In the opening moments of No Time to Die, Daniel Craig’s fifth and final time as James Bond, the iconic spy visits the grave of Vesper Lynd, the woman who died for his love. Because Eva Green’s Vesper had a hand in 2006’s Casino Royale, Craig’s 007 debut, the gesture feels like the finishing stroke of a full circle representing his 15-year run. That feeling only deepens when he faces the rock slab — and, by camera placement, the audience — and says in an earnest near-whisper, “I miss you.”

Then, just as Bond spots a business card emblazoned with the SPECTRE organization’s ominous octopus logo, Vesper’s resting place explodes into rubble. It’s the filmmakers’ way of saying, “Time to upend your expectations.” All things considered, they mostly make good on that unspoken mission statement. (On the negative side of that, Billie Eilish’s theme song is a tepid bore.)

Now retired and committed to Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux, returning from 2015’s Spectre), Bond is coaxed back into the field when an MI6-manufactured virus is stolen from the agency’s off-the-books lab. Dubbed “the Heracles Project,” the bioweapon is genetically engineered to impact only the DNA of its possessor’s choosing — peculiar functionality that means everything to its warped thief, Safin (Rami Malek, The Little Things), a terrorist with a taste for revenge and a burnt face. Safin initially hides behind a Japanese Noh mask — a chilling image and one of the movie’s most indelible. With stakes standing at an all-time high, 007 resorts to consulting ol’ archenemy Blofeld (Christoph Waltz, reprising his Spectre role in a Hannibal Lecter-style cameo).

While much hype surrounds No Time to Die being not only Craig’s last time in the tux, but the 25th official film in the series, I’ve seen no writing on the wall regarding its stature as the franchise’s longest entry, at an eon of 163 minutes. Truth be told, its machinations run a level or two too complex than necessary.

That said, what would I cut? Certainly not a second from the action set pièce de résistance: a chase through the cobblestone streets — and up the stairs — of Matera, Italy. Definitely not Bond’s firepower-packed pas de deux in a Cuban nightclub with cleavage-bearing CIA contact Paloma (Knives Out’s Ana de Armas, bringing a wonderfully disarming comedic presence). In both sequences (and more), director Cary Joji Fukunaga exhibits a control as comfortable as the series’ best, even if none quite approximates the blood-pumping tension of his CV’s highlight thus far: that six-minute tracking shot from True Detective season one, episode four.

I might be persuaded to cast my vote against a rather overstuffed ending that sucks all the fun out of the room … but not when we have Malek treating Safin like Shakespeare once No Time to Die says “yes” to cribbing from Dr. No by jetting to its villain’s island lair.

But I come to praise 007, not to bury him. Through more highs (Skyfall) than lows (Quantum of Solace), one thing remained consistent: Craig, cucumber-cool and captivating. Sean Connery aside, nobody did Bond better.

Already, I miss you. —Rod Lott

The Spanish word camino translates to “road” in English, which is a very apt title for this primo action flick, as it travels down many bloody South American streets, all of them barely lit by a flickering streetlight as stuntwoman extraordinaire Zoë Bell tries to make it out of a green inferno with her life.

Bell is prizewinning photojournalist Taggert, who is sent on assignment to follow a group of heavily armed missionaries through the dense jungle. At first glance, the team seems as nice as a group of guerillas possibly can be, with leader Guillermo (Oscar-nominated director Nacho Vigalondo) providing much of the group’s capable bluster as their likably annoying leader.

However, in a drug deal that is witnessed by Taggert — and photographed, no less — Guillermo slits the fucking neck of a small child for fun. Spotted, she goes on the run as the charismatic leader and his soldiers are after her, wherein she unleashes her masterfully choreographed martial arts capability on much of the offending party.

With Camino mixing important social critiques with blistering ass-kicking potential — the best way to get any kid to learn, if you ask me — Bell is at the top of her B-movie game, with a surprising turn from Vigalondo, helmer of films like Timecrimes and Colossal, portraying a truly despicable general who, at times, is kind of likable.

Camino is a road I’d definitely like to travel again, even if it means pulling over to get kicked a couple of times. —Louis Fowler

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If nothing else — and that’s indeed the case — shot-on-video titan J.R. Bookwalter’s production of Chickboxer resolves a question that has baffled mankind for decades: “How long is too long to lace a pair of shoes?” The answer, per the activity sloooooowly happening underneath the insufferable opening credits, is 4.5 minutes. Now you know.

In a needless fourth-wall demolition that’s like the Cryptkeeper in a Dress Barn sweater, a sour lemon wedge named Kathy (one-and-doner Julie Suscinski) intros her own small-town story and promises a real doozy: “You can keep your Knots Landing!” And in hindsight, you really should, because compared to this, the infamous High Kicks is Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

A good-girl student at an Ohio high school of maybe four or five people, Kathy enrolls in a $41 karate class after hearing about the video store’s recent stickup, in which Bookwalter cameos as the unfortunate clerk. Her tight-ass mother (Barbara Katz-Norrod, an on-the-reg Bookwalter player) is aghast at her daughter’s decision: “They karate people in there!” Uh, hardly. In a class of six, Kathy proves a natural in (this movie’s idea of) martial arts, despite participating in a Hard Rock Cafe sweatshirt — Chicago, in case you were wondering.

