Zero Dark Thirty* (2013) 9.5, 10, 9, 28.5

          Sometimes films dictate the order in which I approach the questions I choose to put to myself. The controversy that has engulfed this film, that is to say my willing awareness thereof, forced me to consider this movie first and foremost in terms of its moral content. I'd like to make a couple of simple points prior to my assessment. This film has been accused of being pro-torture. As per numerous statements of the director and writer, this may not have been intended to support torture, but this film makes a clear argument for torture and not an unconvincing one. I will willingly admit that I was forced to confront the possibility that without torture, which I desperately want to call "enhanced interrogation techniques" because it simply feels better, without torture groups like Al-Qaeda cannot be defeated. This would not make torture right, but it would complicate the issue significantly. I would argue, even though I wasn't convinced by the argument, that this film does us all the fine service of confronting us with a version of events that makes us confront the dichotomy between freedom and security, that makes us question the easy answers we live behind while other people do work that we might not be comfortable with that nonetheless keeps us safe. That may be my favorite part about this one as far as wisdom goes. There is no simple answer. It is a film that sparks questions that countries like the US, that is, countries with a great deal of power and thus responsibility, must ask themselves, questions that are often left unanswered in the minds of people protected from these hard facts. For this reason and not because I totally agree with the movie's point of view, I gave it a 10 for wisdom.
          I would like to make a simple argument that this film is making an argument for the detention program. It's story argumentation 101. They introduce two major characters who have differing opinions about how to counter Al-Qaeda. One says that we can use money and incentives to lure terrorists into giving up their superiors, tactics that worked well in the Cold War. The other insists that because Al-Qaeda is made up primarily of true believers that getting the information needed to capture the leaders of Al-Qaeda will require interrogation and, though not stated explicitly, perhaps torture. The film later shows the former's theory violently squashed and the latter's theory violently vindicated. Maybe this is simply the story that they were given, but the story reads like a pro-torture fairy-tale, in which the Big Bad Wolf is thwarted by torturing his second cousin.
          Beyond this, I'd like to step to the question of wit. In general, this film is well written. There are a number of one-liners that made me laugh and the scenes of intense emotion make you either want to cry or shout. This should, of course be attributed to actors as well. But one more thing about the writing. Pacing a story that takes ten years to unfold cannot be easy. From the beginning, with the haunting, but utterly discreet reminder of 9/11, to the end with the end well-placed addendum, this film managed to keep me interested despite the large amounts of real-world time between the interesting events. This is truly good work.
          As far as acting goes, Jessica Chastain holds your attention even when she's in the background of a scene. I genuinely watched for her reaction to almost everything that happened around her. Hers is not the only good performance. Jason Clarke is the closest anyone comes to stealing Jessica's spotlight. His work in the torture scenes is impeccable and his line about the CIA taking his monkeys is the perfect mix of hilarious and gut-wrenching. James Gandolfini gives a good performance, the sort of beautiful over-the-top to set off Jessica's subtlety. One of the most amazing performances of the year is Reda Kateb, the subject of the torture. He blew me away and I knew I knew him, so I checked. He features prominently in one of the best French films I've ever seen, Un Prophète.
          Overall, I give this movie a solid 9.5, really just barely not a 10. I just lacks that edge.
          As far as wonder goes, the film has a strong core of action and music, but nothing that stands out. The director did not astound me in The Hurt Locker and I'm less than impressed by the overall skill here. I praised the script and I cannot know what exactly was script and what direction, what the actor's skill or director's suggestion, but no one does more than I thought they could do. The story works, but I don't get the sense that this working is because of that one thing falling into place. That is to say that I don't have any big complaints. Overall, I give it a 9. What's missing is that thing that would make it a real contender for Best Picture. That is what I don't see. I've only seen four of the nominees and I already feel confident that Zero Dark Thirty shouldn't win.
          Forgive the last paragraph. I might have made it sound all too dire, but the film astounding. When I came home after watching it, I could only tell my dad that it was "heavy." If you're in the mood to have your morals questioned and "your worldview rocked," to quote my alter-ego, the Ice King, then find time to see this film.
          P.S. I have already watched Les Misérables and Argo since this one and I expect to have reviews soon. Thanks for reading, faithful friends.

