Skyfall

It has been a while. 4 years since feeble Quantum of Solace, 6 years since solid Casino Royal, and finally, Bond is back on the screens, just in time to celebrate 50 years of Bond franchise. And it delivers, despite it not being, strictly speaking, a Bond movie. It is actually totally different from what has been done with Bond before.

Now, meet the biggest innovation in Skyfall: Bond movie finally has an atmosphere. Even though the film still is not even remotely as atmospheric as, say, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, it is a giant leap for a franchise that has been infamous for the lack of real, believable characters and presence of cardboard environment. At last, you can see human beings in Bond movie, vulnerable, intimidated, desperate to survive, and this makes wonders: it actually forces you to follow the plot, rather than watching from fight to fight. It is possible to empathise to not-so-perfect Bond on his losing streak, as opposed to some flawless guy in tuxedo.

Looper

Time travel has been invented, but it is so expensive that only criminals can use it. So the new trade has appeared: in 2072, when the mob wants to get rid of someone, the target is sent 30 years into the past, where a hired gun awaits. Someone like Joe, who one day learns the mob wants to 'close the loop' by transporting back Joe's future self.

There are two easy ways to tell whether the movie is good or not. Firstly, you should ask how many times during the showing you have been distracted from the storyline and the action. Good movie, quite obviously, will easily manage to grasp your attention from the start to the very end. Secondly, after watching a good movie one always realises how crappy the other movies recently watched were. That happened, for example, after watching the Artist: how awesome that movie was compared to all the other staff that went off the press previous winter?