A Spectre of My Former Self (James Bond 24)

Daniel Craig returns as Ian Fleming’s James Bond in Spectre, the latest in the long-running film series. After the incredible highs of the previous film, Skyfall, people were eager for the follow-up. And since the same writers, director, producers, and star were returning, it had to be great, right? Right?

Unfortunately, Spectre rehashes the same ground that was tread in the previous film, and does so with less finesse. While it certainly has fantastic action, the rest of the film comes away as forced, leaving us with a middling Bond film.

I’m going to make a lot of references to Skyfall in this review of Spectre. Since pretty much the entire crew came back for the sequel, I think it’s fair to do so. There was a lot to dissect in the latest Bond outing, so I’m going to break down my thoughts into three categories.

The Good

I was immediately pleased to see the opening gun barrel scene at, you know, the opening, after two films shunted it to the end.

As has been the case for all of Craig’s Bond films, the action scenes in Spectre are top-notch. The most incredible takes place during the pre-title sequence. Bond is thrust into the crush of people in Mexico City’s wild Day of the Dead parade. He takes out some bad guys, and gets caught on a helicopter which is careening out of control. The loop-de-loops were thrilling, and the visuals of the holiday festivities alone were worth the price of admission. Bond looked cool as hell in the skeleton outfit he dons in the opening minutes.

James Bond Pre-Title Sequences, Ranked

As a long-time James Bond fan, I’ve seen all the movies over and over again. The series is famed for it’s thrilling pre-title sequences which precede the story. I’ve listed all the sequences in order from worst to best. Check it out and let me know what you think!

22) The World is Not Enough – It isn’t a surprise that the worst Bond movie also has the worst pre-title sequence. It’s absolutely bloated with excess. It starts off promising, with him fighting some people at a bank in Spain, but quickly spirals out of control as he goes on an overly long speedboat chase on the Thames River, and ends hanging off a hot-air balloon. It’s like a parody of a James Bond intro. It personifies the over-indulgence of the Pierce Brosnan era.

21) Die Another Day – This intro is also pretty bad, but fares slightly better than the previous entry. It starts out completely cringe-worthy as Bond surfs into North Korea, moves along to a ridiculous hovercraft chase scene, and ends with Bond getting captured. The only reason I ranked it higher than The World is Not Enough is because they blended the opening song with the pre-title sequence. They had never done that before, and it kind of worked.

20) Quantum of Solace – The crappy Bond movies keep on coming. I almost ranked this one at number 22, but I decided it wasn’t that horrible. It’s a car chase, which is cool in theory. Unfortunately, it’s schizophrenically edited. No shot lasts longer than two seconds. The camera is constantly switching from Bond’s face to the car to the tires to the road and back again. Making matters worse is the shakey-cam in which it was filmed. So, you have shakey-cam with jarring editing. If that doesn’t make you puke, I don’t know what will.

The Muppets, Alias Season 2, Casshern Sins

The Muppets

Muppet mania

If I was a muppet, I would be Statler and Waldorf, combined.

I am probably going to lose a lot of street cred by writing this, but I enjoyed The Muppets. It works hard to get your nostalgia going, and it largely succeeds. While I didn’t exactly grow up watching the Muppets, I am old enough to remember them, and even I felt nostalgia watching this. It is comical, endearing, and whimsical, all at the same time. It contains all the things Hollywood normally does badly, except in The Muppets they are done right. In fact, they managed to expertly pull off so many of these things, it culminated in a very fun movie, and simultaneously reminded me of how I have no soul. It even gets meta on the audience as the in-movie Muppets try to get their show back together only to face the possibility (and fear) that they aren’t relevant anymore. Of course this holds true for The Muppets as the movie we are watching. The movie’s successes tell me that they are still relevant.

This isn’t a perfect movie, not by a long shot. They adhere to the old tried-and-true formula of telling as many jokes as possible and hoping that some of them stick. Fortunately, most of them do and the movie benefits from it. However, joke after joke after joke makes it apparent that they were trying a little too hard. The plot is somewhat mind-boggling as it doesn’t make sense that Kermit would sell out all of his supposed best friends in order to become “Rich and Famous.” But I suppose I’m thinking about this way too hard. The Muppets is simply meant to be enjoyed, not analyzed.

Verdict: Mahna Mahna (good)

Alias Season 2

Alias season 2 cast

If there’s one thing Alias has going for it, that would be recruiting interesting guest stars. Notice I wrote “interesting” and not “good.” Some of the guests are cool, others are oddities. Nevertheless, they managed to get an eclectic mix of guests to liven up the show. Some of them include Roger Moore, Quentin Tarantino, Vivica Fox, Ethan Hawke, Faye Dunaway, Djimon Honsou, and Ricky Gervais. Season 2 still manages to entertain us in very cool ways. While it isn’t quite as good as the first season, the second season still has strong writing. There are a number of shocking plot twists, and it is easy to stay engaged. Just past the halfway point the SD-6 storyline is wrapped up, and the overarching plot afterwards becomes chaotic, as the writers clearly had no idea where to go next. That problem continues on through the disastrous third season, but fortunately, improves afterwards.

Verdict: Good

Casshern Sins

Casshern moping around as usual.

They should have titled this series Emo Sins instead. Casshern has to be one of the mopiest, blandest, depressing central characters of all time. He walks around feeling sorry for himself throughout the entire series. He can’t even get pumped about the fact that he is an immortal ladies magnet and an unstoppable killing machine (sort of like me). Here’s a breakdown of every single episode

1. Episode begins with a brief flashback of Casshern killing Luna.
2. Opening credits.
3. Casshern wanders around a desolate wasteland and acts emo.
4. Casshern encounters a small enclave of human-looking robots.
5. Word gets passed around that if someone kills Casshern they will become immortal.
6. A group of generic-looking robots attack Casshern/enclave of human-looking robots.
7. Casshern goes berserk and kills everyone.
8. Ending credits.

That sums up just about every single episode of this series. So now you have no need to watch it. You can thank me later. On the positive side, the show does boast fantastic animation, and some great fight scenes. Little else is tolerable, however.

Verdict: Average

Bond…James Bond 8-14

Continuing from where I left off last time, I have since watched all of the Roger Moore films in the James Bond series. Some people don’t like Moore because he infused a bit too much tongue in cheek humor, but I think it suited him well. Every actor gave Bond a unique personality. This is probably the reason why the series has been able to continue for so long. Each time we get a new Bond, we get a new personality, and not a bunch of different people trying to play the role exactly the same way.

Ranking the Roger Moore films in order from best to last would go something like this:

1. The Spy Who Loved Me
2. Live and Let Die
3. Moonraker
4. The Man with the Golden Gun
   
5. Octopussy
6. For Your Eyes Only
7. A View to a Kill

If you’re interested in why I ordered them the way I did (and how could you not be?), read on.