Silver Linings Playbook* (2012) 9.5, 9, 9.5, 28

          I got to see this film with one of my oldest friends without really knowing at all what it was about. I was fortunate. This one is a beautiful little tale about a struggling individual overcoming adversity, but not in the normal, humdrum, Hollywood manner. I carves a new path for himself and Bradley Cooper really knocks this one out of the park. Let's begin.

          For wit, I gave this one a 9.5. There are very few points of complaint here. The writing is ingenious in the way that the dialogue is funny and heartfelt, never pulling punches and the plotting is bravely offbeat never heading quite where you expected it to go and not being ashamed of a happy ending. I hope saying that the ending is happy doesn't give too much away, but there you go. There are some anti-climactic and improbable moments, but they still manage to feel organic to me. I leave room for others to disagree as even I felt my leg being pulled a couple times, but that was only .5 off in my view. Thus the 9.5.

          The acting should  also get some high praise. Both Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence blew me away with their portrayals of people who have endured significant trauma and come out the other end, some times more and some times less intact. Bradley Cooper is rather mesmerizing in his outbursts. He makes me watch him fall apart. Jennifer Lawrence delivers some of the best lines of the film like a pro.

          It's hard to compliment De Niro without insulting him by underselling him. The best thing I can say is that he doesn't take over the scene unless it's appropriate. When his time comes, he captures you and even out of focus he steals the scene, but when it's not time, he plays the background part as well as anyone. This same compliment applies to Chris Tucker. He can be a loudmouth and can takeover things when you don't want him to. In this film, he takes his one scene and steals it, but the rest of the time he plays his part without getting on your nerves.

          The wisdom was a little more disappointing. My views on mental health are probably far from orthodox or even very coherent, but I worry a little bit about the conclusions the film makes on the main character taking his medicine. I may be a little biased on this. The affirmation of the father's obviously ridiculous gambling habits seemed hard to take as well. This I feel more confident about. It is more than enough to keep this from being higher than a 9.

          The 9.5 that I gave this for wonder is utterly well deserved. The cinematography is bold. The decision to allow Robert De Niro to talk to Bradley Cooper while out of focus and various other odd places for the camera, done well for effect, really endeared this movie to me. Music as well was well picked and really worked well in the film.

          I would suggest this to anyone who can take some swearing and some very serious situations. Its hilarious and thoughtful as well as heart-warming. Watch this with someone you care about. The last point I'd like to make is that this is the first post I've made since the page went over 1000 views. Thanks to everyone who reads this. If you care about me or just enjoy it, feel free to argue with me and comments galore.

          

Ruby Sparks* (2012) 9.5, 10, 9, 28.5

          Often since beginning this blog, I have found myself writing out of a sense of obligation. This isn't awful, because I know that without obligation, I would only take in and never produce. But, I'm on a plane from Paris to Chicago, so I figured I'd write my review for Ruby Sparks now. I watched this film under the worst possible circumstances. The screen can't be more than 5"x4" and the whole time I was could hear, slightly louder than the film I was watching, Finding Nemo in German. But despite these inhibiting factors, I really loved this movie.
          I normally insist on having my list of movies open so I can compare with previous films I've seen. But I can't do that now. Because I'm on a plane. So here are the reasons I liked this movie.
          First, Paul Dano. I wanted to give Zoe Kazan first pick, because she wrote it and knocked it out of the park as the co-star as well, but Paul Dano is a revelation. I think that word normally works when you didn't already know that something was good, but every time I see him in a movie, he truly opens my eyes. I gushed on him after Looper too. He was in that for ten minutes. He executed perfectly. He lived on that edge where you, or I anyway, get so nervous for that character who is deliriously happy but you know he's going to chuck it away. He managed to sell abject misery and delirious happiness with the same clarity and truth. He truly wiped the floor with me emotionally. And all I can do is thank him.
          Let's not forget Zoe though. The movie is fantastically written to the romantic comedy genre specifications, but it goes way darker and plumbs the absolute depths, before bringing you back. In this way, I would compare it to (500) Days of Summer. There were so many points in which I forgot that Paul's character was not Paul writing, but also those moments that worked so brilliantly, as one-liners or whatever, that you want to kiss the writer...I literally cannot stop myself as I write, "yes, she's also quite pretty too."
          Beyond her writing, she played a silly part without being campy. She makes the fantasy/sci-fi concept believable. Steve Coogan and Chris Messina are quite good too. They play their little parts quite well without being too much.
          As far as wisdom goes, I think the film doesn't make a particularly new point. It's really easy to take for granted those we love. It's really easy to be selfish, even when we are in love, which ought to be the least selfish time of our lives. This message is simply given new life in this odd story. I think this is the best mode of science-fiction or fantasy. It uses a fantastical concept to show us the same truths that we ought to know by now.
          For wonder, the film is so straightforward that I gave it a 9. I am starting tot think that something may be wrong with my rating system that a simple film can't go above a 9. I'm not sure. One caveat. I could barely hear, so music appreciation was out of the question. A better viewing could easily elicit a 9.5. I would guess it would as the directors we the same ones from Little Miss Sunshine. And the music in that, oy veh. For those who don't know me, that sound has become so integral to my language that I say it completely without thinking.
          I hope anyone who sees this film after reading this loves it. I did. I was so happily surprised, and I was super-psyched for this one. When I watch a trailer that gets me really excited, I put it on my list with a plus sign or a cross next to it(+). I often refer to this, in the lengthy conversations that I have with myself, as crossing a movie. I crossed this and I was still pleasantly surprised. I don't know how many times that's happened. Maybe never. I'm usually just affirmed. I expected good things and I was right. In this case, I expected good things and I was given a great film.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey* (2012) 7.5, 8.5, 9.5, 25.5

