What’s the best (and worst) Bond film ever? The Times' experts rank the movies
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/arts/film/article4585850.ece
Sean Connery and Shirley Eaton in Goldfinger
Daniel Craig in Casino Royale
Ursula Andress and Sean Connery in Dr. No
Maud Adams and Roger Moore in Octopussy
Pierce Brosnan in The World is Not Enough
Lynn-Holly Johnson and Roger Moore in For Your Eyes Only
Which is the best James Bond film? With less than two weeks to go before
Daniel Craig’s latest 007 adventure, Spectre, opens in British
cinemas, we thought the time was right to put all its predecessors in a
definitive order. To compile an official, definitive list of all the Bond
films released to date, from best (1) to worst (24).
All right, so maybe this little vote of ours isn’t strictly official. It is,
however, the most comprehensive poll of James Bond experts, to our
knowledge, anyone has compiled. Steve Cole and Raymond Benson (novelists),
Ben Macintyre and Andrew Lycett (Ian Fleming biographers), and David
Walliams and Edgar Wright (film industry fans) are just some of the names
involved.
We didn’t include the abominable spoof Casino Royale from 1967 -
a film so bad it makes Die Another Day look like The Godfather -
but left on the list the “unofficial” Thunderball remake, Never
Say Never Again, the one film here not made by Bond’s (genuinely)
official producer, Eon. Then we totted up the votes, checking our data using
computers the size of single-decker buses in our secret base deep in the
Amazon jungle.
The result was, much like Sean Connery versus Robert Shaw on the Orient
Express, a close-fought thing. There were only a few points between the top
four films. (The bottom choice, by contrast, was a runaway loser. Sorry,
Pierce.)
1. Casino Royale (2006, Daniel Craig)
Bond begins - belatedly, brutally, brilliantly - as Ian Fleming’s first novel
finally gets the full Bond-film treatment, 44 years after Dr. No.
(We’re not counting the abominable 1967 spoof of the same name.) Daniel
Craig’s newly qualified 007 showed off a beach-ready body and a dry
determination that makes this muscular reboot the best of the bunch. It’s a
modern action thriller that delivers on the thrills (the parkour chase! That
bit at the airport!) but also has room for subtlety, symbolism, psychology
and romance. Eva Green’s Vesper Lynd is Bond’s finest female foil - the
label “Bond girl” has never felt so inadequate - the poker sequence is
superbly sustained; Craig’s final, strategically withheld uttering of the
words “the name’s Bond . . . James Bond” sends a shiver up the spine; the
naked torture scene (pure Fleming) sends a shiver up a different part of a
chap’s anatomy. Yeah, you wish that Venetian building at the end wasn’t quite
so keen to collapse into the canal, but this is Bond as it should be: low on
pathetic quips and unlikely gadgets, high on adrenaline and emotion,
ambiguity and intrigue.
2. Goldfinger (1964, Sean Connery)
Casino Royale edged it out of our poll’s top slot - by millimetres - yet
this remains the Bond film that other Bond films want to be when they grow
up. Sean Connery, the suavest hard man in town, scrubs up a treat in dinner
jacket, wetsuit and powder-blue towelling playsuit alike; tosses out the
puns as if he actually enjoys them; electrifies as he battles to the death
with Oddjob (the henchman’s henchman) in Ken Adam’s Fort Knox fantasia
design. Then there’s Shirley Eaton covered in gold paint; Honor Blackman
radiant in her leathers; the funky Aston Martin; the brassiest of theme
songs; dynamite dialogue with the larger-than-life baddie. Bond (a laser
beam fast approaching his crotch): “Do you expect me to talk?” Goldfinger:
“No, Mr Bond, I expect you to die!”
Raymond Benson, author of six Bond novels: “Goldfinger is perhaps the most
influential film of the 1960s in terms of pop culture. It spawned the big
spy boom in other films, television and fashion. It set the gold standard
for the action-adventure film.”
3. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969, George Lazenby)
Maligned at the time, now seen as one of the series’s most singular
successes. Right, so Australian model George Lazenby is stiff; he’s also
superb in the action scenes, tender when he has to be, and his
first-time-actor’s unease fits in a story that puts Bond in protracted peril
in Blofeld’s mountain-top clinic-cum-lair. The camerawork and the skiing are
sensational - bolstered by John Barry’s best score - and Diana Rigg’s Tracy
is fine enough to make our lothario vow to forsake all others. OHMSS
still divides people; it got the most No 1 placings of any film in the poll,
while others reject its early languor, or just Lazenby.
Steve Cole, author of Young Bond: Shoot to Kill: “There’s an energy and
clout to the action scenes that Bond movies have seldom bettered.”
