Spectre, Sam Mendes‘ latest riff on the classic James Bond formula, comes with all the trimmings fans have come to expect from the undying international superspy series: Daniel Craig‘s 007 kicks henchman ass, kisses gorgeous women, sips on his famous martinis, stares death square in the face more than once, and causes some serious property damage as he visits some of the most ridiculously picturesque places on earth in search of a European big bad hellbent on world domination. It’s the same old schtick, but it’s a schtick millions have come to embrace as a moviegoing staple, one we can count on to deliver insanely expensive-looking action and a fair amount of clean-cut operatic drama. It’s a good Bond film, though there’s nothing remarkable enough about it that it’ll be a standout in the series.

As he’s liable to do, Christoph Waltz plays the film’s central villain, Oberhauser, a worldwide crime boss and tech terrorist who plans to hold humanity in his clutches via some kind of big brother surveillance system. Bond’s path to finding Oberhauser starts in Mexico City, where he causes an explosive international incident involving a helicopter spinning out of control above the city’s annual Dia de los Muertos celebration. It’s an eye-popping opener with clever staging (Bond’s life is saved by a couch) and a sky-high fight scene that’s sure to have those afraid of heights hanging onto their armrests for dear life.

Following his mid-air dance of death, Bond’s journey takes him to Rome, then back home to London, then to Austria, then to Tangier, and back to London again. Mendes doesn’t stray from the series’ touristic traditions one bit, throwing up jaw-dropping locales onto the screen rapid-fire. From the snowy peaks of Austria to the serene desert sprawl of Tangier, mother earth looks her beauty-pageant best, and she’s rocking some shiny jewelry to boot: the baddies’ fortresses look like marvels of modern architecture and the stunning cars Bond rockets around in will make you drool. Bond movies have become increasingly obsessed with suit-modeling and vista-ogling in recent years, but that’s not a bad thing. At least not yet.

Bond’s allies aren’t in short supply in his latest romp: M (Ralph Fiennes), Moneypenny (Naomie Harris), and gadget maven Q (Ben Wishaw) have all got 007’s back, though the bad guys’ eyes-everywhere tech prevents them from aiding Bond remotely. Spending the most time with him is newbie Madeleine Swann (Lea Seydoux), the latest addition to his ever-growing list of doomed lovers. She’s the daughter of an old villain who operated under the Oberhauser umbrella, and she insists she’s got no interest in bedding James like the rest of his international floozies. But who’s she fooling? After a romantic train ride and a close-quarters fistfight with one of Oberhauser goons (Guardians of the Galaxy‘s Dave Bautista), the sexual tension becomes too strong for even the strong-willed Madeleine to resist.

Craig’s got his Bond routine down to a science by now, hunting down his villainous prey with that same signature cold-eyed scowl he uses to make women melt. He’s a very good James Bond, but what slows him down in Spectre is his romance with Seydoux’s Madeleine, which unfolds in such a cursory fashion it’s laughable. She confesses her love for him after spending only a few days together, and even an actor of Seydoux’s talent can’t make such an unlikely leap in affection feel natural. If this is the girl Bond’s meant to consider leaving the spy life for, the writers (Neal Purvis, John Logan, Robert Wade, Jez Butterworth) don’t do enough to convince us of it.

Thankfully, the rushed romance one of only two of the film’s major downers (the other is the movie’s theme song, by Sam Smith, which is insufferable). The action set pieces are all show-stoppers, though the thrills of the opening helicopter scene are never outdone. A close-quarters fight scene between Craig, Bautista and Seydoux is a lot of fun and reminds us that Mendes doesn’t need pricey visual effects to keep us on the edge of our seats (the scene’s absence of music is a great touch that makes the brawl doubly tense). The movie isn’t exactly action-packed, though, as the explosions and car chases are used to punctuate the long stretches of character development/plot progression. Skyfall had a more striking and cohesive visual style than Spectre does (shadows and blackness are the recurring themes, but none of the inky images stick), but Mendes’ craftsmanship is never less than elegant and fully composed.

There’s a twist to Waltz’s character that I won’t spoil here, but what I will say is that he disappoints, again, by playing a villain exactly the way we all expect him to. The man’s capable of great things, but we’ve seen him play this smirking, unfazed, cold-blooded a million times before, and it’s a letdown every time he decides to stay in the pocket and not add any new dimensions to his act. Harris and Wishaw make a better effort, and it’ll be nice to continue watching them support Bond in future entries.

