Skyfall - 4 smiles

“Skyfall,” directed by Sam Mendes and starring Daniel Craig, is one of the best James Bond movies to come along in a long time. It spends equal time looking back and setting up the future and never loses sight of the present. And while Daniel Craig seems more comfortable in his role as 007, Javier Bardem’s villain Silva is the best movie villain since, well, Bardem in No Country for Old Men. Sam Mendes proves as adept at action fare as he is with serious material and he raises the emotional stakes to a high degree, delving into Bond’s past by setting the climactic scene in Bond’s dark old family mansion on the Scottish moors, overseen by a crusty Albert Finney. Mendes brings with him frequent collaborator Roger Deakins and Deakins’ cinematography maybe the best ever in a Bond movie in that the picture is stable and the fight scenes are easy to follow. Thomas Newman’s score makes ample use of the familiar ‘James Bond Theme’ and Adele’s opening number, Skyfall, harkens back to Shirley Bassey’s Goldfinger.

The movie begins with an exciting pre-credits sequence set in Istanbul that climaxes in a fight on top of a moving train. Bond is left for dead by MI6, but, when he resurfaces, it’s to a curt ‘Where the hell have you been?’ from M (Judi Dench), who returns him to active duty before he’s ready and sends him on a global trek to locate a hard drive (containing the names of all embedded field agents) before it can be decrypted. The bad guy, Silva (Bardem) isn’t your usual 007 megalomaniac intent on world domination. You see, Silva was a MI6 agent who worked for M. In fact, he considered himself her favorite, but then she cut him loose. Like a wronged son, he wants revenge: he wants mommy to die. Along the way, Bond encounters a younger Q (Ben Whishaw) and beds two Bond girls, fellow agent Eve (Naomie Harris) and exotic sex slave Severine (Berenice Marlohe). He also meets M’s boss, Gareth Mallory (Ralph Fiennes). “Skyfall” successfully celebrates James Bond turning 50 and it's an immensely satisfying movie. 11/9/12

Flight - 3 smiles

“Flight” is about addiction, illustrating the power of compulsive drinking and the collateral damage that results from it. And if not for its star, Denzel Washington, it would be just another movie about an addict who refuses to admit he has a problem. But because of Washington’s charisma and ability, you don’t mind spending time with Whip Whitaker although he’s not a likeable person and it’s difficult to watch his journey through despair and self-destruction. The twist in the story is that Whip is an airline captain. One day, on a routine trip from Florida to Atlanta through stormy weather, his plane suffers a mechanical failure and goes into an uncontrolled dive. Whip, whose blood alcohol is three times the legal limit for driving and who snorted cocaine for breakfast, shows remarkable skill in landing the plane, losing only six people in the crash. If he had been sober would he have saved all of the people or would he have been killed in the resulting crash, like all of the pilots who were put in similar conditions in a simulator?

Director Robert Zemeckis doesn’t really address these questions. He’s more interested in first presenting Whip as a hero and then painstakingly deconstructing the man over the remainder of the movie. You might charge false advertising because the trailers lead you to believe it’s more about the crash and Whip’s unorthodox thinking that saved so many lives. Washington excels at portraying damaged individuals and his performance is multi-layered. Kelly Reilly provides a counterpoint to Washington as an addict who has already hit bottom, admitted her failings, and is scratching her way to recovery. John Goodman seems to be having fun as Whip’s drug dealer, but Don Cheadle and Bruce Greenwood aren’t given enough to do. “Flight” tells a universal story and the acting is top-notch. Question is, do you want to spend over two hours with an addict? 11/2/12

Lincoln - 4 smiles

Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” is an exceptional blend of bio-pic and story that most of us didn’t know. Kudos to Tony Kushner’s intelligent script that blends the democratic process, political maneuvering and higher moral thinking into great entertainment. And Daniel Day-Lewis is extraordinary as the president, capturing his wit and generosity as well as his iron will. Rather than an overarching biography, Spielberg and Kushner focus on the weeks immediately following the president’s reelection in late 1864, when Lincoln opts to spend his new political capital by pushing through the 13^th Amendment and abolishing slavery in the face of opposition from all sides. Here we get a closer look at the horse-trading, strategic thinking and deal making that went on behind the scenes, all tied to ideas of what should be done rather that what could be done.

