The Eyes of March (2014)

I was traveling when it came time for the sixth edition of the "Eyes of March."

Fair enough. But I didn't expect it would take me another month to finally get these images posted.

And I didn't expect that when I would sit down to do it that I would realize that, gosh, I hadn't set aside as many eye shots as I'd remembered.

Oh, well.

For the past few years, I've struggled to make time to write about movies. This year, I'm struggling to make time to watch them in the first place.

This isn't all bad. I'm back to running again after numerous injuries. I've taken up some new hobbies. And I'm succeeding at a goal I set for myself last year: to spend less time sitting down outside of the day job.

Things change. There are tradeoffs. But I still love eye shots. So, abbreviated and delayed as this edition is, I'm still happy to celebrate the "Eyes of March."

As in past years (see also: 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013) feel free to make guesses in the comments, which I'll approve as quickly as I can.

Genuine heartfelt thanks to those of you who still swing by The Cooler when the light is on.

Enjoy! (Numbers correspond to the image below them)

Shadows and Light: 25th Hour

At the start of 25th Hour, near the site where today the near-complete Freedom Tower stretches 1,776 feet into the sky, spotlights beam in memoriam for the World Trade Center towers that stood there before, dominating the downtown portion of Manhattan's skyline for 30 years. 25th Hour was released in January 2003, just 16 months after the towers fell, and it was the first movie to stare 9/11 directly in the eye. (Movies like United 93 and World Trade Center were still years away.) Working from a novel published before the attacks, Spike Lee didn't have to "go there" to stay faithful to David Benioff's original text but he seemed autobiographically compelled, as if the famously proud New Yorker who had tapped into the spirit of the city in previous films was incapable of shooting a movie in this new New York without confronting how it had changed.

Perhaps Lee also took into account that his early-2003 audience was equally incapable of looking at New York without thinking about what was missing. Thus, he traded background whispers for foreground shouts. As the opening titles appear, Lee offers a montage of the searchlights shining heavenward in tribute from a city still in mourning. Coupled with Terence Blanchard's midnight-blue score, it made for a powerful image, and also a distracting one. Those spotlights might as well have been pointed directly into the camera. With 9/11 still dominating our worldview, Lee's 9/11 references dominated the view of 25th Hour. At least from where I was standing.

Reasons 'Why': The Price of Gold

Before she became a villain in one of sports' weirdest scandals, Tonya Harding was figure skating's ugly duckling. Raised in Oregon by a physically and emotionally abusive mother, she was a skater who came from modest means and looked like it. Acted like it, too. Competing in a sport that celebrates elegance and finesse, Harding was rough and tumble. In The Price of Gold, the latest in ESPN Films' "30 for 30" series, Harding is described as coming from the "gutter." She's compared to an "alley cat" and called a "trailer trash ignoramus." Eventually, even Harding gets in on it, noting that the media portrayed her as a "piece of crap" juxtaposed against skating's "princess," Nancy Kerrigan. If life were a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, Harding would have gone to the Olympics in Lillehammer, skated up to her incredible potential, won gold and transformed into a swan in front of our eyes. And maybe then Harding would have liked the sight of her own reflection. Alas, Harding's fairy tale was destined to be Grimm. So instead, the ugly duckling got together with some loons and decided to disfigure the prettiest swan on the pond.

Even in retrospect the Harding-Kerrigan melodrama is stranger than fiction, except that all the players seemed straight out of central casting. The tomboyish, insecure blonde who honed her skills at a shopping mall skating rink. The pretty, poised brunette with the endorsement deals and the (misleading) air of privilege. The scheming husband, with the dark eyes and the mustache almost long enough to twirl. The goon accomplices who looked like they could get lost in a phone booth, assuming they could figure out how to get inside one. All of them came together under the bright spotlight of the pre-Internet Era Winter Olympics. Director Nanette Burstein (American Teen) recounts the events of 1994 with impressive clarity and pace, chronicling not just what happened but the media's frenzied reaction to it, because indeed that was a distinct element of this tabloid-worthy scandal right from the start. Those too young to remember the whack heard round the world will come away with a clear understanding of how it all unfolded. But what's most impressive about The Price of Gold is that it's more than a transcript. It looks beyond the highlights and lowlights to try to understand why.

