1. Casino Royale (1967): Opening sequence
The film's opening sequence is a deliberate ironic take on the dramatic opening sequences in the EON Bond films. Evelyn Tremble and Inspector Mathis meet in a pissoir, where Mathis presents his credentials, setting the satirical tone of the film.
Plot summary
The movie opens at the country estate of Sir James Bond 007 (David Niven), a legendary British spy who retired from the secret service 50 years ago in 1917. He is visited by the head of British MI6, M (John Huston), CIA representative Ransome (William Holden), KGB representative Smernov (Kurt Kasznar), and Deuxième Bureau representative Le Grand (Charles Boyer). Each in turn implores Bond to come out of retirement: A sinister organization known as SMERSH has been eliminating various agents around the world. Bond implacably spurns all their pleas. M then explains to his fellow representatives the reason for Bond's retirement: the love of his life, Mata Hari, the famous exotic dancer and spy, whom it had been his sworn duty to lure to her death. When Bond continues to stand firm, his mansion is destroyed by a mortar attack, apparently at the orders of M, who is however killed in the explosion.
Bond travels to Scotland to return M's remains to the grieving widow, Lady Fiona McTarry (Deborah Kerr), who has been secretly replaced by SMERSH agent Mimi. The rest of the household has likewise been replaced by beautiful female agents posing as McTarry's daughters. The aim of SMERSH is to discredit Bond by destroying his "celibate image". However, Mimi/Lady Fiona becomes so impressed with Bond that she changes loyalties and helps Bond to foil the plot against him. On his way back to London, Bond survives another attempt on his life by eluding a remote controlled milk float full of explosives.
David Niven as Bond and Barbara Bouchet as Miss Moneypenny
Sir James Bond is now promoted to the head of MI6. Among his first decisions, he orders that all remaining MI6 agents will be named "James Bond 007", as a ruse to confuse SMERSH. He also hatches a plan to train an irresistible male agent to resist the charms of opposing female agents. His secretary, Miss Moneypenny (Barbara Bouchet), recruits "Coop" (Terence Cooper), a karate expert who begins training to resist seductive women. While training, Coop meets the new "secret weapon", an exotic agent known as the Detainer (Daliah Lavi).
Sir James then hires Vesper Lynd (Ursula Andress), a retired secret agent turned millionnaire, to recruit baccarat player Evelyn Tremble (Peter Sellers), whom he intends to use to turn SMERSH agent Le Chiffre (Orson Welles). Having embezzled SMERSH's money, Le Chiffre is desperate for money to cover up his theft before he is executed.
Following up a clue from agent Mimi, Sir James persuades his estranged daughter Mata Bond (Joanna Pettet) to travel to East Berlin to infiltrate International Mothers' Help, a secret school for spies that is actually a SMERSH cover operation. Mata uncovers a plan to sell compromising photographs of military leaders from the United States, USSR, China and Great Britain at an "art auction", another scheme Le Chiffre hopes to use to raise the money he needs. Mata sabotages the auction and destroys the photographs. Le Chiffre's only remaining option is to raise the money by playing baccarat against Evelyn Tremble at the Casino Royale.
Tremble arrives at the Casino Royale accompanied by Vesper, who foils an attempt to disable him by SMERSH agent Miss Goodthighs (Jacqueline Bisset). Later that night, Evelyn observes Le Chiffre playing at the casino and realizes that he is using trick sunglasses to cheat. Vesper steals the trick sunglasses, allowing Evelyn to beat Le Chiffre. Le Chiffre then kidnaps Vesper and then captures Tremble while he chases the kidnappers. Le Chiffre then tortures Tremble in a hallucinogenic torture sequence, at the end of which Vesper apparently rescues Tremble but then kills him. Meanwhile, Le Chiffre is killed by SMERSH agents for betraying them.
While sightseeing in London, Mata Bond is kidnapped by SMERSH in a giant flying saucer, and Sir James travels with Moneypenny to Casino Royale to rescue her. They discover that the casino is located atop a giant underground base run by the evil Dr. Noah, who turns out to be Sir James's weak-kneed nephew Jimmy Bond (Woody Allen). Dr. Noah/Jimmy reveals that he plans to kill all men over 4-foot-6-inch (1.4 m) tall, leaving the diminutive villain as the "big man" who gets all the girls. However, The Detainer foils his plan by poisoning him with one of his own atomic pills.
