Spectre

I liked it a lot!  Great opening sequence, intense WTF musical intro, loads of action, standard drunken Bond womanizing shenanigans--all touched off perfectly by Daniel Craig's reflexive self-loathing.  He always says in interviews how much he despises the James Bond character, which is part at what makes him so excellent at playing the feral maniac.

Regrettably, the villains have no real part to play at all.  They are a little too abstract for their own good.  In Spectre, Bond is confronted with endless troupes of evil thugs rather than a single villain with an immediate, concrete goal.  Even at the end of the movie, it's not clear what the villains were going to do with all the leverage they planned to acquire.  Bond's task is basically to stop a group of crooks for getting the potential to cause 'trouble.'  This makes for a less-than-compelling plot-based menace, but a rather compelling foil for Craig's Bond.

Bond movies are all about the bombs, the cars, and the babes, but Daniel Craig brings the fun of a fly-by-night alcoholic to the mix.  Traditionally, James Bond has moved in a world that caters to his own sexist, hyper-masculine style.  He gets the girl, shoots the guy, and is never short a witty remark or a commanding swagger.

Craig's Bond, on the other hand, is full of ironic reminders that his character is trapped in a hollow unreality.  He drinks carelessly and speaks with a fleck of narcissism that regularly disgusts other characters.  In on-screen dialogue, Bond even suggests that he is hunting baddies more from psychotic compulsion than from duty to queen and country.  Unreliable to his friends and an animal to his enemies, Bond's proficiency at hunting and killing is not always a feather in his cap.  The net effect is a 'sensitive' side to James Bond.  He may wear a tux on the outside, but Craig reminds us that chunks of humanity are missing on the inside.

Although it's easy to argue that irony is best left to Oscar nominees, I like the new Bond.  His character flaws make the movies more immersive than they were under Pierce Brosnan.  The stunts are just as badass, but there is a heightened thrill from knowing a little more of the man behind them.  Brosnan and Connery may have been the manly gentlemen, but Craig's action sequences have an aura of the animal about them, like a shark chasing the smell of blood or a lioness taking down prey.  You get the idea that Bond is doing it from instinct and reflex, which doesn't hurt the sexy factor one bit.

It's because of all this that "Spectre" works so well as a movie.  The villains' main strength lies in numbers, through which they have influence.  Put another way, they are a massive evil social club.  Bond, on the other hand, has no friends and just a few work buddies, who he frequently endangers.  For this reason, it matters less that the villain has a week plot presence because Bond's own self-constructed hell is entrancing enough to make up for it.

Anyway, I recommend it.  The stunts are amazing, Craig is priceless, and for all the post-modern irony, the women are still hot.