Spectre (2015)

A message from beyond the grave from Judy Dench's M sends Daniel Craig's icy James Bond from a Dias de Los Muertos parade in Mexico to Austria, Morocco and to the deserts of Northern Africa as he hunts the head of a powerful network of evil, in this 24th Bond instalment, for the most part a spectacular thrill ride but punctuated with a number of scenes in which the agent's luck is groanworthy.

★★★★☆

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The Apartment (L'Appartement) (1996)

An engaged-to-be-married but duplicitous young man in Paris tries to track down a former lover but despite gaining access to her apartment and at times getting so close to her he can hear and even smell her, his efforts are repeatedly thwarted; it isn't until much further into this twisty, turny, and quite convoluted 1996 romantic mystery, one that is at times distinctly Hitchcockian and at others very 'Polanski', that the mystery of the lover's elusiveness is made clear.

★★★★☆

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