The Definitive James Bond List Ranking

The train fight is probably the hallmark moment of the franchise, neither overchoreographed as later Bond brawls, or triflingly unconvincing as many action scenes of the time. Though many complain that this film is 'boring,' I personally consider it a strong point and more realistic that the film lingers in one environment as long as it does. Only after Berlin, Istanbul is the epitome of the Cold War tension, with a nicely added exotic flare. The film slowly but effectively ramps up to its climax, and even manages a satisfying twist (a rarity for the Bond movies). Daniela Bianchi's voice may be as fake as Sean Connery's hair, but the film more than compensates.

By far the most iconic Bond film, I feel it still has some problems. Pussy Galore is as fitting an equal as Bond's ever had, but clearly is stereotypical flesh fodder for our hero none the less. The title song, plot, villain, henchman, gadgets, etc., are all top notch. The 'laser-scene' featuring Goldfinger's famous riposte has become the most quotable mono a mono exchange in the film series, begetting too many parodies, rip offs, and homages to count.

In what became Roger Moore's shining moment as 007, Barbra Bach delivers a suprisingly good performance in what has become the only decent installment in the Seventies. Their chemistry manages to create a believable romantic subplot, which fitting the title and theme of the film, lifts the film to a level above most of the series. Though, one might have hoped for more from Curt Jurgens, whom the writers basically treat as an afterthought. Carly Simon's theme song is a highlight.

If only judging from Tom Jones's ridiculously over -the-top musical acrobatics and the opening jetpack launch, it isn't a shocker to suggest that the filmmakers (when it comes to Bond movies it really makes very little difference who the director is) felt a very real need to build upon Goldfinger. I can't say they surpassed it in every regard, but I think they succeeded beyond anyone's expectations. Adolfo Celli's lecherous Largo is nearly as great as Goldfinger, and Luciana Paluzzi's honeypot villainess is one of the best female characters in the franchise.

A methodical, realistic reboot, Casino Royale managed to revive and remake a stale canon, and in the process lure new fans to the franchise who never would have been caught dead watching before. The ending may have been a little too much action, but it's hard to complain with the film as a whole.

Virgin Bond films are usually better than average, and GoldenEye is no different. The brain trust charged with helming the series managed to overt many obstacles (mainly the absence of the Soviets as the bad guys) and reinaugurate Bond for the Nineties. Famke Janssen pulls off a remarkably memorable character out of a fairly rote villainess character. Sean Bean and Pierce Brosnan's scenes are among the best of the modern era of the series.

A great, underrated Bond, FYEO recovers from the debacle that was Moonraker quite nicely, with a terrific performance from Carole Bouquet as an amoral sidekick out for revenge. The film features many great scenes, such as the warehouse shootout, the monastary assault, and a Mediterranean torture scene, among others, but is unfortunately bogged down by a rather corny subplot featuring a teenage ice skater who inexplicably wants to sleep with a 55 yr-old Moore, and a jaw-droppingly bad closing gag involving a parrot and Margaret Thatcher. Yes, you read that last line correctly, friend.

Though not particularly amazing either for its plot or acting, the Dr. No-Bond dialogue is among the best exchanges in the series and Ursula Andress cast a long shadow as a Bond Girl. Considering the entire franchise is built upon this one film's success I think it only worthy to give it top ten credit for being, at very least, one of the most impressive action-adventure films of the early Sixties.

The core story could have been more polished and the showdown at the baddie's lair is derivative, but the foundation of a great Bond is there. I won't go as far as to say that Connery's casting could have made it great, the unintentional campiness (e.g. hypnotism, and the climactic bobsled race) and prolonged run time are too much to overcome, afterall. And in retrospect, the idea of 007 marrying does come off as a bit of a shallow gimmick (I don't care if it is in the books), which, naturally, the writers of the series waste no time in exploiting and discarding as quickly as possible. It is not much of a suprise that an obscure booty call, Sylvia Trench, graced the screen in twice as many films as James Bond's spouse. Bonus points for having two good songs, neither of which shoehorned the title into the lyrics.

Had it not been for the mind-bogglingly asinine 'turning Japanese' segment, this James Bond would have ranked much higher. Much more bothersome for it's sheer pointlessness and implausibility than any racial insensitivity, it bogs down an otherwise efficient adventure narrative. On the plus side, Donald Pleasance cements his reputation as the finest of the Blofelds and Nancy Sinatra's theme song is pretty amazing -- and Neil Connery is nowhere to be found.

Sam Mendes' Skyfall is by far the most psychoanalytical, menacing, and bleak of the Bonds, however that's after it starts with 007 shot twice in the chest, crashing a motorbike directly into a guardrail at 30 mph, and then immediately falling off a three-hundred-foot tall bridge and massive waterfall all within six minutes. I understand the appeal to the Chinese market and the calculated decision to make the ruthless international terrorists white, secular Brits (actually, I can't, that's another reality for the modern spy genre to reconcile) but the tonal shifts from serious drama to video game shoot 'em up are mismatched. Pick a genre and stop trying to please every demographic. The story is entertaining, yet also an utter mess. Just for starters, I am baffled why Bond stood and waited until after the sniper shot his target in the head to intercede in the situation, and the lax security at what should be one of the most secure spots on earth. (Spoilers) The entire Silva storyline is so implausible it's best to not dwell upon it. On a different note, the Freudian-fueled scheme to blow up of MI6 headquarters to kill 'M' and vengeful rogue agent/hacker storylines make the script feel like a weird mishmash of Brosnan films, though the climactic scene at the country estate is an appreciated reversal of the old school, clichéd Bond finales.

The Timothy Dalton era started interestingly enough, but the film quickly ventures into the absurd, from fake assassinations, to riding cello cases across the borders of the Iron Curtain, to Mujahadeen invading a Soviet airbase in Afghanistan. There seemed to be more potential here, but the writers forced too many outlandish twists into the script instead of developing the central story. In a bizarre move there are two co-villains instead of a single foe, both only there to serve the plot but are otherwise underwritten, generic bad guys. On the plus side, the acting is quite good. Provided better scripts, Dalton very might well have made the character his own.

Interesting if only as a parody or comedic take on an aging Bond, twenty years past his prime, NSNA does notably feature a clever motorcycle/showdown scene with his female equivalent (the preposterously named Fatima Blush), but in all other regards is inferior to the original which it is based, Thunderball. The video game duel between 007 and Largo is a cheeky, if slightly dated, modern take on James Bond's notorious gambling adddiction in the Atari age. A relatively restrained film, one could reasonably assume that most of the budget was devoted toward securing its oddly immpressive cast, including none other than Max von Sydow (no stranger to slumming himself), Edward Fox, Kim Basinger, and Klaus Maria Brandauer. This perhaps explains why its poster looks like it was drawn by a fifth-grader.

This film is a case of hit and miss. Sophie Marceau as a Stockholm Syndrome-stricken heiress? Hit. Denise Richards as a nuclear physicist named Christmas Jones? Miss. A plot featuring the oil industry as a primary plot element? Hit. The fact the writers were too scared to focus on the corrupt petrocracies of OPEC? Miss. The opening chase? Hit. The closing line? Miss. Robert Carlyle as a renegade, sociopathic KGB agent with a romantic side? Hit. A rogue KGB agent hijacking a submarine to blow up a city in a nuclear blast? C'mon, seriously, that's the plot to like nine other Bond movies.

How did this film happen? It's hard to say. On second thought, no it isn't. It was the Eighties, everybody was on coke, televangelists were fodder for gossip, Pablo Escobar and Manuel Noriega were in the news, Die Hard and Lethal Weapon were the new wave of action flick, Japan was emerging as a world power... hence we get a rogue agent fighting ninjas and blowing up a narco-baron's tanker trucks of drugs, all in the most gruesome manner possible. And I didn't even get to Wayne Newton trying to bed a woman with a Tobey Maguire haircut. In addition to being the least originally named and one of the least memorable theme songs in Bond history, the titular song also features the distinction of being the second best song in the movie after Patti Labelle's If You Asked Me To.

The mystical subplot is weird, but is one of the few interesting ideas in the film that work. The inclusion of black actors and locales is cynical and feels like a cheap attempt to cash in on the 'blaxploitation' movement. (Notice how long 007's black love interest stays alive.) Like practically all Bond films, the script at its core, a drug dealer trying to control the heroin market by bankrupting his competitors and spawning addiction via low prices (think Frank Lucas meets Walmart), might have worked if it had been handled by more mature or sensible minds. People more concerned with telling an interesting story instead of just making another dumb, formulaic action movie with broad appeal. A thoroughly hateable script, if only for its introduction of the cornpone Southern sheriff to the series who would later destroy the credibility of its sequel.

