Max von Sydow

A weeks-long tribute to Max Von Sydow concludes at BAM with a screening of Never Say Never Again, the Bond flick in which the forbidding Swede faces off against an aging Sean Connery over a hijacked nuclear warhead; this good-bad slice of cheese may not exactly be The Seventh Seal, but last night’s von Sydow screening at BAM was the bad-bad Dune ... Meanwhile, the Film Forum features the dark animated film Consuming Spirits, a dystopic story whose complicated animations took 15 years to complete. Director Chris Sullivan appears at the 6:30 screening tonight to explain just how this differs from your typical Pixar flick.

Never Say Never Again, BAM Rose Cinemas, 30 Lafayette Avenue (Brooklyn), tickets and information can be found at bam.org/film; Consuming Spirits features director Christopher Sullivan at 6:30pm screening, Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, box office can be reached at (212) 727-8110.

Craig and Bardem in Skyfall.

The big question the pessimists are asking about Skyfall, the 23rd entry in the James Bond franchise: Does 007 still have a license to keep an audience alert? The answer: And how! Some of the exhilaration faded when Sean Connery lost his hair and took a powder, but 50 years after Ian Fleming’s super-cool agent from Her Majesty’s Secret Service was shot from a cannon into movie history, Bond is back, and so is high-octane entertainment.

Skyfall may not reach the sophisticated heights of Casino Royale, but it’s better than the lollygagging Quantum of Solace.With buff, camera-ready Daniel Craig lending fresh fisticuffs to the role, and acclaimed director Sam Mendes adding more realism and fewer jokes than in most Bond pictures, it’s a satisfying entertainment that delivers a kangaroo kick from start to finish. Despite the less showy Saul Bass-inspired titles and a stupid theme song behind the credits screeched by Adele (“We will stand tall and face it all/You may have my number but you’ll never have my heart”) that reminds us all how much we owe to Shirley Bassey, Skyfall signifies a new 007 style. The series is beyond gimmickry now. You just look at the toys, try to follow the plot and count the bikinis. But the best thing about Skyfall is the way it maximizes the great Judi Dench as M. It’s her best outing in the series to date, and she chews it like taffy. With six you get eggroll, but with vibrant, chromatic cinematography by Roger Deakins (The Shawshank Redemption), anda distinguished assembly of supersonic talents headed by Javier Bardem, Ralph Fiennes, Ben Whishaw and Albert Finney—you get box office platinum.

The film opens with the obligatory chase—007 wrecking an entire bazaar in Istanbul, scaling rooftops on a motorcycle and destroying as many civilians, buildings and moving vehicles as possible, cars that never run out of gasoline, on roads that never end, posing no threat to maintenance. Bond is knocked off the top of a speeding train into roaring rapids and plunges over a waterfall. When the dust settles, a plot emerges; M loses her computer hard-drive, and on it, a file containing the name of every NATO agent in the world’s terrorist zones. Hackers then unleash cyber attacks on secret service headquarters in London. Bond is believed dead, M is threatened with dismissal and the series seems in danger of grinding to a halt. When Bond resurfaces, M snarls through clenched teeth, “You know the rules of the game. You’ve been playing it long enough.” Which means no loyalty, no apologies and anything goes. While he was enjoying some badly needed R and R and taking a shower with sexy Bérénice Marlohe, the bombed-out secret service relocated its headquarters to an underground bunker used by Churchill during the Blitz. Bond’s unlikely new quartermaster is a wimpy fop named Q (Ben Whishaw) who dispatches him to Shanghai to locate and liquidate the thief who is using M’s files to destroy the world. The mega-villain is an epicene bottle-blond fiend played with exotic pansexual delight by Javier Bardem. A renegade agent who used to work for M, he’s droll, cynical and seductive. In the film’s funniest scene, he straps Bond to a chair, runs his hands lasciviously across his crotch and hisses “There’s a first time for everything.” Good ol’ 007, unfazed, counters with “How do you know it’s the first time?”