          I come to this review with a heavy heart. I know many of my dear friends in the U. S. will still be impatiently awaiting the first of a trilogy of movies based upon The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien. The first thing I can say is that I was extremely disappointed. I don't want to get too into generalities, so I'll get specific from the start.
          I gave this film a 7.5 for wit. It fell so under films like JFK and The Kite Runner that I could not conscionably give it an 8. I compared it to The Ides of March, which was also a huge disappointment. The writing was the biggest flaw. Incident suffered most. Dialogue actually worked almost all the time. Moments that are extremely flawed. The opening gets really technical and tells a lot more back story than necessary about the dwarves and the circumstances they come from. It explains the loss of the Lonely Mountain in excruciating detail. All before the introduction to Bilbo and the main heft and weight of his story. Then we go to the world immediately previous to LOTR. We get cameos from Elijah Wood and Ian Holm, as if to say "Remember how much you all liked our last movie?" This again takes too much time. I continually wished we would just arrive at Martin Freeman and the story that we really want to hear.
          To be fair, the scene with the entrance of the dwarves to Bag End was hilarious and they genuinely made me feel at home. I was totally satisfied until they really got going on their journey. They encounter a number of very general threats and the beauty of Bilbo's intelligence getting them out of scraps is missed. For those who know the story, I thought the troll sequence was mishandled, which is unfortunate, as that is my favorite sequence in the early part of the book.
          The relationship between Bilbo and Thorin Oakenshield has an all too neat and tidy conflict-escalation-resolution structure that seems forced. The decision to show the Lonely  Mountain at the end also seems overly convenient, as they haven't even entered Mirkwood yet. In many ways it seemed like they were trying to fill space since they decided to do a trilogy. I really hoped that maybe Peter Jackson had found enough genuine material to make three films and now I'm nearly sure he hasn't.
          A lot is lost, but some highlights in terms of acting deserve praise. Martin Freeman gets the beauty of Bilbo's reluctance, that it is simply the modern man's reaction to adventure. He has pleasure and security. Why should he risk his own life for this adventure? He doesn't see the emptiness of his life in the same way that so many materialists now do not see how much more meaning life ought to have. But he has compassion for the dwarves.
          Besides this, all the old cast slip back into familiar and comforting roles. Sir Ian brings Gandalf the Grey back to life in a way I thought would be hard after seeing Gandalf the White. Christopher Lee, Hugo Weaving, and Cate Blanchett bring back Saruman, Elrond, and Galadriel with ease and never betray any sign of weariness in playing these characters, which is inspiring. Andy Serkis again inhabited Gollum so convincingly that I forgot there was an actor again. I also thought most of the dwarves played their parts to perfection, but I did feel as if Richard Armitage as Thorin Oakenshield felt weird, even awkward.
          A special note should be given to Sylvester McCoy's shining performance as Radagast the Brown. This was truly inspired and made the middle of the movie more bearable for me.
          For wisdom, I gave the film an 8.5. Many parts of it did well in this category, better certainly than in wit, but the aforementioned loss of some of the spectacular nature of Bilbo's wit bothered me in the construction of the themes. Beyond this, I can only think to complain about the loss of the joy and lightheartedness of the book. The Hobbit won so much acclaim as itself, a children's book. It wasn't about all the dark pieces of the mythology like LOTR. It uses the depth of that world, but doesn't feel the need to constantly invoke it. It leaves it as background so it can tell an adventure story. This gives too much focus to the background and we lose the childish sense of adventure that is the lesson that Bilbo's story has to teach us.
          I have very little to complain about in terms of wonder. The film is beautiful from beginning to end. WETA blows me away with how intelligently and painstakingly they conceive and bring forth a world of such depth visually. There are a couple complaints, without which I would probably have given this a 10. First, the dwarves are rarely given in a context that reminds you they are short and stocky. When Thorin fights the great goblin, he looks like a full-grown man. Enforcing the size of the dwarves does not seem to have been done as painstakingly here as it was with Gimli in LOTR. Second, I think again the darkness comes across visually and they don't contrast it with LOTR, as I think they should have.
          I can't say to anyone that they shouldn't go see it immediately, because I know that no human being on earth could have told me that before I saw it that I would have listened to. I only forewarn that some might not get their hopes up. Good luck.

