Bond. James Bond.

YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE (1967)

IanTheCool, we're in complete agreement about a Bond movie yet again.

I've liked the previous two Bond movies before this, Goldfinger and Thunderball, but while You Only Live Twice isn't without its positives, it also contains a good amount of things common to this franchise that I'm just not crazy about. Let's get my complaints about this film out of the way first: the second half. In the second half of this film are quite a few things that took away from my overall enjoyment. I like my James Bond movies to be as grounded as possible, so all the stuff dealing with Blofeld's space-related scheme seemed silly to me. But most of all, I think the film spends way too much time in Japan, to the point where those scenes feel sort of disjointed from the rest of the movie and even slow the pacing down somewhat. Also, Bond's "surgery" to become Japanese for that is ridiculous; you can hardly see any difference on him. One more thing, was it just me, or did Bond's plan to fake his own death ultimately feel pointless in the grand scheme of things?

As for the rest of the movie, it's pretty good. The first half moves along very well and contains some good scenes. Normally, stuff like the magnet in the helicopter picking up the car in the middle of the chase scene and the mini-helicopter Bond uses for surveillance would bother me, but they were incorporated pretty well. The mini-helicopter especially struck me as one of those silly Bond gadgets, and I can sense the franchise gradually start to lean more heavily on elements like that, but at least here it led to an awesome aerial dogfight scene. The first half is essentially the kind of Bond film I prefer, while the second half is the kind that makes me sort of roll my eyes. Basically, I like it when the franchise focuses being sleek, cool spy movies and not showcases for gadgets. You Only Live Twice falls squarely on the middle ground between the two.

**1/2 /****