If Skyfall was the pinnacle of Craig’s run as Bond, Spectre signals a slight downturn and a need for the series to break new ground and redefine who James Bond is for the next generation. Mendes has made a fine movie that pays homage to Bond lore in surprising and delightful ways (there’s something off about that Oberhauser…) but it feels like the timing’s right for a change of the guard. Craig is perhaps the quintessential alpha-male Bond, always in control of his situation and surroundings; maybe it’s time for a double-0 who gets a bit more shaken and stirred in the face of danger.

After the massive success of Skyfall–the biggest James Bond film ever—it was rather surprising to see all the trouble it took to get Spectre off the ground—especially in today’s sequel driven culture. Originally, Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes said he felt “physically ill” at the prospect of returning to the spy series—even after smashing box office records and racking up awards nods. Rumors swirled around the developing picture for months before it was finally confirmed that Mendes would direct. Now, with a new trailer arriving today, we can all be thankful that he did.

While most of the plot has been kept tightly under wraps, what we do know is, Spectre finds Bond (the only-getting-handsomer Daniel Craig) confronted with a cryptic message from his long-hidden past that leads to an encounter with the mysterious organization Spectre. All the while the new M (Ralph Fiennes) takes on political adversaries to keep the British secret service alive.

Written by the same team behind Skyfall (John Logan, Neal Purvis, and Robert Wade) Spectre hopes to capitalize on the reinvigorated tone of the franchise and make another cool billion. To boot, the support here is deep, rounded out by Lea Seydoux, Christoph Waltz, Dave Bautista (Guardians of the Galaxy), and Monica Bellucci.

Spectre arrives November 6th.

In Hollywood, anyone can be a star. A random spot-check of TV listings will reveal numerous entries of reality TV shows. What defines “reality” is up for debate, but the M.O. of these shows is the same: point cameras at people willing to make spectacles of themselves and broadcast those spectacles into millions of homes, then watch as the shiniest of those spectacles become famous. Ten minutes into those fifteen minutes of fame, the public forgets what the fuss was in the first place, which marks these shiny spectacles as being famous for, well, being famous.

On the internet, anyone is a critic. Facebook timelines, comments sections, and Twitter feeds are supersaturated with opinions about Hollywood, and thanks to the anonymity the internet provides, those opinions can get downright nasty. The seedier side of the internet is a breeding ground for spreading sex tape footage, hacked selfies, and wardrobe malfunctions like glittery pandemics.

Still, just as the internet needs Hollywood to provide an endless supply of attention-craving narcissists to feed it, Hollywood needs the internet for its perpetual (and free) promotion of said narcissists. This wickedly dysfunctional relationship is at the core of director Martin Owen’s L.A. Slasher.

The film, penned by Owen and four others, tells the tale of a criminal who goes by the self-appointed name “The L.A. Slasher” (voiced by Andy Dick). The Slasher, donned in a white suit and wearing a mask that looks like a face with all its features smoothed down to nothing, is abducting members of the famous-for-being-famous set. As these serial events continue, the Slasher goes from villain to hero in the eyes of the public; the general consensus, as captured by an eager TV news reporter (Abigail Wright) is that the world is better off without these reality-show-hacks, whose fame was achieved not by hard work or even talent, but simply by being famous.

L.A. Slasher wants to be one of those smart, edgy social satires like Dan Gilroy’s Nightcrawler. In fact, there’s a quote from Nightcrawler that is actually quite damning of L.A. Slasher. In Nightcrawler, Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) says, “My motto is if you want to win the lottery you’ve got to make money to get a ticket.” This is what Owen and almost everyone else involved in his picture fail to understand: you have to do the work to get the reward. Even something as luck-driven as the lottery requires some degree of effort to get to that place. Owen never does the work in this film, but he wants the reward. The net result is not a winning ticket, but instead video hate-mail—a film that feels like it was built upon (and fueled by) the comments sections of the internet’s most notorious posts.

