LICENCE TO KILL (1989)

James Bond is in America to attend a friend's wedding.  Naturally, he parachutes (from an airplane that is suspended from a helicopter) into the wedding.  After that he nearly burns the brides face with an overpowered lighter and a man's leg is bitten off by a shark.  At the same time, a crooked DEA agent helps an imprisoned drug lord escape.  Soon, Bond is on the case and before you can say "They should make an ultra macho version of POINT BREAK where Bodhi and Utah fuck.", Bond is popping wheelies in a semi, tossing people out of an airplane, feeding a guy to maggots, holding a knife to a woman's throat and getting kicked in the face by a ninja.  In other words, it's a typical day for James Bond.

LICENCE TO KILL is a step up from the previous Bond film.  Timothy Dalton also has more to work with here and does a fine job.  Quick pace, a VH1 t-shirt, lots of explosions, wacky gadgets, only a few seconds screen time for Moneypenny, okay but forgettable villain, a young Benicio del Toro as a sneering bad guy, disappointing female leads, a guys head exploding on screen, cool 80's fashions, mildly interesting locations.

Overall, LTK isn't anything to rip your dick off over, but it's still a fun watch.

Three 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 5 - You Only Live Twice (1967)
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 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)

BEGOTTEN (1989)

A freaky dude disembowels himself with a knife. Suddenly a freaky woman shows up and just like the lyric to that one Rolling Stones song, she makes a dead man cum.  She then uses the fresh corpse jizz to impregnate herself.  After that, shit gets weird.

BEGOTTEN was filmed in the late 1980's, but not widely seen until it was released on VHS in 1995.  Watching it back then, late at night on a grainy VHS tape on a crappy CRT TV, BEGOTTEN was a trippy pre-internet arthouse mindfuck.  Revisiting it nowadays it's still watchable, but more of an interesting cinematic artifact than anything else.  Sparse story that really goes nowhere, no spoken words, less violence than you would expect, cricket sounds overdose, creepy nasty-looking people wallering around in the mud, suicide, lots of images of clouds and nature, flickering screen overdose, zero ninjas.  The best thing that BEGOTTEN has going for it is the extremely impressive optical effects that make the entire film look totally fucked up. Like there's no grays or something.  Everything is either extremely black or white.  It looks freaky as fuck.  Whatever the effect is, it's awesome!

I am curious what BEGOTTEN would look like without all of the optical effects. But it's probably for the best that it was released the way it was because while there is obviously no way to track all of the ways that BEGOTTEN has influenced people (either consciously or subconsciously) over the decades, the list has got to be a mile long.  I won't bore you, or myself, with a list.

Long story, short: if you're interested in exploring the weirder side of Cinema, especially in a historical context, then BEGOTTEN is required viewing.  Or, if you're simply looking for a creepy horror movie, you'll probably find the first few minutes entertaining and then fall asleep.