which is the best James Bond movie?

just placed The Living Daylights in my queue; I haven't seen this movie since 1989.

also I thought goldeneye on n64 suuuucked but we already hashed that out in the all-time video games ballot poll results thread

(and it was the first Bond film I watched in the thee-ah-ter)

xp oh i kinda think so too because i am a PC shooter snob (i am amazed that so many people played an FPS with a single joystick and no way of aiming while moving like it was perfectly normal), but it's Important is all.

I mostly stopped watching these movies when I hit mid 20s, save for a few Connery repeats.

actually, my mental bond looks like brosnan and talks like connery too.

I like Bond but don't find there to be THAT much variation in quality between most of them. Like, Goldfinger is indeed a better movie than Tomorrow Never Dies, but not by as great a distance as you'd be led to believe.

who is leading us to believe this?

I mean, I for one rate Goldfinger above half of Hitchcock and among the better works of the time, but Tomorrow Never Dies is really shallow in its depiction of media corruption, and lacks the bombastic plot of Network or the subtle yet media-led revelations of Die Hard 2. The variation in film is, as you say, negligible, but hard to put in context.

Michelle Yeoh motorcycle scene about all that's worth anything in that movie.

you guys have obviously forgotten "sir, the new version of the software is ready. as requested, it's full of BUGS... so people will be forced to UPGRADE." "excellent."

Goldfinger has its place in the critical canon, it's on Roger Ebert's Great Movies list and it regularly shows up on lists of the best action films and best British films ever.

TND is indeed kinda mediocre but still sufficiently entertaining (I always liked the bit where the villain imitates Michelle Yeoh's kung fu posture before scoffing at her, "pathetic," his status as an all powerful media Titan having afforded him cultural superiority); I can't say that if the latter came on tv right now that I'd be all that disappointed that I was watching it instead of the former. I dunno, there's a possibility that I'm so overly familiar with this series that I don't notice subtle differences between them. I should admit that I still haven't seen a few of the Moore ones (or haven't seen them since childhood, when I couldn't tell them apart in any way beyond my suspicion that Octopussy was a funny name for some reason I couldn't quite articulate), but yeah, I don't see the distance between the best and worst in this series as being anywhere near as dramatic as, say, the original Star Wars trilogy vs. the prequels, or Raiders Of The Lost Ark vs. Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull.

I haven't seen it in a long while but I remember A View to a Kill being abhorrent, but maybe it doesn't seem so bad because there's so many and of varying degrees of quality that it all feels part of an awfulness continuum, whereas in the case of Indiana Jones there's a remarkable drop-off in that one entry which makes it stand out as even worse.

'from russia with love' is easily among the best-made action films ever and far and away the series high point IMO.

if only North by Northwest hadn't got there first

They're all good in a way. I don't remember if I've said that before in this thread, but I'll watch any of them, even Diamonds are Forever, at any time if someone asks me.

A View to a Kill is irritating in that the actors and premise have a lot of potential and it ends up with a boring underground explosion plot where they're just punching in a nondescript cave and a fistfight on a blimp

AVtoK seems to be the consensus worst of the series, and as I only remember the very last scene of the film, perhaps I should re-watch it and then amend my statement about the non-varying quality of Bond films accordingly.

Ok, AVtoK is indeed pretty bad. Moore way beyond retirement age for the character at this point, and his sex scene with Grace Jones has to be the ickiest in the entire series. Plus, Walken squandered on an uninteresting character. Like, if ever there was an actor born to play a megalomaniacal Bond villain, it's Walken, but he has exactly zero interesting lines/moments/quirks in the film. Also, the movie is just way to jokey and clowny. When the Beach Boys tune came on during the opening scene, I seriously thought I was watching "Top Secret."

yeah I hated that one.

Should I roll the dice on one of the Brosnans at MoMA? Which is 'darkest'?

Doesn't answer your question, i know, but The World Is Not Enough is my fave Brosnan.

someone threw DAD (lol) a vote for lols, right? I mean, isn't that the one w/ the invisible car & Pierce Brosnan surfing on a broken slab of ice WHILE firing a machine gun?

that's the one w/ J Pryce yeah? xp

either goldeneye or twine (haha) -- goldeneye if you want a cartoony take on postsoviet uncertainty feat. judi dench calling bond a "dinosaur" and the world is not enough if you want the millennium dome + bond in an "antique torture chair" + john cleese

pryce is in tomorrow never dies which i can't remember anything about except him.

this review of the 50 box set prefers Goldeneye:

http://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/review/bond-50/2447

i do too

someone threw DAD (lol) a vote for lols, right? I mean, isn't that the one w/ the invisible car & Pierce Brosnan surfing on a broken slab of ice WHILE firing a machine gun?

the only thing i remember from DAD is the completely tension-free ice chase scene. iirc his car gets shot like a billion times and blown up like a hundred times but it's cool, nothing can stop the magic indestructible invisible car.

Goldeneye the only solid Brosnan, but I don't think any of them are particularly dark. They were clearly trying to get away from the harder-edged Dalton stuff, but quickly overcompensated with Moore-esque ridiculousness.

Tomorrow Never Dies has a good chase scene and Michelle Yeoh is good, but the finale is pretty blah and Pryce isn't a very good villain. World is Not Enough has Denise Richards and unmemorable action scenes. I don't think Carlyle is terrible, but submarine stuff is sort of a snooze and bullet-in-the-brain "i can't feel pain" is kind of pointless. Die Another Day is best avoided unless you really want to see Madonna turning up in a fencing kit.

CASINO ROYALE tbh

I watched The Living Daylights for the first time since a cable rerun in 1990, and it holds up! Two crippling mistakes:

1. No villain. Joe Don Baker's war buff isn't given enough to do. The blond mail Annie Lennox-esque master of disguise comes close.
2. The cellist is perhaps the most insipid Bond girl, which is saying a lot.
3. Timothy Dalton is game but given no memorable quips and is directed to act like he's in Othello.

as far as Dalton goes, Benicio Del Toro in a meat grinder >>> sliding around the snow on a cello case.

*THREE crippling mistakes rather

Daylights was my last one til the Craig Royale. I should try Licence to Kill, I guess.

actually only recently saw A View to a Kill. just horrifically bland, besides delightful Walken delivery in this scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCmgle7Q5eU

xp you might wanna avoid Licence Morbs, unless you really, really like generic B-action. it's the closest to a Stallone/Norris movie that Bond ever came

everybody has different opinions! I hate that.

I dunno. What's the diff b/w Bond and Norris -- tuxes and martinis? This is why I'm not a Bond fan.

Invasion U.S.A. is a more entertaining movie than all but like 5 or 6 Bonds so I really do not know

RAVES coming in for Skyfall.

License To Kill is a good 80s action movie.

Never Say Never Again surprised me! I expected a smug Sean Connery but his quiet weariness is exactly right for the part -- one of his subtler performances. The shark sequence (which I remembered watching on cable as a kid at a friend's house) is quite well shot.

A thousand curses on Kim Basinger. Is there a role she didn't scream for help through?

love her in Nadine actually

she didn't deserve Jeff Bridges.

I remember seeing Connery on Johnny Carson when NSNA came out, talking about putting his hairpiece on to play Bond again.

I liked it more than Thunderball for sure

!

shorter, less waterlogged + Max von Sydow

It's 2-hours-plus and drags after Brandauer walks away though.

One of the more disappointing truths of my adulthood has been learning that Thunderball pretty much sucks.

this shit is relative, Thunderball is weak but outweighs 20-odd years of bollocks that comes after it

cd argue the same about the books, Fleming slid downhill from Casino Royale on but they're all better than say Lee Childs