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Furious 7 is the next tale of Dom, Brian, and the gang driving fast cars and surviving everything like they have some sort of invulnerability cheat code on. In this one, Jason Statham plays the baddie, out for revenge after the defeat of his brother in the last movie. It's a decent set-up that plays out really boring in the beginning. It takes quite a while for the movie to pick up (though there is one decent fight in there). Then they drive cars out of an airplane onto a narrow mountain pass, drive cars into each other at a hundred miles an hour and walk out unscathed, and all kinds of other assorted ridiculousness.

I spent most of the movie laughing at how stupid it was, but that's not a bad thing. It's a tad overlong but once it gets going, strap in for a fun ride. After all the destruction (which includes tons of civilians dying, most notably a truck driver), we get a nice tribute to Paul Walker and that's it.

It's a ridiculous, stupid movie that shouldn't be taken seriously. It's the kind of popcorn movie I enjoy going to the theater to see. But I walked away from it feeling slightly dissatisfied. It has no staying power beyond the one viewing. It's pretty shallow except for the end and the action, while crazy, feels like it would only be effective one time. Hell, it was barely effective this time since all the crazier stunts were shown in trailers and commercials.

Also, the acting is pretty awful. There are a few cast members who do a good job but I've always found Diesel wooden and boring and some of the secondary characters, especially a female villain later on, are God-awful.

A lot of people hate the series for changing so much; I personally feel the movies come out better that way. The racing movies felt like straight-to-DVD trash and I feel the series would probably head down that road if not for the insane stunts and action.

Should you see Furious 7? I think so. If you're a fan, you'll love it and if you love action films, you'll find some of the better car chase sequences of recent memory. But the biggest problem I have--the reason I give it a 5--is that it has no staying power. It's a one-and-done movie that you won't need to see again, nor probably want to.

Dr. No may be the first film in the Bond franchise, but it is one of the better ones. It stays pretty true to the novel and manages both the intrigue of a spy movie and the action that will later be a major selling point of the franchise. In this film Dr. No is threatening to topple American rockets and Bond is sent in to uncover the plot after a fellow agent is killed. He travels across Jamaica, eventually heading to Crab Key for the final confrontation.

The fights are cheesy and the movie is pretty cheap but what is here is nearly all the components of a Bond film. M, Q, Moneypenny, the opening song. It's definitely dated but maintains a certain old time charm. Sean Connery shines as Bond and the other actors and actresses are also wonderful.

There are problems though. The Three Blind Mice who seem to important at the beginning never show up or get subdued later on. There's a lot of editing errors, one great one being the sound of monkeys being used when birds take off.

In the end Dr. No is a good overall movie, one I'd suggest.

What's so especially great about From Russia With Love is that it is a spy story. SPECTRE plays a huge role but, for the most part, we have a tale of two countries on the brink of war and the spies doing the battles in the shadows. Bond goes Istanbul to steal a decoding device and save a Russian defector. It's obviously a trap and Bond knows it. The following two hours are a cat and mouse game between Bond and SPECTRE as war threatens the future of mankind.

What I like is that this movie isn't as action centric. We get time to see Bond and the other characters as humans and when the action does happen, it's grand and exciting. Romanova is an interesting female lead while Connery again shines as Bond.

It's hard to say much about From Russia With Love that hasn't been said before. It's a terrific film, Bond fan or not.