I’ve seen just about every James Bond movie and here’s how I rate them…

So, I’ve spent the last several days and hours on Netflix watching Bond movies that I queued a while ago that Netflix decided to remove for the month of November for some reason.  I’ve seen just about every Bond movie or all I could stand of most of the Bond movies (Octopussy is just as bad as it sounds).  So I thought I would blog about them and how I would rank them.  I will first explain that there is a little hidden Bond history that needs to be shown.  The “Bond” film Never Say Never Again, featuring Sean Connery and Kim Basinger isn’t an actual Bond film.  It was made by Paramount and if anyone who has ever seen a Bond film, knows that MGM is the production company that makes Bond films.  It came out the same year as Octopussy (like I said, I don’t think anyone knew what the hell was going on) and Connery probably thought he still had something in him (definitely wanted another paycheck). 

So, without further or do, let’s begin this list.  I’ll list them off and take note to the key things that make these Bond films distinct besides the car chases, shaken martinis, gorgeous women who love to sit around the baccarat table looking to screw anything with a pulse.  Riveting, I know.  Let’s start:

1. Dr. No (1962)

James Bond’s first ever movie!  He’s on assignment to team up with the CIA’s Felix Leiter (a repeating character who not only changes people but also ethnicities) and solve the mystery of some Jamaican island that has what the natives call “Fire Breathing Dragons!”, (SPOILER ALERT: it’s a tank with a flame thrower on it) .  Aside from this stunning image of Ursula Andress, the only thing else that is note worthing here is the ridiculous suit that the villain, Dr. No, is wearing in the nuclear chamber.  The scenes are nice, being pretty much set in Jamaice and all of the future pieces of the 007 world are introduced: M, Money Penny, Q, and SPECTRE.  Not the best, but it’s a nice start.  One thing I remember about this and most of the Connery/Moore Bond movies are the fight scenes where the sound mixers just decided to use the basic sound of guys punching and running all over each other.  Plus there is this one scene that made no sense at all: something that had to do with getting hijacked from a car.

2. From Russia With Love (1963)

This movie is easily recognized as “the one that takes place primarily on a train with a blonde guy and blonde girl”.  The blonde jacked Russian guy (Donald Grant) and this lovable Kremlin-esque face above (Rosa Klebb) work for SPECTRE (SPecial Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion), which is pretty much the best idea that no one every really spun off from in any major film genre.  I mean, the Justice League has the Legion of Doom, and James Bond has SPECTRE.  It guarantees a slew of future movies.  Anyways, a beautiful Russian blonde (like this storyline won’t repeat ever) is trying to lure Bond into a trap while in the hunt for a Russian decoding machine.  This film pretty much makes Bond what it was for the rest of the 60’s and 70’s.  The main bad guy behind everything is a deep voiced man petting a cat with numbers for names of people, Bond goes on a boat race and blows up some oil barrels, and also blows up a helicopter while escaping from it using what might as well be a BB gun.  Well, played James.  I

3. Goldfinger (1964)

The third film, Goldfinger, is by far the most popular Bond film, probably of all time.  It featured the Aston Martin DB5, Fort Knox’s Gold, A bad guy with a pun for a name (Auric Goldfinger), a sexy henchwoman with another pun for a name (Pussy Galore), the first ever deranged bad guy with some obscene amount of strength and a hidden weapon (Oddjob), a slew of clever gadgets and tricks for Bond that somehow make a timely use for every movie, and a plot that’s still believable to this day.  Setting off a nuke inside Fort Knox to make make the U.S. Gold become radioactive for 56 years, thus making Goldfinger richer than ever?  What’ll we do?!  Oh yeah, let’s leave it up for MI6 and James Bond.  Felix shows up here too, this time white and a different man.  This one is the only Bond film not streaming on Netflix that I would’ve loved to watch again.

4. Thunderball (1965)

Bond heads back to the Bahamas!  Nassau!  Woo!  Spring Break!  Eyepatches!  SPECTRE is behind this one again (see, told you this would make someone money).  This film is easily the one described as “the one with Sean Connery mostly swimming and fighting off the eyepatch guy”.  The eye patch guy is Emilio Largo.  He stole some warheads and Bond wants them back.  This would never happen nowadays, it would be phone calls and paid ransoms.  SPECTRE would totally have the world over a barrel.  This is also the Bond movie where he flies a jetpack and fires a harpoon at someone sneaking on him and his honey pie (a brunette this time, named Domino), oh yeah and uses a woman as a human shield.  I love these movies the more and more I think about them.  Can you even imagine someone remaking these movies shot for shot? 

