Plot synopsis (from the studio): Magic is everywhere in Disney’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice — the family fun adventure from the creators of National Treasure. Balthazar Blake (played by Nicolas cage) is a modern-day sorcerer with his hands full defending Manhattan against dark forces. When a seemingly average kid shows hidden potential, Balthazar takes his reluctant recruit on a crash course in the art and science of magic to become the ultimate sorcerer’s apprentice. Experience more extraordinary thrills, heart-stopping action, and spectacular special effects than you can imagine as these unlikely partners show us that the real world is far more magical than we ever knew!

Warning: Spoilers below!

Liked:

• I primarily decided to rent this DVD to have something to watch with my 8-year-old son. He really enjoyed it, particularly the magic scenes, of course, so I guess the film did live up to its promise of being a good source of family fun.
• There were actually some very funny lines throughout the film. I can’t remember all of them here, but the scene where Drake (the “bad” apprentice) mocks Horvath’s mind control powers by saying, “These are not the droids you’re looking for” in an obvious homage to Star Wars was fantastic!
• Extra points for similarly recognizable tributes to Raiders of the Lost Ark and Fantasia as well.
• Although I generally did not care for the special effects in this film, the Tesla coils were pretty darn cool!

Disliked:

• OMG, Jay Baruchel, the actor who played Dave, has the most annoying voice ever! Having to listen to him for an hour and 40 minutes made me want to shove sharpened pencils through my eardrums. He wasn’t even that good as the lead, so I’m wondering what the casting director was thinking in tabbing this guy for the role. Ugh.
• The love story between Dave and Becky was completely unnecessary. I found it highly unbelievable that a girl as good-looking as that would want anything at all to do with the totally nerdy Dave.
• The storyline was fairly predictable the whole way through, but I guess that’s the nature of Disney films. Heck, even my 8-year-old knew Balthazar would be resurrected at the end, so I can’t say there was much suspense or tension in this one!

Rating:

Despite its flaws, I still think The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is good enough to rent for family movie night. It doesn’t maintain the quality we’ve come to expect from Disney films, but it’s at least fun and mostly watchable. With a different actor as Dave, this might have been a whole lot better! I give it 3 stars out of 5.

I really had no intention of ever watching Avatar, and made my views clear in a recent post on this blog. But after my husband read the post, he insisted I give the movie a try. It would be better than I expected, he promised. All I can say is that I should’ve known better than to take his advice! We always have different opinions about movies, and this time was no different!

Plot summary (from the studio): AVATAR takes us to a spectacular world beyond imagination, where a reluctant hero embarks on an epic adventure, ultimately fighting to save the alien world he has learned to call home. James Cameron, the Oscar-winning director of “Titanic,” first conceived the film 15 years ago, when the means to realize his vision did not exist yet. Now, after four years of production, AVATAR, a live action film with a new generation of special effects, delivers a fully immersive cinematic experience of a new kind, where the revolutionary technology invented to make the film disappears into the emotion of the characters and the sweep of the story.

We enter the alien world through the eyes of Jake Sully, a former Marine confined to a wheelchair. Despite his broken body, Jake is still a warrior at heart. He is recruited to travel light years to the human outpost on Pandora, where corporations are mining a rare mineral that is the key to solving Earth’s energy crisis. Because the atmosphere of Pandora is toxic, they have created the Avatar Program, in which human “drivers” have their consciousness linked to an avatar, a remotely-controlled biological body that can survive in the lethal air. These avatars are genetically engineered hybrids of human DNA mixed with DNA from the natives of Pandora… the Na’vi.

Reborn in his avatar form, Jake can walk again. He is given a mission to infiltrate the Na’vi who have become a major obstacle to mining the precious ore. But a beautiful Na’vi female, Neytiri, saves Jake’s life, and this changes everything. Jake is taken in by her clan and learns to become one of them, which involves many tests and adventures. As Jake’s relationship with his reluctant teacher Neytiri deepens, he learns to respect the Na’vi way and finally takes his place among them. Soon he will face the ultimate test as he leads them in an epic battle that will decide nothing less than the fate of an entire world.

Liked:

• The cinematography and special effects were dazzling (at least for the first hour or so). I couldn’t help be impressed by what I saw, and it’s not even like I was watching it on a high-tech home theater system 5.1 or something like that. Just a regular old flat-screen for me. I wouldn’t necessarily want every movie out there to be mostly CGI, but this style of filmmaking absolutely has a place in today’s world.

