Sink the Bismarck! (1960)

 "I don't care how you do it. You MUST sink the Bismarck."

This is not the kind of war film I was expected, with a surprising amount of focus on strategic planning and reactions in the Admiralty as opposed to action. Yet, while this is perhaps not one of the very best war films, its focus on the backroom planning aspects is certainly a strength. This is a nicely structured- and, within reason, historically accurate-account of both the damage done by the Bismarck and the pursuit of it by the Royal Navy in that anxious spring of 1941.

Admittedly, my own experience of the stock footage, opening the film, of Hitler launching the Bismarck was shaped by some rather hilarious automatic English subtitles of the German dialogue, but this was the only laughable moment. Every other moment was gripping and tension-filled as the full might of the Royal Navy- including the Home Fleet- wrestled with the difficult gambles and ten dimensional chess-playing that was necessary to sink the premier asset of the German navy.

Using Ed Morrow as a kind of chorus was clever; he's an identification figure for any Americans watching as well as being a handy means of exposition. It's also a solid decision to base the film around two fictionalised figures- the cold Captain Shepard who is secretly covering up emotional vulnerability and the coolly competent yet emotionally inteligent Anne Davies- as well as a more cartoonish Nazi in Lutyens than was perhaps the case historically. Those who served as officers for Nazi Germany were enemies of humanity, and attempts to protect Jewish people under their command do not change this. He and those like him thught to defend evil. 

This may not be a great film, but is an impressive one, and both Kenneth More and Dana Winter deserve a great deal of credit.

Moonraker (1979)

"I think he's attempting re-entry, Sir!"

Meh. This is Bond by numbers. It's just a collection of barely connected set pieces,  some of them admittedly rather good, leading up to a silly and implausible finale. Hugo Drax must have the resources of a G7 nation to build six space shuttles and a space station. The fact that Michael Lonsdale makes a dull and charisma-free Drax doesn't help either.

At least Roger Moore is on good form. He seemed a little old in The Spy Who Loved Me but he seems a little rejuvenated in his sixth decade. It's also good to see a bigger role for M in Bernard Lee's final film, with a suggestion that, deep down, he always had a high regard for Bond. The return of Jaws is a mixed bag; he gets some superb action sequences but the scenes of him falling in love at first sight are just silly. And he finally gets to utter four whole words!!! Still, I love the way hired him after Chang dies, the suggestion being that there's actually an employment market for henchmen!

But this is all very obviously influenced by Star Wars and very silly, at a time when peak human space travel had already given way to the age of the space shuttle and the Moon had given way to the brilliant Voyager spacecraft. And worse: it's very worrying to see a Bond film be quite as formulaic as this.

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

"Just keeping the British end up, Sir..."

Ah, 1977. The year of my birth. No Elvis, Beatles or Rolling Stones. The two sevens clash. And any number of punk allusions you'd care to make. It's also the absolute nadir of men's fashions: every single bloke in this film looks absolutely awful. It's difficult to understand why men bothered to wear suits at all in 1977 because they all, without exception, look shit. You can see how punk was so very necessary, for fashion as much as music.

Still, The Spy Who Loved Me is another triumph. I'm a little puzzled as to why The Man with the Golden Gun was so no pulse with both critics and public- I rather liked it- but I'll not argue with the consensus here. The taut plot, the awesome action sequences, the wittiest script yet, all of this makes for one of the finest Bond films yet, even if Roger Moore is perhaps, in only his third film, beginning to look just a little too old for the part.

Neither Moore nor Barbara Bach )Mrs. Ringi Starr!) will ever win any Oscars, but they somehow work perfectly together. Curd Jurgens, taking a break from playing 75% of all Nazi officers in the history of cinema, is the finest Bond villain yet. He has it all; the underwater lair, the hare-brained scheme to bike the world so humanity can start a new life under the sea(!); and the sharks beneath a trapdoor to eat treacherous underlings. 