The movie moves from a casino in Macao, approachable only by boat and surrounded by giant man-eating Komodo dragons, to an endangered London tube station at rush hour, to a hunting lodge in Scotland where M gets a chance to show off some of her own operative training. Mr. Bardem munches a lot of whatever scenery is still standing and Dame Judi employs her icy blue eyes and matching steel reserve with terrifying authority. Bond is floppier and less buttoned-down than usual; he’s given up smoking, and the psychology of his traumatic background is explored for the first time. Bond relies less on naked girls and state-of-the-art gadgets than before, but as played by Daniel Craig, he’s both a teddy bear and as rugged as ever. So much so, in fact, that when his trusty old Aston Martin makes an appearance at last, the audience bursts into applause. Like the pieces of an elaborate jigsaw, everything falls perfectly into place, and there is overwhelming evidence that James Bond will rise again. Is there life after Skyfall? Stay tuned.

rreed@observer.com

Skyfall

Running Time 143 minutes

Written by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and John Logan

Directed by Sam Mendes

Starring Daniel Craig, Javier Bardem and Naomie Harris

3/4

'Skyfall' star Daniel Craig (Getty Images)

We’re not ready to throw in the towel on the moviegoing just yet, but we’ll admit we’re ready for a break from the heavier fare. Today we’re dropping by the Museum of Modern Art for a Bond double-header, with screenings of Diamonds Are Forever (Sean Connery, kind of campy, Jill St. John as the girl, Shirley Bassey sang the song) and Live and Let Die (Roger Moore, crazy campy, Jane Seymour as the girl, Wings sang the song). In addition to being quite generous in what they’re defining as “modern art,” this is some sort of cross-promotion for the next in line, Skyfall (Daniel Craig, super-grave, Naomie Harris as the girl, Adele—reportedly!—singing the song).

Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd Street, tickets and information can be found at www.moma.org.

"Nobody Does It Better," Carly Simon, from The Spy Who Loved Me

A perfectly saccharine 1970s Marvin Hamlisch that has next to nothing to do with spying, but for a shoehorned-in reference to the movie's title in the first verse. It could have been awful--but why'd it have to be so good?

"Goldfinger," Shirley Bassey, from Goldfinger

The haughty pronounciation of "Gold-fing-ah" and the shrieking of "Gold" at the end make this the most manic, and best, of Ms. Bassey's singles.

"The World is Not Enough," Garbage, from The World is Not Enough

Both operatic and weirdly icy, as fit the high-baroque, technology-obsessed Pierce Brosnan era.

"A View to a Kill," Duran Duran, from A View to a Kill

The very opposite of Shirley Bassey's timeless diva-belting, this is about as 1980s as it gets. It also makes the most gleefully nonsensical use of the movie's title out of any of these songs: "All we see is a view to a kill" is a lyric wallowing in how little it's trying.

"Die Another Day," Madonna, from Die Another Day

Sorry, it's true (or at least arguable): this is the best or at least most crazily committed thing that Madonna has done this century, and it gets special dispensation for that alone (most artists' Bond tunes, Paul McCartney, are tossed-off).

DISHONORABLE MENTION:

"Another Way to Die," Jack White and Alicia Keys, from Quantum of Solace

Speaking of just tossing off a subpar single: you can practically hear Alicia Keys counting her money as she sings.

Adele (Getty Images)

Adele is following in the imposing footsteps of Shirley Bassey, Carly Simon, and Duran Duran--and the less impressive ones of Sheryl Crow and Chris Cornell--with her new theme song to the upcoming James Bond thriller Skyfall. Her song, according to Roger Friedman, is to be called "Let the Sky Fall" and feature the lyric “Let the sky fall/Let it crumble/We will stand tall/And face it all/together."

This is Adele's first new material since her mega-smash 21 album, which came out in January 2011 but which the singer is still promoting, with a current cover of Rolling Stone. It's also to be the first James Bond title song to be performed by a big-voiced chanteuse since 1995's Tina Turner "GoldenEye" (sorry, Madonna and Alicia Keys).

