diverse as film criticism, marketing and business, and gender and sexuality studies. So once in a while, some footnotes might work themselves into reviews.
While poking around the interwebz to see who else has attempted watching and reviewing every Bond movie, I found the incredible and wonderful Blog, James Blog. If any of y’all are James Bond fans, you must check out Scott’s blog. His reviews are astonishingly thorough with commentary on every possible aspect of any given Bond film (e.g., “Badassness of villain”, “Most outrageous death”, etc). Scott has been generous enough to allow me to use his “Martini Glass Rating System,” in which every movie is rated on a scale of 1-7 martinis.
This blog will be a work in progress – I’ll be adding additional posts to reviews whenever the urge strikes, and will hopefully get through all 23 of the official Bond films over the next year.
NB: Disclaimer time! I am in no way affiliated with EON films, the Broccoli family, or in any other way connected to the powers-that-be behind James Bond.