Here we are again, watching and reviewing yet another James Bond movie, this time in the form of “Spectre,” the follow up to the hugely successful and well liked 2012 movie “Skyfall,” and not only did we get a returning Daniel Craig as Agent 007, but director Sam Mendes came back as well, bringing with him his sense of craftsmanship and detail which has made the last two Bond movies the best looking and most technically accomplished of them all. Lush, gorgeous and epic, “Spectre” arrives as the biggest and most expensive Bond movie ever, but did that necessarily translate into a “good” Bond movie?

For some reason, there are many out there who are really down on this movie and kind of hate it. A glimpse at Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic shows a very divided response, with people who didn’t like “Spectre” expressing that they really didn’t like it. Do these people not remember “Die Another Day” or “Quantum of Solace” or the entirety of the Roger Moore era, which culminated with one of the worst big budget movies of the 1980s, “A View to a Kill?” I’m not going to say that “Spectre” is the best of the entire series, and I wouldn’t even say it’s the best of the Daniel Craig Bond movies (cause it ain’t) but this movie is hardly worthy of derision. If anything, it delivers a lot of the classic Bond tropes that have been largely missing for the last few films, while maintaining the more serious edge of these post-Brosnan movies, so while the movie does indeed have a stumble or three here and there, it is mostly quite good and still nails what makes Bond movies fun as well as what makes these Craig-led movies different from the rest.Continue Reading …