Disliked:

• Well, I disliked just about everything else in this film, beginning with the acting. I thought Sam Worthington (Jake Sully) was TERRIBLE in his role, which was unfortunate since he’s in just about every scene. I don’t know why, but I did not like his character one bit, and never sympathized with him or wanted him to succeed.
• The “plot” was as transparent as they come. As soon as Jake had his first adventure as an avatar and exulted in the feel of being able to run again, I knew he wouldn’t want to live any other way. As soon as Jake was brought to the Na’vi clan and presented as one of them, I knew he would take their side. As soon as I saw the battle-scarred army general with a secret agenda, I knew he and Jake would eventually butt heads. As soon as I saw the sidekick (Norm Spellman/Joel Moore), I knew he would die. And on and on. There was nothing special about these predictions; it was simply extremely lazy screenwriting on Cameron’s part.
• Unobtanium? Really?? This was another example of lazy writing. Instead of coming up with a feasible name, Cameron settled for a wholly generic term like “unobtanium”. Wow.
• I didn’t understand how Pandora worked. What was in the atmosphere that required the humans to use masks whenever they ventured outdoors? Wasn’t there any oxygen? And if not, then how did the fires burn so fiercely during the battles? Doesn’t fire require O2? Also, I didn’t like how the animals on that planet were mostly the same as those found on Earth — with just a few differences. They had horses, albeit with 6 legs and a plug/outlet type thing for the rider. They had vicious, growling dogs. Meh. I figured animals on a different planet would be … completely different! Pandora was pretty much like Earth, except with more vibrant colors.
• The love story. Again, waaaaay too predictable — and wholly uninteresting. I never got a feel for Neytiri at all, and didn’t care about her one bit.
• The length. Good lord, why did the movie have to be so long? Thank goodness I watched it on DVD and was able to view this over the course of three days.

Rating:

I admit going into Avatar predisposed to hate it. Sci-fi/fantasy is my least favorite genre by far, so this would have had to be spectacular in order to change my mind. While the visuals were good enough, the awful acting and nonexistent plot made this a painful 3 hours for me. I give the film 1 star out of 5.

Plot summary (from the studio): “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” the seventh and final adventure in the Harry Potter film series, is a motion picture event told in two full-length parts. Part 1 begins as Harry, Ron, and Hermione set out on their perilous mission to track down and destroy the Horcruxes — the keys to Voledmort’s immortality. On their own, without the guidance and protection of their professors, the three friends must now rely on each other more than ever. But there are Dark Forces in their midst that threaten to tear them apart.

Meanwhile, the wizarding world has become a dangerous place for all enemies of the Dark Lord. The long-feared war has begun and Voldemort’s Death Eaters seize control of the Ministry of Magic and even Hogwarts, terrorizing and arresting anyone who might oppose them. But the one prize they still seek is the one most valuable to Voldemort: Harry Potter. The Chosen One has become the hunted one as Voldemort’s followers look for Harry with orders to bring him to the Dark Lord…alive.

Harry’s only hope is to find the Horcruxes before Voldemort finds him. But as he searches for clues, he uncovers an old and almost forgotten tale — the legend of the Deathly Hallows. And if the legend turns out to be true, it could give Voldemort the ultimate power he seeks. Little does Harry know his future has already been decided by his past when, on that fateful day, he became “the Boy Who Lived.” No longer just a boy, Harry Potter is drawing ever closer to the task for which he has been preparing since the day he first stepped into Hogwarts: the ultimate battle with Voldemort.

Liked:

• The best part of this film was seeing how the characters (and actors) have matured from the first installment. I don’t think there’s been any other film series that has retained the main talent through SEVEN parts, and it’s just amazing to me that these actors have grown up before our very eyes. I just caught the Chamber of Secrets the other day, and marveled at how young the core trio looked. After watching Deathly Hallows, I marveled at how they’re now virtually adults.
• The maturity theme was driven home in a couple of ways. Most notable was the fact that Harry, Ron, and Hermione were largely on their own in this film. They didn’t have Dumbledore to counsel them and tell them exactly what to do next. They didn’t have any of the usual Hogwarts teachers looking over them, protecting them, and healing them when necessary. It felt like three against the world — and the three were ready for it.
• I enjoyed seeing Harry and Hermione acknowledge their feelings for each other. I know that Harry likes Ginny Weasley and Hermione adores Ron, but it was nice for Harry and Hermione to share a few tender moments, particularly that dance in the tent after Ron had left. At the beginning of the series, I thought for sure Harry and Hermione were meant for each other. I’m OK with how the pairings actually worked out, but still enjoyed this nod to H&H’s friendship.

