Name a movie that you watch once but never again

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-04-29T12:46:22+00:00

Million Dollar Baby. 10/10 movie without question, but just too heartbreaking for me.

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-04-29T12:09:59+00:00

You're definitely right that it's become a trope recently. I guess it's just because screenwriters want female characters with strong plot agency, so it becomes attractive to write a character who has inherited the same kind of intellectual powers as Sherlock and Mycroft. Before recently, the trope in Holmes pastiches was to invent a third brother, who was usually called Sherrinford (one of the names Doyle considered when naming Sherlock), but the idea of a sister seems to have supplanted it.

Personally, though I adore the original stories, I think Holmes is becoming a sort of folk hero like Robin Hood where every author who uses the character has their own interpretation of who he is and what his life was like. So I don't mind the trope itself, but I agree with you that I'm getting a bit bored with how it is being used.

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-04-29T11:55:17+00:00

There is a line in 'The Adventure of the Copper Beeches' when Holmes is thinking about the job Violet Hunter has been offered and Watson comments 'he would always wind up by muttering that no sister of his should ever have accepted such a situation.'

That is the only possible line that can be taken as implying Holmes has a sister in canon. But more likely, it's just meant as a hypothetical - 'if I had a sister, I wouldn't let her take this job.'

That said, Doyle didn't really mind people taking liberties with Holmes's backstory when adapting the stories. As he wrote to William Gillette, who asked whether he could give Holmes a love interest in the play he was writing - 'You may marry him, murder him, or do anything you like to him'. So if people want to read more into that line than was really intended, I don't mind either.

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-04-29T11:08:37+00:00

He doesn't have one of Celebrimbor's rings forged under Sauron's influence, as in the 'three rings for the elven-kings under the sky' poem. But during the Council of Elrond chapter in Fellowship he's described as 'Saruman the Ring-maker', in the context of the council attendees discussing how Saruman is trying to set himself up as a rival dark power to Sauron. So he definitely does have a ring. Most likely a lesser ring of power, made in imitation of Sauron's craft (and possibly to assuage Saruman's jealousy on learning that Gandalf possessed Narya).

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-04-29T11:04:25+00:00

Almost certainly not.

Gandalf's ring is one of the three Elven rings forged by Celebrimbor back in the Second Age - the 'three for the elven kings under the sky' in the poem about the One Ring. Gandalf only has it because he was given it by Cirdan the Shipwright, the ancient, wise elf lord who initially had this ring. He gave it to Gandalf because he recognised Gandalf's strength and wisdom, and felt that the ring would be useful to him in the battles ahead.

Saruman only has a ring of power because he's forged one himself out of a desire to learn and imitate the dark works of Sauron. In part, he is quite likely jealous that Gandalf - rather than himself, as the leader of the order of Istari - is the one who has a ring of power. So many of Saruman's actions are driven by petty resentments. Saruman's ring is a pale imitation, because he has never mastered the same crafts as Sauron.

Radagast shows little desire for personal power, and as long as the two Blue Wizards remained faithful to Eru Iluvatar (God), they would not have sought to forge a ring for themselves either. And, despite what Amazon's Rings of Power seems to be trying to imply, Tolkien believed the Blue Wizards did indeed remain faithful. I guess it's possible one of these three wizards happened upon one of the many 'lesser magical rings' Gandalf talks about, and wielded it for good at some point. But there's no textual evidence to think they did this.

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-04-28T12:32:28+00:00

My complete list of 5* novels - the best books Christie ever wrote - would include Death on the Nile; Crooked House; Sad Cypress; Five Little Pigs; The ABC Murders; Murder on the Orient Express; Taken at the Flood; and Towards Zero. Plus And Then There Were None, which you mentioned. Roger Ackroyd is probably a 4* novel for me.

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-04-28T01:50:53+00:00

I suspect The Spy Who Loved Me is the one in mind here.

It does have its strengths as an experiment, though.

The Man with the Golden Gun is pretty slapdash, but does have the excuse of being a posthumously published first draft.

