Shaking the Martini: The James Bond Marathon

In 2019, we lived in a rental house in my hometown for a while during our transition from California to Florida. It was a weird time and—no surprise—I found comfort in parking myself in front of the TV after the move and during school breaks. One of the channels had a marathon of James Bond movies over the course of several days, so I watched a lot of the early Bonds back-to-back. Now, there’s my idea of heaven! That marathon gave me something good to look back on during an otherwise very disorienting period of life.

I’ve always known I wanted to watch/rewatch all the movies someday, but it wasn’t until five months ago that the seeds were really planted. It started with seeing Goldfinger on an airplane in September. Then I saw a post from @historyundressed about The Man With the Golden Gun and decided to watch it (coincidentally, exactly two months after I saw Goldfinger). And from there, it snowballed.

So now here we are, 11 movies later, with no sign of slowing down. I’ve been writing down my thoughts on each one as I go along, and I’m officially joining the ranks of countless other bloggers who have swooned over Connery, booed at Blofeld, and eyed every single car with envy.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to post all 27 in a row. (Can you imagine?) But I’ll be peppering them here and there throughout the year.  I’m not reviewing one this week—this is just an introductory post—but I thought it would still be fun to note a couple “statistics” before we get going.

Here’s where I stood before I began this “marathon” (noting the differentiation between my personal favorites, and whom/what I consider to be the best):

Top 3 Favorite Bonds:

Roger Moore

George Lazenby

Daniel Craig

Best Bonds:

Daniel Craig or Sean Connery

Roger Moore

Favorite Bond Movies:

The Man With the Golden Gun

Casino Royale

Skyfall

Best Bond Movies:

Casino Royale

Goldfinger

On Her Majesty's Secret Service

Controversial opinions, I'm sure! But again, these are my opinions from before I started this rewatch (so, six years in the dark), and many of my thoughts are already changing. More on that to come 👀 Other categories to be discussed include Bond girls, cars, gadgets, locations, villains, and more! (This is serious business—we must be thorough!)

One final note: I’ll be including the two parody/unofficial Bond films as well: The 1967 Casino Royale, and Never Say Never Again (1983). (Like I said—we must be thorough!)

I look forward to sharing these reviews with you, and I hope you enjoy reading them!

’Til next time,

Becca