Looper* (2012) 9.5, 10, 9.5, 29

So I went last night on a whim and finally saw Looper. I was absolutely not disappointed. This film is this year’s Inception. I do not say this lightly. Not every year has an Inception. Only occasionally do we see a science-fiction film of this depth, both in terms of its understanding of its own fictional science and in its moral delving. I would compare it also to Primer. I love this kind of film.
        I could simply gush for another paragraph, but I'll get down to brass tacks. Wit is a 9.5, but a low 9.5. Malcolm X is a 9.5 and this is not Malcolm X, but that's really more like 9.72. Looper is closer to 9.26, but both even out. I feel better comparing it with Last King of Scotland or Lat den Ratte Komma In. It is better written than the former and better acted than the latter.
        As far as the writing goes, I really appreciate the way that it deconstructs the idea of scientific progress making us better. It takes apart the main premise of the X-Men comics, that evolution and mutation will give us discernible and exciting new powers in large numbers. Its moral delving intelligently analyzes the morality of fixing things through violence. If you can fix your life simply by killing the bad guy, should you? I don't want to give anything away, but the questions this film asks and the potential answers it gives are mind-blowing and new-world-opening.
        Now to the acting. Joseph Gordon-Levitt really doesn't grab you, but he eeks into you and makes you really care. His character is perhaps most interesting because both he and Bruce Willis play him. They both give you a strong sense of his emotional dependence and his repeated failed attempts at independence. This may be one of the most impressive aspects of it. These two actors seemed so in sync in terms of their choices about the character, but you can see them diverge and Joseph become something different. These two performances can hardly be separated, but I do feel like Joseph does a better job. Bruce fails to draw you in in quite the same way. He fails to make it seem real in the same way that Joseph does.
         Paul Dano, despite only being in the movie in the very beginning, really made me scared and grabbed me in a way no one else did. It makes me want to watch There Will Be Blood again. He genuinely reaches moments of emotion equal to the end of that film in fifteen minutes of Looper. He really makes you afraid of the life that he has gotten into, which helps when Joseph's character gets into it later.
        I take back what I said. If Paul Dano excites me and pulls me in, Pierce Gagnon absolutely tore my mind open. I will not ruin this, as the fact that this part of the story is not in the trailer made it all the more impressive and wonderful and fun. Just watch out for the young boy in this film. It is genuinely the most impressive child performance that I have ever seen.
        For wisdom, I gave this a 10. I really believe that he gets to the heart of the obsession with violence that I know I have. He really opens up the question of whether violence solves things, anything. He doesn't however answer it simply. He shows us a method of solving problems that involves self-sacrifice instead of the sacrifice of others. This seemed a very Christian idea to me. That is, I guess, the best compliment I can give.
        Wonder is also a 9.5. I placed it along with Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and Primer. I think it failed to make it to a 10 because its music didn't stand out, but the action and the setting are flawless, especially in the parts that are more sci-fi oriented. They do them with ease. I really appreciate the simplicity of the way that they represent the most complicated concepts.
        If you haven't seen this, I would definitely suggest it to anyone interested in the sci-fi aspects and also to anyone interested in the moral questions involved. Also, if you just like Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Emily Blunt, Paul Dano, or Bruce Willis, this film will not disappoint.

