James Bond movies you might actually want to watch, a list

I'm going peculiar over a Covid isolation Christmas, so apparently you get lists. In this case, one of my favourite* film franchises.

There are twenty five canonical** James Bond movies. Around half of them are worth watching in some form or other, either through actual quality, their place in the history of the franchise, or so you can marvel at how on earth such howling gibberish made it to production. 

I have categorised them accordingly, and in chronological order. 

I ain’t ranking this shit.

Actually entertaining

• Dr No (1962)
  I always like to see where it all started. A simple, classic, utterly deranged Bond plot. If you can get past the racism, sexism, and cognitive dissonance of Sean Connery being moderately attractive.

• From Russia with Love (1963)
  In which Bond does some actual spying. He will not bother again.
  Content note: wine snobbery.

• Goldfinger (1964)
  The Platonic ideal of early Bond.

• The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)
  Christopher Lee gives us a dark mirror to 007. The high point of the Moore era - the franchise's knowing camp goes just too far enough.
  Also Britt Eckland activates a giant laser with her arse.

• A View to a Kill (1985)
  The terrible tragedy of Roger Moore preventing Christopher Walken and Grace Jones from destroying Silicon Valley.

• License to Kill (1989)
  A thoroughly watchable 1980s drug crime action flick, that happens to be helmed by Timothy Dalton's proto-Craig take on Bond.

• GoldenEye (1995)
  It's GoldenEye, motherfuckers.
  (What's fascinating is how much closer it is to the Bond of the 60-70s than the later Bond of the 2000s)

• Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
  We're not only watching this to see a caricature Rupert Murdoch get mulched by maritime engineering equipment, it's also got Michelle Yeoh in it.

• Casino Royale (2006)
  It turns out you can do post-Bourne Bond and retain the kitschy humour.

• Skyfall (2012)
  The best Bond movie.

• No Time to Die (2021)
  The most recent Bond movie.
  Only really necessary as a capstone to the Craig era because they put Spectre after Skyfall, but still solid enough.

So bad it's good

• Moonraker (1979)
  Bond, but make it Star Wars, set it in Venice for some reason, and add a reaction shot from a judgemental pigeon. Oddly slapstick. Good fun to watch once you've decided you like Bond.

• Die Another Day (2002)
  AKA "that one with Madonna, and the invisible car". This is a weird love letter to the rest of the franchise, peppered with references and little nods. A postmodern Bond-about-Bond. Sadly, it lands closer to Scary Movie than Scream in that regard. I love it, but you might have a normal human brain.

So bad it's bad

• Octopussy (1983)
  Please do not watch this film. 

The remaining 11

We've missed Lazenby's oddly-paced curio On Her Majesty's Secret Service, the actually quite fun but unremarkable Thunderball, and those Moore ones that just kind of blur together making Austin Powers seem a little redundant. Diamonds are Forever has the wonderful assassin duo Mr Wint & Mr Kidd, but is otherwise broadly nonsense. The Living Daylights is arguably better than License to Kill, but is gently indifferent to making sense.

There's some solid entertainment to be had in the rest of the list, but it's not where I'd tell you to start.

If you’re interested in finding out more about James Bond, its history, and its peculiar place in the British national psyche (as well of how much of a bellend Ian Fleming seems to have been) then I strongly recommend Simon Winder’s short book: The Man who Saved Britain

* Let's just take it as a given that we've all done the appropriate hand-wringing about Enjoying Problematic Things.

** I am not even going there.