Catching up with Bond, Shaun, and Ava

If distributors are going to playing coy all November long with their hottest Oscar prospects, I'm going to play catch-up during the lull.

Back in the Spring, Alex Garland's dulcet sci-fi Ex Machina was making the rounds on the arthouse circuit, earning strong notices for its heady ruminations on consciousness and artificial intelligence, and especially for Alicia Vikander's enigmatic robotic performance.

It's a thoughtful, chilling, lingering chamber piece -- and what perfectly designed, minimalist chambers they are too -- that takes a refreshingly intimate approach to subject matter that would tempt most filmmakers to go big. We already knew Garland had a penchant for subtle speculative fiction based on his adapted screenplay of Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go from 2010, and his authorial voice remains intact in this directorial debut.

Review - Skyfall

It's iterated often in Skyfall that the old fashioned ways are sometimes the best. It's a persistent theme that permeates both the literal narrative and the conceptual approach to the 23rd entry in the storied James Bond franchise. While the story debates the virtue of antiquity in a modern world, the film adheres to Bond tradition as seen through a filter of contemporary dramatic substance for present-day audiences to appreciate. The Bond is old-school (rustically so at times), but the treatment he gets is fresh.

With the theatrically-minded Sam Mendes at the helm, Skyfall indulges us in a sense of detail to character that is uncommon to Bond films. None of the previous 22 have dared plumb the depths of 007's traumatic past and haunted present that this one attempts to – with some success, as well. Nor have any of them explored the practically maternal relationship between Bond (Daniel Craig's third outing) and his MI6 shot-caller M (reprised once again here by Judi Dench). Skyfall puts their connection front and centre as one of the main driving forces of the plot.