Meanwhile, the robbers (Maximum Impact’s Ken Jarosz and Ozone’s Tom Hoover) are actually full-blown criminals who blackmail Mayor Cornblatt (one-timer Dennis K. Murphy) into picking up a suitcase filled with $5 million in cocaine. In an imperfect storm of clubfooted plotting, their felonious follies tie into the disappearance of Kathy’s karate classmate (Melanie Todd, Robot Ninja) and the accidental overhearing of nefarious plans by Kathy’s effeminate BMOC crush (James L. Edwards, Her Name Was Christa).

Luckily, Kathy has the solution: Only Chickboxer can help!

Oh, looks like I failed to mention Chickboxer, the TV show within the movie. It’s Kathy’s fave; she’s obsessed with it to an unhealthy degree. So she calls Chickboxer actress Greta Holtz (scream queen Michelle Bauer, Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama, showing her comedic chops in the movie’s best scene and showing her other attributes on its cover art). Now, if Kathy isn’t supposed to be touched in the head, I’d like to know what frequent Bookwalter collaborator Scott P. Plummer, in his directorial debut and death, was thinking. Someone made a choice and committed to it; whether said someone told anyone else remains a mystery. (What’s not a mystery is why so many characters wear shirts emblazoned with the logos of various Bookwalter titles.)

With Greta too busy trying to keep her breasts contained within her skimpy outfit, it’s up to Kathy to become, in her own words, “a superhero.” Although her karate experience amounts to one class — and her kickboxing experience unquestionably nil — she nonetheless chickboxes murderous adults twice her size into submission. The end.

Shoelacing included, all this occurs within a pat 61 minutes. Also crammed into that hour is an unrelated coda with a fully nude Bauer — but not as Greta — in bed, grinding on some dude’s crotch as guest director David DeCoteau (who footed Chickboxer’s $2,500 budget) can be heard telling her to cover the lucky guy’s penis. She must not have heard — and DeCoteau must not have wanted to purchase another blank Maxell — because the unit is unobstructed and, befitting of everything else in the movie, limp. —Rod Lott

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On the South American penal colony known as Devil’s Island, it’s “every man for himself.” Unless you’re renowned artist Steve Duval (Hideous Sun Demon Robert Clarke), the newest arrival. The prison commandant (Niles Andrus) asks Steve to give art lessons to his headstrong adult daughter, Marlene (Dorothy Haney), seeing how’s she’s “a little stubborn.”

Overhearing this plan, Marlene then and there decides to help Steve, a total stranger, escape — ordinarily a pie-in-the-sky goal; then again, most prison camps don’t have escape tips literally posted to the commandant’s office door like this one. Thus, two safari pith helmets for disguise later, as the guards booze up, she sneaks Steve and pal Whorf (Robert Christopher, Frankenstein Island) out of the colony …

… and into the surrounding jungle, where a vicious primitive tribe rules, to justify the film’s title, Terror of the Bloodhunters. Said tribe is seen in stock footage, with tied-up white women shot specifically for the picture — in other words, just the sneaky kind of cinematic rug schlock filmmaker Jerry Warren used to pull.

Lo and behold, it is Jerry Warren! For Bloodhunters, he brought along a couple of hairy tarantulas, responsible for damn near a third of the modicum of actual action. So dull that most public-domain collections usually go without it, Terror of the Bloodhunters certainly isn’t the worst B jungle flick you’ll ever see, but it’s more certainly not the best — not even if it’s the only one you let into your eyes. —Rod Lott

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I had the ultimate pleasure to meet director Jack Hill in the early 2000s, when he was a at a local college campus showing a double feature that included Switchblade Sisters, a film that gained new prominence once Quentin Tarantino’s Rolling Thunder Pictures reissued it to theaters.

One of my favorite films since a rental in the early ’90s from a now long-gone video store in Oklahoma City, it was thrilling to see it on the (somewhat) big screen and even more thrilling to meet the soft-spoken man who made it, a film that he described as a modern (as modern as the ’70s can be, I suppose) take on Othello.

Switchblade Sisters tells the story of blonde Maggie (Joanne Nail, in short shorts and high-heeled boots), a streetwise teenager who, after a scuffle in a local burger bar, ends up in a girl gang called the Dagger Debs, led by Lace (Robbie Lee, who has always reminded me of a Depression-era youth). When her boyfriend, the leader of the Silver Daggers, dies, they become the Jezebels, the meanest bunch of teen troublemakers in town.

However, when high school sleaze Crabs (Chase Newhart, channeling his evil Eaglebauer) tries to take full control, the Jezebels team up with a Black militant squad led by Muff (Marlene Clark, who really should have had a spin-off flick) and take the dirty motherfucker and his boys down, by any means necessary, which, thankfully, includes plenty of machine guns.

A box-office dud upon release, Switchblade Sisters effectively killed Hill’s career, but, even watching it now, the amount of guts on display here proves that he was far ahead of his time, delivering a movie that would probably make at least good money at Redbox, capitalizing on all the things that have made movies in general great over the years: rowdy girl gangs, dark violence, black humor, Black nationalism and, I guess, Shakespeare.

Well, at least all the things I love in a movie. —Louis Fowler

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