Despite the promise India held as a backdrop to James Bond's Orientalist shananigans, the film fails as a romance and a thriller. Worst of all, the film feels as if it is twice as long as it actually is and is littered with stupid, throwaway gags and cliches. Spoiler alert, James Bond and Western Europe are not annihilated in an atomic blast. Steven Berkoff, the go-to bad guy of the Eighties, shines, perhaps the only charismatic character in the entire film.

No actor can truly inhabit the role until he makes a bad film (for some reason debuts, either in fear or doubt, tend to bring out the best in a production), at very least QoS challenges Octopussy for worst-titled Bond movie. Frenzied yet lifeless, the film is awash in gadgets, bad hairstyles, and recycled bits of Bond films past. While it pretends to have an edgy, emotional side it betrays all the realism and credibility that Casino Royale invested the franchise by showing a parachute scene that defies logic and physics, 007 literally beating up three MI6 agents with his hands tied behind his back, and a woman getting her shirt ripped off defeating three hulking goons. The upskirt shot of a would-be rape victim, as coincidental as the director tries to make it look, is perhaps the most crass and pointlessly misogynistic moment of the series. The film is remarkable for its yearning to look contemporary yet indifference to progress. A fondness for backwardness captured nicely in the opera segment, opera being the only legitimate place a man would ever wear a tuxedo in this de-formalized age, outside of a high school prom or the Oscars.

Yet another wasted oppurtunity. The final showdown between 007 and Scaramanga might have provided an interesting battle of wits or marksmanship, a deeply personal and minimalist alternative to a franchise perpetually enamored -- one may more accurately say enslaved -- to the hackneyed idea of the megalomaniac eccentric and his lair of minions and lasers. Instead of that intricate psychological affair, we get a mastermind with a third nipple and a flying car, with a hidden lair, a dwarf sidekick, and a @#$%^&* ray-gun.

Rupert Murdoch was born to play a Bond villain, sadly the premise is lost in a haze of poorly conceived fight scenes and grandiose set pieces.

Not in the offical canon, this spoof is mostly memorable for its ecentric yet squandered collection of stars, John Huston (co-director), Peter Sellers, Orson Welles, and Woody Allen. Unfortunately this was the narrow window in the late Sixties bridging the years between the moment Welles had stopped trying and before Allen had emerged as a mature comedian. While I figure Huston did it for the money or as a lark, Peter Sellers did it presumably (judging by his filmography) out of hubris to prove himself the best comedian in the room, or perhaps that was coincidental -- according to Wikipedia, he thought it was a straight thriller. Considering the clusterf!#% this film is, who the hell could tell.

This is a disaster of a film. Even the title is a nonsensical mash up of articles, nouns, and prepositions. Simply put, the premise is outrageous. As awkward and improbable as the scene in which Grace Jones seduces a 58 yr-old Moore is, it is overshadowed by many other stupid ideas that completely take us out of the film. There is a thirty minute-long chunk of the movie involving horse racing that to this day I still can't figure out why was included other than to kill time. Tanya Roberts is worthless, but as a Bond Girl it doesn't hurt much. The real problem is the villain, who is the worst cliche imaginable, a Nazi-bred, KGB-trained corporate bully with slickbacked hair who is literally incapable of empathy. And the finale involves an exploding blimp at the Golden Gate Bridge.

Moonraker was nominated for an Oscar for special effects and made over 200 million, which still isn't enough to make us forget that this is arguably the dumbest, least original movie in the James Bond canon.

Ample evidence why Sean Connery should have stayed retired from the Bond series after You Only Live Twice. Using Bond Girls as an accurate barometer of the films' overall quality, Jill St John, predictably, ranks among the lowest. Of all the women who have had the unfortunate fate of being re-dubbed in this series... This is a rather bad joke of a film.

Whoops, how did this get in here? All joking aside, the truly sad part is that this shameless, Italian, Eurospy knock-off still isn't the most cringe-inducing Bond-related movie. Why they didn't just go the satire route is beyond me, the movie functions more or less as a parody in any event.

I cannot fully articulate the awfulness of this film, from its script, casting, music selection, villain, use of special effects (especially sfx), direction, down even to its generic-looking poster. At this point of the franchise, the filmmakers were clearly out of ideas. Which explains why they inevitably chose to go back to one of Ian Fleming's more popular works for Die Another Day's follow-up.