Dr. Maybe

I'm not a James Bond fan but I kind of want to be a James Bond fan. I really like Sean Connery and, in this world of psy-ops and algorithms, it seems potentially comforting to know there's a guy who sees this treacherous world as an endless forest of beautiful women to sleep with. So I watched Dr. No again recently. I still haven't found what I'm looking for.

Dr. No mainly just feels like a pleasant vacation for a profoundly lonely man. No-one he meets can be trusted, especially not the women, except Honey Ryder (Ursula Andress), who's sexy but hardly has any chemistry with him. She seems so dim, it's hard to imagine them having a real conversation.

I wonder if Ursula Andress took lessons to suck in her gut like that all the time.



Connery never needed to do that. I imagine if he had a gut he'd probably just let hang out. That is one of the pleasures of watching him, just seeing how extraordinarily at ease with himself he is, and how his eyebrows transmit every tiny nuance of his ease.



I know part of the fun of the James Bond movies is supposed to be how ridiculous they are, how far from reality they are. But I want to get a sense of real danger. I guess that's why From Russia with Love is the only one I can really enjoy. But I still think I'm better off watching Notorious, To Catch a Thief, or North by Northwest.