5. You Only Live Twice (1967)

That’s not Dr. Evil, that’s Donald Pleasance as Blofeld, one of the many people behind the SPECTRE operations.  This time, James Bond stars in “the one where he goes to Japan to find out about the space ship swallowed by the Russian spaceship.  If you IMDB this movie and see a picture of Sean Connery with a racist looking haircut, its because 1960’s Japan to the rest of the world was actually 1920’s Japan.  This definitely shows the downward spiral from Goldfinger and Thunderball.  I don’t think the creators knew where to go with this, so they went to Japan and tried to make American’s like Japanese people even though it’s a hard sell, even 20 years after Pearl Harbor. 

After this movie, the producers decided to go with George Lazenby for James Bond.  I won’t even mention that film here because it’s such a piece of shit.  Basically Blofeld is hunted again, and Irma Bunt, a henchwoman who reminds me of a bizarro Mary Poppins, kills “Mrs. Bond”.  Mrs. Bond?  Oh yeah, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is the one where “James Bond was married for 5 minutes and George Lazenby was James Bond for 142 minutes”.  Let me repeat that, a two and a half hour Bond film.  The ones that were two hours were hard enough to watch. 

7. Diamonds Are Forever (1971)

After the atrocity known as George Lazenby exited quickly, Connery returned as 007.  Ironically, the guy you see before you is playing Blofeld.  That’s right, instead of keeping Donald Pleasance as Blofeld, they went with acotr Charles Gray, who had a little more charm to his bad guy persona.  This Bond film can be described as “the one that takes place in Vegas with the stubborn redhead and the two homosexual henchman”.  In case you don’t remember the two henchman, look up Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd and try to tell me those two weren’t the first homosexual bad guys on film.  The setting of Las Vegas for this film was a pretty good idea.  Q played slots illegally while not a single Pit Boss is accosting him for answers.  Jill St. John wears a lot of bikinis and tells a 10 year old to blow up his pants.  And Blofeld makes a remark about St. John showing too much “cheek”.  The main story behind this was that a satellite had Diamonds on it was going to be send a laser beam onto everything on Earth and heat it up until it exploded (ahem….Goldeneye).  Plus there was something involving marching band music in this movie which I still didn’t understand.

8. Live and Let Die (1973)

It should’ve really be called Roger Moore takes on Prince and the Revolution.  Jane Seymour aka Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman is a tarot reader in this film.  It’s the second film for a new Bond and so far the studio is 0/2 with the new Bond thing.  I don’t know what the process was for making these movies, but this one was too damn hard to watch.  It was a lot of Voodoo and New Orleans and huge Cadillacs and Tarot cards.  WTF is James Bond doing in New Orleans?  It’s 1973!  He should be in New York with the Disco scene!  I tried to watch this, but all I knew was the Jane Seymour character was the slave tarot card reader who turned over a love card when she mentioned James Bond instead of the Death card like she was supposed to.  Nothing special in this movie at all.  It’s “James Bond versus Black people”.

9. The Man With the Golden Gun (1974)

This movie wasn’t too bad but it wasn’t even close to enjoyable.  It revolved around a man who owned a wax museum on an island and also owns a laser controlled from solar cells which harnessed the power of the sun (ahem, Die Another Day).  It opens with the worst thing ever for a Bond villain to have: 3 nipples and the short guy from Pleasure Island (de plane de plane guy).  Not kidding.  Scaramanga, which might hold the title for most creative name to never be used again in any pop culture, is a million-dollar-a-job hitman, who sends 007 a golden bullet which makes him his next target.  The Golden gun is made out of a cigarette case and if anyone forgets from the video game, is a one shot kill. 