In a huge and disorganized finale, the casino is overrun by secret agents, including a French Legionnaire (Jean-Paul Belmondo), stereotypical movie cowboys and Indians, George Raft, and Ransome. Eventually, Jimmy's atomic pill explodes, destroying Casino Royale along with practically all the characters.
2. Michael Jackson – Moonwalker (1988): The music video to Jackson's song "Man in the Mirror" acts as the opening segment to the film. This short film features a montage of clips of children from Africa, Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and other historical figures.
Retrospective
A short biographical film about Jackson, covering the years from his birth until the Bad tour short parts of the following songs are played:
• "Music and Me"
• "I Want You Back"
• "ABC"
• "The Love You Save"
• "Who's Lovin' You"
• "Ben"
• "Dancing Machine"
• "Blame It on the Boogie"
• "Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground)"
• "Rock with You"
• "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough"
• "Can You Feel It"
• "Human Nature"
• "Beat It"
• "Thriller"
• "Billie Jean"
• "State of Shock"
• "We Are the World"
• "The Way You Make Me Feel"
• "Dirty Diana"
Badder
A parody of the music video for Bad's title song, featuring children filling the roles of various people from the original clip
Of note, this video features a young Nikki Cox, who would eventually star on Unhappily Ever After and Las Vegas. The singing group The Boys appear as background dancers. The video also features Jermaine Jackson, Jr., and Brandon Quintin Adams of Mighty Ducks fame.
Speed Demon
The "Badder" clip transitions into a second short film, referred to as Speed Demon, directed by Claymation innovator Will Vinton. This acts as the music video to the song Speed Demon. In the film, Michael, in an attempt to avoid overzealous fans (even The Noid), disguises himself as a rabbit (named Spike), but ends up taunting the fans into chasing him. During the chase, he morphs into other celebrities, including Sylvester Stallone, Tina Turner, and Pee-Wee Herman. After finally losing the fans, he removes the costume, which comes to life and challenges him to a dance-off. In the end, a policeman tells him he is in a "No Moonwalking Zone", then sarcastically asks for his autograph (as opposed to "signature") on the ticket. Just as Michael is preparing to leave, the rocky crag in front of him morphs into Spike's head who then nods to him, leaving Michael one-upped by his own alter-ego. (But he seems happy enough as he leaves.)
Leave Me Alone
The fifth segment of the film is the short film for the song "Leave Me Alone", and features an animated music video focusing on media interest in Jackson's personal life, because he had felt that the tabloid, media, press, paparazzi, etc. wouldn't leave him alone. He feels that no matter what he does to prove his innocence, they will not leave him alone. The video for the song won a Grammy in 1989 for Breakthrough, animated video, the only Grammy Award received for the album, Bad.
Smooth Criminal
Jackson plays a benevolent gangster who uses his powers as a crime figure to protect the children of an unnamed big city. The film opens with a framing sequence depicting a scene linked to events occurring near the end of the film, in which a group of children (including Sean Lennon) watch as Jackson exits a club and is attacked by mobsters with machine guns. The film then backtracks to Jackson playing in a field with the children and their dog. The dog runs away, and in their search for it, Jackson and the children uncover the lair of Mr. Big, Frankie Lideo (Joe Pesci, as a parody to Michael Jackson's own manager, Frank DiLeo), a drug dealing mobster with an army of henchmen who wants to get the entire populace of planet earth addicted to drugs, starting with the children. Mr. Big discovers Jackson and the children, but they escape; Jackson tells the children to meet him at Club 30's, which turns out to be a haunted nightclub abandoned since the 1930s. The story goes back to the mobsters attack on Jackson, and here it is revealed that Jackson is actually a magical gangster, who draws his power from shooting stars. As one passes by the club, Jackson transforms into a sportscar and mows down several of Mr. Big's henchmen. The story picks up on the children at Club 30's, and at first the children are afraid, but when Jackson appears the scary atmosphere of the club transforms and the children find themselves back in the 1930s. The club is now filled with zoot suiters and swing dancers. Jackson participates in a dance-off with the other club members, which serves as the music video for "Smooth Criminal". The version of the song used in this segment is different from the album version — there are several new lyrics and the song is much longer overall, including symphonic material by Bruce Broughton. The extra lyrics are to make the story of the song clearer. The more commonly seen music video form is a four-minute collage of various clips from the movie.
