which is the best James Bond movie?

Also thank you for the reminder to finish watching The Spy Who Loved Me, I'll do that now

i haven't seen TWINE since it came out but I remember liking it much more than Tomorrow Never Dies, or Die Another Day later on.

Goldeneye is about as good as the best Moore movies, though not as good as Martin Campbell's work in Casino Royale, which was the best Bond since the Connery ones for certain. not sure why they gave Sam Mendes two consecutive Bonds, his direction and staging is vv pretty but cinematically inert even when things are moving swiftly. Campbell made the two best Bonds of the post-Dalton era (maybe including the Dalton era.)

i will never understand enjoyment of Brosnan Bond. i find those movies overstuffed and fuuuuuhuuucking stupid. Tomorrow Never Dies is kinda watchable & that is not saying much

thus endeth my grumpy post

I know it was hobbled by the writers' strike (Daniel Craig wound up writing some of it himself iirc) and QoS is superficially interesting in some ways but it really is amazing just how badly Marc Forster fucked up on his turn at bat

i love QoS so maybe my argument is invalid idk

again it has interesting aspects (it's refreshingly short and low-stakes, Kurylenko is good, Amalric is hilariously out of place) but the execution is inept and the action is below Greengrass levels of comprehensibility

i think the pleasures of something like Casino Royale are that it's such a classically composed, cleanly shot, clearly staged thriller w/a compelling cast, and that it's not just a good Bond film but a great action film. i think the producers overthought things at least creatively, being influenced too much by the gloomy Nolan-type blockbusters for the last two, and a bit too much by the Bourne films for QoS. I guess Spectre was an effort to return to some semblance of classic Bond but they whiffed on that one too. CR was refreshing because it just felt like the first Bond film in eons that wasn't campy or self-referential or a joke. Humorous enough to be charming, dark enough to hit hard when it had to, smart in all the right ways, and so on.

Solace is the only one i've ever written about.

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/quantum-of-solace

I can't see Die Another Day getting many votes

The fact that it even got one vote, Jesus Christ. Visiting home and my mom ended up watching it this evening; seeing it again was just painful. So horribly 2002.

for your eyes only is awesome, partially for how much it breaks with bond traditions and also reduces the plot to pretty simple espionage. the underwater scenes are v gorgeous

octopussy's first half is p good but it loses a lot of steam when they get to the circus

Agree with both -- these were the first two Bonds I ever saw (thanks early 80s HBO running them constantly) so I'll always have a fondness. I'd argue that there's just enough tension in the defuse-the-bomb run to make it work. (Also I still can't get over Gaston from Gigi as the villain, as that was the only way I knew who Louis Jourdan was at the time.)

Die Another Day contains what are definitely the worst FX in the series with those ice floats.

I saw For Your Eyes Only in the theater with my dad so that movie has a special place in my heart, even if it does feature The World's Dumbest Henchman:

https://youtu.be/8FDX6_BSas8

Cinemark is showing The Spy Who Loved Me next month, think i might try to go. I've never seen it on the big screen!

Extremely challopsy stuff from the BFI here:

http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/lists/007-great-underrated-james-bond-films

i like most of those movies but diamonds are forever is a soulless incoherent slog

TWINE is the only irredeemable one on that list.

again the world is not enough is good and die another day is horrible

I remember Die Another Day being pretty funny

If you treat it as parody it might work.

wait

is live and let die......good?

they're still all bad

OHMSS ofc

Live & Let Die is good-ish until it turns into the Dukes of Hazzard & you are stuck watching a chase that lasts 72 years

wait that doesnt compute, how can that be the bad part

live and let die rules, you're right deems

i revisited ohmss for christmas and yeah it's still the best one and is maybe my favorite action film of all time

LALD's chase is the one where a boat goes through a wedding cake yes

xp really have to give that a watch, i hear all the right things about it

anyway thus far (just david blained jane seymour into bed) this is a pretty cracking mix of blaxploitation, forsyth-swinger spy pad and moore being much more of a modern quipper than i remember from later bonds

it's moore's third best bond film imo (after for your eyes only and the spy who loved me) and it's remarkable to me that his initial approach to playing bond is even more severe than connery's! ofc afterward he leans into the camp

hmmm maybe a project for the new year....

they're still all bad

^^^

holy shit its the one with the exploding couch/shark as well?

/kotto

correct!

dont get me wrong, i love LALD but i hate the sherriff & the chase is SO long. Like, Thunderball underwater fight scene long. LONG.
it was the first James Bond movie i remember watching all the way through - it has a very “Saturday late night tv movie” look to me that i love (Enter the Dragon has this same nostalgic look/feel to me also)

i showered and got a wash on while the chase happened tbh

absolutely agree that the movie only benefits from dropping it, tonally as well as running time/tightness

the living daylights

^^^

...is the correct answer

My faves are From Russia With Love, and For Your Eyes Only. Living Daylights also great. OHMSS is good but not my fave.

Mark s otm

feel like i hear from the "they're all bad" contingent every time

FRWL and License to Kill are no-disclaimers good all the way through from start to finish

Goldfinger, OHMSS and the Craig Casino Royale are mostly good but severely drag towards the end (or have LAZENBY)

Most of the rest are bad-but-good or bad-but-fine

Nearly all the Brosnans and Craigs and maybe Thunderball are properly bad

A proper adaptation of Moonraker with Connery is in-my-head-classic

I watched Casino Royale for the 3rd time over Xmas. Still the best Bond. I think the actual poker play could've been done a bit better and less eyerolly but it's a Bond film so that's a minor quibble. That fight on top the crane near the beginning is just kick-ass action. Craig is the best Bond since Connery too.

the pre-titles of The Living Daylights are v good, and the sole straight Fleming adaptation in the entire series

Live And Let Die is "bad" but fantastic, my second fave

OHMSS is magnificent all round, the better of the two non-bad films in the series, and the only one out of all of them with admirable, positive sexual politics

(or have LAZENBY)

here's how good OHMSS is: it stars an asshole male model with no acting experience who did not speak to the director for the duration of the shoot and had to have his dialogue dubbed over in post and it still rules so hard that he seems 'fine' in it

casino is great until the car crash

its so bad after that it ruins what comes before

quantum of solace is overall better

russia with love best, goldeneye is good