Flight
You can talk up your Daniel Day-Lewises and Joaquin Phoenixes — or even your Bradley Coopers this Oscar season — but never count Denzel Washington out of the Best Actor race.
Case in point: Flight, brought to you by Robert Zemeckis, who is directing his first live action film since 2000’s Cast Away. His leading man, Washington, plays the ludicrously named Whip Whitaker, a veteran airline captain, who uses all his years in the pilot’s seat to somehow crash-land a plane after a mid-air catastrophe and save nearly everyone on board. While first hailed as a hero, Whip soon becomes the subject of some serious doubt as we learn about what really went down that fateful day.
The elements at play certainly sound diverting and the critics have taken to Flight, giving it a definite sense of lift-off. “After a decade spent tooling around with cold marvels such as The Polar Express and A Christmas Carol, Zemeckis’s return to life-action film-making is being hailed as The Kind of Adult Drama They Don’t Make Anymore,” notes the Guardian. “Flight is more entertaining and more cunning than that … what lends it that force are not the carefully calibrated moral ambiguities of the script, but the bruised, defiant soul that appears to us in the form of Denzel Washington.” Roger Ebert is similarly enthralled by Washington’s performance: “Not often does a movie character make such a harrowing personal journey that keeps us in deep sympathy all of the way.” And our own Richard Corliss is on board, concluding that “A canny director and a top star decided to dig deep to find the core of a compromised hero. And when they reach that center of gravity, Flight soars.”
MORE: TIME’s Review of Robert Zemeckis’s Beowulf
Wreck-It Ralph
Tagline: When the Game is Over, the Fun Begins.
In a cute concept, Wreck-It Ralph stars John C. Reilly as video game character Ralph, who has finally had enough of constantly being bested by Jack McBrayer’s Fix-It Felix in the digital world they inhabit. Intent on showing that he doesn’t always have to be the bad guy, Ralph embarks upon a journey through their arcade — it’s an animation! Just go with it! — via the video games of a generation’s misspent youth.
Anything with Pac-Man in it is always going to be worth your time and the reviewers have been suitably charmed. TIME’s Mary Pols goes all out, admittedly shocked by how much she fell for the film: “The most inventive and entertaining family movie I’ve seen this year, packed with wickedly smart humor and joyful animation.” Roger Ebert doesn’t really disagree, commenting that, “more than in most animated films, the art design and color palette of Wreck-It Ralph permit unlimited sets, costumes and rules, giving the movie tireless originality and different behavior in every different cyber word.” And Variety gives it a boffo notice, stating that “Walt Disney Animation Studios has a high-scoring hit on its hands in this brilliantly conceived, gorgeously executed toon, earning bonus points for backing nostalgia with genuine emotion.” There’s clearly life in video games yet.
MORE: TIME Q&A with John C. Reilly
NewsFeed’s Flicks Pick: Two solid choices, which don’t have much, if anything in common, but both seem worthy of your money. If push comes to shove, we’ll take Flight.