10. The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

Of all the henchman that scare the living hell out of people, Jaws has to be the one.  Oddjob had his hat, Nick Nack was small and quick, Pussy Galore was just a woman, the Russian guy from SPECTRE, none of them even come close as Jaws.  The Spy Who Loved Me, which was parodied very well by Mike Myers in Austin Powers 2, was about a Russian female spy (this time brunette) who are working together to try and find out how a Royal submarine carrying nukes was sunken (ahem, Tomorrow Never Dies).  The female agents name is Agent XXX.  Kinky I know.  One of the more famous scenes in this is when Bond drives the Lotus Elise into the water and it turns into a submarine.  Part of this movie also takes place on a train, but Jaws is involved.  Also, one of the main points of this movie is that when the mission is over, Agent XXX plans to kill James Bond.  Or does she?  (No, no she doesn’t)

11. Moonraker (1979)

One of the more futuristic Bond films during the 70’s, it involved space and rockets.  Hugo Drax, along with Jaws again as the henchman de jour, try to steal a NASA rocket from the USA without anyone knowing what they are up to.  Bond is sent on the case and uncovers a mystery that has more to do with the past than it does the future.  Some memorable scenes are the skydiving one where Jaws and Bond fight over parachutes in the beginning, there’s a speed boat race involving some explosive charges, and also some pretty fancy space suits and some futuristic technological laser guns.  Not a bad movie, but it’s certainly better than some of the other Moore Bond films.

12. For Your Eyes Only (1981)

I’ve seen this movie.  Less than 3 days ago.  Yet, I don’t think I could tell you a single important or distinct thing about it.  I know at one point there is a giant scuba suit fight.  Someone gets murdered and someone sees it.  I also know there is an encryption device, which I’m also positive I’ve written about already.  Either way, this movie was uninteresting.  The same Blofeld character comes back in a wheelchair for some reason and controls a helicopter with Bond inside.  This one also involves skiing and a hot Olympian that Bond does not sleep with, but might as well have since she was horny as hell and hits on him.  Who knew 20-something Olympic athletes liked 40-something secret agents"?

13. Octopussy (1983)

This Bond film is best described as “the one involving a Faberge egg and a clown.  Some villain buys a Fabrege egg and heads to India.  This is another movie where nothing really happens that is worth knowing.  There’s a train scene and an atomic bomb somewhere involving nuclear war.  The car doesn’t look that great.  The woman is okay.  The only memorable line is “Oh that?  That’s my little Octopussy”.  Lame. 

14. A View to a Kill (1985)

This Bond film is great start to finish.  Christopher Walken, a true acting talent, is the bad guy, Max Zorin.  May Day, who is played by Grace Jones the black version of Lady Gaga circa 1985 is the henchwoman who is just as sexual as she is dangerous.  Along with Tanya Roberts who plays a blonde geologist who knows Zorin’s plans to flood the Silicon Valley to take over the microchip industry.  There’s several twists about this plot.  There’s a part involving horse race cheating and Silicon Valley and the Eiffel Tower and tons of cool scenes.  This film was Roger Moore’s last one, which was a good way to go out.  The title song from Duran Duran is probably the best song to ever come from a Bond movie and make the Top 10 charts.  It’s interesting because the beginning title card shows “Neither the name Zorin nor any other name in this film is meant to portray a real company or actual person”, which always makes a person feel suspicious about the actual making of the film.  I know I was intrigued when I first saw that. 

15. Living Daylights/Licensed to Kill

Didn’t bother watching these ones either.  Here’s one thing I know about these two movies.  If Bond was going into a dark period, this was what put it there.  Timothy Dalton killed the Bond franchise for about 6 years. 

16. Goldeneye (1995)

The 6 year silence of James Bond returns and came out with a boom.  Probably considered the Best Bond film ever by some.  Pierce Brosnan, who has all the good looks, charm, and agent-like talent to pull off this movie.  Not only does it involve a Cold-war scenario which, during 1995 was hard to do at all seeing that most people were over Russia and the USSR thing.  The opening scene is tremendous.  The second scene is just as great.  The third scene, guess what, just as good as the next.  Sean Bean stars as 006, who “dies” during the opening scene but returns later to get his revenge on 007 for not staying and getting him out of their nasty little break-in.  Famke Janssen, plays Xenia Onatopp, who is probably one of the sexier henchwomen since her key move is crushing guy’s ribs and lungs with her hips and getting off to it.  The main story involves an electromagnetic resistant helicopter that is used in the hijacking of an old Soviet satellite that eliminates cities with one quick shot (sort of a remake of Diamonds are Forever).  Also Judy Dench is M in this one.  But Q returns and give Bond the BMW convertible which sold tons of models just because of this movie.  And guess what?  There’s a baccarat scene as well.  Bond does have an American friend, but it’s Jack Wade, not Felix.  I don’t know if I can say enough about this movie, but I will.

17. Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)

This film is a very modern and very slick Bond film.  It has a new BMW car, not a convertible, but an M5 series.  The bad guy is a media mogul (Murdock-esque) and is trying to create the news while reporting it.  One of the main lines that is a spin from Citizen Kane is “You provide the pictures, I’ll provide the war”, which is originally “you provide the prose poems, I’ll provide the war”.  Teri Hatcher, is a past Bond fling who is married to said  Media Mogul.  After he finds out, he has her killed and frames Bond for the murder, before it even happens.  Bond’s co-agent, a Chinese version of Agent XXX from Spy Who Loved Me, is named Wai Lin and she needs him to discover the whereabouts of a submarine that sank in the South China Sea, but was really outside of the zone where it really sank.  Elliot Carver, the villain, sails around in a stealth boat and decides to fire on both the British and Chinese, causing a war for his media coverage.  The henchman, Stamper, is a jacked Blonde guy who is famous for torturing people for hours while still holding them alive.  A very good Bond flick if I do say so.  Never really a dull moment, plus the car has a talking female voice and is drivable from a cell phone.  If only this technology panned out in real life.

18. The World is Not Enough (1999)

What do you get when you mix Denise Richards, a nuclear plot, a kidnapper named Renard who is losing his senses making him somehow stronger, and a victim who is suffering from Stockholm syndrome with a sexual twist?  This movie.  Not too much to write home about with this one.  It has some flashy scenes.  A submarine…again.  But this time it explodes underwater and is inches away from becoming nuclear.  Viktor Zukovsky is back from Goldeneye.  This movie also introduced Q’s replacement R, played by John Cleese.  This is Q’s last movie, making it hard to imagine another Bond film with the charming old scientist who invents things.

19. Die Another Day (2002)

Aahh.  Halle Berry.  Oscar winner.  Black beauty.  Why wouldn’t she be a Bond girl?  In this movie, which was very well thought out and futuristic, involves Bond being captured by the North Koreans and then traded for a Korean soldier who is of similar value to Bond.  In Bond’s return to duty, he looks for a Diamond mogul and tries to figure out the connection between the two.  While catching a couple views of Jinx Johnson here, he finds an island that offers gene therapy to people that alters their complexion and allows for a complete metamorphosis of the face, confusing Bond and other people suspicious of  them.  Madonna was in this one as some fencing instructor.  Inside MI6, there is a spy known as Miranda Frost, who works for the bad guy named Gustav Graves, who harnesses the power of the Sun on the North Pole to show to a bunch of World Powers at some Ice Hotel.  Then he goes nuts and tries to kill Bond.  This is Bond’s first movie with the new Aston Martin DB9 Vanquish which had some good tricks up its sleeve.  Pierce’s last film as Bond was okay.  Hard to go out on top, but I think he did the best he could.

20. Casino Royale (2006)

This movie is a reboot for the 007 series.  It’s with a new cast for the most part and a new style of Bond.  Daniel Craig, who is less charm and more machismo, is playing Le Chiffre in a marathon game of poker in Montenegro.  Bond is sent with Vesper Lynd and gets help from CIA Agent…(drumroll please)…..Felix Leiter!  Who is Black!….Again!  So there’s a team of people trying to play the World Series of Poker to try and win and beat Le Chiffre at his own game and lose his money so he can stop being a banker for the World’s Terrorist organizations.  There’s a twist at the end of this movie and it’s best to keep it secret since it ties into the next film.

21. Quantum of Solace (2008)

So, (SPOILER ALERT) James Bond is on a revenge trail and has to find whoever is responsible for his previous lover’s death.  There is a couple nice shots in Egypt and some good action sequences that have really gotten better from the previous Bond films.  I have no idea who the bad guy is or what he’s really after.  I don’t even know who the woman is, but I do know that she is named Camille.  Felix Leiter is once again in this, and he is played by the same person as the last movie. 

With this last movie being only so-so and the newest Bond film (Skyfall) looking better by the day, it’s hard to see what kind of Bond movies will be made my Daniel Craig and company.  Either way, I will be enjoying it.