Vanessa Paradis and Hélène Florent are luminous as women trapped in the rapture of love
Review
Skyfall: Bond and Bardem Go Boom
For its golden anniversary, the old franchise gets spiffy and serious
A Royal Affair: The Enlightenment Brings Sexy Back
Denmark’s contender for best foreign film is a sumptuous delight about a crazy king, a passionate queen and a doctor who makes house calls
Lincoln: Spielberg’s Urgent Civics Lesson
Daniel Day-Lewis gives a towering performance as a President who could charm and cajole to pass crucial legislation
A Late Quartet: Harmonic Divergence Starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Christopher Walken and Catherine Keener
Things get ugly when one member (Walken) of a renowned string quartet gets sick and another (Hoffman) gets tired of playing second fiddle
Denzel Washington in Flight: A High Time or a Crash Landing?
Come for the great imperiled-plane scene, stay for a taut, surprising drama from director Robert Zemeckis
Wreck-It Ralph: Toy Story with Avatars
In the most inventive family movie of the year, a bad guy longs to be good even though Pac-Man’s Pokey tells him it’s good to be bad
Chasing Mavericks: Looking For That Big Break
A convincing Gerard Butler and fresh-faced Jonny Weston team up for the story of how young surfer Jay Moriarity tackled the big waves at Mavericks for the first time
Cloud Atlas: The Wachowskis Struggle in the Stratosphere
Andy and Lana team with Tom Tykwer on a wildly ambitious, oddly earthbound adaptation of the David Mitchell novel
Brooklyn Castle: The Cool Kids Play Chess
The teenaged members of the chess team at New York City’s Intermediate 318 are the Yankees of chess. They’ve won 26 national chess titles—more than any other school in the country, which is an especially impressive feat
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Holy Motors: Leos Carax Flirts with a Cinematic Masterpiece
This vaudeville of film history is the year’s moviest movie
Alex Cross: Freed from Madea, Tyler Perry Is Still No Morgan Freeman
The gravitas Freeman brought to James Patterson’s sadistically inclined crime stories more than a decade ago is sorely missed in director Rob Cohen’s attempt to reboot the series
Bad 25: Spike Lee Brings Michael Jackson Back to Thrilling Life
On the album’s silver anniversary, Lee documents the blood, sweat and art that went into this platinum touchstone from the King of Pop
