Every Sam Mendes Movie Ranked From Worst To Best

8. Spectre

Mendes' most expensive film to date is also his most problematic, and in honesty, can anyone blame him for struggling to live up to the brilliance of his first Bond film, Skyfall?

Spectre certainly had a lot going for it on paper, namely an ensemble cast including Lea Seydoux, Dave Bautista, Andrew Scott, Monica Bellucci, and especially Christoph Waltz, yet the end result was ultimately a bloated, disappointingly generic greatest hits travelogue of tired Bond tropes.

One suspects Mendes felt the pressure to reincorporate "classical" Bond elements after Skyfall more closely resembled a Christopher Nolan film than a traditional Bond flick.

But between its rather suspect treatment of its female characters, its wildly convoluted plot, and how thoroughly it wastes Waltz as Blofeld, the whole film just feels like a bit of a missed opportunity.

Is it a bad film? Not quite: it's certainly watchable despite clocking in at an agonisingly distended 148 minutes, and the marvelous opening "single take" sequence was clearly a try-out for 1917 in retrospect, but it's an undeniable disappointment following one of 007's best-ever outings.