All the Connery films, save for Never Say Never Again. Connery MADE the franchise.
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the Bond film most faithful to the novel.
Not ONE Moore film.
License To Kill
The World Is Not Enough. Gorgeous antagonist, plus Robert Carlyle as the alleged Bad Guy.
Tomorrow Never Dies. Michelle Yeoh resoundingly kicks James Bond’s ass.
Casino Royale, the real one, not the Woody Allen-scripted vomitfest. ALMOST as faithful to the source material, save for the troglodyte substitution of Texas freaking Hold ‘Em poker for Baccarat, an aristocrat’s game.
Skyfall, though it’s inferior to the rest of my list. It tried rally hard to be the 50th Anniversary Bond. Bond is not who he once was. His skills and conditioning are lacking. He is protecting M, his surrogate Mum, from an inspired protagonist. He/they retreat to Bond’s ancestral home, where Bond et al. make a stand. The bastards blow up his Aston Martin DB (David Brown)5, the most famous car in movie history and it was actually a 1/4 scale model of the Aston that was destroyed. Other 1/4 scale replicas students sold at auction for one-quarter of a million dollars. This is on my list for the Bond nostalgia, and for its exposition of the vulnerability of a hero, like Logan.
The man is Bond. He was a pliable and talented orphan subscripted my MI6 to be a spy and killer with all the panache and patina of a gentleman of the world. He’s not “fun.” He is exciting. He has a nearly superhuman libido, which is why he excels at sex and violence. He is very intelligent, which is why he recalls the correct service temperatures for heated Sake (97.4 degrees F) and Champagne (34 degrees F). He is not a cultural pawn, he does not change with the times.
He is my role model.
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