Skyfall, The Master and Silver Linings Playbook

After the disaster that was "Quantum of Solace", 007 was back on form with "Skyfall". Although when the movie opens with yet another car chase, my heart sank with the  memory of that which opened "Quantum". Mercifully, we were out of the cars quite quickly, but if we have to have a chase, please think of something more original. However, the film did have probably the best dialogue for any Bond film for a long, long time. Lots of great one liners that had been missing for so long. But overall, despite undoubted fun for a couple of hours, I found the whole thing a bit predictable. Although I guess that is what we like about Bond. I was disappointed by the final sequence, where was the big set and hundreds of extras? There were some great performances, I especially liked Ben Wishaw as Q, Albert Finney as Kincade and Ralph Fiennes as Mallory.

It was a dark and wet early evening that I drove to High Wycombe to see "The Master", the latest movie from Paul Thomas Anderson. It turned out to be a baffling but disturbing film, typical of this writer/director. It is basically a character study more than a story. There are two Oscar worthy performances from the two leads, Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman. At time it seemed very theatrical, as the camera gets up close and personal with their faces, and they are together for most of the time. The movie is beautifully filmed, but the feeling of alienation is not helped by the discordant music, some off key scraping from Johnny Greenwood. And the screenplay is perhaps intentionally wobbly. There is another great performance, this time from Amy Adams, but can terrific acting compensate for an unremittingly cold  story? At 144 minutes, it did not seem that long, and was never boring. So lots of contradictions, not an enjoyable film, but one that brings the highest quality theatre to your home town.

What happens when you combine an director like David O. Russell and Harvey Weinstein? An outstanding story of two (make that lots) of damaged people and a lot to say about mental illness and those people that have to put up with it,  with a crowd pleasing feel throughout. This is one of the three best movies I have seen this year, it really is a fantastic film. The screenplay that Russell has written, based on the novel by Mathew Quick, is absolutely brilliant and should win an Oscar. In the hands of the two leads, Bradley Cooper in his best role to date and Jennifer Lawrence who is just mesmeric, the dialogue sparkles. There are some outstanding supporting roles. Robert De Niro, Jacki Weaver and Chris Tucker are superb. We are in the realms of offbeat, wacky romcom, but it all fits together so well. The comedy is in fact very subtle, not laugh out loud but warm and quirky. OK, the unoriginal ending is nothing like the rest of the movie, but as Cooper shouts at his parents at four o'clock in the morning, why did Hemingway in "Farewell to Arms" have to spoil everything with a miserable conclusion.