Matthew Parker, Bond author: “Diana Rigg steals it from a plank of wood.”
4. From Russia With Love (1963, Sean Connery)
The series hits its stride with a taut, glamorous, sometimes self-mocking
Cold War thriller that introduces us to the scrupulously hierarchical
Spectre organisation and its fiendish, faceless, cat-loving leader, Number 1
(later revealed as Ernst Stavro Blofeld). Features some of the best acting and
best action of the series in the train face-off between Connery and Robert
Shaw, who might yet have bested Bond if he’d only ordered the right kind of
wine with his fish supper.
5. Dr. No (1962, Sean Connery)
The original and fifth best. An amazing amount of the series’s hallmarks are
in place from the off - and Ursula Andress emerging from the sea remains one
of the most celebrated moments in cinema - but the story itself looks a
little stunted these days.
Simon Winder, author of The Man Who Saved Britain: “A marvel, of course,
and the opening few seconds with the radio interference sounds making a
segue to the theme tune could have a claim to be the fanfare marking the
start of the 1960s, but it is also regrettably cheap-looking in some ways.”
6. The Spy Who Loved Me (1977, Roger Moore)
The best of the Moores, this is the one with the genuinely jaw-dropping
opening title sequence (Bond skiing off a giant cliff before opening a Union
Jack parachute); Carly Simon’s middle-of-the-road dream of a title tune;
Jaws the giant henchman; the submarine-swallowing secret base that the
designer Ken Adam secretly got his friend Stanley Kubrick to help him to
light. Big fun.
7. Skyfall (2012, Daniel Craig)
If you can ignore some logical inconsistencies - and this is James Bond, I’d
strongly suggest you try - this is one of the smartest, most stylish entries
in the series. It’s certainly one of the best looking, thanks to Roger
Deakins’s photography, and best acted, thanks to Craig, to vengeful
peroxide-blonde nutjob Javier Bardem, and to Judi Dench, dying on the job in
the only 007 film in which the baddie gets everything he wants. Also the
only Bond film to earn $1 billion at the box office and, even adjusting for
inflation, the biggest earner in the series (ahead of Thunderball and Goldfinger).
8. Thunderball (1965, Sean Connery)
The last gasps of Peak Connery - maximum insouciance, yet still looks as if
he means business - this tropical
long-weekend-cum-nuclear-ransom-race-against-time goes on to get waterlogged
in the seemingly endless diving sequences. A 20-minute trim away from being
one of the best.
9. You Only Live Twice (1967, Sean Connery)
In which Bond goes to Japan, Connery eyes the exit, and Donald Pleasence
plays the most iconic incarnation of Blofeld, whose fully kitted,
hollowed-out volcano remains the acme of supervillain secret bases even
today. Top pub fact: Roald Dahl wrote the screenplay. And director Lewis
Gilbert liked the plot so much that he repeated it, more or less, in his
other two Bonds, The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker.
10. Live And Let Die (1973, Roger Moore)
Rog arrives, aged 45, but seizing the Seventies with Bond’s LED digital watch
and preposterously professional coffee-making gear as M and Moneypenny visit
him in his swish Chelsea flat. This is the one with voodoo, the speedboat
chase, Jane Seymour, Paul McCartney’s theme, Sherriff JW Pepper and the
exploding baddie “who always did have an inflated opinion of himself”.
Edgar Wright, film director (Shaun of the Dead, The World’s End):
“Ridiculously entertaining. Bordering on silliness at times, but frequently
weird and wild. Not the best, but perhaps my favourite.”
11. GoldenEye (1995, Pierce Brosnan)
Brosnan arrives to rescue us from six Bondless years with the best of his
four films, directed by Martin Campbell, who would go on to restart the
series again with Casino Royale. Great opening bungee jump, a tank
chase through Moscow, the arrival of Judi Dench’s M, Sean Bean acting “posh”
as 006, and a sexy assassin who kills her victims between her thighs. Back
in business, in other words.
12. The Living Daylights (1987, Timothy Dalton)
The first of Dalton’s two post-Glasnost, post-Aids outings is a spy thriller
that starts in style in Europe but then, failing to learn the lessons of
history, lingers too long in Afghanistan. Was to have been Pierce Brosnan’s
first Bond film, but at the last minute the producers of his television
series, Remington Steele, insisted he fulfil his contract and shoot a
final season instead.
13. Diamonds Are Forever (1971, Sean Connery)
Lazenby resigns, Connery comes back for $1.25 million (which he donates to
charity) and a production deal. The result: a scrappy, silly, stylish
travelogue that takes a blank-looking Connery from London to Amsterdam to
Las Vegas to a drab oil rig (looks as if all the money went on his salary)
as the producers try to bring Bond back to his Goldfinger heyday. Pub fact:
in early drafts the villain wasn’t Blofeld (camply played here by Charles
Gray) but Goldfinger’s vengeful twin brother. A guilty pleasure.
14. Licence to Kill (1989, Timothy Dalton)
Bond goes rogue (back before he went rogue every bleeding film) to hunt the
Central American drug lord responsible for his CIA buddy Felix Leiter losing
a leg to a shark. The second and darker of Dalton’s two outings was not a
big commercial success, but it hits its vengeful stride in its second half.
A third Dalton was being planned before legal issues put the series “on
hiatus” for six years.
Raymond Benson: “Totally underrated, in 1989 especially, it presented an
accurate tone and feel of Fleming’s literary world, in particular the novel
of Live And Let Die.”
15. The Man With The Golden Gun (1974, Roger Moore)
A hurried effort, with some sorry sexism - Rog locks Britt Ekland in a
cupboard while he has sex with Maud Adams - but it’s worth relishing
Christopher Lee as the three-nippled assassin, Scaramanga, and an
outstanding car-jump stunt, spoilt ever so slightly by the composer John
Barry’s use of a swanee whistle to underline its gravity-defying bravado.
16. For Your Eyes Only (1981, Roger Moore)
A reaction against the excesses of Moonraker, its return to
ground-level espionage is hard to get excited by now. And 007 is starting to
look less like an experienced older man, more “dad”: Rog was 53 when this
was released, his love interest Carole Bouquet was 23. In an injokey
pre-title sequence, Bond dumps an unnamed Blofeld - unavailable for use by
the official series because of legal battles with the Thunderball producer
Kevin McClory - down a chimney at Beckton gasworks in east London.
17. Octopussy (1983, Roger Moore)
Bond goes to India, Bond dresses up as a clown to defuse a nuclear bomb, Bond
gets to bed a second sexy female criminal with “pussy” in her name. The
American actor James Brolin tried out for the lead role before Moore was
brought back to help to counter the threat from Connery’s return to bondage
in Never Say Never Again that year.
18. Tomorrow Never Dies (1997, Pierce Brosnan)
The one with Jonathan Pryce as a malignant media mogul.
Simon Winder: “It is not really clear what goes so hopelessly wrong with
Brosnan’s Bond. Brosnan himself has the air of a Moss Bros model worried
about ripping his clothing - but it is far more than Brosnan’s fault. Scene
after scene in this film is simply generic and everything smells of decaying
versions of former glories.”
19. Moonraker (1979, Roger Moore)
Silly? Well, sure, but actually this set-piece-stuffed Moore extravaganza is
nicely shot, globetrotting good fun - and that aerial pre-title sequence is amazing
- until, uh-oh, it blasts off into orbit for laser battles.
Kevin Maher, Times film critic: “Nice to see Jaws again, but that space
finale was horrendous in 1979, still sucks today.”
20. A View to a Kill (1985, Roger Moore)
A Bond too far for our star. On the plus side: Duran Duran’s theme,
Christopher Walken. On the minus side: the plot is a rubbishy rehash of Goldfinger;
Bond snowboards to the tune of California Girls; Moore, now 57, is
seen baking quiche. Quiche! Has its fans, mind.
Matt Gourley, co-host,James Bonding podcast: “This movie is
snowboarding-Beach-Boys-Grace-Jones-Eiffel-Tower-base-jumping bats*** crazy
and I love it.”
21. Quantum of Solace (2008, Daniel Craig)
The drabness of the villain’s plot - to defraud the people of Bolivia via
inflated water rates, mouhahahaha! - is intentional, but the story’s
satirical stabs at contemporary corporate larceny get lost amid shaky
camerawork and rushed storytelling that lacks tension.
Simon Winder: “I was at one of the Casino Royale premieres and it ended
with everyone cheering. The same event for Quantum of Solace ended in an
embarrassed silence.”
22. The World Is Not Enough (1999, Pierce Brosnan)
More not-quite-there Brosnanisms: one villain feels no pain (Robert Carlyle),
the big villain is Bond’s girlfriend (Sophie Marceau), Desmond Llewelyn says
goodbye as Q, yet the only thing that really lingers even vaguely in the
memory is a speedboat chase. Oh, and Denise Richards in hotpants as the
nuclear scientist Dr Christmas Jones. “I was wrong about you,” quips Bond as
the pair finally get steamy together. “I thought Christmas only comes once a
year.” Just call her Dr Goesliketheclappers Jones and be done with it.
23. Never Say Never Again (1983, Sean Connery)
Connery wigs up one last time for this deeply so-so remake of Thunderball,
which for legal reasons was the only story available to producers in what
was the only serious Bond film not to be made by Cubby Broccoli’s Eon
productions. It doesn’t gel at all, even if Klaus Maria Brandauer and
Barbara Carrera are nicely bonkers as the baddies.
24. Die Another Day (2002, Pierce Brosnan)
Our voters made this a clear favourite for the bottom slot. Its vulgar
excesses prompted a rethink three years later, aka Casino Royale. Now
that’s what I call a comeback.
Tom Sears, co-presenter, James Bond Radio: “Instead of the real Bond we get
an invisible car; the worst dialogue in any film ever; the worst, most
clichéd Bond girl ever in Halle Berry; the most ridiculous ‘stunt’ ever when
Bond paraglides on a CGI tsunami; and the worst theme song of the entire
series, by Madonna. I left the cinema a broken man.”
The panel
Raymond Benson, writer of six James Bond novels (1997-2002), three
novelisations, The James Bond Bedside Companion; Ajay Chowdhury,
co-author, Some Kind of Hero: The Remarkable Story of the James
Bond Films; Steve Cole, author, Young Bond: Shoot to Kill
(out in paperback Oct 22); Paul Duncan, editor, Taschen’s The
James Bond Movie Archives; Andrew Lycett, biographer of Ian
Fleming; Matt Gourley, co-host, James Bonding podcast; Ben
Macintyre, Times writer and author, For Your Eyes Only: Ian
Fleming and James Bond; Kevin Maher, film critic, The Times;
Dominic Maxwell, theatre critic, The Times; Matt Mira,
co-host, James Bonding podcast; Kate Muir, chief film critic, The
Times; Mark O’Connell, author, Catching Bullets: Memoirs
of a James Bond Fan; Matthew Parker, author of Goldeneye:
Where Bond Was Born: Ian Fleming’s Jamaica; Alan J Porter,
author, James Bond: The History of the Illustrated 007; Tom Sears,
co-host, James Bond Radio podcast; Robert Sellers, author, The
Battle for Bond; David Walliams, comedian, writer, actor,
presenter of My Life With James Bond 007; Simon Winder,
author, The Man Who Saved Britain; Chris Wright, co-host,
James Bond Radio podcast; Edgar Wright, film director and
screenwriter. Plus a crack squad of Times critics and writers.
My favourite 007 films
by David Walliams
1. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
The best story (and incidentally the most faithful to Fleming’s book), the
best direction (former Bond editor Peter Hunt brings new energy to the
series), the best Blofeld (a mesmerising Telly Savalas), the best Bond girl
(a troubled Diana Rigg), the best score (John Barry’s explosive theme, and
Louis Armstrong singing We Have All the Time in the World) and the
best ending (leaving you deeply upset). The film is perfect and, despite
what some might say, George Lazenby is excellent. I had dinner with him in
LA and he said: “I screwed it up.” I replied: “No, you didn’t and you made
the greatest Bond film of all.” He signed my first edition of OHMSS,
writing: “We have all the time in the world.”
2. Goldfinger
The film effortlessly sets up what the series was to become. The humour, the
car, the henchman and most notably that the Bond world is larger than life
and not quite our own. Sean Connery is on magnificent form. It is a
faultless film. For me, OHMSS just beats it for having an emotional
journey for Bond.
3. Skyfall
Sam Mendes managed to bring together all the elements you want to see in a
Bond film, and yet tell a story that is totally new, especially visiting
Bond’s family home and killing off M. The dialogue sparkles. An instant
classic.
4. The Spy Who Loved Me
The perfect 1970s Bond film. My first and probably my favourite, if not quite
the best. Roger Moore is now totally at ease in the role, there is Jaws, Ken
Adam’s sets, that song, and the most beautiful Bond girl of them all, my
first love Barbara Bach.
My best Bonds
by Ben Macintyre
1. Casino Royale
The closest screen version of 007 to Ian Fleming’s original Bond: unknowable,
cruel and brutally stylish. Bond’s greatest feat: Daniel Craig rescued the
franchise.
2. From Russia With Love
Connery did not make the single best Bond movie, but remains overall the best
Bond; the train compartment battle with Robert Shaw’s blond villain remains
one of the finest moments in cinema, ever.
3. Dr. No
What seems extraordinary about the first Bond film is that so many of the
ingredients were established from the outset, and have hardly changed since.
The first utterance of the words: “Bond... James Bond.”
And the worst...
Die Another Day
A film, weirdly, with all the usual props, but no soul, no real interest in
what is happening or undermining the clichés, and a plot that takes
ridiculous to an excruciating level.
Sean Connery and Shirley Eaton in Goldfinger
Daniel Craig in Casino Royale
Ursula Andress and Sean Connery in Dr. No
Maud Adams and Roger Moore in Octopussy
Pierce Brosnan in The World is Not Enough
Lynn-Holly Johnson and Roger Moore in For Your Eyes Only
Which is the best James Bond film? With less than two weeks to go before
Daniel Craig’s latest 007 adventure, Spectre, opens in British
cinemas, we thought the time was right to put all its predecessors in a
definitive order. To compile an official, definitive list of all the Bond
films released to date, from best (1) to worst (24).
All right, so maybe this little vote of ours isn’t strictly official. It is,
however, the most comprehensive poll of James Bond experts, to our
knowledge, anyone has compiled. Steve Cole and Raymond Benson (novelists),
Ben Macintyre and Andrew Lycett (Ian Fleming biographers), and David
Walliams and Edgar Wright (film industry fans) are just some of the names
involved.
We didn’t include the abominable spoof Casino Royale from 1967 -
a film so bad it makes Die Another Day look like The Godfather -
but left on the list the “unofficial” Thunderball remake, Never
Say Never Again, the one film here not made by Bond’s (genuinely)
official producer, Eon. Then we totted up the votes, checking our data using
computers the size of single-decker buses in our secret base deep in the
Amazon jungle.
The result was, much like Sean Connery versus Robert Shaw on the Orient
Express, a close-fought thing. There were only a few points between the top
four films. (The bottom choice, by contrast, was a runaway loser. Sorry,
Pierce.)
1. Casino Royale (2006, Daniel Craig)
Bond begins - belatedly, brutally, brilliantly - as Ian Fleming’s first novel
finally gets the full Bond-film treatment, 44 years after Dr. No.
(We’re not counting the abominable 1967 spoof of the same name.) Daniel
Craig’s newly qualified 007 showed off a beach-ready body and a dry
determination that makes this muscular reboot the best of the bunch. It’s a
modern action thriller that delivers on the thrills (the parkour chase! That
bit at the airport!) but also has room for subtlety, symbolism, psychology
and romance. Eva Green’s Vesper Lynd is Bond’s finest female foil - the
label “Bond girl” has never felt so inadequate - the poker sequence is
superbly sustained; Craig’s final, strategically withheld uttering of the
words “the name’s Bond . . . James Bond” sends a shiver up the spine; the
naked torture scene (pure Fleming) sends a shiver up a different part of a
chap’s anatomy. Yeah, you wish that Venetian building at the end wasn’t quite
so keen to collapse into the canal, but this is Bond as it should be: low on
pathetic quips and unlikely gadgets, high on adrenaline and emotion,
ambiguity and intrigue.
2. Goldfinger (1964, Sean Connery)
Casino Royale edged it out of our poll’s top slot - by millimetres - yet
this remains the Bond film that other Bond films want to be when they grow
up. Sean Connery, the suavest hard man in town, scrubs up a treat in dinner
jacket, wetsuit and powder-blue towelling playsuit alike; tosses out the
puns as if he actually enjoys them; electrifies as he battles to the death
with Oddjob (the henchman’s henchman) in Ken Adam’s Fort Knox fantasia
design. Then there’s Shirley Eaton covered in gold paint; Honor Blackman
radiant in her leathers; the funky Aston Martin; the brassiest of theme
songs; dynamite dialogue with the larger-than-life baddie. Bond (a laser
beam fast approaching his crotch): “Do you expect me to talk?” Goldfinger:
“No, Mr Bond, I expect you to die!”
Raymond Benson, author of six Bond novels: “Goldfinger is perhaps the most
influential film of the 1960s in terms of pop culture. It spawned the big
spy boom in other films, television and fashion. It set the gold standard
for the action-adventure film.”
3. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969, George Lazenby)
Maligned at the time, now seen as one of the series’s most singular
successes. Right, so Australian model George Lazenby is stiff; he’s also
superb in the action scenes, tender when he has to be, and his
first-time-actor’s unease fits in a story that puts Bond in protracted peril
in Blofeld’s mountain-top clinic-cum-lair. The camerawork and the skiing are
sensational - bolstered by John Barry’s best score - and Diana Rigg’s Tracy
is fine enough to make our lothario vow to forsake all others. OHMSS
still divides people; it got the most No 1 placings of any film in the poll,
while others reject its early languor, or just Lazenby.
Steve Cole, author of Young Bond: Shoot to Kill: “There’s an energy and
clout to the action scenes that Bond movies have seldom bettered.”