Disliked

• I know the isolation in the woods is a key element of the story and that Rowling extended the scenes for so long so the reader could get a sense of the frustration the characters felt regarding their own inaction. I get that; I really do. But it didn’t play well for me in the book, and was even worse on the film. Did the characters really have to spend 30 movie minutes moping around the woods to convey their frustration to the viewers? As I said, I know and appreciate the intent behind such scenes, but it was just so, SO boring!
• Was it just me or did Alan Rickman/Snape look particularly jowly in this film??? His face was so flabby that it was distracting. Yeah, it’s a shallow observation, but still… it’s one thing that really stood out in the film.
• I kind of missed seeing some of the usual Hogwarts figures. As good as Harry, Ron, and Hermione are, they weren’t quite enough to carry the entire film for me. Thankfully Part 2 should feature more screen time for some of my other favorites.

Rating:

It’s hard to come up with a rating for Part 1 because I know I’m seeing an incomplete work. Most of the story up to this point was simply setting up all the action that will take place in Part 2. Going just by how entertained I was during Part 1, however, I give this movie 3 stars out of 5.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): In a “post-Apocalyptic” world, the only living beings seem to be animated ragdolls — which Wikipedia tells me are called “Stitchpunks”, though I’m pretty sure that term was never used in the film. The Stitchpunks don’t have names, but are distinguished from each other by numbers on their backs. The action mostly revolves around 9 (voiced by Elijah Wood), a relative newcomer to the rest of the team.

9 first learns of the existence of other Stitchpunks when he meets 2 (Martin Landau). 2 gives 9 a voice box, but is then pursued and captured by a robotic “cat beast”. 9 is then rescued by 5 (John C. Reilly), and the two of them then set out to help recover 2. Along the way, they meet up with 7 (Jennifer Connelly) and learn a little bit about what happened to make the world the way it is now. It turns out that a scientist (Alan Oppenheimer) created an intelligent machine that was supposed to help mankind, but an evil dictator took control of the machine and used it to try to take over the world. The subsequent wars resulted in the widespread devastation the Stitchpunks now see.

There is still hope of returning the world to its former glory, however. The Scientist put a bit of his soul into each of the nine Stitchpunks and created an amulet that could be used to destroy the Fabrication Machine should such action be necessary. 9 learns of this from watching a how-to tutorial, and then shares his knowledge withi the remaining Stitchpunks. 1 (Christopher Plummer) sacrifices himself so the amulet can be recovered, which results in the destruction of the Fabrication Machine. The film ends with a new rainfall, which seems to indicate that life on the planet will begin again.

Liked:

• Hmm, I guess I liked the fact that this film was only 79 minutes long and therefore wasn’t quite as torturous as it might have been.

Disliked:

• The storyline took far too long to develop. Why did audiences have to wait until the middle of the film to find out what the Stitchpunks were and what they were trying to do? That sort of thing is usually spelled out in the first 15 minutes or so. The only reason I kept watching this was that it was Family Movie Night and my 7-year-old chose this title.
• The lack of dialogue was annoying. I hate just watching endless action scenes, so the beginning of this film sucked for me and I spent most of it on my netbook writing a review for something I bought from fatburner.org. (I felt the same about Wall-E, BTW.)
• Did anyone actually care about the Stitchpunks? They weren’t developed as characters — despite having distinguishing characteristics, which is a completely different thing. I felt no connection to these things, so I wasn’t invested in their success nor was I affected by their “deaths”.

Rating:

9 just wasn’t my kind of movie at all. It was boring, hard to follow at the beginning, and lacking in any kind of interesting developments along the way. Since I base my ratings on how entertained I was and how likely I would be to see the film again, I give this 2 stars out of 5.