Jennifer Garner in 'Butter'

The Master

Paul Thomas Anderson

Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams

September 14

This long-deferred movie actually couldn’t have been better timed. An apparent allegory for the creation of Scientology, The Master comes along just as public interest in the (alleged!) money-grubbing cult is at an all-time high, post-Tom/Katie divorce. In this telling, Philip Seymour Hoffman is the L. Ron Hubbard-like figure who snares untold numbers of believers into his thrall. Plot details, per Paul Thomas Anderson’s standard, are hazy, but the trailer reveals simply that Mr. Anderson has kept up his keen attention to aesthetic compostion--and that Amy Adams, playing a devoted cult wife, may be this film’s MVP. Can we arrange for Katie Holmes to present her the Oscar?

Killing Them Softly

Andrew Dominik

Brad Pitt, James Gandolfini, Sam Rockwell

September 21

Andrew Dominik’s follow-up to the much-loved, little-seen Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford jumps forward in time--it’s a modern-day store of mobland America, based on a pulp crime novel. The movie was a hit at Cannes, and may be yet another feather in the cap of good-looking weirdo character actor Brad Pitt, who plays a hitman’s assistant, or “point man.” The whole thing promises to be a real boys’ club, with costars like Richard Jenkins, James Gandolfini, and Ray Liotta, who knows a thing or two (actually, just one thing) about mob movies.

Butter

Jim Field Smith

Yara Shahidi, Jennifer Garner, Ty Burrell

October 5

Little is really known about this long-delayed satirical film. How long-delayed was it, you ask? The early buzz was that Jennifer Garner’s character, a housewife and competitive butter-sculptor, was based on Presidential front-runner Michele Bachmann. Director Jim Field Smith hails from the U.K. but takes on heartland rituals in this look at the dairy-art circuit, whose protagonist is an adopted orphan daring to take on the longtime champions (Ms. Garner and Mr. Burrell). Somehow, Hugh Jackman, Olivia Wilde, and Alicia Silverstone fit into this puzzle--no word on what Ms. Silverstone, noted vegan, did around the enormous blocks of milk product.

Argo

Ben Affleck

Ben Affleck, Bryan Cranston, Alan Arkin

October 12

Ben Affleck, flamed-out Hollywood star, has had a successful second career as the director of Boston heist pictures, but his third directorial effort, Argo, finally takes him outside of the old neigborhood. Mr. Affleck stars as a CIA officer who comes up with a cunning plan to rescue escapees during the Iran hostage crisis--he fakes the production of a sci-fi movie (Iran makes a lovely moonscape, after all) and attempts to airlift out the Americans, pretending they’re crew members. Sounds fairly tidy, but we’re sure complications will ensue--and we haven’t even read the Wired article on which the whole thing’s based!

Cloud Atlas

Tom Twkyer, Andy Wachowski, Lana Wachowski

Tom Hanks, Hugo Weaving, Halle Berry

October 26

Everyone believed that the mammoth David Mitchell novel, encompassing millennia of human experience, was unfilmable. And maybe everyone was right! All we know right now is that the Wachowskis (of the Matrix films) and Tom Twkyer (of Run Lola Run) have turned all of their creative over-enthusiasm towards putting together the most rollicking movie ever to contain both a Martin Amis-style comedy of manners and a post-apocalyptic agrarian community on Hawaii. Somehow, major stars like Tom Hanks and Halle Berry fit into the equation. As you read this description, you’re already significantly behind; you’d better start reading Cloud Atlas this minute if you hope to have it finished and marginally comprehended by October!

Keira Knightley in 'Anna Karenina'

Skyfall

Sam Mendes

Daniel Craig, Judi Dench, Ralph Fiennes

November 9

The next, and long-delayed, installment in the James Bond story comes with a schmancy pedigree--director Sam Mendes has experienced diminishing returns since the 1990s, but he still, you know, has an Oscar. So too does Javier Bardem, who promises to be the most menacing villain since Dr. No. Un-bedecked by golden trophies are new Bond girls Naomie Harris and Bérénice Marlohe, but that’s hardly the point, is it? About the plot, little is known, but for the promise of spy-queen M’s past coming back to haunt her. All the better: it’s about time Judi Dench got to stretch her acting muscles in the Bond movies.