Matthew Parker, Bond author: “Diana Rigg steals it from a plank of wood.”
4. From Russia With Love (1963, Sean Connery)
The series hits its stride with a taut, glamorous, sometimes self-mocking
Cold War thriller that introduces us to the scrupulously hierarchical
Spectre organisation and its fiendish, faceless, cat-loving leader, Number 1
(later revealed as Ernst Stavro Blofeld). Features some of the best acting and
best action of the series in the train face-off between Connery and Robert
Shaw, who might yet have bested Bond if he’d only ordered the right kind of
wine with his fish supper.
5. Dr. No (1962, Sean Connery)
The original and fifth best. An amazing amount of the series’s hallmarks are
in place from the off - and Ursula Andress emerging from the sea remains one
of the most celebrated moments in cinema - but the story itself looks a
little stunted these days.
Simon Winder, author of The Man Who Saved Britain: “A marvel, of course,
and the opening few seconds with the radio interference sounds making a
segue to the theme tune could have a claim to be the fanfare marking the
start of the 1960s, but it is also regrettably cheap-looking in some ways.”
6. The Spy Who Loved Me (1977, Roger Moore)
The best of the Moores, this is the one with the genuinely jaw-dropping
opening title sequence (Bond skiing off a giant cliff before opening a Union
Jack parachute); Carly Simon’s middle-of-the-road dream of a title tune;
Jaws the giant henchman; the submarine-swallowing secret base that the
designer Ken Adam secretly got his friend Stanley Kubrick to help him to
light. Big fun.
7. Skyfall (2012, Daniel Craig)
If you can ignore some logical inconsistencies - and this is James Bond, I’d
strongly suggest you try - this is one of the smartest, most stylish entries
in the series. It’s certainly one of the best looking, thanks to Roger
Deakins’s photography, and best acted, thanks to Craig, to vengeful
peroxide-blonde nutjob Javier Bardem, and to Judi Dench, dying on the job in
the only 007 film in which the baddie gets everything he wants. Also the
only Bond film to earn $1 billion at the box office and, even adjusting for
inflation, the biggest earner in the series (ahead of Thunderball and Goldfinger).
8. Thunderball (1965, Sean Connery)
The last gasps of Peak Connery - maximum insouciance, yet still looks as if
he means business - this tropical
long-weekend-cum-nuclear-ransom-race-against-time goes on to get waterlogged
in the seemingly endless diving sequences. A 20-minute trim away from being
one of the best.
9. You Only Live Twice (1967, Sean Connery)
In which Bond goes to Japan, Connery eyes the exit, and Donald Pleasence
plays the most iconic incarnation of Blofeld, whose fully kitted,
hollowed-out volcano remains the acme of supervillain secret bases even
today. Top pub fact: Roald Dahl wrote the screenplay. And director Lewis
Gilbert liked the plot so much that he repeated it, more or less, in his
other two Bonds, The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker.
10. Live And Let Die (1973, Roger Moore)
Rog arrives, aged 45, but seizing the Seventies with Bond’s LED digital watch
and preposterously professional coffee-making gear as M and Moneypenny visit
him in his swish Chelsea flat. This is the one with voodoo, the speedboat
chase, Jane Seymour, Paul McCartney’s theme, Sherriff JW Pepper and the
exploding baddie “who always did have an inflated opinion of himself”.
Edgar Wright, film director (Shaun of the Dead, The World’s End):
“Ridiculously entertaining. Bordering on silliness at times, but frequently
weird and wild. Not the best, but perhaps my favourite.”
11. GoldenEye (1995, Pierce Brosnan)
Brosnan arrives to rescue us from six Bondless years with the best of his
four films, directed by Martin Campbell, who would go on to restart the
series again with Casino Royale. Great opening bungee jump, a tank
chase through Moscow, the arrival of Judi Dench’s M, Sean Bean acting “posh”
as 006, and a sexy assassin who kills her victims between her thighs. Back
in business, in other words.
12. The Living Daylights (1987, Timothy Dalton)
The first of Dalton’s two post-Glasnost, post-Aids outings is a spy thriller
that starts in style in Europe but then, failing to learn the lessons of
history, lingers too long in Afghanistan. Was to have been Pierce Brosnan’s
first Bond film, but at the last minute the producers of his television
series, Remington Steele, insisted he fulfil his contract and shoot a
final season instead.
13. Diamonds Are Forever (1971, Sean Connery)
Lazenby resigns, Connery comes back for $1.25 million (which he donates to
charity) and a production deal. The result: a scrappy, silly, stylish
travelogue that takes a blank-looking Connery from London to Amsterdam to
Las Vegas to a drab oil rig (looks as if all the money went on his salary)
as the producers try to bring Bond back to his Goldfinger heyday. Pub fact:
in early drafts the villain wasn’t Blofeld (camply played here by Charles
Gray) but Goldfinger’s vengeful twin brother. A guilty pleasure.
