The french have a saying: It's the fate of glass to break.

Spectre (2015)

Chosen by me as I hadn't watched it since it was on at the flicks and I never finished the blogalongabond project from years ago, so I might fill in the gaps.

Bond's Intro: Pretty cool. He's done up in a skeleton costume and followed along by a sort of pointless one shot through a parade, into a hotel and over some rooftops. Why is a one shot look take? Who knows? Presumably Sam Mendes is a fan of Touch of Evil.

Theme Song and Credits: The song is a pretty lacklustre affair (mirroring much of the movie perhaps?), a lethargic swan song. The credits feature the usual silhouetted tits and guns but also feature a lot more naked Bond than most and have a weird octopus motif that skews uncomfortably close to tentacle porn.

  
The Ladies: Monica Bellucci and Lea Seydoux. And here is one of the films biggest problems (and it has a few). Bellucci in her five minutes of screen time is so much more interesting and has so much more chemistry with Craig than Seydoux (who was excellent in The Lobster, reviewed recently) who is a slight nothing of a character. At one point we are told by somebody that the daughter of an asssassin is the perfect partner for Bond but we never really get the sense of that connection which means the ending doesn't work at all.

The Baddies: This does what Star Trek Into Darkness did and hides a well known to the audience baddie under a different name for most of it's running time. The only purpose of which is too fool people before the film comes out who look at imdb listings. And it never works. Everybody knew he was Khan. Everybody knew he was Blofeld. So it just seems a waste of everybody's time. 

This also does one of those annoying things where it crafts a personal connection between hero and foe to no appreciable gain what-so-ever. God forbid we just want to watch Bond do his job saving the world and watch Blofeld do his job fucking the world up without some lousy daddy issue stuff.

Andrew Scott is mostly garbage, an oily haired scuzzball whose reveal as a baddie is tossed off casually because who the hell didnt know that from 2 seconds of looking at him.

Dave Bautista looks cool but doesn't really leave a lasting impression.

License to Kill: God knows how many innocent people are killed as Bond brings down a block and a half of mexican real estate.

Bond hates foreigners: See above. Also the films casual confusing of mexican day of the dead and rio style parades. 

He's pretty reckless in all these foreign countries but then again he brings a helicopter crashing down on London streets, so that's just his way I guess.

Bond hates women: All the women are just used to further his needs. Even the sex seems an afterthought. He does leave Bellucci a way out of her predicament (make her main character in the next one. make her main character in the next one. make her main character in the next one)

Bond's crazy knowledge: That is a 1948 Rolls Royce Silver Wraith

Bond's a big fat snob: They position him (and more directly M) as hard working men who get their hands dirty as opposed to Andrew Scott's went to school with the home secretary knobend.

00's killed: None but 009 does have his car stolen by Bond.

Mini overview: A rather damp affair. Craig is great as usual but the whole thing just isn't interesting enough to last it's exceptionally long running time. The action sequences are ok but curiously uninvolving lacking any real pulse pounding moments, though the helicopter stunt at the start is cool. None of the personal stuff works so great chunks of drama are inert (does anybody care that Blofeld is a sort of brother to James Bond?). The first half is stronger which leads to a deflated feeling when Bond quits to be with Seydoux.