Anna Karenina

Joe Wright

Keira Knightley, Jude Law, Aaron Taylor-Johnson

November 9

Joe Wright just can’t resist the charms of Keira Knightley--and he’s hardly alone! Mr. Wright made it cool to think Ms. Knightley was a good actress by directing her in well-received roles in Pride & Prejudice and Atonement--without his attentions, she’s languished a bit. But Ms. Knightley is back doing what she does best (aristocratic hauteur, wearing elaborate garments, telling off gentlemen), and this time, she’s got a complement of men to choose from. Though all of us English majors know how it ends, let’s form factions rooting for Jude Law’s Karenin or Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s Vronsky--or, at least, let’s decide after the fact who had the most convincing Russian accent.

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn--Part 2

Bill Condon

Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner

November 16

The series that launched a million magazine covers has finally ended (though the saga of its stars’ offscreen love will surely inflate the bottom line at many a media company for years to come). It’s the final installment of the Twilight series--or “Saga,” as the producers would Germanically have it--and if you waited a week to see any of the fine independent films released last week, get in line early for popcorn. Every tween and teen and regressing thirtysomething within a five-mile radius cannot wait to see just how the Bella-Edward vampire-mortal union ends--even though the book came out years ago! No matter. Fandom, like vampirism, is eternal.

Life of Pi

Ang Lee

Irrfan Khan, Gérard Depardieu

November 21, 2012

Another unfilmable novel adapted to the screen? It must be fall! Ang Lee attempts something of a comeback with his adaptation of Yann Martel’s Booker Prize-winning novel, wherein a boy and a tiger are trapped on a raft floating in uncharted waters. Mr. Lee has a lot to prove, having released a couple of films consecutively that couldn’t quite match Brokeback Mountain in terms of popular acclaim. Perhaps the transfer to a wholly new environment, with the challenge both of a dense, allusive text and of a, you know, tiger, will move him to new heights! If not, it’ll at least be the season’s most compelling misfire.

Les Misérables

Tom Hooper

Russell Crowe, Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway

December 14

Anne Hathaway has subjected you to her songs through lo these many Oscar ceremonies--and now she finally has the opportunity to belt it out on film! The world’s most energetic entertainer shifts down a gear to play doomed prostitute Fantine in the adaptation of the world-rattling Broadway show; her costars include Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe playing, respectively, the unfairly convicted Valjean and the doggedly devoted Javert. Other cast members in director Tom Hooper’s first post-Oscar flick include Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter as the garrulous-to-a-fault Thénardiers, but it’s Ms. Hathaway who’s likely dreaming a dream... of Oscar!

Grace and Gere.

At a time when the new Russia is more about gangsters than politicians, along comes a benign thriller that is about as thrilling as last week’s borscht. A group of Russian spies sneak across the U.S. border posing as illegal Mexican immigrants. Soon after, a U.S. senator is murdered in an alley in Washington, D.C, played by Detroit. Richard Gere plays Paul Sheperdson, a retired C.I.A. operative who threw in the towel in 1989 after he brought down a coven of Soviet assassins code-named for the Romans who killed Julius Caesar, and especially the bloodiest and most dangerous killer of them all, a monster named Cassius. Now, after more than 20 years, the feds think Cassius has just arrived masquerading as one of the phony wetbacks and suspect him of assassinating the senator. None of this is ever explained, but Sheperdson’s old boss at the C.I.A. (Martin Sheen) implores him join forces with a rookie F.B.I. agent named Ben Geary (Topher Grace) to track down Cassius. Apparently, when the C.I.A. joins forces with the F.B.I., it’s like dumping a piranha in a water tank with a stingray. Sheperdson hates academics, but Geary, despite his youth (he wasn’t even around when Sheperdson watched the Berlin Wall fall), is an expert on Cassius, even writing his Ph.D. thesis at Harvard on him. It’s hate at first sight, but Sheperdson, who shot and killed Cassius himself in 1989, is intrigued enough to come out of retirement and prove them all wrong. The search begins and a lot of dull action ensues.

