Casino Royale (1967)

Every spy movie has to have some sort of mystery in it. The mystery here: who the hell thought this was a good idea? I mean, it’s not like the legit Bond movies take themselves all that seriously, so how far can you really go in parodying them? The answer to that question is painfully evident here. Every so often this movie raises itself up and achieves a level of extraordinary stupidity; the rest of it is a mishmash of lame, incomprehensible, unwatchable, or some combination of all three. The only moment in the movie that is even within hailing distance of competence is the baccarat scene—and that’s the one part of the script that plays it straight! Otherwise, this is a bomb of staggering proportions, a film that is so bad it can’t even achieve "so bad it’s good." Seriously, I like a spoof as much as the next guy, but this...words fail. At least, as I struggle to find something good to say, I can at least report that a few of the women in the flick are great to look at. So there’s that. Otherwise, yeesh. Your mission: avoid this at all costs.

From Here to Eternity

It's probably not a good sign when you spend most of a flick waiting for bombs to drop--as in Pearl Harbor. This work's Best Picture win is evidence that the movie was overvalued due to its proximity in time to WWII (and, perhaps, its alleged raciness, though in reality it's really quite tame). The film's greatest strength lies  in the performances, particularly Burt Lancaster's work as the least screwed up of the principal characters. The narrative's intertwined stories are weak and fairly uninteresting, at least to this viewer. Admittedly, I'm not really one for stories focused on the "lives and loves" of fill-in-the-blank type people, even in a normal context; set such a story against the backdrop of world-altering historical events, and that putative main subject matter comes across as unusually petty and ultimately meaningless. A major disappointment.

King Solomon's Mines

(1950 version, with Stewart Granger and Deborah Kerr.) I often preach about old movies being better than you think they are; this one's not exactly a poster child for that concept. Not to say that it's bad; but the running time largely consists of a pastiche of wildlife encounters--which were probably fascinating back in the day but relatively bland for today's jaded viewer, who's seen all this and better in any number of nature shows--and a story that meanders to an ending with very little payoff. This one's probably only for the film buffs out there.