Spectre: 5 Awesome Things (And 8 That Sucked) In The New James Bond

2. It Looks Beautiful

This one's hardly surprising. Beautiful, globe-trotting locations are a staple of the Bond franchise and this film doesn't disappoint, jumping around the world from Day-of-the-Dead Mexico to mountainous Austria to opulent Rome to sun-drenched Morocco and back to steely grey London, all beautifully framed by cinematographer, Hoyte van Hoytema. As a film it doesn't quite reach the heights of beauty that Skyfall did, but it's still gorgeous to behold. Special props must go to that first shot. A Goodfellas-style tracking shot, and one of the most impressive in all of Sam Mendes' directing career, the opening crawl of Spectre is achingly good. All it does is follow Bond through a crowd to a vantage point on a rooftop, but it's dripping with exotic details, exquisite framing and deathly menace. It's a shame that nothing else in the film quite matches it in terms of visual panache.