Good seeds are there. His victimized characters, all reality show types, are nameless and only identified by their primary characteristic. There is The Stripper (Marissa Lauren), The Teen Mom (Tori Black), The Socialite (Korrina Rico), The Heiress (Elizabeth Morris), The Actress (Mischa Barton), and so on. It isn’t necessarily original (think of the theme song to Gilligan’s Island), but it’s terribly fitting. These characters aren’t supposed to be actual people; they are only supposed to represent the types of people who populate the reality worlds.

That said, the good seeds are washed away by Owen’s inability to develop clever caricatures out of these folks. Instead, he falls back on generating lazy stereotypes, giving his characters nothing to do but take selfies and take to Twitter, both of which would be fine if they photographed or tweeted anything worth paying attention to. Also not worth paying attention is the traditional (read: not social) media. Abigail Wright’s The Reporter is mostly inert, but it’s William Nicol’s CBuzz Host (think TMZ jacked on stimulants) who takes the prize, with bro-dude dialogue and mannerisms that become insufferable before his hair gel dries.

With absolutely no protagonist to care about (including the anti-hero Drug Dealers played by Danny Trejo and Dave Bautista, whose characters are entirely unnecessary and unable to provide the comic relief they were clearly created to provide), all that remains is the villain. All that remains is The Slasher.

Again Owen fails to make the money to buy the lottery ticket. Despite supposedly being motivated by the reality show culture, there are no layers to The Slasher. There is no wondering what makes The Slasher tick. The Slasher, like the other nameless characters in this film, is painted with broad, bland strokes (white suit, creepy mask, obsession with fame), only he’s injected with a baseless hate for a specific celebrity type that feels like Angry Twitter started a GoFundMe campaign to make revenge porn. It’s Bad Guy 101 at its worst: a villain who doesn’t have something weighty to say, only something lengthy.

Owen’s greatest sin, though, is being so enamored with his own direction that he routinely sacrifices narrative flow for the sake of a cool shot or an extended music video-style scene where nothing happens but loud music and dancing. It’s nothing more than artistic preening, saved only by Chase Bowman’s superb cinematography.

L.A. Slasher is quite ironic, really. Owen targets those who have done nothing to gain their fame, but he does so by doing as little as possible. The film isn’t satire; it’s insult disguised as intellect, and once the glossy, music video veneer is stripped away, all that remains is an 85-minute hate tweet.

As always, the journey to the next Bond film is an interesting one. Before the $1 billion earnings of Skyfall, MGM filed for bankruptcy, leaving everyone to assume it would be a long, long time before we saw 007 again. Obviously, the four-year wait was well worth it, with the Sam Mendes directed film going above and beyond the average blockbuster. We can all be thankful that he’s back for the next round.

Spectre finds Bond (Daniel Craig) and the rest of MI6 still reeling from the aftermath of Skyfall. While struggling to keep the secret service alive, Bond must face off against a menacing organization and find the truth about SPECTRE.

The cast is rounded out by some familiar faces (Ralph Fiennes, Ben Whishaw, Naomie Harris) and some new to the Bond world (Christoph Waltz, Dave Bautista, and Lea Seydoux). And while the film doesn’t arrive for more than half a year, this first trailer looks gorgeous–thanks mostly to the fine work of Roger Deakins’ replacement, Hoyte van Hoytema (Interstellar, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy).

Check the trailer below. Spectre arrives November, 6 2015.

Most people–hell, most comic book readers–have little to no knowledge of the Guardians of the Galaxy, a team of misfit, cosmic Marvel superheroes introduced in print in 1969. James Gunn, the director of Marvel Studios’ film adaptation of the D-list franchise, has a similar level of notoriety, with his work (Slither, Super) mostly only familiar to indie and indie-horror geeks. Why would Marvel take such a risk, dumping millions of dollars into producing a movie with minimal name recognition?

Well, let’s look at it from this angle: What if all of the scumbag bounty hunters, smugglers, and monstrous brutes from Star Wars got their own movie? What if you infused it with the attitudinal, irreverent humor from the first Iron Man movie, cranked up to 11? And what if you slapped on a bitchin’ ’70s soundtrack on top of it all, just for the hell of it? That’s Gunn’s film in a nutshell, and it’s totally awesome, off-the-wall, sci-fi fun. Marvel knew they had a gem on their hands, and with Guardians of the Galaxy they’ve unleashed on us a hell of a good time at the movies. And a talking tree. And a talking raccoon. And Chris Pratt’s abs.