Plot summary (with spoilers): Harry (played by Daniel Radcliffe), Ron (Rupert Grint), and Hermione (Emma Watson) are back for their sixth year at Hogwart’s School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Now that they’re all getting older, teenage angst comes into play quite often, with Ron hooking up with Lavender (Jessie Cave) while Hermione stews because he can’t see that she’s totally in love with him. Harry is in the same situation with Ginny (Bonnie Wright), who has taken up with Dean Thomas (Alfie Enoch). Most of the shenanigans involving school life have to do with these relationships, while run-ins with Slytherins or mishaps with new professors are kept to a minimum.

Meanwhile, Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) has a task for Harry: He’s to get to know new potions master Professor Slughorn (Jim Broadbent) in order to find out a bit of Tom Riddle’s (Frank Dillane) history. Slughorn liked Riddle when he was a student, and Dumbledore thinks Riddle told Slughorn a secret that could help defeat Voldemort for good. After a while, Harry does succeed in learning what Riddle had said. He’d asked Slughorn about horcruxes, which clearly showed that he was leaning towards the dark arts and was contemplating murder to secure his immortality.

Dumbledore, who already destroyed two of Riddle’s horcruxes, has an idea of where a third might be. He takes Harry to an isolated seaside cave, where Dumbledore has to drink a disgusting liquid in order to reveal the horcrux. The liquid weakens him, but with Harry’s help, he’s able to retrieve Voldemort’s locket.

Upon returning to Hogwart’s, Dumbledore is confronted by Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton), who, as a newly-minted death eater, has been tasked by Voldemort with killing Dumbledore. Bellatrix Lestrange (Helena Bonham Carter) and a few others show up for support, but allow Draco some space to carry out his task. He hesitates, however, showing that he doesn’t have the nerve to go through with the murder. That’s when Professor Severus Snape (Alan Rickman) steps in and finishes the deed himself. The death eaters escape as the Hogwart’s community weep around Dumbledore’s body.

My Reaction: I am not a Harry Potter fanatic or anything, but I have enjoyed the books and films for the most part. But I have to say that Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was completely, utterly boring for the first two hours or so! I can’t believe so much screentime was spent on the Ron/Lavender stuff, while other, more important questions were left unexplored. For instance, the only way we learn that Snape was the half-blood prince was from his own quick utterance with 5 minutes left in the movie? There was no explanation of where the name came from, what it meant, or why it was important. I know these answers because I’ve read the book, but the film should be able to stand on its own.

I also thought the Draco subplot was hard to follow. Again, I knew from the book that he had been recruited as a death eater, but from just watching the movie, I had no idea what the hell was going on with him. Shouldn’t that have been explained early on just to give viewers a heads-up on what was happening? I mean, surely not every audience member has memorized the entire canon backwards and forwards!

I don’t care that there were differences between the book and the film (like Harry being immobilized by Dumbledore on the astronomy tower vs. just staying put because Snape told him to), but I do think the stuff that’s included should be adequately explained.

Oh, and what was up with all of those tight, close-up shots throughout the movie? My god, those were so annoying! How many times did Ron end up looking as though he was being viewed through a fish-eye lens? Ugh, that was just terrible cinematography!

Overall, I thought Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was one of the weaker films in the series. Nothing happens for the first two hours, so by the time the action did pick up towards the end, I had already tuned out. I give this movie 2 stars out of 5.

Not being much of a science-fiction fan, Jumper wasn’t a movie that I was interested in seeing when it was released way back in February. I didn’t even bother checking out the DVD when that first became available — until I heard that Rachel Bilson was in the film. She was one of my favorite television actresses when she was on The O.C., and her name in the credits here was enough to get me to rent Jumper.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): High school boy David Rice (played by Max Thieriot) is the kind of kid that bullies love to pick on. One day, as he gives a meaningful gift to Millie Harris (AnnaSophia Robb), the girl he’s had a crush on since they were five, resident jerk Mark (Teddy Dunn) throws the object onto an iced-over pond. Ignoring Millie’s pleas to be careful, David ventures out to the middle of the pond, where he promptly falls through the ice. Instead of drowning in the frigid waters, however, David emerges in the public library — very much alive. He has just discovered his powers of teleportation.

Soon thereafter, David leaves home, robs a bank, and begins traveling the world while living off the stolen money. After eight years, an older David (now played by Hayden Christensen) has a swanky New York apartment, and lives a life of leisure, jumping from one exotic location to the next. However, this leisurely existence is thrown into turmoil when he arrives home one day to find a stranger named Roland (Samuel L. Jackson) in his living room. Roland seems to know all about David’s abilities, and what’s more, is looking to kill him.

