Skyfall

Me and James Bond films in the past have always had a very sordid affair. They are movies that I have always wanted to love but for one reason or another they just keep pushing me away. The very first Bond film I ever saw was the incredibly silly "Die Another Day". A film that gave Moonraker a run for it's money in terms of how over the top cartoonish it was. I was ten and even then I felt like I was watching a cartoon instead of what I thought was supposed to be a more grown up spy adventure film. I liked it for a time but I have grown to hate it for it's horrible CGI, lame attempts at trying to make Bond cool, the god awful torture that is Madonna's theme song, the ludicrous plot and again the OTT cartoonish aspect of it all (I made a giant Ice palace, you know cause I could). After I saw it I felt this is what James Bond was and I never really got his appeal to most people, until I saw "Casino Royal". A very suave, very sophisticated movie that I had first expected out of  "Die Another Day". I loved it, I loved the look and feel of it, I loved the characters, I loved the story and I loved that this was basically Bond before he became James Bond. I loved it and the fact that it was pretty much guaranteed to have a sequel left me wanting more, and I got more, I got Quantum of Solace. While not a horrible movie, Quantum failed to live up to the hype left by Casino Royal in that it had lost almost all sense that this was a Bond film and had become a straight up Jason Borne movie. Quantum left me cold and after that I could care less about the next Bond movie coming out if this is what it was going to be. Little did I know that it would take Bond 5 years to make it back onto the big screen and after so long a time I was genuinely interested to see how James Bond would fair in his newest outing. I don't believe the hype for a new James Bond sequel has been this big since "Casino Royal" was released And the question on every one's mind is "Can it live up to the hype"? And I am very pleased to report that it not only lives up to that hype, but shoots past it to become one of the best Bond films ever made.

Wreck it Ralph

Video games and movies have had a notorious relationship. Usually the movie industry will use video game properties in the worst ways possible. Weather it be a blatant cash in piece of crap (Hitman, In the Name of the King) or an "In name only" movie that has very little to do with the original source material ( Resident Evil, Alone in the Dark). The common idea that most if not all video game movies suck is certainly not unjustified however there have been a few bright spots along the way though the company that seems to want to actually try and make good video game movies is the Disney company. Their first attempt was the admirable but very flawed "Prince of Persia" movie, an Indiana Jones movie with a Romancing the Stone complex. While not very good it did show that Disney is certainly willing to put effort and talent behind it's video game productions (I mean for fucks sake it had Mike Newell directing with Jake Gyllenhaal starring). And now we have Wreck it Ralph, a movie that has been claimed to be the Toy Story of video games. While Wreck it Ralph is certainly not as good as any of the Toy Story movies, it is certainly an enjoyable film for both kids and adults.