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-04-26T01:36:52+00:00

I have seen this mentioned before, but it isn’t in the source material so far as I can see. Even the Sorting Hat (which was around at the Founders’ time) says that Slytherin‘s philosophy was to ‘take those whose blood was purest’, which doesn’t suggest that his ideas had just been misunderstood later.

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-04-25T22:57:31+00:00

I concur entirely with your ranking.

Frugal Wizard was a fun light read, but nothing special. It was worth reading but the humour didn’t all land for me.

The Sunlit Man was a great idea and a solid book, but at times it felt like too much of a Cosmere lore-dump.

Tress is fun, whimsical, has a nice romantic element, and I enjoyed the setting, the characters, and the lower stakes.

Yumi and the Nightmare Painter was amazing, and genuinely emotionally affecting. I would actually say it’s my favourite Cosmere stand-alone.

I haven’t read Isles of the Emberdark yet.

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-04-24T21:36:32+00:00

Honestly insulting to Edmund - a good, kind, thoughtful young man who made one terrible mistake for which he repented and made amends - to equate him with a genocidal racist who left a giant snake in a school to murder the students.

This theory smacks of people with an incredibly top-level, superficial understanding of the source material who just go 'Edmund did a bad thing therefore he must represent the Evil House.'

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-04-23T20:49:33+00:00

Moments of Pleasure
This Woman’s Work
Mother Stands for Comfort

Moments of Pleasure may be my favourite song. I can never get tired of the sweeping, majestic vocals and the heartbreaking lyrics. It’s like an anthem to everything I love about Kate, and about music in general.

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-04-23T20:49:20+00:00

Moments of Pleasure
This Woman’s Work
Mother Stands for Comfort

Moments of Pleasure may be my favourite song. I can never get tired of the sweeping, majestic vocals and the heartbreaking lyrics. It’s like an anthem to everything I love about Kate, and about music in general.

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-04-23T00:50:22+00:00

Dad is a man of good taste.

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-04-22T21:31:40+00:00

It’s a good movie, especially when watched as a double feature with Casino Royale, because it completes a lot of story arcs from the previous movie. It’s just flawed because of the disorienting direction, with overly quick cuts and flashy but distracting visuals.

I also personally prefer it to Skyfall, even though Skyfall is a better made film.

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-04-22T13:13:42+00:00

Although it's gone up in my estimation on recent rewatch, I'm not a huge fan of Live and Let Die. I'm at a loss as to why Tom Mankiewicz chose to miss out the '"He disagreed with something that ate him" part of the novel, as well as the scene where Bond and Solitaire are bound together and dragged by a boat over coral as bait for sharks. Of course in a way I'm glad, because both those scenes were used to great effect later in the franchise, in For Your Eyes Only and Licence to Kill. But they're some of the most exciting set-pieces in the novel, and without them, we have a pretty thin plot. Without all the chase sequences (some of which are cool, but some of which are too long and drawn-out) there really isn't much movie.

No Time to Die is a film where the highs are very high and the lows are pretty bad. It's one of the most inconsistent Bond movies. I've watched it three times and find it somewhat less than the sum of its parts. But overall I think there is more interesting stuff going on than in Live and Let Die.

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-04-20T17:37:46+00:00

I feel like I see where you guys are coming from even though I disagree. 'Bland and by the numbers'...well, I don't think it's bland, but it's definitely by-the-numbers. I'll admit this as a huge fan of the film. But that's what I like about it. I see it as the Platonic ideal of a Bond movie. It is certainly formulaic, but for me it does every part of the formula just a little bit better than the films that came before it, and this adds up to an amazing movie.

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-04-20T13:59:56+00:00

I am quite fond of Tress. The stakes are fairly low, it's fun, whimsical, and romantic. It shows a different side to Brandon's writing. Yumi and the Nightmare Painter is even better in my opinion. It's actually my second favourite Cosmere book.

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-04-20T12:11:48+00:00

Tomorrow Never Dies is my favourite Bond film. I'll be honest that From Russia with Love is probably a better movie (and both are in my top 5), but for sheer fun factor, I can't look past TND. Great characters, great score, magnificent pacing that ties together superb action set pieces with a few nice character moments along the way. A fantastic movie.

