I realize that all I really needed to do to prep for Skyfall is rewatch the previous two Daniel Craig James Bond pictures, which came out six and four years ago—just imagine how many Bond movies we'd get if MGM had been financially stable at any point in the last 25 years! But I'd already seen Casino Royale twice, representing a personal record for a James Bond movie (tied with You Only Live Twice; I'm not sure how it happened, but there you have it), and I hadn't, in fact, seen any Bonds not played by Craig, Brosnan, or Connery. Fortunately, New York is more or less the rep-movies capital of these United States, so IFC Center came through with all of the Connery Bonds, followed by MoMA showing every single one through Quantum of Solace to celebrate the 50 years and 22 movies leading up to Sam Mendes Presents: Prestige Bond. I did not have the time, money, or, when it really comes down to it, the inclination to perform a full catch-up; I want to have watched all of the Bond movies more than I want to actually sit down and watch them, mainly because almost every single one of them is 10 to 15 minutes too long. (The Craig installments are the opposite: Casino Royale wears its 140 minutes reasonably well, though it could be trimmer; and Quantum of Solace, at a mere 105 minutes, is the trimmest entry ever.) I did have the inclination to DVR a bunch more Bond movies when I found out they're airing on some channel called Universal HD. By the time the fourth Daniel Craig entry hits, I'll probably be caught up or close to it. For now, here's my incomplete, inexpert Bond guide.

Connery: I caught From Russia with Love and Diamonds Are Forever at IFC, leaving only Dr. No and Thunderball unseen by me. From Russia with Love is so good! That and Goldfinger really hit the sweet spot of cold, hardass spy stories and blockbuster silliness; You Only Live Twice and Diamonds Are Forever have their charms, but even that early in the series, they start to feel kind of self-parodic and erratic (Twice gets points for a plot where Bond fakes his own death because faking your own death is always awesome). Diamonds in particular is a weird, weird movie, the way it answers the sadness of its non-Connery predecessor with ungainly if sometimes droll mayhem.

Lazenby: The franchise's famous one-and-done has become both underrated (for appearing once, flanked by Connery on either side) and overrated (because now everyone talks about how secretly amazing On Her Majesty's Secret Service is). Indeed, Lazenby's rep as the Bond That Got Away got me into MoMA to watch Secret Service on the big screen, and like Diamonds Are Forever after it, it's a bizarre mélange of a movie, perhaps moreso for including actual emotional content that sandwiches a truly tedious section of the movie where Lazenby's posher, more boyish 007 holes up at some kind of experimental spa treatment facility (I've forgotten already), forgets the romantic subplot that begins and ends the movie, beds a bunch of ladies, and generally sneaks around. When SPECTRE brings the thunder down on this snowy mountaintop facility, the movie kicks back into gear in a big way; I see how much of this movie's climax Nolan borrowed for Inception, at least in terms of visual scheme. Also, I always used to make fun of how 70s Bond spends so much damn time skiing, but the ski action in On Her Majesty's Secret Service is top-notch! A dude gets owned by a snowblower! Then the movie goes into this melancholy bordering on devastating finale, and you get one of the most ambitious but also vaguely self-hating James Bond movies in the series. Lazenby gets both a boost from the material and a demerit for playing out that material with less charisma than Connery would have.

Moore: Okay, I admit it: I still haven't seen any Roger Moore Bond movies all the way through. I meant to go to The Spy Who Loved Me, but got sidetracked with a screening. I DVR'd Live and Let Die and watched the beginning of it, but got sidetracked by the last presidential debate. My wife and I watched the beginning of Moonraker when it was on Netflix Instant, but got sidetracked by not watching Moonraker anymore. Roger Moore has starred in more James Bond movies than anyone, which makes it hard to decide which ones to watch. Live and Let Die has a catchy theme song. The Spy Who Loved Me does, too, and it seems to be considered the all-around best. But Moonraker goes to space, and A View to a Kill has Christopher Walken. You can see the bind I'm in. Also, the alleged Roger Moore approach—campy old Uncle Bond—has sort of disseminated itself into my consciousness through dozens of self-consciously silly would-be blockbusters over the years, even those not directly intending to spoof this series.

Dalton: Like Lazenby, Dalton has a kind of Bond-revisionist mystique about him, as someone whose installment not that many people liked at the time, liked even less when a permanent replacement was found, and then seems to get props in retrospect. Indeed, The Living Daylights, which I saw at MoMA, does some pretty admirable stuff that Brosnan supposedly wanted to do and Craig actually did get to do: it gives us a grimmer, less quippy 007, and moves back in the direction of international espionage rather than full-on world-saving. But like On Her Majesty's Secret Service, it gets itself a little hamstrung by adhering to the formula: women, gadgets, quips, running long. But Dalton makes a pretty cool semi-serious Bond, even if he does have to wear pleated pants at one point. I'm totally DVRing License to Kill and may watch it before I get to one of those Moore installments.

Brosnan: I know Moore's Bond is supposed to be an old smoothie, but for me, Brosnan is the post-Connery guy who actually has some smoothness to make up for his lack of real menace. Brosnan had a fruitful second career sending up his Bond image in movies like The Tailor of Panama and The Matador, playing louche and sometimes crude, and maybe a touch of those characters would've given his run more distinction, but even so, I think he gets a bad rap (possibly because this is the Bond I grew up with, for better or worse). I haven't seen any of the movies in years, but Tomorrow Never Dies is a totally solid James Bond movie, Die Another Day goes a little far into silliness but has plenty of good stuff, and the rest are both acceptable enough. I do remember feeling some disappointment in The World Is Not Enough when it came out, because I assumed that, with Begbie from Trainspotting as the villain, Denise Richards from Starship Troopers as one of the babes, and John Cleese on deck to replace Q, this would easily be the best James Bond movie ever made. How very late-90s of me! And how very forward-thinking of the movie to be just pretty good. But both World and Die Another Day attempt to inject some real-world consequences into Bond's actions; he gets seriously injured during the extended opening of the former, and left for dead at the beginning of the latter. In fact, when watching the trailer for Skyfall and seeing how it hinges on Bond getting fake-killed and/or left for dead, I felt like a real expert thinking: Hey! Wait! All of that stuff has basically already happened in Die Another Day, You Only Live Twice, and the last half an hour of Casino Royale!


Craig: Seriously, though, Casino Royale is really good, and Quantum of Solace is an underrated sequel. (I never actually reviewed it but I did defend it at length back in 2008. Check that comments section for jokes about a then-brand-new Obama administration!) I'm just relieved that Craig signed on for two more movies after Skyfall, so this movie won't have to burden itself with premature trilogizing. And, you know, so I have more time to watch more overlong, formulaic James Bond movies!