Photo: Focus Features

Knightley dons the hats, veils, and upholstery silks as Anna Karenina, a character once played by Greta Garbo and Vivien Leigh. Working with her "Atonement" and "Pride and Prejudice" director, Joe Wright, and Tom Stoppard's adaptation, Knightley drives a radical restaging of Leo Tolstoy's Russian lit classic. She plays an aristocratic wife and mother who betrays her chilly husband (Jude Law) with dashing Count Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson).

Photo: Columbia Pictures

In "Skyfall," which has already grossed half a billion worldwide, Judi Dench's spymaster M gets more screen time and more to do, and she undergoes more changes than in any previous Bond film. Her character is integral to the plot -- always powerful, never eager to please. This aging government servant believes, when nudged toward retirement, that age and the experience that comes with it are actually to be valued by the motherland, not binned.

'Silver Linings Playbook' by The Weinstein Company

Sometimes it feels like the year's very best films all come out at once in November and December. Looking at these five gems, including a violent noir starring Brad Pitt and a crowd-pleasing comedy from Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper, there might be some truth to that theory.

Mads Mikkelsen (Photo by Joel Ryan)

Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen, 46, courts Oscar in the 18th-century romance "A Royal Affair," (opening today) the Danish entry for Best Foreign Film. In that sexy historical drama, Mikkelsen plays the German doctor and philosopher that charms crazy King Christian VII of Denmark (Mikkel Boe Folsgaard) and beds his young English queen (rising star Alicia Vikander).

"Mads? Of course, as a Scandinavian I had seen a lot of his films," Vikander told Yahoo! Movies this week. The Swedish actress, 24, who also has a major role opposite Keira Knightley in "Anna Karenina" continued: "He's one of our greatest actors. When I met Mads for the first time at a screen test in Copenhagen, it took me one second to realize he's one of the most down to earth men. He's funny, witty, brilliant and a real inspiration."

Photo by Warner Bros. Pictures

I was belatedly watching "Cloud Atlas" at my local Cineplex, catching up on movies that I hadn't seen because, thanks to Hurricane Sandy, I no longer had my Manhattan to upstate NY umbilical cord. I hadn't read all the reviews when "Cloud Atlas" premiered in Toronto because, as I recently told Steven Gaydos, executive editor at Variety, "I see the movie and then I decide." But this was a case where the gaseous critical response to "Cloud Atlas" had wafted in my direction, a skepticism and negativity reflected in Rotten Tomatoes' stingy 63 percent fresh. So, I'd postponed seeing an adventure that was completely radical among contemporary American films in the gleeful, optimistic way it played musical chairs with male and female, young and old, and future and past. By creating a movie that starred Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, and Huge Grant and blurred the boundaries between men and women, the Wachowski siblings (Andy and transgender Lana), and Tom Tykwer, adapting David Mitchell's genre-busting best-seller, took some major risks. And they created an entertaining, ambitious movie that went beyond feminism to an all-embracing humanism that wasn't naive enough to believe that evil didn't walk the earth in wingtips or stilettos or bare feet.

Catherine Keener and costars in "A Late Quartet" (Photo: RKO Pictures)

Lust, competition, mortality: they all come together in "A Late Quartet." It's the magnetic star-driven story of a fictional famed string quartet that implodes when its cellist, Peter (Christopher Walken), discovers he suffers from Parkinson's. After 25 successful years touring the globe, this marriage of musicians, and the marriage of the viola player, Juliette (Catherine Keener) and the second violinist Robert (Philip Seymour Hoffman) come to a crescendo. Meanwhile the first violinist Daniel (Mark Ivanir) mentors the couple's daughter Alexandra (Imogen Poots) all the way into her bedroom.

Betrayal, harmony, ambition, belated coming of age and dedication become variations on themes that transcend musicians and result in a stirring chamber piece impeccably played for four terrific actors. I talked to Keener ("the 40-year-old Virgin," "Friends with Money") about keeping the beat, the great Christopher Walken (Oscar nomination please!) and playing Philip Seymour Hoffman's wife — again: