Reviews Worth Reading
The film is essentially about how Michael has failed to be his father, to garner real respect, and even to be truly Italian. The failure is a well-made sequel but was it necessary? It distorts the whole picture, as though Vito Corleone died for nothing.
Moonraker skips the part where all is as it seems, a noble approach for a film in a formula series (they might have made it stick as self-aware humor, but even that would have been too “wink-wink” with Moore at the Helm). “You appear,” says Drax after Bond’s fourth miraculous escape, “with the tedious inevitability of an unloved season.” Here is an oddity: a franchise that doesn’t know it knows itself.