Skyfall

Daniel Craig, Javier Bardem, Judi Dench - Dir: Sam Mendes

Due to its biffo box office bonanza, the largest ever for a Bond film, many have bandied around the words 'Best Bond Eva”. I beg to differ. However, I do come from a generation who actually remembers going to see Sean Connery's Bond at the cinema, so I may be biased. But, whatever objections, it's hard to deny that Skyfall is a whole bunch of fun.
If you're ticking off the essentials that go into a Bond movie then this third outing for Daniel Craig pretty much has it all. Pre-credit action sequence? Check (and it really is very good). Decent theme song? Check. Memorable villain? Check. Witty dialogue? Check. Nubile babes? Check. All that and it goes, riskily, to the odd place previously unexplored in the fifty year old franchise by shedding a little light on Bond's upbringing.
And then there are the things that bug a seen-it-all-before pedant such as myself. One big thing actually. I'm sick to death of seeing films where the Big Plan is to get caught and then escape at exactly the right moment. There are a lot of them about. The last Batman film for instance. Oh, and the previous Batman film as well. And now Skyfall, where it happens twice. This is the single worst plan in the world. Eva.
But even that doesn't stop this being ridiculously enjoyable.

On the Road is an extremely good-looking film. It gets the fifties vibe it is aiming for and immerses the viewer in it, from seedy interiors to rich landscape photography. It is, however, as you'd probably expect from a film based on Jack Kerouac's novel, a bit of a ramble. The book was thinly disguised autobiography and the film adds a little more to the real-life characters that were portrayed. Sam Riley does a good job as Kerouac's alter-ego Sal Paradise, though one longs for a young Mickey Rourke to really bring Dean Moriarty (Neal Cassady) to life. Elsewhere Viggio Mortensen pops up as the William Burroughs stand in and Tom Sturridge investigates young Allen Ginsberg's sexual confusion. Meanwhile Twilight fans have been fizzing at the bung online with the possibility that Kristen Stewart gets her kit off. She does, albeit briefly.

Just when you assume Richard Gere is about to (or has already) retired, he pops up and does something really good. This time it's in Arbitrage a smart drama about an investment specialist whose business is about to go belly up in the Bernie Madoff manner. While frantically trying to do a deal that will save himself, Gere is unlucky enough to crash his car, even more unluckily killing his mistress in the process. The film is tightly wound and serious as it charts his downward spiral, gaining class from Susan Sarandon's pitch-perfect turn as the long-suffering wife.

In what is going to be a big year for science fiction, the first off the ground is Love, a visually arresting piece in the philosophical vein of 2001: A Space Odyssey or Moon, both of which it superficially resembles. After opening with a startling discovery during the American civil war we jump straight to the international space station where the sole astronaut is about to lose all contact with earth. It's a strange film, filled with Malick-like questioning, often a little baffling, possibly profound in its message. It certainly looks fantastic and is a remarkably original and assured debut.

If you're not totally sick of 'found Footage” horror movies then V/H/S is your film, a meta-exercise in found footage with six directors each telling their own stories within a wrap-around plot (also via found footage). And, taking into account the many frustrations of the genre (vagueness, lack of resolution) it actually does a pretty fair job of things. You could do a lot worse.