Spectre (2015)

James Bond returns and so does another “B” name guy in “Spectre,” Daniel Craig’s fourth 007, starting were 2012’s bloody “Skyfall” ended, with Sam Medes again as director. We open on Mexico City on Dia de Muertos with Bond, silent, glaring, and donning a skull mask as he stalks a man in a white suit. A religious parade blares on the street as Bond creeps on rooftops. “Godfather, Part II” vibes bounce hard. Bond takes his shot. Boom. Shit hits. Roll song. It’s down hill after. The song’s a shrieky-dude bust, and the movie that follows has great moments –- Craig fights a silent, giant killer (Dave Bautista) aboard a train as in “Russia With Love,” but when we get to the big bad in this big data flick, “Spectre” turns into a goddamn joke. And Christoph Waltz -– he of “Inglorious Basterds” fame –- is the punchline. He plays He Who Should Have Remained Unnamed with the lamest motive I’ve seen in years. It’s not “Quantum of Solace” or some other series duds –- what’s the one with Halle Berry? -– but this one flick trashes four. Even new-era champ “Casino Royale.” B-

True Lies (1994)

I loved James Cameron’s “True Lies” when I saw it in a Philadelphia cinema 21 years ago with a friend. I cheered the openly tongue-in-cheek story and action as Arnold Schwarzenegger as a secret U.S. spy demolishes Middle Eastern terrorists in downtown Miami, the fanatics threatening to destroy the city with a stolen nuclear warhead. In a scene still spectacular Ahnuld flies a Harrier jet up against a skyscraper and kills a villain with a ride on a missile. But, damn, this is an ugly sexist film. See, I was a very naïve 20 year old in 1994. Now I cringe at the entire midsection which has Schwarzenegger’s Harry Tasker going rage as he suspects his dumb, hapless wife (Jamie Lee Curtis) of cheating on him; him, a guy who’s done nothing but lie to her for two decades. See, Cameron has our hero kidnap and then psychologically torture the woman until she admits in fact she has committed no sin against her husband. (If she had!?!) Cameron seems to know his writing is vile. Side characters offer admonishments, almost as sideline commentary. But it still smacks of, “Keep watching. Keep laughing!” Cameron’s worst film. _­C+

Spy and Pitch Perfect 2 (both 2015)

Next time a guy says women aren’t funny, punch the motherless bastard in the face. 

In “Spy,” Melissa McCarthy re-teams with her “Bridesmaids” and “The Heat” director/writer Paul Fieg for a spoof/nod to 007 antics as McCarthy plays a CIA desk jockey who takes the field – and a few lives – tracking down a stolen nuke. The plot here, as in “Heat,” is distractingly laid back. That’s OK. I came to see McCarthy. Here’s the joke: She starts off her mission puking on the bad guy she just killed, but before long she’s dropping the “F” bomb and cracking skulls open. Fat loner cat jokes? She throws then back with fire as fellow spy Jason Statham torches his tough guy persona as a jackass who fumbles every single move he makes. She needs no man to save her. 

In “Pitch Perfect 2,” Anna Kendrick and Rebel Wilson return as college a cappella singers who have to fight their way back to the spotlight after a disastrously hairy performance. Co-star Elizabeth Banks takes on director duties, and her comedy might suffer from too many side plots, but it’s knowing and funny as it openly mocks sequel “come backs” and career students.

Spy: A- Pitch: B

From Russia with Love (1963) and The November Man (2014)

Sean Connery-era classic Bond “From Russia With Love” (1963) is unapologetically mean, early 1960s fun and danger, crude indeed, the absolute best of the 007 series as our hero knowingly enters a trap to snatch a top secret Enigma-code like device from the Russians. 

Except it’s not the Russians setting the trap, its SPECTRE, the terrorist group led by an unseen Blofed and fronted by a blonde thug (Robert Shaw) who seems to embody a Hitler Youth fantasy and a madwoman fascist (Lotte Lenya) with a steel-toe kick. Connery nails the film without lifting an eyebrow or breaking a sweat. His train car tussle with Shaw is one of the best fight scenes ever, and “Russia” only gets better with a boat chase, a helicopter terror hunt, and a finale inside a hotel room. It’s perfect cool. 

Now, later Bond man Pierce Brosnan goes all wrong in the forgettable, drab “The November Man” (2014) as a professional assassin who trains his protégé to never fall in love and birth children, and then secretly… well, you know. Right? I mean, here’s a spy film where you can guess every next spy-plot twist and sit back and watch it. Yawning. Brosnan is too good for this.

