#13 Never Say Never Again starring Sean Connery (1983); Rating 005

Twenty years after he started, Connery ends his Bond career outside the EON family, in an unofficial Bond movie that mimics the plot of Thunderball. Bond has been forcibly retired after his skills begin to slow. When two U.S. Cruise missiles fall into the hands of Maximillian Largo (Klaus Maria Brandauer), Bond returns to woo Largo's lover, Domino (Kim Basinger) and breaks into his circle. Mr. Bean takes a turn as an English agent in the Bahamas, while Bond and Largo battle real pain in the Domination videogame. One of my favorite, yet cheesy, Bond moments of all time ends with a pen and two black shoes. Later, Bond escapes a castle and an extended, underwater treasure-trove shootout.

#14 Octopussy starring Roger Moore (1983), Rating 004

This one used to be one of my favorites as a teenager, but like some of the initial Star Wars installment, my memories of the scene are better than the film itself! Bond investigates the death of a fellow agent, tracking counterfeit Faberge eggs, circus performers, and two comrades in crime, German General Ortov (Steve Berkoff) and businessman Kamal Khan (Louis Jordan). Unfortunately, rather than stick with originality, the movie steals from Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Temple of Doom, before a Count of Monte Cristo-like escape. Octopussy (Maud Adams) and her Wonder Woman-like island of Amazons round out the scene-stealing that the movie filches from other flicks. Octopussy's back story gives this one a strange personal twist, but it should have ended with the battle against the circus, rather than the hot air balloon.

#15 A View To A Kill starring Roger Moore (1985), rating 002

Multimillionaire Max Zorin (Christopher Walken) works with the KGB to control computer circuitry and various weapons of mass destruction. It's a surreal movie, from the opening battles Russians in Siberia as "California Girls" plays in background, to the duels on the Eiffel Tower and the Golden Gate Bridge. Mayday (Iman) stars as Zorin's bodyguard and lover, who Bond later chases ridiculously in half a car through one painful scene, that like the rest of the movie is painfully long.

#16 The Living Daylights starring Timothy Dalton (1987), rating 004

Using Fleming's short story premise, Bond sets up what turns out to be the fake defection of a Russian spy, by shooting the defector's intended assassin. Bond meets a beautiful chello player, realizes that the bad guys have set him up for disgrace and potentially death, escapes on the chello player's said chello case, and defeats the forces of evil with the help of Q's gadgets. A less-than-auspicious start to what would be a brief Dalton career as James Bond.

#17 License To Kill starring Timothy Dalton (1989), rating 003

Bond goes on a rampage when the drug runner Sanchez (Robert Davi) murders Felix Leiter's new wife, Della, and feeds Leiter to a shark (a scene from the novel, Live and Let Die). Bond loses his license to kill, jams up the efforts of the CIA and Hong Kong secret service in his attempts to take out Sanchez's remaining men, and gets some help from pilot Pam Bouvier (Carey Lowell). The movie's closing scenes include an exciting semi-truck chase that looks a lot like a scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark&ellips; and hopping a plane in a truck.

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