Bond, The Best Bond(s)

Connery - Goldfinger
Moore - For Your Eyes Only [he actually seems somewhat tough in this one]
Brosnan - Goldeneye

btw, I wish Thunderball's underwater sequences were tightened up a bit. They bog down the film. But opening fight scene is first rate.

 

NSNA (remake) health farm fight scene is sheer genuis!

 

Ahh so you are the comedian that voted for it?

Octopussy too..jeez.

 

missing letter/film title

 

From Russia With Love
Goldfinger
On Her Majesty's Secret Service
The Spy Who Loved Me
For Your Eyes Only
Casino Royale (2006)

 

And there we disagree. Think of this: can you imagine Connery doing the scene where Bond futzes with the espresso machine? Methinks no. If anything, early Moore Bond was prissier than he'd later be - it was Bond ala Felix Unger...

 

No, I think he was criticized because he couldn't act! And he couldn't - he was a model with little acting experience, and the part overwhelmed him...

 

My favorite Bond films have always been From Russia With Love and Goldfinger. Goldfinger came out right before other studios and producers got on the spy bandwagon in the mid 60s.

 

Connery was the best Bond no doubt but I loved Dalton as well, he brought back some of the nastiness of Bond, and he was by far the best actor of the bunch. How anyone could have like Brosnan is beyond me. I always felt that he made Bond a prima donna, and just looking at him always made me think "this guy's gonna hurt someone??".

 

How come nobody votes for David Niven as the best Bond? His house and Lion collection were beyond reproach. I like the prude Bond he played.

Woody Allen wins by default as the best Jimmy Bond....

 

I'd rank them like this:

1.Goldfinger
2.From Russia with Love
3.Never say never again
4.Live and Let Die
5.License To Kill
6.Casino Royale 2006
7.The World is Not Enough
8.On Her Majesty's Secret Service
9.Goldeneye
10.The Spy Who Loved Me
11.Diamonds Are Forever
12.Octopussy
13.Dr. No
14.For Your Eyes Only
15.The Living Daylights
16.The Man with the Golden Gun
17.Thunderball
18.You Only Live Twice
19.Quantum of Solace
20.A View To A Kill
21.Moonraker
22.Casino Royale 1967
23.Tomorrow Never Dies
24.Die Another day

 

Wow - that's a REALLY high placement for "Never Say Never Again", especially since you put "Thunderball" in the middle!

I'm curious to know why you like "NSNA" so much more than the original...

 

My favorites:

Goldfinger
From Russia With Love
Thunderball
You Only Live Twice
On Her Majesty's Secret Service
The Spy Who Loved Me
For Your Eyes Only
Casino Royale

 

Ehh, Brosnan did fine in that department, IMO. Moore comes across as prissier and less threatening to me - and Lazenby also looks pretty wimpy and non-threatening...

 

More gritty than Thunderball imo.

 

Goldfinger

 

Goldfinger has the classic comment by Bond about how anyone listening to The Beatles needs to wear earmuffs.

 

In my case, it would be for the amazing car chase scene.

 

The urine sample also came in handy

 

Lazenby wimpy? He kick's butt. (even Teresa gets a slap!)

 

First, to set the record straight, I inadvertently selected Quantum of Solace (not worthy) rather than Casino Royale (totally worthy). So, my actual picks:

From Russia with Love - this is a really good story, quintessential 60's intrigue
Goldfinger - a really good movie, this is where the Bond's begin to get "big", and we start to see a formula emerging.
Casino Royale - wonderful reset for the series; action, intrigue, pacing. Really my only issue is that this would have been superb were it set in the early 50s.

FWIW, i put QOS in the player this week, and it just didn't grab me. I saw it on the big screen, of course, but at home, it was just not compelling, and I stopped midway thru. Maybe I was tired, but it just didn't seem to "pop" like CR.

By the time production began for YOLT, the Bond films had taken on a life of their own, independent of the books, and the sense was that each Bond must be bigger than the last. I loved the movie when it came out - particularly the exotic local - and anything seemed possible. (Bond and the Beatles just kept getting bigger.) In retrospect, tho, this hasn't aged as well, as the villain and the scale are a bit cartoonish. (Not to mention Sean Connery going incognito to "become Japanese".)

In this case, that substantial divergence from Fleming's novel means that there still tremains a great opportunity to revisit YOLT, to more faithfully bring the novel to the screen with an adaptation that includes the suicide island and focuses more on the characters than the scale.

Any word on what will be next?

 

I think of him as being bland and non-threatening. Everyone raves about "OHMSS" but I just can't get into it, largely due to Lazenby - he's a cinematic non-entity...

 

I love NSNA mostly because of that video game and the motorcycle chase scene. It was one of the first Bond movies I saw, at the age of 7 or 8, and those bits left me completely stunned. NSNA also has that great trademark Sean Connery humour that Thunderball is missing a bit. Having seen them all by now, I must also admit that Klaus Maria Brandauer is one of my favourite Bond bad guys.