Coulda Been a Contenda: No Mas

Roberto Duran stunned boxing fans when he put a beating on then welterweight champion Sugar Ray Leonard in their first meeting, "The Brawl in Montreal," June 20, 1980. But that was nothing compared to the shock he provided in their second meeting five months later. In the eighth round, after exchanging a few blows with Leonard, Duran traded hooks and jabs for a move that most in boxing had never seen before: he waved his right glove in surrender. "No mas," he said. No more. One of the most ferocious fighters the sport had ever seen — Joe Frazier said Duran reminded him of Charles Manson — up and quit. The crowd at the Superdome in New Orleans and those watching live on TVs around the world were flabbergasted. From his ringside microphone, legendary broadcaster Howard Cosell summed it up as it unfolded, calling it "the most inexplicable thing I have ever seen in the ring."

The "No Mas" fight transcended sports and instantly became part of the pop culture. (You didn't need to be able to pick Roberto Duran out of a lineup in order to understand a "no mas" joke.) The TV footage was boxing's version of the Zapruder film, with the outcome unmistakable and the cause shrouded in mystery. Why did Duran quit? Did he have stomach cramps, as he insisted after the fight but showed no signs of up until his surrender? Was he out of shape? Had he simply had enough of Leonard's showboating antics? These questions have never been satisfactorily answered. And for all of these reasons, the "No Mas" fight is perfect fodder for ESPN Films' "30 for 30" franchise. But like many boxing bouts, No Mas fails to live up to its self-created hype.

Under the Circumstances: 12 Years a Slave

In what is already the iconic shot of 12 Years a Slave, Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) digs his toes into the muddy ground his heels can't quite reach in order to avoid being choked to death by the noose around his neck. It's a gruesome yet painterly image, which makes it quintessential Steve McQueen. And as the director is wont to do, he holds this wordless shot for well over a minute so that we might feel Solomon's struggle and notice the nonchalance with which the slaves behind him return to their chores, either disinterested in his fate or painfully aware that they are powerless to intervene. In any movie about any man, this near hanging would make for a striking image, but here, of course, it takes on added meaning because of the significance of the subject matter. In this one shot, McQueen does much to sum up the entire American slave experience in which life was little more than trying to avoid slipping into death.

But after watching 12 Years a Slave for a second time, I wonder if a more significant shot might happen a little later in the sequence — after a fellow slave dares to bring water to Solomon, after the plantation overseer is seen pacing on the nearby veranda, waiting for his boss and Solomon's owner (Benedict Cumberbatch's William Ford) to return to determine Solomon's fate, and after a few slave children are spotted playing in the field behind Solomon, laughing obliviously. It's a shot of the mistress of the house (Liza J. Bennett) standing at the railing of her mansion balcony calmly observing Solomon, whose shoulders and rope-bound neck are out of focus in the foreground. In this one image, only a few seconds long, McQueen does much to sum up the institutionalized indifference that's core to not only America's shameful slave history but to any instance in which human suffering or inequality is allowed to persist in plain view.

Bests of 2013

2013 was the year that this blog gathered dust. Statistically speaking, I posted nine times, but even that sad number is misleading: three of those posts pertained to 2012 releases, one was my annual Eyes of March celebration and one was my reflection on Roger Ebert upon his death in April. Alas, the only 2013 theatrical release that I reviewed in this space was To the Wonder — the movie the showed me what it feels like to not fall under the spell of a Terrence Malick movie.

This wasn't by design. That is, mentally speaking, I didn't disassemble this blog, put it back in its box and stick it up in the attic for storage, although doing so would have eliminated some clutter in my mental living space. No, rather the blog was always there, never totally out of view, like a piece of exercise equipment once used regularly but now only functional for the purposes of air-drying delicates — a fitting analogy, actually, because on many occasions last year when I thought I was ready to start blogging again I was amazed at how quickly and completely my writing muscles had atrophied.

I won't bore you with the reasons for this hiatus except to say that there were several factors, personally and professionally, that demanded my attention and energies elsewhere. I guess that's my way of saying that it didn't feel like much of a choice. And I mention that now because I can't say I know if 2014 will be a return to earlier years of production or more of the recent trend. I certainly have a desire — and, to a degree, even a plan — for writing more moving forward, because I miss it. Oh, how I miss it. But until things actually change, it's just a fantasy.

Reaching the Trees: The Great Escape on a Great Expanse

I'd seen it dozens of times. But never like this.

