Inception (2010)

Barnardo’s, Whetstone. Baffling Christopher Nolan thriller about espionage conducted within dreams – on multiple levels. Buried within a highly convoluted plot is a powerful film about loss and grief, but it fails on many levels. There’s no chemistry between the characters, despite the excellent Leonardo DiCaprio. Parts of the multi-level-dream plot don’t really make sense. Plus, the trial-run worlds created by the female dream architect were far more interesting than the actual ones in which the bulk of the film is set. So instead of her streets that bend and warp psychedelically (as "borrowed" for Doctor Strange), you get a hotel plunged into zero gravity (mildly diverting) and a bog-standard building in a snowscape (Bond film meets Hoth’s Echo Base in The Empire Strikes Back). I still don’t understand why the team were being constantly shot at, and the effect of all this is ultimately numbing. With hard-to-love characters and worlds within worlds that aren’t real, why should you care about any of it?

The World Is Not Enough (1999)

The third Pierce Brosnan James Bond film.

The pros:
• A better script than Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
• A vulnerable villain (Robert Carlyle)
• M (Judi Dench) is given more of a part in the story
• Reasonably good theme song (by Garbage)

The cons:
• John Cleese is deeply unfunny as the successor to Q: not the right feel for the film at all
• The scene in which the baddie holds burning coal makes no sense. Even if he could feel no pain, as suggested, it would still have burned his flesh and destroyed his hand.
• The villain was dying anyway: so what was his real motivation? Love for Elektra?

GoldenEye (1995)

The first of four Pierce Brosnan James Bond films is an interesting attempt to introduce some knowing irony to 007 being a sexist anachronism, without taking the more radical step of the reboot that would come with the Daniel Craig era. All the usual tropes are there. We played “Bond iSpy” and ticked off each of the familiar elements. But it’s not a terrible film, despite the absolutely awful Russian IT boffin. There’s a bit more dialogue, so Brosnan gets to really act. The tank chase and exploding pen were enjoyable, as was the jumping-off-a-dam sequence. The ludicrous plot elements are present and correct, and reach a remarkable new peak when Bond dives off a cliff after a plane, “flies” into it, climbs into the cabin and then – at the very last moment – averts a crash.

Die Another Day (2002)

The fourth and final James Bond film starring Pierce Brosnan showed that the series was desperately in need of a rethink (which it would soon have with Daniel Craig). The sci-fi-tinged plot (an invisible car, a space laser like the Death Star in Star Wars) is possibly even more ludicrous than usual. There’s a bit where he’s wandering around in pyjamas and a Jesus beard after 14 months of being tortured. Halle Berry is blandly uninteresting as the female lead. John Cleese is an unfunny disaster as “Q”. There’s some awful dialogue (“Die, bitch!”). Madonna has a pointless cameo to demonstrate that she can’t act. There are cheesy slow-motion shots. And there’s a truly surreal moment when the soundtrack includes “London Calling” by The Clash. The sole redeeming feature is Judi Dench as “M”.

Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)

Bond film #18 and Brosnan film #2. The tech-lord villain attempting to start World War III is ridiculous. The wisecracks are daft and unfunny. Q’s brief cameo is totally bolted on. The “funky” music and slow-motion shots are naff. Regular machine-gun spraying never hits Bond. The female lead has a ludicrous secret base hidden in her flat. And Pierce Brosnan acts with his hair. But somehow it’s highly enjoyable. The extended handcuffed-on-motorbike chase scene was a lot of fun. Judi Dench is superb as M.