A Bond film infused with the spirit of New Labour from the opening action scene focused on the triumphalist national symbolism of the Millennium Dome and the economic regeneration of the Isle of Dogs to the scenes where MI6 sets up temporary headquarters in Scotland acting as an allegory for devolution.

A couple who communicate almost exclusively in bombshell decisions go away to Éire for Christmas and make decisions at each other.

The older women in this would have better chemistry as a lesbian couple than as sisters. I presumed the script had made them sisters so as not to alienate the conservative audience for this specific subgenre of bad Christmas romcoms.

There’s something interesting about these Bond films from the End of History. Wai Lin (Michelle Yeoh) refers to Bond as a “decadent agent of a corrupt Western power” and it’s a joke but a joke that the film feels no need to seriously repudiate or counter.

The old is dying and the new cannot be born. Behind the onanistically triumphalist surface symbolism of this first post-Cold War Bond film with its literal graveyards of Soviet symbols and its rampages through freshly-capitalist Russia and communist Cuba, there is a hint of rot at the heart of both Bond and by extension England.

Train!

What better place for Poirot to comfortably retire in 1947 than Italy in the midst of its post-fascist reckoning and before the economic recovery brought about by the Marshall Plan?

X xxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxx ‘xxxxx xxxxxxxx xx xxxxxxx’ Xxxxxxxxx xxxx xxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxx xxx x xxxxxx lack of background music in scenes where you’d expect it.

The most important shot in THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO is when Mikael (Daniel Craig) leans over Lisbeth (Rooney Mara) to find something on his computer and clumsily uses the trackpad to open the wrong applications mumbling to himself while struggling to find the right folder in macOS, all while Lisbeth watches him with a look of impatient contempt.

In one scene, Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) and his yuppie colleagues briefly list all the progressive social issues that they’re aware of as ostensible members of society but clearly care about less than haircuts and business cards.