This year I am reviewing one film per month for the blog - in order to spread cinematic love as well as increase my own poor filmic knowledge base. So, a week or so into February, welcome to January's review - Moonraker! Moonraker is the third book and 11th film in the British cult classic James Bond adventures. Directed by Lewis Gilbert and fronted by Roger Moore, the film has all the best bits of Bond that you would expect - the baddie (Hugo Drax played by Michael Lonsdale), the gadgets, the chases, the casual sexism... The chases through Venetian canals, the Amazon jungle and Rio are superb, and Moore's acting is a nice mix alongside the female characters Corinne Dutour and Holly Goodhead.
Released in 1979, the film also neatly reflects the 1969 American Moon landing. Ian Fleming's original book was published in 1955, years before the mission, and so was almost entirely prophetical and caught the political mood of the time in the anti-Red post-War States. After all that was put into the film, with its record-breaking $34 million production cost, you might wonder why it only gets mediocre reviews and two-star ratings. It is the eleventh film in one of the biggest film/book franchises of all time. I think that partly speaks for itself.
