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6. The Spy Who Loved Me (81%)

There's a reason The Spy Who Loved Me is the best-reviewed of the Roger Moore-era Bond flicks: it's sleek and stylish, it's got menacing villains, and it's played relatively straighter than other installments. Spy finds 007 in a love/hate relationship with beautiful Russian agent Triple X (Barbara Bach); they're both on the trail of the evil Stromberg (Curt Jurgens), who has commandeered British and Russian nuclear subs as part of a plot to rule the oceans. Stromberg has some of the most memorable henchmen of any Bond antagonist, including Jaws (Richard Kiel), an imposing figure with a grill full of metal, and Naomi, whose attraction to 007 doesn't prevent her from trying to kill him. Of course it's absurd (the opening ski chase, while exciting, is particularly implausible, as is Stromberg's retractable ocean lair), but it's played with great, glossy style, and Moore is at his suave, witty best. The Spy Who Loved Me "pulled Roger Moore from the shadow of his predecessor and established him as a bone fide Bond," wrote John J. Puccio of DVDTown.com.

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5. Thunderball (90%)

After the zeitgeist-shifting power of the first three Bond movies, Thunderball found the series resting a bit on formula, beefing up the gadgets and stunts with less concern for the characters. Still, with Sean Connery fully inhabiting the role of 007, these turn out to be minor slights indeed. The irrepressible SPECTRE wants to destroy Miami with an atomic weapon unless its demands are met, so Bond heads to the Bahamas, where he memorably dukes it out underwater with some SPECTRE frogmen. Thunderball may not have broken much new ground, but it ably got the job done; "It's remarkably good fun," wrote James Rocchi of Netflix. "It's retro enough to be amusing in the dull bits and timeless enough to be fresh and vital today."

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4. Casino Royale (2006, 94%)

There's a moment early in Casino Royale that signals this won't be just another Bond adventure. The look on Daniel Craig's face as he drowns his antagonist in a washroom sink is cruel and ice cold, emphasizing one of the unspoken aspects of the series: James Bond is not a nice guy. He's a womanizer and a cold-blooded killer. But as a series reboot, Casino Royale is hardly a therapy session; it includes some of the most mind-blowing set-pieces in all of the Bond films, including a parkour chase on a crane in Mozambique and a thrilling escape from a rotting building in Venice rigged with explosives. Casino Royale ditched the campy elements of previous installments, and the result was a gritty, thrilling action picture of rare emotional heft. "Let the purists squawk: In Daniel Craig, the Bond franchise has finally found a 007 whose cruel charisma rivals that of Sean Connery," wrote Ty Burr of the Boston Globe.