Skyfall and Moonrise Kingdom

No other Bond but this one (Daniel Craig's) could have traced his path forward into the world from an ancestral home like Skyfall. It was a bit of a stretch even for him, but no other Bond was dark enough to pull off such a grim origin, and frankly none of them left enough of the character on the screen to warrant that close of a look. The past three Bond movies have a continuity that the others lacked, and prompt a different level of investment (if one is a fan, as I am). In this movie - the wall between M and Bond is utterly demolished. There could be no going back from it, hence M's demise. Daniel Craig appears gaunt and a little haggard - did he lose weight for the movie,or just sleep? Or, was that look deliberately cultivated with makeup? I couldn't tell, and I found that more unsettling than Javier Bardem's scene-stealing Vader move - taking apart his own face as he confronts Judy Dench's M with the devastating effects of a not-quite-fatal cyanide pill. In case anyone is still wondering, M stands for Mother - or it should.

Moonrise Kingdom was an unusual little movie set on the fictional island of New Penzance ( actually, Rhode Island) - Gilligan's Island meets The Wonder Years meets Hogan's Heroes... or maybe something a little darker, like MASH.
Two misfit twelve year olds find each other (and love) and try to blow a bubble around themselves.He's a bespectacled 'coonskin capped cub scout, she's a reading runaway with a hair trigger temper.This was a comedy, and I bought it all the way up to the moment that the girl knifed one of the other cub scouts. Yes, he was a bully, but he was a kid and this was a comedy, dammit!. The wound wasn't serious, and neither was anything that followed.There was a storm, a Harold Lloyd-like run in with a clock tower, lightning, a flood, and perfectly respectable actors like Frances Mc Dormand, Ed Norton and Tilda Swinton ( et tu, Tilda? ) caught in the matrix of this movie with Bill Murray and Bruce Willis. I loved the 'New England nautical' look of the movie, and the soundtrack - but not much else.