PLAYING FOR KEEPS

In director Gabriele Muccino’s dramatic comedy Playing for Keeps, Gerard Butler portrays a former star athlete who hopes to reconnect with his ex-wife and son by coaching the kid’s pee-wee soccer team, and who is consequently forced to (try to) resist the advances of a trio of beautiful, aggressive, lascivious soccer moms who can’t keep their hands off him. This, in the language of Hollywood screenwriters, is what is known as “a problem.”

RISE OF THE GUARDIANS

There appears to be a certain amount of bafflement, among those who track such things, as to why Rise of the Guardians has failed to make its expected dent on the late-autumn box office. Did the action comedy open too soon after the release of the similarly animated Wreck-It Ralph, thereby splintering its audience? Was the casting of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy as makeshift superheroes an idea deemed too juvenile for viewers over the age of three? Was the film’s title generic and confusing, leading potential crowds to expect the arrival of the owls of Ga’Hoole?

If I may, I’d like to posit a different, simpler theory: The movie just sucks.

LIFE OF PI

Some 45 minutes into director Ang Lee’s Life of Pi, there’s an image that’s so deeply resonant and beautiful and sad – one that’s presented with so little melodrama or fuss – that I immediately welled up and felt compelled to stifle a sob. I remember the image clearly because I rarely stopped feeling that way for almost the entire hour-and-a-half that followed.

LINCOLN

Steven Speilberg has never directed a talkier movie than his presidential biopic Lincoln, and only on rare occasions, it seems to me, has he directed a better one.

SKYFALL

Longtime fans of the franchise can, and likely will, argue over whether Skyfall is one of the all-time best James Bond films or whether it just feels that way because it’s now been six years since the last decent one. (Despite having friends who’ll stump for everything from Moonraker to The World Is Not Enough, I don’t know anyone who really cares for 2008’s Quantum of Solace.) But here’s a question that I’m not sure merits any argument: Prior to this latest adventure, has any other Bond movie looked quite so spectacular?