David manages to escape from Roland, and later discovers from fellow jumper Griffin (Jamie Bell) that Roland is a Paladin — someone whose life mission is to rid the world of jumpers. Griffin has been keeping track of Roland for years, waiting for the perfect opportunity to take him out. Although David is interested in Griffin’s expertise, Griffin wants nothing to do with him. Since David has been identified by the Paladins, everyone he knows and loves, including the older version of Millie (Rachel Bilson) whom he recently hooked up with, is in imminent danger.

The rest of the film then shows David first trying to evade the Paladins, and then attacking them head-on once he learns that they’ve got Millie in their clutches. Viewers get the battles they expect, as well as a predictable Hollywood outcome.

My Reaction: I had mixed feelings after seeing Jumper. On the one hand, it wasn’t as science-fiction-y as I thought it would be. There weren’t any long, drawn-out explanations about wormholes or the actual jumping process, which I thought was the best way to go. Trying to make any of that stuff seem plausible would have simply opened the film up to a lot of logical criticisms, thereby taking away from the story itself. But on the other hand, there were so many other unanswered questions along the way that I was far from satisfied at the conclusion.

Most of the questions I had centered around the nature of the Paladins. Not much was ever said about them, except that they had been tracking jumpers for centuries and were more or less religiously motivated. But how did Paladins become Paladins? Were they selected by some manual process, or were their “skills” somehow inherent to their natures, much as jumping was a natural ability. If the former, why would David’s mom want to be a Paladin when she knew her son was a jumper? If the latter, how did the son of a Paladin have the ability to jump in the first place?

Another thing I had to wonder about during the film was why would the jumpers continue to risk their lives once they knew the Paladins were out there? David didn’t know anyone was tracking him until the encounter with Roland in his apartment, but Griffin had known about Roland for many years. My question is, why would either Griffin or David continue to jump, thereby leaving a trail for the Paladins to follow, once they knew they were being hunted? Why not go move somewhere, get a regular job, lead regular lives, and NOT jump anymore? Seems pretty easy, doesn’t it?

And finally, I just have to say one thing about Rachel Bilson’s character Millie. When David started in on his “it was always you” speech, I totally had flashbacks to The O.C., where Seth Cohen said the exact same thing to Bilson as Summer Roberts! Wow, Bilson really inspires the men with lasting love, doesn’t she??

Overall, Jumper wasn’t terrible, but it did give me the feeling that there was a lot of unrealized potential with the script. It’s a watchable film that will leave you wanting more at the end, which is why I give it just 3 stars out of 5.

As a huge fan of the early seasons (1-6) of The X-Files television show, I was extremely thrilled to hear that a new stand-alone movie was being released. The film would revive characters that had been off the air since the seres bowed out in 2002, and was frequently described as an homage to the fans by writer/director Chris Carter. Never having been fond of the alien mythology arc (I’m still not sure I understood exactly what happened there), I was looking forward to this “stand-alone” movie.

I began to worry a bit as preliminary reviews from major critics heavily panned the flick. It was dull, they said, and lacked focus and excitement. I passed those off as being written by people unfamiliar with the series. But when fans also started slamming I Want to Believe, my heart sunk. Surely these people would have been pretty lenient, right? Nevertheless, I decided to skip The Dark Knight and spend my $8.50 to see Mulder and Scully in action again. What a huge mistake!

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): The film’s timeline coincides with the television series, which is to say that six years have passed in the lives of Fox Mulder (played by David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson). Neither works for the FBI anymore. Scully is a surgeon at Our Lady of Sorrows hospital, while Mulder spends most of his time alone in a remote farmhouse clipping out newspaper stories of unexplained phenomena.

One day Scully is approached by Agent Dakota Whitney (Amanda Peet) and Agent Mosley Drummy (Xzibit), who ask for her help in locating Mulder. No, they’re not looking to arrest him for past infractions of Bureau rules; instead, they need his assistance on a current case. A young FBI agent named Monica Bannan (Xantha Radley) has been abducted, and now they’ve got a disgraced Catholic priest saying that he has psychic visions of Bannan’s whereabouts and who has already led the FBI to a severed arm. Whitney and Drummy want Mulder to talk to Father Joseph Crissman (Billy Connolly) to determine if the guy is a fraud or not.