Friday night, at the AFI Silver, just outside of Washington, DC, I saw The Great Escape as if for the first time — because for the first time I saw the 1963 classic stretched across a theater screen.

To say that viewing fulfilled a lifelong dream would be an exaggeration, but only by about 11 years. My uncle introduced me to The Great Escape in my preteen years on two grainy VHS tapes — and in so doing he connected me with a movie that instantly became one of my favorites and that fanned the flames of my growing passion for cinema.

In the Shadow of Giants: Elway to Marino

The 1983 NFL Draft produced more great quarterbacks than any other before or since. And that was just the first round. Six quarterbacks were taken in the first 27 picks that year, including two who would become among the top five (or so) ever to play the position, one who would play in four Super Bowls, two who would be fairly average and, not to be forgotten, a guy named Ken O'Brien who would flash enough brilliance to be named to two Pro Bowls but remain forever overshadowed by guys in his draft class named John Elway, Dan Marino and Jim Kelly. Elway to Marino, the latest entry in the ESPN Films "30 for 30" series, is fixated, no surprise, on the guys at the top. But in a documentary collection that has produced great films like June 17, 1994, The Two Escobars and Catching Hell, Elway to Marino is nothing more than a Ken O'Brien.

That's nothing to be ashamed of, but it's not much to cling to either. Director Ken Rodgers retells the events of the draft clearly and evocatively through talking-head interviews and archival footage, even going as far as to recreate the banquet room where then-NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle announced the picks under a gaudy chandelier. But drafts are only so interesting, particularly in retrospect — even drafts in which the consensus best talent available, Elway, used a potential Major League Baseball career as leverage to avoid signing with the Baltimore Colts, which had the top pick that year. And for all the ways Elway's draft experience was unusual, Marino's is actually typical. Sure, his eventual professional output suggests he should have been selected a lot sooner than 27th. But it wasn't all that long ago that NFL MVP quarterback Aaron Rodgers fell to the 25th pick in 2005, suffering all the while in the green room. And all-time legends Joe Montana and Tom Brady didn't get picked until the third and sixth rounds, respectively. So this stuff happens.

Penrose Stairs: To the Wonder

Exteriors at magic hour. Interiors before the movers come. Curtains blowing in the wind, often with someone hiding on the other side. Trees. Sky. Churning, trickling and spraying waters. Hands caressing wheat and tall grasses. Women scampering away from the camera with sprightly verve. Lost, anguished men scanning the horizon for answers. Swings. Empty chairs. Livestock. Birds. Necks and necking. Classical music. Elliptical voiceover narration. Constant searching. These are the fundamental, incontrovertible elements of Terrence Malick's cinema — those things that both his most ardent fans and his befuddled detractors agree make a Malick film distinct.

Thus, any debate about Malick's cinema typically comes down to whether those elements combine to exude the two qualities Malick most consistently explores: grace and awe. Malick's latest film, To the Wonder, might have more of those basic signature elements than any of its predecessors, despite being Malick's shortest film in more than three decades, but it's almost entirely lacking in grace and awe. It's all fundamentals with almost no feeling — save for emptiness. The gestures are familiar, but this time there's no soul behind them. The auteur's trademark flourishes feel less designed for this film than leftover from previous ones. To the Wonder is Terrence Malick via Overstock.com.

Remembering Roger Ebert

"Funny, thoughtful, opinionated, brilliant. An inspiration to anyone who ever wanted to write from a certain point of view." - Joe Posnanski

"To be able to have done exactly what he wanted to do for a living until the very end is an inspiration to anyone." - Jake Cole

"To be a good critic, you have to know your art-form. To be a great one, you have to love it." - Peter Sagal

"When I was a kid, no person turned me on to more movies and filmmakers than Roger Ebert. He changed my life." - Michael Bonfiglio

"Roger Ebert. Everything else you say is superfluous." - Ray Ratto


Up the stairs, past the scattered toys and piles of cardboard boxes that lined the walls of my grandparents' mostly unfinished attic, was the childhood bedroom of my mother's brothers. They'd been out of the house for more than 10 years. Their double beds were still there, neatly made as if waiting for them to return from school, but now this mostly forgotten space in the rafters belonged to my grandfather, who'd lined one wall with more fishing rods than anyone who went fishing only a few times a year could possibly hope to use in a lifetime and whose hoard of fishing magazines, lures and spools of line covered almost every available surface space except for the two square feet or so of table on which sat a small black-and-white television.

It was on that television, on an otherwise unmemorable day during a summer I can't quite pinpoint, that I distinctly remember watching Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert debating on the show that made thumbs famous. Or, more to the point, I remember trying to watch them. The TV in the attic provided me a bit of privacy and a respite from my grandfather's steady diet of local news, but it also gave me rabbit-ear antennae to adjust and a serrated tuning knob to manipulate ever so slightly in the hopes of generating a clear picture. Of course, no matter how much time you spent getting the image to come into focus, as soon as you stepped away from the TV whatever progress you'd made was sure to come undone.

This Time With Meaning: Survive and Advance

Dereck Whittenburg receives the awkward one-handed fling from Thurl Bailey less like the targeted shooter in the closing seconds of a national championship basketball game than like a defensive back intercepting a wayward pass before it sails into the bleachers. From nearer to half court than the 3-point arc, Whittenburg gathers the ball, turns, takes a deep knee bend and fires. It's a moon shot, and at the very moment it becomes obvious that the ball won't reach the rim Lorenzo Charles leaps into the frame, collects the ball near the iron and drops it into the hoop as time expires, giving North Carolina State a 54-52 upset victory over the University of Houston and sending the Wolfpack's flamboyant head coach Jim Valvano running around on the court looking for someone to hug.

It's one of the most famous sequences in college basketball history — memorable because NC State wasn't supposed to have a chance against Houston in that 1983 NCAA championship, memorable because Valvano's reaction reveals both his shock and his spirit, memorable because the game-winning bucket and Valvano's reaction are so charmingly inelegant and, last but not least, memorable because CBS and ESPN play the hell out of that highlight clip each March. If you're even a little bit of a college basketball fan, you've seen that play at least a dozen times. It's the quintessential March Madness moment and it's something of an eternal flame for Valvano, the beloved coach, broadcaster and motivational speaker. That said, the ubiquity of the NC State upset highlight is the very thing that made me skeptical about Survive and Advance, the latest edition of ESPN Films' "30 for 30" series, which seeks to climax with a sports moment that is as worn from overuse as a child's favorite toy. In the original "30 for 30" volume, director Jonathan Hock did a marvelous job reviving the forgotten legend of Marcus Dupree, but I wondered if he could be as successful crafting drama and insight from a story that is already so familiar.

Turns out, he was ready.

The Eyes of March (2013)

It's been awhile.

Last month I let my five-year blogging anniversary pass by without notice, or without a single blog post.

But nothing brings back a blogger like tradition — and it doesn't hurt when said tradition requires very little writing.

And thus continues my annual tribute to eye shots (see also: 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012).

This year, including the header image (which you can consider number "0"), there are 13 eye shots. As usual, some of them are easily recognizable. Others not so much.

Although this is a tribute to eye shots more than anything, it tends to be a fun guessing game each year, too. So leave your guesses in the comments below.

Enjoy! (Numbers correspond to the image below them)

Everybody Breaks, Bro: Zero Dark Thirty

Let's start with torture, in part because Zero Dark Thirty's depiction of torture inspired controversy even before the movie was released, but mostly because that's where Zero Dark Thirty begins, and in a way it's where it ends, too. After a brief sequence in which the horrors of 9/11 are conjured through overlapping audio clips from that tragic and chaotic day, the movie opens at a secret military base at which an al-Qaeda terrorist is being "harshly interrogated." First we see the detainee waterboarded, and later he's stripped naked, dog-collared and stuffed inside a wooden box just big enough for him to fold into — all in an effort to get him to talk. None of this is brief. Director Kathryn Bigelow doesn't exactly ogle the brutality, but she doesn't shy away from it either. The first 30 minutes of the movie, scripted by Mark Boal and inspired by insider accounts, are dominated by the physical and psychological punishment of this beaten terrorist at the hands of the CIA. That Zero Dark Thirty spends so much time here confirms that Bigelow and Boal believe these interrogations to be historically significant, one way or another. And that torture is demonstrated to be a dehumanizing experience for both sides confirms that that Bigelow gets it right.

Did controversial interrogation techniques like waterboarding lead to intelligence that led to the discovery of Osama bin Laden? It seems silly to argue otherwise. The link might not have been direct, but the nasty reality is that these techniques were used and intelligence was gathered, and it seems reasonable to assume that some prisoners cooperated purely to avoid torture in the first place, which isn't possible if the potential for torture isn't on the table. Whether torture, as an actual technique or merely as a looming threat, is effective enough to justify its use is a different matter, and not one that Zero Dark Thirty cares to examine. So what does the film "say" about torture? Mostly that we did it, for better or worse. It's part of the history of that larger event. World War II had the beaches of Normandy and Higgins boats. The "war on terror" had undisclosed locations and pitchers of water. That's the way it was.

Skateboarding Cinema to the Future: QUIK

When I was a kid, I wanted to make movies. Well, specifically, I wanted to make Return of the Jedi. Not instead of George Lucas. Immediately after him.

In first, second and third grade, I was mesmerized by the Star Wars trilogy not just as escapist adventure but also as an act of creation. As often as I watched the movies themselves, I watched my TV-recorded VHS copy of the 1983 documentary about their development. (I had a book, too.)

The Star Wars trilogy was full of moviemaking "stuff" that went beyond the usual. Instead of just actors, costumes and sets, there were models, robots and puppets — and things like Jabba the Hutt that seemed to be a combination of all three — not to mention an abundance of rubber and fur that appealed to the Muppet fan in me.

In my not-entirely-thought-through efforts to someday make a Star Wars movie of my own, I focused my initial energy on those smaller creations — even going so far as to beg my mom to buy me some furry fabric so that I could take a shot at making my own Ewok suit — in part because I was fascinated by that stuff, and in part because I knew I couldn't shoot an Ewok scene without an Ewok costume, but mostly because, at the time, owning my own movie camera seemed only slightly more realistic than owning my own Millennium Falcon.

Times have changed.

Bests of 2012

Happy New Year!

There are still a few items on my 2012-viewing short list that I expect to see in the next week or two, most notably Zero Dark Thirty, Rust and Bone and Amour.

In addition, at some point I need to track down several films that never seemed to come my way, like This Is Not a Film, The Turin Horse and The Color Wheel.

And then there are movies that I let slip by but still hope to catch up with, like The Imposter, End of Watch and The Loneliest Planet.

All of that said, here's my look back at the year in film, which included viewings of about 60 new releases, most of which are included below, in some fashion or another.

A Rambunctious Sort, Ain't He?: Django Unchained

Over at LATimes.com, an article examining the mixed reaction of blacks to Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained is preceded by one of those quick poll questions that site managers like to tack on to stories in an effort to foster interactivity and "enhance" the online experience. It asks, "Does Django Unchained go too far over the line?" Like a check-box note written by an 11-year-old girl determined to find out if her elementary school crush likes her back, the answer options are simply "Yes" or "No." And yet the only appropriate answers to that question are "Which line?" and "When, exactly?"

Director of seven or eight features, depending on how you count his two-volume epic Kill Bill, Tarantino has been stepping well over someone's lines of appropriateness for 20 years now, making movies that aren't just dominated by violence and profanity but that are gleefully obsessed with them. His latest two pictures, 2010's Inglourious Basterds and this year's Django Unchained, further court controversy by taking on (and then to some degree simultaneously avoiding) the Holocaust and the American slave trade, two topics guaranteed to make everyone hyper-aware of those proverbial lines.

Given QT's track record, including his occasional habit of playing some of his controversial characters (with unmistakable relish), there can be no doubt that Tarantino, like most modern stand-up comedians, is obsessed with crossing the line. He gets laughs out of it, cheers out of it, gasps out of it and critical hosannas out of it, and, yes, he inspires furious anger with it, too. His unwillingness to stay behind the line is as core to Tarantino Cinema as his reverence for cinema itself.

Hooper's In the House: Les Miserables

I love musicals. Always have. I'm particularly fond of the palpable energy of live performances — highlighted by those awesome moments when talented singers belt out heartfelt lyrics to the back row — but cinematic adaptations of musicals can be plenty wonderful, too. And yet I didn't have particularly high hopes for Tom Hooper's adaptation of Les Miserables, because that's one musical that's never really touched me, on stage or on screen: it's an epic tale of tragedy and love that somehow leaves me cold.

In fact, the only part of Les Mis that never fails to thrill me is the atypically jovial number "Master of the House," performed by the delightfully corrupt innkeeper and his wife.

Never fails until now, that is.