Last Night** (2010) 8.5, 7.5, 9, 25

So I had high hopes for this movie and most of them were dashed. I'm going to deal with wit ad wisdom together on this one, as they are so deeply entwined. At the start of the movie, I saw some beautiful little bits of dialogue. Keira Knightley really knocked this one out of the park. From beginning to end, I found her performance compelling. I wish I could say the same for old Sam Worthington. He convinced me, in part, at the very beginning. Frustration and sweet sincerity flow from him naturally, but the more complicated parts seemed to baffle him. This may be due to the poor writing of his character. But he is struck nearly dumb and his dialogues with Eva Mendes feel stilted and painful. Eva, of course, is splendid. She clearly envelops her time onscreen.
I will admit that all of my comments, positive and negative, could be chalked up the writing. The writer makes Sam stilted and awkward. Nearly no attempt is made to justify, even psychologically, how his character moves from the moral high-ground, allowing me to believe that he is innocent, even occasionally showing himself so as he speaks to Eva, to the senseless betrayal that he enacts in the second half of the movie. I can hear various critics, good friends of mine, calling me naïve. Why can't he be good and then break? He talks a good talk with his wife and then cheats. It's believable. It happens. But he convinces me of where he stands before he cheats and then is unconvincing afterward. He obviously believed he loved his wife when he was talking to her, but he turns so quickly and crosses the line with such ease. He confesses prior mental infidelity that seems out of league with his earlier moment.
Keira's part seems less stilted. She goes through an emotional turmoil and still doesn't move ahead without thought or sense. She betrays him, but she persists in loving him. The whole half of the movie with Keira is more believable.
But the ending is all. I believe that we genuinely have come to accept to lightly what once worked because it was avant-garde. A Serious Man chooses to have no ending because we know the ending and it doesn't need one. A large number of modern films simply cut the ending off in an attempt to be “edgy.” I believe that Last Night is a victim of this. If this film needed one thing to become a great film, it is an ending. The movie ends mid-sentence. No attempt is made to explore the aftermath of their infidelities. It simply stops before they can get going. At the last second, Keira gives a shrug as if to indicate, “Who really cares what happens next?” I am not satisfied, on artistic as well as moral grounds.
  The moral grounds are based upon the fact that it reads like a dismissal of the importance of infidelity and, as To Rome with Love also insinuates, it imagines that infidelity can come into a relationship with no discernible side-effects. I've never seen it happen. I do not believe it is possible. The truth always seems to out. Furthermore, the film appears to make a moral judgment that the infidelity and the consequences and unimportant. This could hardly be more false.
  As noted above of course, I gave the film a 8.5 for wit and a 7.5 for wisdom. This is a low 8.5 for wit, closer to King of California than Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.  I don't give a lot of 7.5's for wisdom, but for perspective, I gave Match Point, which depicts a man murdering over infidelity being let off the hook and living happily-ever-after, a 7. So this is only slightly above that.
For wonder, I gave the film a 9. It should not be understated how well the beginning and middle of the film feel. Little mini-cuts within scenes of dialogue emphasize the sense that what we see, we've seen before. That there is nothing to linger on about with infidelity. I really love those bits when Keira is discussing her plans with her ex-lover and you can see that a short cut was made and you see that not everything is being shown. It creates a nice little effect that keys you in and keeps your mind in the right place, but the ending makes me wonder if the director had any better sense than that it looked nice. It's unfortunate.
Overall, it is a low five star film. I generally consider all five stars worth a re-watch, which was required just to write this review, but I wouldn't encourage you to go out and get this now.

Skyfall* (2012) 9.5, 9.5, 9, 28

      So I saw Skyfall the day after it came out here in France, that is, Saturday. For my American audience, it is as if I got a special reviewer's preview. That is, as Riley Griffith's character in Super 8 said, "production value." So I have to take advantage.

