YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE (1967)

When I first started reviewing the James Bond series I was pretty excited, but after the first few bored the shit out of me I started losing interest. It's been nine months since my last review on the series and after painfully trudging through this installment it might be nine more before the next one.

Something strange is going on: every time Russia or America send a spaceship up another larger craft comes along and gobbles it up. Sounds like a job for James Bond!  He fakes his death and travels undercover to Japan where he quickly infiltrates a building and steals some documents that lead him to a dormant volcano that's actually the lair for a bad guy who's trying to start a war between Russia and America. Naturally, Bond doesn't take kindly to this silly horseshit and punches a lot of people until peace is restored. He also bangs a few random women.

As usual, everything looks very easy for James and the bad guys are ridiculously stupid. One time Bond is dead asleep and a dude sneaks into the house, crawls up in the ceiling then lowers a string down to drip poison into Bond's mouth! Why?!!!! If Bond is right there asleep just toss in like 20 hand grenades or something! Or maybe blow up the entire house with missiles from your army of helicopters. Jeez. Another time Bond is tied to a chair and instead of killing him they untie him, put him in a plane and then parachute out leaving the plane in a dive.  Naturally, Bond karate chops his way over to the controls and lands the plane. I guess I'm over thinking the whole thing, but the film would have been much more enjoyable if the villains were actually competent.

Lots of James bond-style action, a few attractive women (especially Akiko Wakabayashi), way too little screen time for Donald Pleasence, beautiful Japanese scenery, a pool full of piranhas but we never see them...just their bubbles, helicopter dogfight, ninjas. The highlight of the movie for me, besides Dr. Loomis, was the supporting role by the legendary Tetsuro Tanba.

Worth checking out on a lazy afternoon.

Two and a half Thunderballs out of five.

Part 1 - Dr. No (1962)
Part 2 - From Russia With Love (1963)
Part 3 - Goldfinger (1964)
Part 4 - Thunderball (1965)
Part 6 - On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)
Part 7 - Diamonds Are Forever (1971)
Part 8 - Live and Let Die (1973)
Part 9 - The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)
Part 10 - The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)
Part 11 - Moonraker (1979)
Part 12 - For Your Eyes Only (1981)
Part 13 - Octopussy (1983)
Part 14 - A View to a Kill (1985)
Part 15 - The Living Daylights (1987)
Part 16 - License to Kill (1989)
Part 17 - GoldenEye (1995)
Part 18 - Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
Part 19 - The World Is Not Enough (1999)
Part 20 - Die Another Day (2002)
Part 21 - Casino Royale (2006)
Part 22 - Quantum of Solace (2008)
Part 23 - Skyfall (2012)
Part 24 - Spectre (2015)
Part 25 - No Time to Die (2021)

Non-Eon James Bond films:
Casino Royale (1967)
Never Say Never (1983)

KAIJI: THE ULTIMATE GAMBLER (2009)

[Update 03/09/2021: Need to redo this review completely. Fix the screenshots also.]

I might not be the best person to review this movie since I've never read the manga or seen the anime, but then again that didn't stop me from falling madly in love with DEATH NOTE. I heard about KAIJI because the two stars of DEATH NOTE (Tatsuya Fujiwara and Ken'ichi Matsuyama) reunite in this film and that sounded exciting! And it was, but it was also disappointing because Tatsuya is the main star (and he's great), but Ken'ichi only has a very minor part with probably less then two minutes of actual screen time!

The story is about this dude who has a crappy job with no fucking future. One day he's hard pressed by these evil dudes into going on this cruise ship where he's suppose to gamble away his debt to them (whether or not his debt was actually real I never figured out). So he gambles and ends up as a slave for these people and spends 15 years(?) working on some underground construction. Finally one day he get the chance to gamble his way out if slavery and all kinds of wild shit happens.

I liked the story a lot and enjoyed the movie, but it felt like they were just cramming too much into the movie and skipping right over some important shit. My recommendation is to read the manga first then watch the movie. Personally I liked the story enough that I'm going to try and read them myself before I watch Part 2.

Part 2 - Kaiji 2: The Ultimate Gambler (2011)
Part 3 - Kaiji: Final Game (2020)