Well, here we are again; fresh from the fairly lengthy business of not only introducing this series of retrospectives, but discussing ground zero, numero uno movie The Big Boss, we now move our focus on to Bruce Lee’s second completed, starring role film. A word of warning. This retrospective began in the mind as a much shorter piece, but it actually turned out to be unexpectedly epic in length. I really should have known. Released in 1972; Fist of Fury (also known stateside as The Chinese Connection, as well as one or two other titles), is Bruce Lee’s second Raymond Chow produced, Hong Kong feature for Golden Harvest. Once again, Lo Wei directs (as well as playing a significant acting role

Dateline December 2013 Part 1: Introductions Welcome one and all to this series of retrospectives focused on the feature films of the late great martial arts legend; Bruce Lee. I was born the year Lee’s action debut The Big Boss, came out in Hong Kong cinemas, and thus, I am not quite old enough to have been aware of him while he was still alive. I was all but two years old when he died. It was as a kid, growing up in the late 70s, that I became interested in him in the way that most schoolboys probably did (and no doubt, still do). Fast forward forty odd years, and I find that my fascination in the man has not diminished one iota, quite the opposite in fact. What began as mere schoolboy ido

Dateline: December 2010 Roger Moore’s fourth outing as 007, and the eleventh movie in the official series is an interesting one to revisit. This time we see Bond take on mega-billionaire industrialist (and Messianic megalomaniac) Hugo Drax, who has global genocide and world domination on his mind (no surprises there then). The adventure takes us around the world in the best Bond tradition and then finally out into space for a showdown aboard Drax’s hidden orbiting lair. ‘Space?’ I hear you say? If this seems odd to you, don’t worry; you’re not alone. Allow me if you will, the indulgence to set the scene… It’s 1977 and Bond movie #10 The Spy Who Loved Me has hit the cinemas and is a significa

Dateline: November 2010 So here we are in the tail end of 2010 and I’m sitting here trying figure out what I want to say about this most interesting of Bond movies. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (OHMSS from now on) represents a curious ‘blip’ in the EON franchise and for some spoils an otherwise seamless (at least in common perception) transition between Connery’s and Moore’s tenures in the Tux. I myself as a child watching Bond on TV always assumed that OHMSS came sandwiched neatly between Connery’s last movie and Moore’s debut. I was also wrongly of the opinion that Lazenby did just the one movie because he wasn’t very good and the film bombed. To this day we kind of imagine him as just

Dateline: December 2010 Writing a retrospective review of this movie seemed at first mildly strange to me. The film still seeming too recent in one’s mind’s eye to undergo such a ‘retro’ treatment. Yet it’s actually over ten years now since The World Is Not Enough graced our cinema screens. Perhaps more bizarre sounding is the thought that incredibly, it came out almost two years BEFORE the terror attacks of 9/11 in NYC. All of a sudden this movie is feeling kind of ‘of a different time’ to me. Watching it again confirms its late 90s credentials. Not a bad thing per se, but certainly noticeable. The World Is Not Enough (TWINE – great acronym) was the 19th Bond movie overall, and Brosnan’s th