You Only Live Twice

This is in the hay day of 007 films. Made when 007 was exciting and entertaining. That gets a lot of hate from people with Generation Xenophobe ideology. But it's totally exciting. Here, we get almost all the venues. We even get outer space. We get super beautiful scenery that pretty much make this one of the great Bond films, secure at number 5 in my opinion. Most of this is set in Japan, and much of it is filmed there. While Thunderball inspired the most in Austin Powers, this is probably second place in inspiration for Austin, and that's a good thing. Let us face the fact that the modern day 21st century Bond movies couldn't inspire Nolan Ryan to throw a baseball. This was made in the era when piranha were considered dangerous, and that plays a big part in the film. "Blowhard" (my name for Number 1) likes to feed his piranha. And you can guess what he feeds them. Lots of action, lots of scenery, lots of beautiful women, lots of wit, lots of gadgets. It has everything, which is probably why so many critics are so jealous of it.

This time, "007" (Sean Connery) has to investigate some mysterious goings on in outer space as first an American, then a Soviet rocket disappear. Naturally, they blame one another but "M" (Bernard Lee) has an inkling that Japan might be the source of the mischief and so our suave and debonair "Mr. Bond" is duly despatched. Allied with their spy chief "Tiger" (Tetsurô Tanba) who has his own underground train - he is soon hot on the trail of the "Ning Po" berthed by a small island that might well provide some answers. It's got loads of action scenes - "Little Nelly" and her heavily armed aerobatic battles being one of the better ones. The beautifully delicate Akiko Wakabayashi provides the glamour - though little of substance and Donald Pleasence - armed with some peckish piraña fish - turns up as the scheming arch enemy just before a series of disappointingly set-piece battle scenes at the end of what had, up until the last 15 minutes been a more sophisticated and intriguing film that relied more on subterfuge and mystery, as well as a decent soupçon of Japanese culture (including some interesting bathing/wedding traditions that our "James" joined in with, heartily). It's a good film, with a memorable Nancy Sinatra theme song (from Messrs. Barry and Bricusse), but not one of the best, I'd say.

An improvement over Thunderball but still not as good as the original 3 Connery films, it is still very iconic despite it only just having a reappraisal.