Pratt plays Peter Quill, an earthling abducted as a child in the ’80s who now thieves, gets laid, and causes a general ruckus across the galaxy in his spaceship, the Milano (named after Gunn’s childhood crush, Alyssa Milano). We meet Quill (or Star-Lord, a self-appointed moniker he desperately hopes will catch on) in treasure-hunter mode, looking to loot a mysterious sphere from a tomb on a seemingly deserted, dusty alien planet. He navigates the rocky terrain with some clumsy of rocket shoes, a bug-like space mask, and his trusty Walkman, which cues Redbone’s “Come and Get Your Love”, the first of the film’s many retro-tastic tunes only Gunn has the cajones to blanket a multi-million dollar movie in. In an homage to Raiders of the Lost Ark, Quill steals the sphere, eludes laser-toting baddies, hops back into the Milano, where he’s startled by a drowsy one-night-stand he forgot spent the night. Whoops.

Quill bands together with all manner of galactic riffraff to protect the sphere from warmonger Ronan the Accuser, the film’s dark, creepy big-bad played by an imposing Lee Pace who has evil intentions of using the thing to destroy the planet Xandar. Quill’s band of outcasts are Gamora (Zoe Saldana), the green-skinned, badass daughter of Thanos, the biggest villain in the galaxy; Drax the Destroyer (hulking WWE alumni Dave Bautista), who’s hellbent on avenging the death of his family at the hands of Ronan; Rocket (Bradley Cooper), a genetically engineered talking Raccoon with a heavy-artillery fetish and a Joe Pesci temper, and his amiable tree-creature BFF, Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel).

Pratt is the absolute right man for the job, with the film’s subversive, witty material playing precisely to his strengths. Fans of his work in Parks and Recreation are guaranteed Guardians ticket-buyers, and they won’t be disappointed. Diesel and Cooper (with great help from the talented visual effects team) make Rocket and Groot an irresistibly lovable on-screen duo, and almost steal the show altogether. Bautista surprisingly hangs right in there with his more experienced cast mates, drawing just as many laughs with Drax’s lack of capacity for sarcasm and metaphor. Saldana often gets lost in the noise, as the other Guardians’ unique, colorful personalities make the more conventionally sketched Gomora feel a little stale.

Guardians is refreshingly detached from Marvel’s flood of Avengers movies (though it does technically exist in the same universe), offering up an edgier, funnier brand of superhero action. The film feels even more like Star Wars than J.J. Abrams’ 2009 Star Trek reboot did, delivering big-time adventure while being thoughtful enough to highlight the well-written core-character relationships above all else. The action is sufficiently epic and more brutal than any Marvel movie before, with even the good-natured Groot doling out heaping helpings of bone-crushing violence. (A scene in which the gentle giant pulverizes a group of hapless grunts mirrors Hulk smashing up Loki in Avengers, but gets an even bigger laugh.)

Gunn does a great job of preserving his wacky indie sensibilities and incorporating them seamlessly into a giant, crowd-pleasing blockbuster film, a feat that takes more finesse than his Troma-boy resume may lead you to believe he’s capable of. While it isn’t as out-there as Slither or Super, Guardians feels like a Gunn film through and through.

The film hits a few tonal stumbles along the way, with the heavier dramatic scenes between the core characters feeling slightly out of place. (A tortured existential outburst by Rocket feels the most awkward, though it’s effectively acted by Cooper and the animators.) The myriad supporting characters–Glenn Close as the leader of Nova Corps, Xandar’s police force; John C. Reilly as a Nova Corps officer; Benicio Del Toro, in a brief appearance as the Liberace-like Collector–are good fun, though they’re too great in number for any to make a lasting impression. Michael Rooker’s Yondu, Quill’s venomous abductor and adopted father figure, sticks out amongst the supporters with his wicked volitility.

Visually, Gunn and DP Ben Davis use every color of the rainbow to give Guardians a distinctive sci-fi look, with each detailed environment looking more imaginative than the last. This is an oddball movie that’s as funny as Galaxy Quest and as thrilling as any Marvel movie that’s come before, and it’s cause for excitement for the futures of both Marvel Studios and Gunn’s career.

Guardians of the Galaxy trailer