Spectre - 2015 - 3 Stars

Actors: Daniel Craig, Christoph Waltz
Director:  Sam Mendes

Surveillance culture has a huge problem with the spy film.  When your location is known at all times by various shadowy organizations, the notion of sneaking around is gone.  A spy such as James Bond is only allowed to pry inasmuch as those seeking him allow.  Rather than try to evade this 21st century reality, the film steers into this particular skid.  I'm not sure I like the results.

There's some excellent action setpieces in this film - a great opener, as all Bond films should have, a car chase, some fun bits with a helicopter.  There's also a disquieting amount of backstory - Bond's past, always something best left to the viewer's imagination, is used once again to support the film's present.  There's some very hoaky plot jiggering going on in this movie beyond that as well.  The James Bond film franchise is a franchise for a reason - people like seeing a spy do cool spy stuff, have sex with a woman he barely knows, and beat up who needs beating up.  They don't want to know who James Bond was as a child.

This is the last film with Daniel Craig, and I'm hoping very much that they abandon this form of light serialization and go back to the old formula - sure, Bond plots are both dumb and forgettable, but that's the point.  You remember a villain, maybe a setpiece, the girl, and a joke.  All these plot details I'm remembering now did not make my theatergoing experience a better one.