Russia: A November: C-

Enemy of the State (1998)

When I saw “Enemy of the State” in 1998 I loved it as a shockingly smart, electric child to the 1974 classic thriller “The Conversation.” Will Smith here plays a D.C. lawyer trapped in an impossible conspiracy involving the National Security Agency, portrayed as a power-mad and secret-crazed demon of data collection, snooping, and illegal spying, with anyone in its way, hunted for  life or left for dead. “There’s no such thing as privacy,” one character says. Director Tony Scott (RIP) and his writers must have seen the future. This is our reality. Our now. The NSA owns us. We willingly gave ourselves over. Now, the great cinematic trick: When Smith’s lawyer – arrogant, a cheater, way too assured of himself – falls hard, his only savior is an ex-snoop played by Gene Hackman, who played an expert snooper in “Conversation.” The casting is genius. Smart. Instant built-in background. The character names may be different, but the faces match. Fast paced with crackling dialogue and action, I once got a giddy charge out of nerds at computers handed the power of America. Now I see it as evil truth. Name one other film more precognisant. A

A Most Wanted Man (2014)

One cannot watch Anton Corbijn’s ultra-tense “A Most Wanted Man” without mourning Philip Seymour Hoffman’s shocking death. “Most” is Hoffman’s final lead role, a notion that undeniably hovers over every dark frame. This story is rooted in futility and a man facing certain doom, likely eternal loneliness. Hoffman is chain-smoker German spy chief Gunther Bachmann, suffocating under the pressure of his job: Tracking suspected Middle Eastern terrorists in Germany post-9/11. The trick: Bachmann wants his suspects walking free to lead him to larger, more dangerous targets. His latest mark is a maybe innocent son (Grigoriy Dobrygin) of a war criminal who may want to truly dissolve his father’s ill-gotten future. The man brings into his circle a banker (Willem Dafoe) and a lawyer (Rachel McAdams) who quickly realize there are no bystanders in terrorism. More so, Bachmann is being hounded by bureaucrats to make arrests now, forget logistics. Who’s right? Who’s innocent? Nothing matters, and from the John Le Carre book from which this comes, that mindset can only lead to another dark day. The finale is a pulverizing gut punch. Hoffman truly marvels as a tired man crumbling before us. See it nonetheless. A

Three Days to Kill (2014)

Kevin Costner goes a long way in selling “Three Days to Kill,” a Luc Besson-produced action/“comedy” about a dying CIA assassin named Ethan who goes home to Paris to see his estranged family – Connie Nielsen as wife, and Hailee Steinfeld as teen daughter – before he kicks. As it happens, the CIA has one last job for Ethan: Kill two bad guys known as The Albino and The Wolf, who are neither an albino nor a wolf. Golden carrot: Way-too young CIA handler Vivi (Amber Heard) has a magic cure that can keep our man alive. Costner acts aces, truly. But “Kill” made my skin crawl. I’ll say it: Besson shines a creep perv voyeur for teen girls here and with “Taken” and his so-long-ago “Leon.” He fixates on girls who cannot walk outside without falling victim to rape, not without “daddy” to save them. Steinfeld’s teen gets the treatment here. Besson’s fantasy? The take on grad-school-age Vivi as some 1980s Euro-fantasy dominatrix smells of a gross dream of middle-aged men with script approval. Nielsen’s wife has nothing to do but forgive her man, repeatedly. Blame director McG? No. This hangs on Besson. Dickless. D+

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014)

I loved Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan book series before I drifted left and he disappeared into techno-war-porn liberal hate. Ryan was a great read: Injured marine turned CIA desk geek with deadly smarts. Blow shit up? Tougher guys did that. Clancy’s writing electrified: He foresaw 9/11 in 1994. Now comes “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit,” a reboot with Chris Pine as Ryan. It fizzles. It chases 9/11. It casts Russians as villains in a move politely called nostalgic. It starts strong: Young Ryan is wounded in Afghanistan, but his rehab spirit captures him a gal (Keira Knightly) and a secret boss (Kevin Costner) who hires Ryan for his vibe on tracking bad money. But fizzles. I’ll skip plot, because when the climax hits, Ryan –- injured 10 years on  -– is popping motorcycles like Knievel and punches like Bourne. Baffling. Did a reel get lost? Kenneth Branagh is director and bad guy, going full Hollywood. A missed idea screams loud: Why not recast Ryan with Knightly -- oddly cast as distressed damsel -- as female Ryan? Clancy might have been a right-wing blowhard, but he knew cool women. Disappointing. (But better than that Affleck crap.) C+

Paranoia (2013)

By the time most tech jumps from lab to retail, it’s old. All eyes are on the new shiny toy we don’t know we need. Woe the Hollywood thriller that wants to be techno hip, and takes a year to gestate before jumping into a theatrical pool already looking at NetFlix. “Paranoia” never stood a chance. We are tasked to root for a Brooklyn hotshot engineer (Liam Hemsworth, vibing like he’s never seen New York) who crosses the bridge to work for one CEO shark (Gary Oldman) and after a grievous faux pas is strong-armed into working for another Fortune 500 dick (Harrison Ford), with orders to steal wares both soft and hard. The drama tries to spook us with the notion that Big Business will always lurk … in a reality where we now the NSA is monitoring this review as it’s posted. Oldman and Ford square off grand, though no one is thrown off a plane. Damn it. Not even those guys can get past creaky dialogue and scenes where the duped-but-loyal girlfriend (Amber Heard) realizes her iPhone is missing and runs to dial her landline. Expiration date: Ancient. C-