Keeping that Julius Caesar cast list going, another Russian assassin named Brutus is interviewed in a prison cell and he too is savagely murdered. This time it is Sheperdson who sends Geary home, fearing for the lives of his wife and two kids. Then we see Sheperdson slit the throat of Brutus, using Cassius’s famous trick of using an invisible wire from his wrist watch like an old James Bond toy. Aha! So maybe while we were waiting for the true identity of Cassius to be revealed, it was really secret agent Sheperdson all along. But there’s more. Was he a double agent? Now that the Russians sit beside us at the U.N., who is he spying for? Why do Sheperdson and Geary both lapse into Russian? Who is the real villain? No spoilers here. Illogical surprises are just beginning. Contrived plot twists, preposterous red herrings and music so loud it drowns out the dialogue all contribute to a film that might have seemed feasible in the first draft to director Michael Brandt, who also wrote the silly script with Derek Haas, but it got mangled in translation. You can’t even say that when all else fails, there is always the acting. Hopelessly miscast as an F.B.I. agent on a dangerous mission, Mr. Grace doesn’t look old enough to shave. And rarely has Mr. Gere walked through any movie with so little energy and so much indifference. I’ve seen more fervor on the face of a man parking a car. It will take double time to make up for The Double.

rreed@observer.com

THE DOUBLE

Running Time 98 minutes

Written by Michael Brandt and Derek Haas

Directed by Michael Brandt

Starring Odette Annable, Stephen Moyer and Richard Gere

1/4

Bardem has played the villain before, in No Country for Old Men, but that was a bit edgier than the stodgy Bond franchise. Between the potential Bond villainy, his rumored place (per IMDb) in the Stephen King adaptation The Dark Tower, and his role in Eat Pray Love, Bardem is carving out a niche for himself as the actor in big-budget movies that aren't offensively stupid (one's mileage on Eat Pray Love may vary). A Bond film directed by Sam Mendes is about as prestigious a paycheck role as one can get -- which can't be said of the role he passed up in Wall Street, which would have had him racing motorcycles with Shia LaBeouf. (He also turned down the lead in Nine -- wise man.) Perhaps Bardem can sneak some scripts for tentpole movies that don't seem awful to his wife, Penélope Cruz, last seen in Sex and the City 2. There's a difference between cashing in and selling out, you two -- we don't want to end up resenting the Spanish invasion!

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_

The Hobbit

Whether you love The Lord of the Rings trilogy or find it to be pompous nerd bait, one thing is undeniable: Those movies are successfully epic on a scale that few films have been in the last 20 years. It goes to reason that The Hobbit could follow suit, especially if Peter Jackson winds up directing, as rumored. Of course for that to happen, there would need to be a budget and money to pay said budget, but those are semantics! Here's guessing some other studio figures out at a way to make this movie—and its sequel—happen by 2015.

The Next James Bond

James Bond will return in Don't Hold Your Breath. The next Bond film was put on hold "indefinitely," meaning that established talent like Sam Mendes and Daniel Craig will probably have to move on. Upside: New Bond rumors!

The Three Stooges

If it feels like you've been hearing about the Farrelly Brothers attempt at The Three Stooges with Benicio del Toro and Sean Penn in lead roles for years, that's probably because you have. Alas, prepare to hear about it for a little bit longer. Still, if this fever dream project ever does happen, expect it to be awesome.

The Materese Circle

Back in February 2009, Tom Cruise had his pick of the studio litter ... and wound up choosing Knight & Day (then called Wichita). But The Materese Circle still feels like the best film out of that lot. At the time, Cruise, Denzel Washington and David Cronenberg were working on the project—a spy thriller from Robert Ludlum that would be oh-so-prescient because of the fact that one of the characters is a Russian spy. How 2010!

Cabin in the Woods

It's a horror movie in 3-D—so, demerits—but this one has Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford playing the leads who may be baddies, a bunch of fresh-faced youngsters in a cabin and dialogue courtesy of Joss Whedon. Man, poor Whedon—can't that guy ever catch a break?