At the climax of the song, Mr. Big lays siege to the club and kidnaps one of the children, Katie. Jackson follows them back to Big's lair and ends up surrounded by his henchmen. Mr. Big appears and mentally tortures Jackson by threatening to inject Katie with highly addictive narcotics. While Katie manages to wriggle free from being injected, Mr. Big decides he's had enough and orders his men to kill Katie before finishing off Jackson, but not before a shooting star flies by. Jackson transforms into a giant robot and kills all of Mr. Big's soldiers. After Jackson turns into a giant spaceship, Mr. Big gets into a large hillside mounted energy cannon, firing on the spaceship into a nearby ravine. The children are his next target, but the spaceship returns from the ravine just in time to fire a beam in the cannon with Mr. Big inside and saving the children from destruction.
The sports car featured in this segment (as a morphed Michael Jackson) is the 1970 prototype Lancia Stratos 0. The automobile now resides in the private show room of the Bertone stile center at Caprie (in Susa Valley).
Come Together
The film closes with Jackson performing a cover of the Beatles' song "Come Together". One of the child actors in this movie is Sean Lennon, son of the late Beatles member John Lennon. Released as the B-Side to "Remember the Time" in January 1992 and a slightly different version appeared on the 1995 release of the HIStory album, on disc 2. This song was originally supposed to be on the "Days of Thunder" soundtrack.
Closing credits
During the closing credits, two more segments are shown. The first has Ladysmith Black Mambazo performing "The Moon is Walking" in Club 30's amidst behind-the-scenes clips. The second is the four-minute version of the "Smooth Criminal" music video.
3. Monsters Vs Aliens 3D – Movie (2009): Deep in space, a planet explodes. From the debris, a glowing meteor is sent flying towards Earth. The meteor is spotted by two inexperienced UFO trackers, who pinpoint its point of impact in Modesto, California.
Meanwhile, Susan Murphy (Reese Witherspoon), a Modesto native, is preparing for her wedding to local weatherman, Derek Dietl (Paul Rudd). Just outside the church, she's struck by the glowing meteor. As a result, she grows to 49 ft 11 in tall, is labeled a monster and is captured by the military. She is confined to a military facility (most likely Area 51), commanded by General W.R. Monger, (Kiefer Sutherland) that houses other monsters: Dr. Cockroach, Ph.D., an insect-headed mad scientist (Hugh Laurie); the Missing Link, a 20,000-year-old fish-man (Will Arnett); B.O.B., a gelatinous, jolly, indestructible monster (Seth Rogen); and Insectosaurus, a fuzzy bug that stands 350 feet tall, dwarfing even Susan. As she is returned to her cell, the General tells Susan that she cannot make any sort of contact will the outside world, not even her family, friends or fiance, and that her new "monster name" is Ginormica. Susan feels alone and scared.
Meanwhile, an alien overlord named Gallaxhar (Rainn Wilson) detects the meteor's energy and sends a robotic probe to retrieve it on Earth. When the object lands the U.S military try to communicate with it by using a keyboard similar to another science fiction movie with aliens. The president decides to improvise and instead plays Axel F from Beverly Hills Cop. The monster then scans the president with its eye and begins to, destructively, make its way to a populated area, conventional weapons prove useless against it. In response, General W.R. Monger suggests to President Hathaway (Stephen Colbert) that the monsters can provide the power to defeat the aliens.
The President agrees to Monger's proposal and has the monsters deployed near San Francisco where the robot is headed to with the promise of granting them their liberty for taking this mission. Despite their best efforts, the monsters are unable to stop the probe from entering the city in its pursuit of Susan, whom is imbued with the energy it is seeking. As Susan attempts to flee the creature by crossing the Golden Gate Bridge with the rest of the evacuees, she realizes that she has inadvertently drawn the robot there and endangered the citizenry on it. While Susan desperately grapples with the attacking robot with Insectosaurus's help, her new compatriots assist in clearing the bridge while Dr. Cockroach enters the robot to attempt to disable it from within. With considerable difficulty, they manage to defeat the robot, albeit destroying the bridge to do it.
At that victory, an invigorated Susan is allowed back to her hometown to reunite with Derek and introduces her new friends to her parents. While the monsters innocently cause a panicked ruckus at her parents' home, Susan makes her way to Derek's workplace only to find that he has rejected her. Utterly heartbroken, Susan leaves to mope even as her monster friends reunite with her after their own social fiasco. As they converse about her realization that her ex-fiancee's worthlessness and the value of her new friends, Gallaxhar's ship arrives and Susan is abducted, apparently killing Insectosaurus when he tries to resist the attempt.
