Stephen Adams

Rating: ★★★★½ (4.5/5)

There are very few James Bond fans you’ll ever find that don’t have Goldfinger on their “Mount Rushmore” of Bond films. It’s pretty much the gold (heh) standard by which all Bonds that come after have to live up to. Why is that though? What makes Goldfinger the movie that we all look to as a definitive view of who Bond is and what makes a great Bond film? I’ve been thinking about this for some time and even now I don’t know that I have the answer to those questions.

Rating: ★★★½ (3.5/5)

I don’t know why this movie gets the hate that it does. It’s rated as rotten with the audience score on Rotten Tomatoes at a 59%. Yet the critics, for once, rate it actually higher at 64%. I’m more in line with the critics, if maybe even a bit higher.

I get that this movie is the worst of the Sean Connery films, but I’d say its far from bad. I had a good time with it. That being said, this all comes down to what makes a Bond movie. This has all the ingredients for a great Bond film: an interesting villain in Blofeld, cool gadgets, Sean Connery, women. Okay that last one is a stretch because the writers had no idea what to do with women at this age of cinema, particularly with James Bond. All in all though, this has the stuff of a good Bond movie, it’s just the decisions made that I think knock it down a few rungs.

I made it back from Dragon Con! What a wild ride that was. It was probably one of my favorite Dragon Cons that I’ve participated in, I definitely learned a lot of lessons I hope to take with me to the next one.

We got there Thursday afternoon after driving six hours and I thought I would definitely need to valet park when I got there because that’s usually how it works. There are only so many parking places in the self-park and I figured they would all be gone when I got there. By the time I realize there was still room to self-park I’d already committed to letting the dude at the check-in take my car and charge me a $20 premium to park it for me. So began the journey of me spending too much throughout the whole weekend, but we’re going to try not to get into that. The struggle started really when I got the bags out of the car and handed them over to the bellhop. His name was Eddie and he was actually a really nice dude.