Aside from Lincoln, not one other person thinks the Amendment has a chance of passing the Senate and the House. Hardly anyone even thinks it’s a good idea. We are reminded that the Emancipation Proclamation was a wartime measure and that, with the Civil War grinding to a halt, only a change to the Constitution would prevent slavery from resuming in the South. And the movie takes great pains to illustrate the racist thinking that was part of the average white American worldview in January 1865. Tommy Lee Jones almost steals the movie as the radical Republican Thaddeus Stevens, a man who staunchly believed that blacks and whites were equals on every level. His performance is full of ethical righteousness and hilarious invective. But Day-Lewis’s Lincoln is a canny politician hiding behind the folksy exterior, always telling home-spun anecdotes that reveal stinging moral rebukes. In Day-Lewis we see a Lincoln aged by his presidency and the war but a deep thinker, a man for all ages. Spielberg has recruited an A list of actors in supporting roles, including Sally Field, David, Strathairn, Hal Holbrook, John Hawkes, James Spader, Jackie Haley, Bruce McGill and Tim Blake Nelson. “Lincoln” is definitely a talky movie, but it illustrates the power of ideas and the power of words. It’s a must-see. 10/17/12

Wreck-It, Ralph - 3 1/2 smiles

“Wreck-It Ralph” combines a fresh idea with a love of retro video games and it’s hard not to love this animated tale set in the world of video arcades.  Directed by Rich Moore, this movie creates a fully realized world of video game characters and the lives they live when the arcade closes for the day. Wreck-It Ralph (perfectly voiced by John C. Reilly who captures Ralph’s good heart and rough exterior), the 9-foot-tall, 643-pound bad guy from the ‘80s arcade game Fix-It Felix Jr. is tired of being ostracized for his destructive behavior. He can’t help it if he was programmed that way, but after 30 years, he’s tired of his demolition job. Because Ralph wants to be liked, he decides the only way to win the affection of the people in his game is to earn a medal. To do this, he goes to the most likely place, the Hero’s Duty game, via Game Central Station (modeled after New York’s Grand Central Terminal). In Hero’s Duty, he crosses paths with tough Sgt. Calhoun (Jane Lynch) and ends up in the land of Sugar Rush, which incorporates elements of Japanese animé. In this vibrant land of cupcakes, cookies and candy, he meets the scrappy little misfit Vanellope von Schweetz (Sarah Silverman). Initially, Ralph sees her as a pest, but as the story progresses, he starts to feel compassion. A glitch in her character (a programming error) has caused the other residents of Sugar Rush to mock her. Even the ruling King Candy (Alan Tudyk) is part in the cruelty. Both outsiders, Ralph and Vanellope ultimately connect in an endearing father/daughter-type friendship.

Moore has brought meticulous detail to his imaginary world of electronic characters and one enjoyable sequence is when lonesome villains gather at a Bad-Anon support group. Here we see Super Mario Brother’s Bowser, a spiky, fire-breathing tortoise, Pac-Man, Q’Bert, and Zangief, a Russian wrestler from Street Fighter II.  Silverman adds a lot of entertainment with her smart-alecky delivery, which contrasts nicely with Reilly’s earnest nature. And Lynch’s Sgt. Calhoun is similar to Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story with her extreme seriousness about her duty juxtaposed with the fluffy surreal background of Sugar Rush. “Wreck-It Ralph” is a gorgeously told story that will play just as well to children as to their parents. Surely it is the favorite for a Best Animated Feature Oscar. 11/6/12

Cloud Atlas - 2 1/2 smiles

I saw “Cloud Atlas” twice: the first time to understand the various stories (there are six), the second time to make meaning of those stories. And at three hours in length, I don’t think your average moviegoer should have to spend that much time trying to understand a movie. Directed by Tom Tykwer and the Wachowski siblings (Lana and Andy), and based on a novel by David Mitchell, “Cloud Atlas” is unlike any other movie. It takes place in six different periods of history and one scene follows the next in no particular order. There is no apparent logic to the scene shifts, but one movement or gesture in one era will connect with a similar movement in another.  There is little or no link between stories, except the repetition of familiar faces and attempts to depict endless cycles of patterns of human behavior. The directors cast Tom Hanks, Jim Broadbent, Halle Berry and Jim Sturgess in a variety of roles. Implicit in the casting is the notion that these are the same souls in different incarnations, but the directors do little with his concept. Instead, the directors seem to focus on freedom, romantic, creative, political, combating the forces of repression.

The most interesting narrative is the one that takes place in Neo-Seoul in the year 2144. An obedient ‘fabricant’ clone Sonmi-451 (Doona Bae) rebels against her lowly station as waitress-slave and joins the rebellion led by handsome Hae-Joo Chang (Sturgess). This allows the Wachowskis (who also did Matrix) to play with familiar elements, like rocketing chases through holographic highways amid a post-‘Blade Runner’ city. And Bae is genuinely touching as the factory worker awakening to her own individuality. Unfortunately, we are told the message of “Cloud Atlas” over and over — ‘Our lives are not our own,’ Separation is an illusion,’ ‘What is an ocean but a multitude of drops’ — rather than shown. And the makeup doesn’t always work: Berry as a white-skinned Jewess in 2012 London, Sturgess as a Neo-Seoul Asian and Bae as a 19^th century American wife. “Cloud Atlas” is an ambitious movie, an interesting movie, a different movie. Worth three hours? Maybe. Worth six hours? Definitely not. 10/29/12