Movie Recs: Awesome and Awesomer Edition

Wreck-It Ralph: I saw this in a theater full of adults, 90% of whom groaned as the requisite toy commercials played before the actual movie. One of them said, ruefully, "I guess we're just not the target audience for this." But the funny thing is, I left the theater thinking that we (adults) were indeed the target audience. Why else would there be all these visual references to games that most kids have never played and likely never will? (I mean, Tapper? What kid is going to want to run out and play that?) And why else would there be some very complicated themes about the construction of your identity, the nature of true love in several forms, and the salvation of the soul? If the previous sentence makes the movie sound heavy and exhausting, it's not at all, and therein lies its genius: Wreck-It Ralph is an eye-candy dream that, despite having a guy with freakishly huge hands as its hero, moves along in a fun, breezy manner, where the difficult themes are never overdone and the story is never in service to the toy-selling. The voice casting was top-notch and that really helped (although Sarah Silverman skated a very fine line between cute and annoying.) This is a movie that I look forward to showing my son, and is no waste of time for any grown-up with an open mind.

Skyfall: A LOT of spoilers are up ahead... I'm not kidding! Proceed at your own peril if you've not seen the movie. ( Read more... )

tl;dr version: I really enjoyed it, despite its shortcomings. It's nice to see a Bond movie that knows when to take a cue from the Bourne films, but keeps the inherent Bond-ness to the whole affair intact.