The Incomplete Guide to Thunderball, Drive-Away Dolls, and our favourite reads of the week
In which we continue our Bond series, try the first solo Ethan Coen film, and share short and long-reads in lieu of a fully-fledged list in 8 minutes
Thunderball in 2024
Nearly 60 years later, is this the winning ticket or is it a write-off? - Vanessa Burke
Inspired by the Prince Charles Cinema 2024 James Bond season, back in January I committed to rewatches of all movies before the end of 2024, making sure to add my incisive witty commentary. I promised to judge all films according to the characters’ relationships, international travel, and plot believability.
Thunderball kept up the relentless pace of its predecessor, hitting cinemas only a year after Goldfinger. This film sees the introduction of further core elements to Bond movies in the next decades, but there’s also a nice change of pace with a Q field visit, and there’s technical advancements in its underwater camerawork. Is all it rote or revolutionary though?
Domino Day
Dominique “Domino” Derval’s development, who poses as Emilio Largo’s niece when she is really his mistress, is interesting: she rejects labels like kept woman, and recognises Largo as a bad man before she discovers his assassination of her brother. This is mirrored when Bond compares himself to Largo as he dances with Domino. She then gets the final glory of killing Largo before he can kill Bond, marking the first proper reversal of the Damsel in Distress trope.
Other women buck trends too: the Shrublands physiotherapist is immune to Bond’s charms, but he blackmails her into a hook-up after she believes his stretching machine-torture was her fault (though, after giving in, she is willing). Fiona Volpe, on the other hand, remains a baddie after sex, taunting Bond. This lack of sentimentality might well be the reason Bond uses her as a bullet sponge.
Finally, Largo discovering Domino’s duplicity is staged menacingly, with cutaways tricking us into thinking things will progress terribly. It’s a relief when the meek man-figure of the scientist deliberately interrupts potential torture and frees Domino to save the day (it’s a good thing he sees through being “told what to do” before the worst could happen). (3/5)
Bahamas 1988 New Providence: Junkanoo, Credit: Rüdiger Stehn.
Live and Let Dive
The film starts in Paris at the supposed funeral of an enemy agent of SPECTRE, but Bond is unaware that this entanglement is sustained until he explores the Shrublands health clinic more. Amusingly there is a musco-skeletal physiotherapy service with that name in Gorleston, Norfolk, but the filming location was decidedly in the home counties - though the Buckinghamshire clinic is a mental health facility. Thank goodness the NHS provides free treatment!
Bond quickly thereafter relocates to Nassau, the main location for the rest of the film. One of the best sights it shows off is the Junkanoo: these street festivals are akin to carnival parades and take place across the Caribbean. While they often take place around Christmas time, or New Year’s Day, they are also frequently held in the summer. Attending a Junkanoo can be arranged through your hotel, so costs are harder to determine - though it certainly looked like you could just rock up in the film.
The final stop of the movie - though not seen - is Miami. The more interesting aspect is the “cocoon” boat, the Disco Volantis, which is composed of a shell and a hydrofoil. This is, unsurprisingly, not a currently commercially available experience. Yachting Art puts the production costs at an unsubstantiated $500,000, and its current whereabouts are not known. Perfect for a spy caper, but on the whole, the lifestyle of this film has been reasonably achievable. (3/5)
Under the Sea
After Goldfinger’s plot to hold the American gold reserve hostage, SPECTRE does the same with two nuclear missiles, demanding £100m in diamonds. LUXE Digital claims the De Beers Centenary Diamond comes close, but SPECTRE would likely not have accepted a diamond of such renown. Instead, the equivalent of 1-carat diamonds (one of which would cost around $4,000, according to Diamond Pro) would weigh 5 kilograms, and would neatly fit in a suitcase of no suspicion. Maybe that’s where Die Another Day gets them from…
What about the ecological impact though? Emilio Largo instals netting around the aircraft, making it hospitable for local sharks - the equivalent of dogs to deter thieves. This reminded me of international efforts to restore coral reefs. While the the Bahamas don’t yet include growth on man-made structures, Largo may have unintentionally started something (until his hydrofoil exploded, and undoubtedly contaminated the water).
Speaking of, the Disco Volante is registered in Panama: standard protocol for anyone with less than good intentions. To end on a more positive note, at least the cool inventions that were used, such as the famed jet pack (or jet-suit), the miniature underwater air supply, and the Skyhook are legit! On the whole, the SPECTRE of defeat does not rest on this plot’s believability. (3/5)
Not a thunder blunder
Thunderball’s cultural impact reminds me of my assessment of Goldfinger. This film continued to define what James Bond would be in the future, with SPECTRE haunting him for decades, and the then-unknown Blofeld characterisation - anonymity, grey suit, white cat on a lap - inspiring the depiction of arch-enemies going forward.