At first, Mulder thinks this is merely an FBI ruse designed to lure him out into the open, but Scully immediately dismisses that notion. The FBI could get him at any time, she points out. So Mulder finally agrees to go see what Father Joseph has to say.

Quickly falling back into their old roles, Mulder is inclined to believe the man, while Scully can’t get past the fact that Father Joseph is a convicted pedophile. Even after Father Joseph leads the agents to more body parts and cries tears of blood, Scully refuses to accept that he has psychic abilities. Mulder, on the other hand, begins working the case in earnest, believing that there’s still time to save Agent Bannan.

The rest of the film then follows Mulder and Whitney’s investigation, as Scully retreats to the sidelines to deal with a terminally ill patient at the hospital. And in true X-Files fashion, even though the case is resolved, the question of whether or not Father Joseph was truly having psychic visions is not.

My Reaction: I was extremely disappointed with The X-Files: I Want to Believe, as it bore little resemblance to the show that I once loved so much. Instead of tight, taut storytelling, viewers got a rambling narrative that was slow to develop and then far too quickly resolved. Plus, I didn’t even think the story was a classic X-file of the sort that Mulder and Scully used to deal with on TV. Yes, the priest might have been having psychic visions, but that was so tame compared to some of the things Mulder and Scully saw over the years.

Moreover, the “B” storyline, that of Scully’s dying patient, served to slow the film down considerably. I realize that the storyline was supposed to show how Scully still has to struggle with her faith even though she’s no longer at the FBI (a Catholic promoting the use of aggressive experimental treatment instead of deferring to God’s will), but still… it was boring as hell and felt so out of place.

While Duchovny played Mulder much as he did on the TV show, managing to get a few good one-liners into the dialogue and everything, Anderson seemed to take Scully in a whole different direction. She was far more hostile, and, well, whiny than I remember her being from the TV show. How many times did she get in Father Joseph’s face about his past crimes? Yeah, we get it… he’s a pedophile and she abhors him. Just move on for the sake of plot advancement, please!

And what was with all the in-depth analysis about Father Joseph telling Scully, “Don’t give up”? That has to be one of the most commonplace phrases out there, yet Mulder and Scully spend several minutes debating the meaning. WTF? If someone said “Don’t give up” to me, I’d just be like, “Yeah, okay” and move on. For some reason, that scene totally annoyed me.

Frankly, I’m far too bummed about what I saw to continue writing out all the problems I had with the script. Suffice it to say that if this is indeed the last we ever see of The X-Files franchise, I’m going to pretend I Want to Believe never happened. I give this film 2 stars out of 5.

Most of the time, I don’t even think twice about watching a movie that’s based on a novel because screenwriters generally do a decent job of capturing the gist of the story in their scripts. Yes, I know that it’s exceedingly difficult to get an adaptation “just right”, and that people will forever quibble about what the screenwriter chose to include or leave out, but for the most part, you don’t have to be familiar with the book in order to enjoy the film.

However, I think the opposite may be true for The Golden Compass. I know that a lot of Philip Pullman fans were looking forward to this release, and many people felt that The Golden Compass would rival The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in terms of broad appeal and popularity. But domestic audiences didn’t exactly flock to The Golden Compass, and I think part of the problem might have been the incomprehensibility of the story to someone unfamiliar with Pullman’s work.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): The entire story takes place in a parallel universe where humans’ souls exist externally in the form of animals. The main character is Lyra Belacqua (played by Dakota Blue Richards) is a young orphan being raised by her uncle Lord Asriel (Daniel Craig) at Jordan College in Oxford. Lord Asriel is a controversial figure because of his beliefs about dust, a kind of dark matter that the ruling Magesterium denies even exists. After narrowly escaping an assassination attempt, Lord Asriel takes off on an expedition to the North in order to study dust more closely, thereby exiting for the rest of the film.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Coulter (Nicole Kidman), a benefactor of the college, comes for a visit and instantly takes a liking to Lyra. In fact, she says that Lyra would be perfect as her assistant, so she offers to take Lyra away with her. Lyra willingly agrees, but before she goes, the master of the college gives her a magical Golden Compass that can answer any question asked of it — as long as the questioner knows how to decipher the answer.

