The Debt

When the new Mission Impossible film comes out (and I'll probably be a fan) one of its hallmarks will be that it has about five missions, and five huge set-pieces, and each one will be more explosive than the last, and by the end of the film it will all be a muddle as to what happened. The Debt, John Madden's remake of an Israeli thriller of the same name, is an example that a spy film, and a very good spy film, needs to have only one mission, one simple set-piece that can center a film. In this case, a trio of Mossad agents in the 1960s are sent to Berlin to kidnap and extract the surgeon of Birkenau, a notorious Nazi criminal. What happens on that mission reverberates for all their lives. I really enjoyed this one, in particular the aforementioned center of the film, the mission in Berlin. Less successful is the framing device, in which the agents are played by older (and much more famous) actors. Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson, and Ciaran Hinds were all, not surprisingly, excellent, but the younger actors, Jessica Chastain, Sam Worthington, and Martin Csokas, got the best part of the film.

The ending is a let-down but doesn't wreck what came before.

The Eclipse (2010)

I loved this movie but it's probably not for everyone. It's essentially a slow-moving character study with a few quick-shock scares thrown in to make it a ghost movie. That combination makes it tonally a little strange but it worked for me. I'll admit I was initially frustrated that the film never explained the ghostly presences but the more I thought about it, the more okay I became with it. This is psychological horror, and it doesn't need to be explained.

Ciaran Hinds, mostly known as a character actor, plays the lead, a woodworking teacher who volunteers at a literary festival in his hometown of Cobh, a seaside town in Ireland. He drives the visiting authors around, which include an arrogant American author played very well by Aidan Quinn--he really finds his inner asshole--and a female author of the supernatural played by Iben Hjejle, who was a romantic history with Aidan Quinn. All three actors turn in amazing performances. Also, the movie looks amazing, partly because of its naturally beautiful location but also its cinematography. Many shots frame the actors at a great distance, dwarfed by landscape and architecture. This will probably be in my top ten at the end of the year.