Okay, here we go.
Doctor No: at the time, it was unique. No movie like this, with a murderous good guy, had ever been made. So no wonder the combination of new thrills and Connery as the human incarnation of a black panther started the franchise.
The movie itself: very slow by today's standards and the spectacle is low - in the novel, Bond has to crawl through an army of tarantulas during the big endurance test and ends it off by killing a giant squid in hand to hand combat! One of the few instances the novels outdid the movies. No theme song, but THAT theme, so it's all good. 004 Bonds for historical value, Ursula Andress and Bond singing a little ditty (Underneath the Mango Tree), but realistically it is between 002 & 003.
From Russia With Love: Huge improvement, the train fight is just as good today as back then. The third act remains excellent, the first half of the movie is too slow & bereft of action. Great theme song! 005 Bonds.
Goldfinger: First half and the finale are amazing, second half crawls to a halt because Bond is passive throughout AND very bad points for Bond forcing himself physically onto Pussy Galore (and having her like it). THE theme song, gold standard. 006 Bonds.
Thunderball: the quintessential Bond movie, the first time the formula was crystallized. I love it unreservedly. The underwater battle does go on a bit too long for modern audiences but the juxtaposition of the silence of the sea (and the shots of the underwater creatures) with the savage bloodletting that goes on makes it special. And Bond has a five-on-one fistfight after it, which is pretty damn lively. Good villain, great Bond girl, excellent action, and a top Theme song by Tom Jones. 007 Bonds.
You Only Live Twice: thought this was the bee's knees back when I saw it as a teen, nowadays the racism & Connery's boredom make it less enjoyable, but the action & spectacle remain impressive and it introduced ninja's to the West! Theme song: don't like it as much as the previous ones, but it grew on me. Nancy Sinatra had to record it in several goes because it was technically too hard for her - which is really strange for a professional singer. 006 Bonds.
OHMSS: Lazenby isn't a good Bond but would have grown into the role, but as a world class larrikin of course he had to be contrarian and ruin it all. The opening is great & the editing of the fights is - special, quite disorienting at first. Then the movie grinds to a LOOOOOONG halt (a huge chase & fight in Switzerland was scrapped for budget reasons) but once Bond starts escaping Blofeld's lair the action doesn't let up and remains great. The tragic ending really suffers from Lazenby's delivery. Not a fan of the song, but I love the instrumental theme over the opening credits. 005 Bonds, would have been 007 with Connery in top form and more action in the first half.
Diamonds Are Forever: Damn confusing in the first half and almost surrealist at times, pretty lame finale. Pre-credit sequence & the elevator fight are great, the rest not so much. 003 Bonds.
Live And Let Die: hey, it's blaxploitation time, so let's have Bond get really racist!!! There is literally not one good black character in the entire movie. They are all in on Mr. Big/Katanga's plan. Moore still finding his feet, there are some cool bits but also a lot of crap. Pre-credit sequence sucks (no Bond!). Theme song is awesome though. Boat chase goes on for too long but was ground-breaking at the time. Finale is hyperlame. 003 Bonds (though to be fair I liked it better a long time ago).
The Man With The Golden Gun: terrible. Lower budget, bad jokes, bad henchman, bad Bond girl, finale could have served as the end of a '70s spy show on TV. And biggest crime of all: throwing away Christopher Lee, closest thing to a real life James Bond ever, in the most disappointing Bond vs. Baddie showdown ever. 001 Bonds, even with that stunt and the karate schoolgirls. Theme song is meh.
The Spy Who Loved Me: big rebirth of Bond, played forever in the cinema and the first one I saw on the sort of big screen (I only went to see it late in the run after all my mates at school had raved about it for weeks). Loved the action, the spectacle, the chases, the unstoppable henchman, the Bond Girl showering in the submarine, the battle inside the tanker... Theme song is lame, credits weren't. Definitely Moore's best. 007 Bonds.
Moonraker: indeed pretty much a remake, liked it at the time though the over-reliance on jokes started to grate even back then. Jaws in Love was AWFUL. Much sillier than Spy Who Loved, the cartooniness starts to take over.
For Your Eyes Only: Everyone seems to think this is a more serious Bond, but it really isn't. Jokes take over almost all the time, the plot is pedestrian (a variation on the Lektor device of From Russia...). Villain is really lame. Only serious bit in the entire movie is the warehouse battle which is pretty good, and the rock climbing stunts near the end are impressive too. The first Bond that really disappointed me and that hasn't changed over the years. Can't stand the theme song & that is par for the course for the rest of the Moore's.
Octopussy: Please, make it stop! Craptacular movie, superlame comedy that ruins the entire film (Bond is a literal clown! Bond channels dog trainer Barbara Woodhouse!). Even the Bond girl is recycled. The jokes render all the action neutered. 002 Bonds, but only because of the next one... (Meanwhile, over at Never Say Never Again Connery perfectly blends comedy with action thrills and delivers a far superior Bond movie, only hampered by the fact that it is a Thunderball remake.
A View To A Kill: Bond hits rock bottom. He even identifies himself as James Bond to a cop who responds with 'yeah, and I'm Dick Tracy'. Bond is just a slapstick figure now, and Grace Jones as the super henchwoman is a total waste of space. Christopher Walken overacts like crazy and still doesn't exude menace. The Golden Gate finale doesn't even know how to induce a sense of vertigo in the audience. Duran Duran does the theme song: kill it with fire.
He is more determined to overcome than the one armed swordsman !