The other reason is its legal implications: Thunderball was the centre of a screenwriting credit dispute, and to avoid problems, Eon Productions foolishly settled on bad terms. After Thunderball became the most successful Bond film released in North America - even out-earning the next five movies, Thunderball was remade by the other party as Never Say Never Again. It was surely an instructive lesson for other franchises, and this was an effective template for future films with Sean Connery as 007. (3/5)
Drive-Away Dolls
A caper like so many others. - Elliot Wengler
I don’t know what this film was. A caper? An erotic thriller? There’s psychedelia in there but it’s not very well done or clear what its point is. For a Coen Brother film that’s only been made by one Coen Brother (Ethan), this might be the most peak and nonsensical Coen film ever.
I went in blind, having not seen the trailer, but was mainly attracted to it by the 84-minute runtime and a previous trust in the pure cinematic joy of a Coen Brothers film.
The most notorious thing about Drive-Away Dolls is that it was originally called Drive-Away Dykes, as its leads are lesbians. Apparently the studio (distributed by Focus Features) was not keen on putting the word Dykes on marquees.
Just like everything else about this, it speaks to an anarchic and quirky attitude that once came with the Coen brand, but is lacking here. The end card features the original wording, plastered over by the new title; this confused identity is more interesting than any of the content within the rest of the feature. This whole… controversy, if you can call it that, is the only thing of note here.
Jamie (Margaret Qualley) and Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan) are lesbian roommates, and Jamie tags along to Marian’s intended trip to Florida. Jamie is confident, outgoing, having affairs, and a bundle of chaotic energy that drives most of the film. Marian is quiet, uncomfortable, just wants to read her book, and is unimpressed by Jamie’s dedication to a party scene and in-your-face style, convinced that her normality and simple life is a better way to avoid homophobia.
They rent a car from a drive-away service, where they can have the car cheaper if they drive a specific car for another client, one-way. They unknowingly get mixed up in a caper at this point, having taken a car intended for some gangsters to transport some illegal cargo down to Tallahassee.
From here, the girls go on an amusing-enough road trip, but everything feels formulaic. Jamie wants Marian to get out there and get laid, Marian just wants to complete the trip and get the car to Tallahassee on time. Jamie wants Marian to get excited about a queer slumber party, Marian just wants to read her book.
The adventures are, like I say, amusing enough, but they rarely evoke belly-laughs. Margaret Qualley is immensely watchable with her intense southern drawl and Sorkin-paced dialogue and stories. She gets all of the best lines, leaving Marian to be stilted and sour rather than dry and witty.
The queer aspects of the story are normalised: it’s not a big fuss that they’re gay and living their best lives. That’s a plus, but it’s also a bit tonally confused, given the explicit 90s setting and underground nature of the LGBT+ stories of America in those days. The problem is, it comes across a bit more male-gaze than it does queer storytelling? (Ed. note: Tricia Cooke, Coen’s wife, co-wrote the film, and self-identifies as queer and lesbian)
Less watchable are the crooks trying to recover the illicit cargo from the girls’ car. Bill Camp and Joey Slotnick are chasing them the whole way, visiting each of the locations they have amusing episodes in, and utterly failing each step of the way. Their antics aren’t all that amusing, nor all that believable. No–one in this film feels real. I feel like you can be unrealistic or boring, but not both.
Pedro Pascal and Matt Damon have amusing cameos, and the actual reveal of what the girls have inadvertently smuggled is fun, but just weird. Coen Brothers films have a tendency to be quirky -- weird, even a bit crazy -- but those characteristics are usually joined by something profound, or a damning statement about the world or its characters. Here it just all… happens.
Don’t get me wrong, some of this is solid B-movie fun, and it’s mercifully short. However, when you accidentally click on this on Netflix in a few years, you won’t feel like you missed out at the cinema.
Our recommended reads of the week
Vanessa
The power of YouTube fascinates me. This story isn’t quite breaking news anymore, but I’m still hooked on how the review of an influential host of two channels managed to undo the financial prospects of an (admittedly shaky) automotive company.
Marques Brownlee reviews technology on MKBHD, and cars on Auto Focus. The below video is his review of the Fisker Ocean. See for yourself.
While we may fail to understand children’s now-changed ambitions to become YouTubers instead of chasing fame by appearing on reality television programmes, this is the power of the internet. Whether intended or not, you can build para-social relationships with those who watch what you produce - without an intermediary, and therefore with full control over your narrative. And that can scare conventional capitalist enterprises - at least fledgling ones.
Elliot
Adrian Chiles is a national treasure; or, he should be. People may mock him for being a grouchy (ugly) man who couldn’t make The One Show or Daybreak work. These days, he hosts a show on BBC Radio 5Live, and charms his audience with an affable, layman’s term-heavy approach to news and current affairs. He combines guests across his show to create real cross-sections of discussion, hitting heavy on real life stories whilst bringing levity to news.
He’s become notorious in recent years for the wonderful banality of his Guardian columns. Finally, a columnist who turns an internal debate about the value of climbing a tree into prose.
However, his latest is just something else. An extremely moving personal investigation into grief and mourning, and the sort of thing that men simply do not talk about and often seem ill-equipped to talk about. It’s beautiful, it’s real, and it’s funny. His book about having a sensible relationship with alcohol, The Good Drinker, is also brilliant. They say that there aren’t many tools out there to help men cope with mental health, but experiencing it through another bloke’s honesty is a help.