14. Licence to Kill (1989, Timothy Dalton)
Bond goes rogue (back before he went rogue every bleeding film) to hunt the
Central American drug lord responsible for his CIA buddy Felix Leiter losing
a leg to a shark. The second and darker of Dalton’s two outings was not a
big commercial success, but it hits its vengeful stride in its second half.
A third Dalton was being planned before legal issues put the series “on
hiatus” for six years.
Raymond Benson: “Totally underrated, in 1989 especially, it presented an
accurate tone and feel of Fleming’s literary world, in particular the novel
of Live And Let Die.”
15. The Man With The Golden Gun (1974, Roger Moore)
A hurried effort, with some sorry sexism - Rog locks Britt Ekland in a
cupboard while he has sex with Maud Adams - but it’s worth relishing
Christopher Lee as the three-nippled assassin, Scaramanga, and an
outstanding car-jump stunt, spoilt ever so slightly by the composer John
Barry’s use of a swanee whistle to underline its gravity-defying bravado.
16. For Your Eyes Only (1981, Roger Moore)
A reaction against the excesses of Moonraker, its return to
ground-level espionage is hard to get excited by now. And 007 is starting to
look less like an experienced older man, more “dad”: Rog was 53 when this
was released, his love interest Carole Bouquet was 23. In an injokey
pre-title sequence, Bond dumps an unnamed Blofeld - unavailable for use by
the official series because of legal battles with the Thunderball producer
Kevin McClory - down a chimney at Beckton gasworks in east London.
17. Octopussy (1983, Roger Moore)
Bond goes to India, Bond dresses up as a clown to defuse a nuclear bomb, Bond
gets to bed a second sexy female criminal with “pussy” in her name. The
American actor James Brolin tried out for the lead role before Moore was
brought back to help to counter the threat from Connery’s return to bondage
in Never Say Never Again that year.
18. Tomorrow Never Dies (1997, Pierce Brosnan)
The one with Jonathan Pryce as a malignant media mogul.
Simon Winder: “It is not really clear what goes so hopelessly wrong with
Brosnan’s Bond. Brosnan himself has the air of a Moss Bros model worried
about ripping his clothing - but it is far more than Brosnan’s fault. Scene
after scene in this film is simply generic and everything smells of decaying
versions of former glories.”
19. Moonraker (1979, Roger Moore)
Silly? Well, sure, but actually this set-piece-stuffed Moore extravaganza is
nicely shot, globetrotting good fun - and that aerial pre-title sequence is amazing
- until, uh-oh, it blasts off into orbit for laser battles.
Kevin Maher, Times film critic: “Nice to see Jaws again, but that space
finale was horrendous in 1979, still sucks today.”
20. A View to a Kill (1985, Roger Moore)
A Bond too far for our star. On the plus side: Duran Duran’s theme,
Christopher Walken. On the minus side: the plot is a rubbishy rehash of Goldfinger;
Bond snowboards to the tune of California Girls; Moore, now 57, is
seen baking quiche. Quiche! Has its fans, mind.
Matt Gourley, co-host,James Bonding podcast: “This movie is
snowboarding-Beach-Boys-Grace-Jones-Eiffel-Tower-base-jumping bats*** crazy
and I love it.”
21. Quantum of Solace (2008, Daniel Craig)
The drabness of the villain’s plot - to defraud the people of Bolivia via
inflated water rates, mouhahahaha! - is intentional, but the story’s
satirical stabs at contemporary corporate larceny get lost amid shaky
camerawork and rushed storytelling that lacks tension.
Simon Winder: “I was at one of the Casino Royale premieres and it ended
with everyone cheering. The same event for Quantum of Solace ended in an
embarrassed silence.”
22. The World Is Not Enough (1999, Pierce Brosnan)
More not-quite-there Brosnanisms: one villain feels no pain (Robert Carlyle),
the big villain is Bond’s girlfriend (Sophie Marceau), Desmond Llewelyn says
goodbye as Q, yet the only thing that really lingers even vaguely in the
memory is a speedboat chase. Oh, and Denise Richards in hotpants as the
nuclear scientist Dr Christmas Jones. “I was wrong about you,” quips Bond as
the pair finally get steamy together. “I thought Christmas only comes once a
year.” Just call her Dr Goesliketheclappers Jones and be done with it.