Goldfinger (1964)

“Goldfinger” is arguably the high-point of Sean Connery’s run as James Bond, when the series stormed pop culture and the world. It’s also damn awkwardly dated as far as the women go as it plays with forced entanglement as foreplay. Take a breath, it is of its time period. The plot –- unlike later, unnecessarily busy Bond films -– is simple: Bond must track down gold smuggler Auric Goldfinger (Gert Frobe) who has a perverse idea about knocking out Fort Knox so that he can take control of the world’s gold market. Or some such. Who cares? The bad guy’s pilot/dame is named Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman). And Bond’s first bed quest ends up smothered in gold paint. There’s also a mad granny with a machine gun, and that Aston Martin, plus Oddjob and the killer bowler hat. It’s camp entertainment delivered dead pan, and that’s missing in the newer run, for better and worse. Connery is effortless. Bond is Connery, and Connery is Bond, is there any argument? And as Goldfinger, Frobe is a plain-spoken man of evil, but a man. No disfigurement. No foamy outbursts. Just a snake. The crazy good music? That’s never been better. A-

The Recruit (2003)

When a brilliant hotshot (Colin Farrell) is recruited to join the CIA and his trainer/boss/mentor looks and sounds and does that whole wiggy Al Pacino thing, and is, in fact, Al Pacino, something must be wrong. “I got a bad feeling about this” wrong. And, that’s “The Recruit,” a spy thriller from Roger Donaldson, who made the terrific 1980s mind-screw “No Way Out.” You know the way out here, though, because … did I mention Al Pacino? In a literal spotlight at one point? Sporting a goatee? This is by-the-numbers with every twist underlined by a loud music cue, but it’s not a terrible affair. Pacino overacts with zeal, having fun showing the whipper snappers on set (Farrell, Bridget Moynahan) how you spook the guys behind the cameras and holding the boom mikes. Drinking while watching? Take a shot every time Farrell loses the American accent. And, yes, I skipped a plot summary. (Al Pacino.) C+

The Double (2011)

Richard Gere is the sole reason to watch “The Double,” a spy thriller that moves the Cold War to modern day, and slings out plot twists with the excitement of mail delivery. Gere plays Paul Shepherdson, a retired CIA agent (drum roll) called back into action after a senator is slain with the exact M.O. of a Soviet assassin that Shepherdson swears he killed. So the hunt is on, with Shepherdson in the lead, and a rookie desk-jockey FBI agent (Topher Grace) in tow. Director/writer Michael Brendt and co-writer Derek Haas (they wrote the recent “3:10 to Yuma”) seem to think they are making a conspiracy film akin to “Parallax View.” They are mistaken. That film vibrated with mind-screwing paranoia. From silly character reveals to foot chases through empty rail yards, and car chases at empty ports, “Double” cannot even compete with a slow episode of “24.” Gere half asleep, is far too good for this. Grace is laughable. The ending too ludicrous for words. C-

Knight and Day (2010)

Tom Cruise plays a cartoon version of his “Mission: Impossible” superspy in “Knight & Day,” a comedy-action-thriller that smells of 200 rewrites and old cliches in cheap paint. But – shocking to my snob tastes – it works. Mostly. As Cruise hilariously mocks his own onscreen heroics, Cameron Diaz -- she of the trillion watt smile and ditzy double-take – adds more wink-wink charm as the helpless/ hapless woman. Cruise is Roy Miller, a spy on the run who spots Diaz’s car restorer at an airport and sees the perfect unwitting partner who can help get him through his life’s woes before the end credits roll. See, Cruise as Miller knows he’s in a movie. Every shot in the film is too … perfect. This is all satire. (It better be.) Director James Mangold skips over gaping story holes by having his leads get knocked out and then woken up in new time zones and all-new clothes. “Knight” dissipates from the mind like rubbing alcohol on skin, but Cruise and Diaz are all sugar-high smiles on this candy corn flick. It all glides by. B-

Salt (2010)

“Salt” is a 5-Hour Energy Drink revamp of Cold War super-spy thrillers with Angelina Jolie as Evelyn Salt, a CIA agent who’s actually a Russian assassin tasked with doing in the U.S. of A. But, and this is no spoiler: She’s the hero. This is Jolie, after all, superstar and mother of no less than 14 children. Also, even with dozens of feds on her shoeless Soviet heels, Salt goes out of her way to leave her puppy with an African-America girl who lives nearby. Lee Harvey Oswald never did that. Oswald, by the way, figures into the film’s myriad plot twists and shockers, orchestrated by Phillip Noyce (“Patriot Games”). Yet all the “gotchya” moments are for naught. I pegged the real bad guy just by casting. Yet, I liked “Salt.” The action is wildly over the top but enjoyable, and Jolie is the match of Willis, Gibson or McQueen. One can always see the wheels turning behind her eyes: Dig the scene where Salt escapes from police, and she appears to plan every single move in one instant. And I'll take Jolie in action any day over sob stories such as "The Changeling." For summer flicks, this is good stuff. It’s high-time we get a cinematic female hero again. B