James Bond: Ultimate Edition, Volume 1

MGM-UA, which owns video rights to the James Bond movies, customarily trots them out whenever a new theatrical Bond film is in the offing, and the recent release of Casino Royale provides the latest excuse to repackage the series. This time around the Bonds are being made available in four boxed sets containing five films each, with the better entries parceled out in such a way that require you to buy every box to get the best of the bunch. Goldfinger (1964), arguably the finest of Sean Connery's 007 adventures and perhaps the high water mark of the entire franchise, is the headliner in Volume 1, as Honor Blackman's Pussy Galore remains the best of the Bond girls and Gert Frobe's Auric Goldfinger (“I don't expect you to talk, Mister Bond; I expect you to die”) still gets our vote as the most interesting of the secret agent's super-foes. Connery's next-to-last vehicle, Diamonds Are Forever (1971), is a tad too campy, but it has nice Las Vegas location shooting, a luscious leading lady in Jill St. John, and another topnotch bad guy in SPECTRE's Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Charles Gray, perhaps better known to younger viewers for his work in The Rocky Horror Picture Show). Also included are The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), Roger Moore's second outing as 007 and a great showcase for one of the screen's most urbane villains, Christopher Lee; The Living Daylights (1987), a somewhat dour installment with Timothy Dalton debuting as a much more serious Bond; and The World Is Not Enough (1999), a fast-paced romp starring Pierce Brosnan and memorably featuring Denise Richards as a rocket scientist (who knew?). Each film is presented in a beautifully remastered double-disc edition, with DVD extras across the set including audio commentaries, “making-of” featurettes, deleted scenes, screen tests, booklets, and more. Highly recommended. (E. Hulse)