On the ship, Susan manages to break her bonds and chases Gallaxhar through his ship until he traps her in a special machine that drains the meteor's energy from her body, returning her to normal size. With that energy, Gallaxhar creates a massive clone army and threatens to conquer Earth while exterminating its population. Meanwhile, the remaining monsters pledge to raid the ship to rescue Susan and avenge the death of Insectosaurus.
Once there, the trio disguise themselves as clone troopers and reunite with Susan as she is taken to be killed. However, they are discovered and they barely hold off the army as they escape to the ship's power source. Once there, Dr. Cockroach accesses its control system and initiates a self destruct sequence which unfortunately includes sealing off sections of the ship. While Susan is able to escape, her compatriots are trapped and apparently doomed. Although they insist she escape the ship, Susan decides to confront Gallaxhar and force him to free her friends. When he admits he cannot while he is making his own escape with the meteor energy, Susan shoots the energy's container and allows it to fall on herself.
With the subsequent energy exposure restoring her gigantic size, Susan forces her way back to the sealed section of the ship where her compatriots are trapped. However, while they escape the ship, they are still too high in the sky to drop down and survive the fall. Fortunately, the problem is solved with the arrival of Insectosaurus, who has just emerged from his actual state of chrysalis in a new winged form under Gen. Monger's command and he retrieves the squad and flies them to safety as the ship explodes.
Back at Susan's hometown, the monsters are given a hero's welcome including Derek who wants to reconcile for the sake of an exclusive interview with her that would help his career. Insulted at this craven opportunism, Susan violently rejects and humiliates him on camera, declaring her real place with her new monster friends.
At that moment, the team is alerted of a new alien menace in Paris, France and the eager Monsters make their way to Europe on Insectosaurus to deal with the emergency.
Richard Moody’s Comments: one for my childhood movie collection is “Monster Vs Aliens” but it is not out on DVD as yet. This is one that I will buy for my collection in the future. I really enjoyed the movie as it was one of the best this year so far.
By Richard Moody
1. Batman (1966): When Batman (West) and Robin (Ward) get a tip that Commodore Schmidlapp (the final role of actor Reginald Denny) is in danger aboard his yacht, they launch a rescue mission using the Batcopter. After a tangle with an exploding shark, Batman and Robin head back to Commissioner Gordon's office where, through deduction and wisdom, they figure out that the tip was a set-up by four of the most powerful villains ever (Joker, Penguin, Riddler and Catwoman), who have united to defeat The Dynamic Duo once and for all.
Armed with a dehydrator that can turn humans into dust, a World War II Unterseeboot made to resemble a penguin, and their three pirate henchmen (Bluebeard, Morgan and Quetch), the "fearsome foursome" intends to take over the world, and Batman and Robin must stop them. Catwoman romantically lures Bruce Wayne into a trap, little suspecting that Wayne is Batman's alter-ego, and Penguin even schemes his way into the Batcave, leaving the Duo unable to prevent the kidnapping of the dehydrated United World Security Council.
After giving chase in the Batboat, the Caped Crusader and Boy Wonder use a sonic charge weapon called "Bat-Charges" to disable Penguin's submarine and bring it to the surface, where a grand fistfight ensues. Although Commodore Schmidlapp sneezes on and scatters the powdered members of the dehydrated Council, mixing them together – which would normally spell their doom – Batman constructs an elaborate filter to return each of them to life.
Prior to this process, Robin asks Batman if it might not be in the world's best interests, with continued problems of overt racism, especially in the U.S. during the 1960s, for them to alter the dust samples so that humans can no longer harm one another. In response, Batman says that they cannot do so and can only hope for people, in general, to learn to live together peacefully on their own.
However, in the final scene, Robin's wishes are ironically fulfilled when the Security Council is improperly re-hydrated. While all of the members are alive and well, continuing to squabble among themselves and totally oblivious of their surroundings, each of them now speaks a completely different language than their original native tongue. As the world looks on in disbelief at this development, Batman and Robin quietly climb out of the United World Headquarters to an uncertain future. Batman's final words express his sincere hope that this "mixing of minds" does more good than it does harm.
By Richard Moody & James Ross
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