Film Club Regroup

Following several months off due to holidays, babies being born, and busy schedules, our film club has resumed meeting.  We left things off after viewing only two Martin Scorsese movies, Mean Streets and Taxi Driver, but we decided to pick things back up with Quentin Tarantino’s early films.

 

A recent radio segment on the 20th anniversary of Pulp Fiction piqued our interests in Tarantino and our film club decided that before returning to Scorsese we would view Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction.  The initial plan was to dive back into Scorsese after those two movies, but after our first meeting last weekend and rave reviews for the two movies viewed, it was decided we would watch the Kill Bill series before returning to Scorsese.

 

A recent ranking of Tarantino’s directorial films has been attempted, but it may change a bit after another viewing of the Kill Bill films since I haven’t seen those movies in nearly a decade.  Below are my current rankings of the nine films Tarantino has directed.  It should be noted that regarding Grindhouse and Four Rooms I have included the portion of the films that Tarantino actually controlled.

 

9. Kill Bill: Volume 1

8. Grindhouse (Death Proof)

7. Jackie Brown

6. Kill Bill: Volume 2

5. Four Rooms (The Man from Hollywood)

4. Django Unchained

3. Reservoir Dogs

2. Inglourious Basterds

1. Pulp Fiction

James Bonds' John Gardner Novels

Listed below are my ranking of the 007 continuation novels penned by John Gardner.  Gardner was the author selected to revive James Bond in print following a one-off in 1968 by Robert Markham, which was a pseudonym for Kingsley Amis.  Gardner's novels ran from 1981-1996.  In my humble opinion, Gardner's best Bond novel was about on par with Fleming's average works.

 

Gardner started out in his Bond writing career leaning heavily on gadgets, but gradually got away from those gimmicks.  Some of my biggest complaints with his writing was that he seemed to either get too technical, as he was an ex-Royal Marine commando, or use stale cliches for cliffhangers and plot twists.  In the example of Brokenclaw, the novel is moving along just fine and is actually one of his better works until the ending when he has our hero making the most foolish decisions a person could make, and the worst part is he doesn't even try to provide some sort of explanation for Bond's motives.

 

Here is my rank for the best to worst James Bond novels by John Gardner:
 

1. No Deals, Mr. Bond

2. Death is Forever

3. Icebreaker

4. Scorpius

5. The Man from Barbarossa

6. Cold Fall

7. Never Send Flowers

8. Brokenclaw

9. Role of Honor

10. For Special Services

11. License Renewed

12. Win, Lose or Die

13. Seafire
14. Nobody Lives Forever