Meanwhile Caroline Munro is there to look sexy, and Richard Kiel is a splendid if mute presence as Jaws, suspiciously soon after a film after the same name, also featuring a shark. Hmm. There's also a staggering number of British characters on display- George Baker, Edward de Souza, Vernon Dobtcheff, Nadim Sawalha and Cyril Chaps. The American submarine commander is played, inevitably, by Shane Rimmer. It could never have been otherwise.

The film is full of brilliant, stylish action sequences from the opening ski chase (love the parachute) to Bond's best car yet. By this point we know all the tropes and the film can have real fun with them.

The double entendres ("Well, tell him to pull out immediately") are superb. There's even a moment of wit for the incidental music: the familiar refrain from Lawrence of Arabia is heard as Bond and Anya traverse the desert.

The locations- Cairo, the pyramids and Karnak- are the best possible. Carly Simon's theme tune is the best yet and surely unsurpassable. Can this be the best Bond yet?

You Only Live Twice (1967)

"Well, at least he died on the job..."

Well, it's quite the contrast. Thunderball was a pile of pants, an incoherently directed film with little in the way of charm or entertainment, whereas You Only Live Twice is superb, and easily the best Bond film so far. What went right? Well, the straightforward direction by Lewis Gilbert helps; Thunderball may be much artier (It has wipes, for Christ's sake! In a James Bond film), but it fails to make the narrative clear. Here we have no such problems. What we do have is a well constructed and paced film courtesy of a script by the great Roald Dahl. Yes, that Roald Dahl.

Even the opening sequence is innovative-the image of a NASA space capsule being eaten by another spacecraft is delicious, as is Bond's apparent death before the titles. And the image of a spacewalking astronaut drifting helplessly through space to what he knows will be his death has all the existential horror of the late David Bowie's "Space Oddity" a couple of years later.  All this before we even get to the theme song from Nancy Sinatra, who gives the great Shirley Bassey a run for her money.

We then move straight to the Americans blaming the Soviets for the swallowing of the spacecraft, with both of them portrayed as squabbling juvenile warmongers, leaving the British (naturally) as the voice of reason. This is a little uncomfortable to watch from a distance of fifty years, however. In the wake of Dean Acheson's famous comment Britain is being portrayed here as a "Greece to America's Rome", which smacks very much as a consolation prize for a wannabe superpower. Even this film, which portrays the clever British as in control and saving the world, can't hide the fact that the Americans and Russians of 1967 are sending people into space and we are not.

The fact that M and Moneypenny are in a submarine is brilliant, as is the recognition of Bond's naval rank. The two superpowers are at loggerheads and world war beckons if all this is not sorted out before the next spacecraft is launched. Fortunately, there's a lead pointing to Japan. Also fortunately, Bond took a First in Oriental Languages at Cambridge.

It's interesting that the film's inevitable misogyny (as ever, women are seen through the eyes of a fifteen year old boy) is somewhat obscured by the presentation of all this in the context of what Japanese culture is supposed to be like. There's also the question of ethnic stereotyping, and while this can't be dodged the film gives a broadly positive image of Japan, perhaps remarkably so less than a generation after the War. We get Sumo wrestling, geishas and, of course, ninjas. The tropes are all here to play.

Is impossible at this point not to mention the cute and willing Aki ("I think I will very much enjoy serving under you") who is killed, while Bond's initially more modest "wife" is not. Hmm. Still, this Japan is cool, and I love Tanaka.

The bit with "Little Nellie" looks suspiciously as if it was just crowbarred into the film to give Desmond Llewelyn something to do, but it isn't long before the Russians launch a rocket of their own (Norse pagans will be either pleased or outraged that the Russian for "three" is "Odin"), which is duly swallowed again. Cue more recriminations and a reminder of the stakes, although it certainly makes me wonder how credible it is that a criminal organisation like SMERSH could have the resources to send a rocket into space capable of doing this. Best to banish such thoughts.

This film is possibly the most influential Bond film in popular culture and certainly for Austin Powers: the volcano base is brilliant, and Donald Pleasance's splendidly hammy performance as the now-revealed Ernst Stavro Blofeld is blatantly the inspiration for Dr. Evil. And the piranhas, and the collapsible ramp above them, are perfect.

This is an incredible film and easily the best so far. I'm genuinely unsure if anything will top it.