Binge-watching Bond part 2: 'From Russia With Love'

Bianchi and Connery

My girlfriend Liz and I are binge-watching all the Bond films in anticipation of the new one, Spectre, which hits theaters this November.

Clearly, this is a tribute to both how much she loves me and how cool she is. She has seen some of the old ones, but very few, and like me, she is a fan of the Daniel Craig editions.

We've done Dr. No, which she seemed to enjoy a lot, and here we are at the second film of the series.

Although Goldfinger is easily Connery's most iconic performance as James Bond, his second outing in From Russia With Love may be my favorite.

This is certainly one of my favorite Bond films, it feels like a straight espionage thriller, the jokes are subtle and the story is deadly serious. You get the first glimpses of Blofeld and his evil Spectre cadre of villains and also more insight into the characters of M, Q and Moneypenny.

There's a great villain in Robert Shaw, who comes across like an Aryan, steroid-infused version of Bond, who has been trained expressly for the purpose of killing 007.

There's also the creepy Rosa Klebb, a twisted, rare female Bond villain who even shows some lesbian undertones in a scene with the heroine, the simply ravishing Daniela Bianchi.

But this is Connery's movie through-and-through. I've never loved how, for a certain generation of filmgoers, he is the one and only Bond. I would argue that all of them have their virtues. But this outing sure goes a long way to cementing his status as an iconic hero and sex symbol.

Robert Shaw in From Russia With Love

He oozes cool and confidence in every frame -- and he is so graceful and formidable in the action scenes that he is truly believable despite playing such a larger than life character.

In some ways this film marks the beginning of the end of smaller scale Bond films for quite a while.

There's only one gadget and it's a very practical one and the stakes are relatively modest. No one is trying to dominate the world here.

The success of this film, depending on your point of view, was either a blessing or a curse for the series which went bigger and bolder with each subsequent film before coming down to earth a little bit with one of my all time favorites, For Your Eyes Only.

I would probably put this in my top five, so I have my fingers crossed that Liz likes it as much as I do.

Liz's take: I think in the first half of the movie I was a little turned off because it was a little too male-gazey. I didn't like the over-the-top catfight, which I thought was preposterous, and obviously not necessary. But I thought Daniela Bianchi was great, she's being duped but she also has a lot of agency and is a female spy going up against Bond on her own which is cool. I liked how the bad guy was kind of bizarro Bond, but I still think I like Dr. No better. That said, I do like that the film gave the ladies a taste of Bond as a sex symbol, an ever-so-slight nod to its female audience. The action in it also holds up well as realistic.