There's a few mechanisms I use in my games that aren't in the CT rules to provide 'cinematic realism' more than 'rules realism' - since I find most players really want a cinematic RP experience more than a mundane, hyperrealistic or purely rules-driven one... I adopted these amazing rules from TORG™, a game system by West End Games written by my cousins that was incredibly cinematic and fun:
1. Write your adventures like movies - one, two or three Acts, each with one or more Scenes. Each scene can be 'standard' or 'dramatic', based on whether the heroes should be masters of the universe or up against the wall. Each Act should have a climactic dramatic Scene (but it needn't be the final Scene of the Act), and should position the MacGuffin for the next Act (see Hitchcock for a definition of a MacGuffin). Most adventures already fit this pattern, as it's a staple of screenwriting.
2. For initial scenes, info-gathering, bar encounters, finding contacts, etc. or other situations where the goal is to press the action forward, standard scenes are just the trick. In a standard scene, no modifications to skills, etc., are made - but the players get a bonus to their initiative. The players have a reasonable advantage and the dramatic tension is appropriately low.
3. For scenes central to the plot, when an Act is ending or other places where you need dramatic tension, use a 'dramatic' scene. The villains get the initiative modifier and players find themselves in a tough contest... but they can use their Luck points (see below) like water if needed to avoid those bad rolls - rolls that otherwise would annihilate the plot you're trying to move forward.
4. Use Luck points as well as experience points. Assign 1-3 upon completion of each Act - based not on die rolls but on inventive and quality play that advances character or storyline development. Any number of Luck points can be spent to get another chance at the die roll, and the player can choose which of the rolls to accept as his own. In dramatic encounters, there's no limit to the number of Luck points a player can spend on one die roll... but the big villains get a few of their own, that they can use to 'cancel out' Luck points. 'Dramatic' doesn't mean 'deadly', it means 'dramatic'... extraordinary things happen in dramatic moments, and just as the players are supposed to be 'larger than life heroes', the villains are also 'larger than life'...
5. If skill rolls are required for crucial 'dramatic'-Scene actions (starting the engines before the ship crashes into the sun, negotiating with the tribal leader before he drops the party in the volcano, climbing up the computer core and dropping the nanobots into the processors, coordinating the airstrikes on the enemy compound, etc.), use 3-4 rolls of increasing difficulty to represent steps to completing the task. Skill-oriented characters who sometimes suffer in combat-heavy climactic scenes love this, since they can decide the fate of the Act, and even the Adventure, with their pet skills.
No one likes getting killed by the first bad guy you face because of an appallingly bad die roll - but players love to be the one whose character makes a sacrifice or an amazing skill roll (whether natural or modified by Luck points) for the good of a planet - or where they feel that they've 'just scraped by' by spending a precious Luck point to mitigate a lethal injury down to a scrape. In this way, players feel very participatory, they accept the bad times far more graciously (since they understand the danger and tension more than flat die rolls can communicate) and they have a much higher sense of the rising action and denouement that a good adventure tale requires. Unused Luck points can be recycled into experience points or kept for next time (to a reasonable maximum), allowing their Luck usage to be balanced against their character improvements.
I love it when I call for an initiative roll and my players go, "Is it standard or dramatic?" and I just look at them for a moment before answering. And I really love it when something in a standard Scene changes - like when the big bad guy comes in to the command center and spots the undercover player character as he's about to download the secret plans, and I inform them that the formerly standard Scene is now a Dramatic scene... in that moment I know I've got 'em hooked and a great tale is in the offing.
