Skyfall (2012)

Skyfall opens with a silhouette of Daniel Craig. As the actor walks from the shadows and into the light, we see his character slowly take form. He’s suit up and holding a gun. A typical James Bond introduction. Continuing in the Bond tradition is a long chase, this time ending with Bond’s death. Cue in the Skyfall opening theme by Adele. It is, visually, so damn appealing but it also has some dark emotion lurking underneath. Now you know what to expect from the film.

We see that Bond has survived and is living a luxurious life in secrecy. He needs painkillers to cope with a life amiss of purpose and it’s been long since he’s received that shot of adrenaline he’s become a slave to. MI6 is his only way out. His boss, M (Judi Dench), hands him a new assignment. Bond heads to Shanghai, a city that’s inhabited by skyscrapers, decorated in lustre and coloured in neon. The filming locations are great. Not just in Shanghai but throughout the film.

Cloud Atlas (2012)

Halfway through my first viewing of Cloud Atlas, I knew I had to watch it again. When I finished, I debated. Commercial compromise is much harder for me to take than lack of ambition. Cloud Atlas sold out. I make that statement now after two full viewings. I greatly admire and respect what the film initially set out to do. This is a film with a numerous characters, lesser actors, several events, plenty of scenes and a lot to chew on. They’re all pieced together into a beautiful collage, as if it were the grandest editing project by a film scholar of the highest rank. Nevertheless, the film bears it all evenly. The tone wavers, but never falters.

Cloud Atlas is a large web of narratives, switching back and forth between its sub-plots, each telling a story from a different era and each just as interesting as the other. The film’s talky and quite objectively defined; clearly a film with an agenda. There’s no attempt to suck you in, not an ounce of realism. This is a cinematic achievement that you are meant to experience from the outside. But the perspective is sky-high and the approach is ground-breaking. It requires real audacity to do what Cloud Atlas intends to do and even more to do it the way the film-makers do it.