23. Never Say Never Again (1983, Sean Connery)
Connery wigs up one last time for this deeply so-so remake of Thunderball,
which for legal reasons was the only story available to producers in what
was the only serious Bond film not to be made by Cubby Broccoli’s Eon
productions. It doesn’t gel at all, even if Klaus Maria Brandauer and
Barbara Carrera are nicely bonkers as the baddies.
24. Die Another Day (2002, Pierce Brosnan)
Our voters made this a clear favourite for the bottom slot. Its vulgar
excesses prompted a rethink three years later, aka Casino Royale. Now
that’s what I call a comeback.
Tom Sears, co-presenter, James Bond Radio: “Instead of the real Bond we get
an invisible car; the worst dialogue in any film ever; the worst, most
clichéd Bond girl ever in Halle Berry; the most ridiculous ‘stunt’ ever when
Bond paraglides on a CGI tsunami; and the worst theme song of the entire
series, by Madonna. I left the cinema a broken man.”
The panel
Raymond Benson, writer of six James Bond novels (1997-2002), three
novelisations, The James Bond Bedside Companion; Ajay Chowdhury,
co-author, Some Kind of Hero: The Remarkable Story of the James
Bond Films; Steve Cole, author, Young Bond: Shoot to Kill
(out in paperback Oct 22); Paul Duncan, editor, Taschen’s The
James Bond Movie Archives; Andrew Lycett, biographer of Ian
Fleming; Matt Gourley, co-host, James Bonding podcast; Ben
Macintyre, Times writer and author, For Your Eyes Only: Ian
Fleming and James Bond; Kevin Maher, film critic, The Times;
Dominic Maxwell, theatre critic, The Times; Matt Mira,
co-host, James Bonding podcast; Kate Muir, chief film critic, The
Times; Mark O’Connell, author, Catching Bullets: Memoirs
of a James Bond Fan; Matthew Parker, author of Goldeneye:
Where Bond Was Born: Ian Fleming’s Jamaica; Alan J Porter,
author, James Bond: The History of the Illustrated 007; Tom Sears,
co-host, James Bond Radio podcast; Robert Sellers, author, The
Battle for Bond; David Walliams, comedian, writer, actor,
presenter of My Life With James Bond 007; Simon Winder,
author, The Man Who Saved Britain; Chris Wright, co-host,
James Bond Radio podcast; Edgar Wright, film director and
screenwriter. Plus a crack squad of Times critics and writers.
My favourite 007 films
by David Walliams
1. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
The best story (and incidentally the most faithful to Fleming’s book), the
best direction (former Bond editor Peter Hunt brings new energy to the
series), the best Blofeld (a mesmerising Telly Savalas), the best Bond girl
(a troubled Diana Rigg), the best score (John Barry’s explosive theme, and
Louis Armstrong singing We Have All the Time in the World) and the
best ending (leaving you deeply upset). The film is perfect and, despite
what some might say, George Lazenby is excellent. I had dinner with him in
LA and he said: “I screwed it up.” I replied: “No, you didn’t and you made
the greatest Bond film of all.” He signed my first edition of OHMSS,
writing: “We have all the time in the world.”
2. Goldfinger
The film effortlessly sets up what the series was to become. The humour, the
car, the henchman and most notably that the Bond world is larger than life
and not quite our own. Sean Connery is on magnificent form. It is a
faultless film. For me, OHMSS just beats it for having an emotional
journey for Bond.
3. Skyfall
Sam Mendes managed to bring together all the elements you want to see in a
Bond film, and yet tell a story that is totally new, especially visiting
Bond’s family home and killing off M. The dialogue sparkles. An instant
classic.
4. The Spy Who Loved Me
The perfect 1970s Bond film. My first and probably my favourite, if not quite
the best. Roger Moore is now totally at ease in the role, there is Jaws, Ken
Adam’s sets, that song, and the most beautiful Bond girl of them all, my
first love Barbara Bach.
My best Bonds
by Ben Macintyre
1. Casino Royale
The closest screen version of 007 to Ian Fleming’s original Bond: unknowable,
cruel and brutally stylish. Bond’s greatest feat: Daniel Craig rescued the
franchise.
2. From Russia With Love
Connery did not make the single best Bond movie, but remains overall the best
Bond; the train compartment battle with Robert Shaw’s blond villain remains
one of the finest moments in cinema, ever.
3. Dr. No
What seems extraordinary about the first Bond film is that so many of the
ingredients were established from the outset, and have hardly changed since.
The first utterance of the words: “Bond... James Bond.”
And the worst...
Die Another Day
A film, weirdly, with all the usual props, but no soul, no real interest in
what is happening or undermining the clichés, and a plot that takes
ridiculous to an excruciating level.