Best Movie Posters of 2012

There's a lot of movie watching and writing I want to do. Soon. But now it's time for family. So let's continue this other holiday season tradition with a look back at my favorite movie posters of the year.

My introduction from last year's post still applies:

What do I look for in a movie poster? In general, I like a striking image that stands out in the lineup at the multiplex while evoking the film's themes. The best movie posters ingrain themselves within our memories of the films themselves, so that to think ofJaws, for example, is to think of that image of the giant shark swimming upward toward the helpless swimmer. Of course, that means that sometimes how we feel about a movie poster is directly tied to how we feel about a film, and an image that might otherwise be pedestrian takes on greater meaning retroactively, or a compelling image is made to feel trite because the movie turns out to be.

It's a short list for me this year. Take a look and tell me: what are your favorite posters of the year, and what did I get horribly wrong?

Printing the Legend: You Don't Know Bo

Let's be honest: as the 1980s became the 1990s, none of us had a clue why we suddenly needed "cross-training" shoes. But there was never any doubt that Bo Jackson was the right guy to sell them — whatever they were exactly. Bo Jackson was a two-sport star in baseball and football, and after Nike crafted its "Bo Knows" campaign there seemed to be no limit to what he could do. Basketball, tennis, cycling, soccer — the ads, and Jackson's physique, convinced us that, yeah, he'd probably succeed at those sports, too. It was the perfect marriage of a spokesperson's abilities and a company's commercial cunning. To see a "Bo Knows" ad was to never forget it, which could also be said of seeing Jackson himself. So it's only appropriate that Michael Bonfiglio's documentary on Jackson, You Don't Know Bo, would include a section on that famous ad campaign, because all these years later it's a perfect encapsulation of both Jackson's allure (he was one of the most famous athletes on the planet) and our habit of romanticizing his potential to the point that it inflated our perception of reality.

Yeah, I'm something of a Bo Jackson skeptic. Always was. Sure, he was a damn impressive athlete. Other than Deion Sanders (conveniently not mentioned in the documentary — nor is Brian Jordan, for that matter), no other athlete in my lifetime could have found a place in the starting lineup of every professional baseball and football team in America. Jackson was a truly awesome figure — powerful, graceful, fast, strong and possessing a knack for doing the sensational with an air of nonchalance. But during Jackson's too-brief career, we were so awestruck by his multi-sport talent and tendency for SportsCenter-friendly spectacle that we often ignored his limitations and inflated his successes. I've felt this way for years, so I approached You Don't Know Bo, the final episode in ESPN Films' second "30 for 30" volume, hoping it would change my mind. Instead, the very resume that Bonfiglio uses to convey Jackson's greatness confirmed my skepticism.

Everything Old Is New Again: Skyfall

By the time I got around to seeing Skyfall, I was aware that it had been called (at least perhaps) the best Bond movie of all time. By whom and how many, I'm not sure, because this wasn't stuff I was seeking out — the hype on Twitter was simply impossible to avoid. I mention this up front because I'm definitely not the guy who should be evaluating where this picture ranks within a franchise that is now 50 years, 23 films and six Bonds strong. In theaters, on VHS, on DVD or on TV, I've seen almost all of the Bond movies at this point, but most of them only once, and I've never read so much as a page of Ian Fleming's original novels. So all I know about what a James Bond movie "should be" comes from a relatively distant appreciation of what James Bond movies typically have been. Still, when it comes to Skyfall, of this much I'm certain: I've never had a better time watching a Bond movie.

As good of a time? Well, sure. A few weeks ago I stumbled upon Casino Royale on TV and was reminded of the transfixing sexual tension between Daniel Craig's Bond and Eva Green's Vesper Lynd, and I appreciated anew the boldness of rebooting this James Bond as an emotionally raw character. Meanwhile, I've always felt that Goldfinger was the quintessential Bond flick, what with the presence of Sean Connery, the girl painted in gold, the laser aimed at Bond's crotch and the mere existence of Oddjob and Pussy Galore. And even when I think of a ridiculed installment like Moonraker, I'm put in touch with my childhood fascination for the oh-so-Bond-villainous Jaws, the tall guy with the metal teeth who you figure Vince McMahon would have dreamed up as a 1980s WWF heel if he hadn't been conceived for the Bond universe. That said, while Skyfall isn't as playful or imaginative as most of its predecessors (very much by design), it's also more sensitive, more personal and more visually daring than almost all of them. And that's thrilling.