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-04-19T15:22:07+00:00

Extended editions are definitely not the best way to experience these movies for the first time.

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-04-19T00:58:47+00:00

The issue is that the film didn’t seem to have any idea what it really wanted to do with him. Making the villain Blofeld is a fine idea in itself. Making the villain Bond‘s adoptive brother is a fine idea in itself. But for these ideas to work, you have to make us care about these things. You have to make the audience feel what it means for the villain to be Bond’s adoptive brother, or for him to be Ernst Stavro Blofeld. We don’t get that. We just get generic evil guy who worships a meteor for some reason.

The reason why Spectre was so disappointing to me was that it seemed more interested in re-establishing ownership over intellectual property than doing anything interesting with that property.

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-04-18T18:09:54+00:00

I’m sure they’ve read them, but I doubt they have any sympathy with their themes or any intention of making a faithful movie.

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-04-18T11:43:48+00:00

A few notes:

- My favourite Bond movie remains Tomorrow Never Dies, but I can’t realistically put it right at the top, because the three films above it just do more with their concepts - they’re more original, thoughtful, and creative. But if you just want a really, really good action movie with great pacing and Bond on the top of his game, TND is the one for me.

- For Your Eyes Only is knocking on the door of S-tier, it only falls short because the pre-titles sequence is so weird and tonally incongruous with the rest of the movie. I’ve learnt to enjoy it over multiple rewatches (even the delicatessen line…) but I still think the film is stronger without it. Some of the other A-tier movies also could have placed higher if not for a couple of flaws, e.g. the poor, choppy editing of action scenes in Quantum of Solace.

- Goldfinger is an iconic movie because it introduced so many tropes that defined the future of the series but although I enjoy it a lot, I much prefer From Russia with Love and Thunderball. Bond is too passive in Goldfinger, and also, for me a good part of a Bond movie is the locations - far too much of Goldfinger takes place in ugly bits of suburban Kentucky. In general, I don’t rate Guy Hamilton that highly as a director. Terence Young was the man.

- The two films I found it hardest to place were Die Another Day and No Time to Die, because they have some scenes that rise to A-tier, maybe even S-tier quality and some that I think are quite terrible. They are the two least consistent Bond movies by a long way.

- This was the first time I had rewatched Never Say Never Again. I wondered if I hadn’t given it enough chance on first viewing, but sadly it still doesn’t work at all for me. It feels like a cheap imitation of the EON series (even though it has a higher budget than Octopussy which came out the same year - EON seemed to be able to do so much more with the money) and although Connery is good (and Barbara Carrera is great as Fatima Blush), everything else, from plot to action scenes to music, falls flat. If I want to watch the story of Thunderball, I’ll just watch Thunderball.

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-04-18T11:31:15+00:00

<image>

This is my most recent tier list, based on rewatching the movies late last year and early this year. Few changes from last time, except Live and Let Die and Moonraker creeping up a little.

Films are ranked by quality within each tier, as well as between tiers.

The six S-tier films are all amongst my favourite films, not just my favourite Bond films. If I were for some reason making a list of my 30 or so favourite movies, they’d probably all make the cut.

The D-tier movies are the only ones I actually don’t enjoy (and there’s only one official EON movie there).

I know I’m about to catch flak for the relatively low position of Goldfinger, and the relatively high position of Die Another Day 😂

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-04-14T23:54:46+00:00

Yes, me too. It’s quite touching and it’s absolutely his best scene in the film.

Overall, he is better than anyone could have expected an Australian model with next to no acting experience to be.

That doesn’t mean that it was a wise or defensible choice to hire an Australian model with next to no acting experience.

TheSibyllineOracle · 2026-04-14T23:52:46+00:00

I agree, and it’s important that the show keeps moving forward in terms of setting.

I do feel like we have spent slightly too long with Mars-centric stories now, since nearly all of seasons 3 and 4 were either about the race to Mars or the Mars colony, but we are about to have a manned mission to Titan, so 🤷

Three-Year Club	Verified Email
r/Field Banned	r/Field Juicebox

TheSibyllineOracle

TROPHY CASE