      This film follows the trend in the last two Bond films, those starring Daniel Craig, of upping the ante as far as intelligence and substance goes in Bond. My mother loves Sean Connery and Pierce Brosnan and I cannot deny their skill. It is not because Daniel Craig is a better actor, though he definitely is better than Pierce and maybe better than Sean, but it is based on someone who is obviously hiding. The two writers that all three share in common also wrote Die Another Day and that is, in my humble and, in this case, extremely accurate opinion, the lowest Bond has ever gone. Who is behind this? I cannot put my finger on it, but someone is keeping these men honest. 

      All this said about this Daniel Craig era of Bond, this movie really does do something more. Casino Royale blew my mind as it created a version of Bond that was two things I wanted. One is accurately violent, which in my mind is a great relief after decades of clean kills, polluting the essence of violence; the blood and guts hidden, violence became stylized, even pretty. (I should credit my brother, Steve, with that idea. I believe he said something similar to me when we went to see Die Another Day in theaters many moons ago.) The second was that it made Bond openly broken. If he was a sexual deviant, it was because he trusted no one and was a bit of a misogynist. This blew open Bond for me, intellectually.

      Quantum of Solace did what I didn't believe possible. It allowed a Bond girl to escape Bond's dirty clutches and go unsexed. Think about it. James Bond didn't have sex with a Bond girl. It also cleared the way with the Vesper story, which need resolving.

      Skyfall's brilliance is that it asks extremely large questions about Bond and the nature of action films. I attribute this, in part, to the direction of Sam Mendes. Sam and I have been at odds since his first film, American Beauty. To this day it is the only film that I have heard good things about, set down determined to watch, and simply pulled it out before it was finished and never came back. We've grown closer in mind, but it wasn't until Away We Go, still number 3 all time, that I began to like him, even trust him.

      All of that may be interesting, but now I'd like to get down to it. For wit, I went with a 9.5. This is up .5 from Quantum of Solace, though I should guess that was on the low end of 9, while Skyfall is definitely on the high end of 9.5. I cannot give it a 10 as it doesn't feel unquestionable. Occasionally the jokes go a bit low, reminding one that these writers wrote Die Another Day, but overall it is written beautifully. As before, it does things that are shocking, unheard of in the old Bond, or most other movies that aim for this Hollywood action film crowd. People die when you don't expect it, almost as it might happen if one were a real spy. 

     An absolutely brilliant performance by Javier Bardem. He again steps outside himself and finds another type of character. One might be tempted to compare this with his other famous psychopath from No Country for Old Men, but though he is clearly criminally insane, this character has more in common with Javier's character from Vicky Cristina Barcelona than with the silent, cold-blooded type in the aforementioned Cohen Brothers film. Daniel Craig keeps up the same level from the other two, with the intensity and the emotional intelligence intact. Dame Judi Dench, Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris, and Albert Finney are quite good as well.

      If I could return to what this film does in particular, it asks the question about why we still need spies like Bond and therein confronts its own raison d'être. Why do we need stories about men who chase down bad guys? Aren't we beyond good and evil? Aren't we beyond such apparent categorization of good guys and bad guys? M confronts this question during an inquest into her work as head of her department. She answers that things are not simpler, but more complicated. We don't live in a world without shadows or secrets. Everything is now done in the shadows and secrets are everywhere. I like her answer to that question, but I think I like the film's answer to the questions about itself even more. The film argues that though many people who would once have been seen simply as "baddies" might be something more substantial, there are still very clear, very real and dangerous threats in the world today. These unquestionable evils are not less dangerous than the giant Soviet Union. They may be much more dangerous. I'm not sure that is very well said, but the movie, I think, says it better.

      I think that covers why it gets a 9.5 for wisdom. I gave it a 9 for wonder. I thought about a 9.5, but found that I gave Snatch a 9 for wonder. That makes me think that I have been over-estimating wonder for a while. Who knows? Overall, this movie does a great job with car chases, explosions, helicopters, etc., but it doesn't rely throughout on fancy, newfangled equipment, but allows itself to give two sides, high technology and low. Even the low technology half of the film has a good deal of shooting and a helicopter fight scene. (I don't think I'm ruining anything to mention that James Bond beats the helicopter.) The music adds little but a sense of nostalgia.

This film, in my mind, is a definite step up from Quantum of Solace and progress in a series is the highest compliment I can give. If you haven't, as I'm sure you poor, backward Americans haven't, see Skyfall.