While Lyra is living with Mrs. Coulter, she learns that the woman is actually the head of an organization called the General Oblation Board, or “Gobblers” for short. The Gobblers are suspected of having kidnapped a number of Oxford children in order to experiment on them, so Lyra realizes that she’s in imminent danger. She therefore runs away from Mrs. Coulter, and joins forces with an aeronaut named Lee Scoresby (Sam Elliott) and a polar bear warrior named Iorek Byrnison (Ian McKellen) in order to find and rescue the endangered children.

The rest of the film then deals with Lyra, Lee, and Iorek’s adventures as they set off to find the missing kids. They get into a number of dangerous situations, fight an epic battle, and eventually emerge victorious as they save the children from harm.

My Reaction: As I said, I’ve never read the Pullman book, so I didn’t come into this viewing with an additional background information on the characters or the story in general. Because of this, I had a hard time understanding the significance of everything that happened in the film. For instance, I didn’t understand the whole point of having the action take place in a parallel universe. Was that just so there could be talking animal characters as well as humans? And what was the purpose of the Golden Compass? Did it actually tell Lyra any great truths that she couldn’t have otherwise figured out for herself?

Admittedly, I wasn’t paying as much attention as I could/should have while watching this film, so I might have missed the answers to these questions. Even so, the fact that I wasn’t compelled to pay attention means the story was less than interesting to me, which points to other shortcomings as well.

I was disappointed that Daniel Craig had such as small role in this film. I think his total screentime was probably about 5-10 minutes, which sucked. I like the actor, and would have preferred to see more of him than, say, Nicole Kidman or Dakota Blue Richards, who were both extremely grating and annoying after a while.

Overall, I just couldn’t get into The Golden Compass enough to bother trying to figure out what was going on. The story was boring and the entire effort just seemed a bit… lackluster. I give this movie just 2 stars out of 5.

I Am Legend was one of the biggest box office hits of 2007, finishing in sixth place on the year with an estimated domestic gross of $256,393,000 and change. The film received lots of positive reviews, and since I usually like Will Smith movies, I knew I’d eventually get around to seeing it. I didn’t have a chance to catch it in theaters, but was finally able to rent it last weekend.

I managed to remain unspoiled for this film, meaning I didn’t have any idea what it was about beyond what was shown in trailers. As it turns out, I shouldn’t have gone to all that trouble to avoid reading detailed reviews or listening in on discussions my friends had about the movie because not much happened in it anyway!

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Smith stars as Col. Robert Neville, a man who appears to be the only human survivor in New York City after a deadly virus wiped out the rest of the population in the year 2012. Neville spends most of his days driving around the city with his dog Sam, hunting wild game and scrounging for supplies.

Strangely, he keeps a close eye on the time and makes sure to hustle back home while there’s still a bit of sunlight left. Furthermore, he barricades himself in his home at night, barring the door and pulling steel barriers down over the windows. Hmm, maybe he’s not alone after all.

As luck would have it, Neville is a virologist, so he spends the rest of his abundant free time in his basement laboratory working on cure for whatever wiped out most of humanity in the first place. He currently runs his test on bats and other creatures, but according to his notes, nothing has proven effective so far.

Later we learn that Neville does indeed have company in NYC. Apparently, not all of the infected humans died. Those that weren’t killed outright by the virus ended up suffering from rabies-like symptoms that not only turned them into raving lunatics, but also disfigured/elongated their skulls and transformed them into vampire-like creatures that are afraid of sunlight. Neville runs into a couple of these creatures in an abandoned building, and again later on when he gets ensnared in a trap.

Neville then gets a shock when two more uninfected survivors show up in the city. They are Anna (played by Alice Barga) and Ethan (Charlie Tahan), who help rescue him after he essentially tries to kill himself following the death of Sam, his only companion. Anna says they are heading to a survivor’s camp in Vermont, and encourages Neville to join them. Neville, however, replies that there are no survivors and that the two of them would just be wasting their time.

Things come to a head when Neville’s formerly secret abode is discovered by the vampire-like beings. These creatures apparently followed Anna and Neville after Anna’s rescue mission, and are now laying siege to the place. Neville leads Anna and Ethan to the basement, where he secures them in a hiding place. He also discovers that his latest cure actually worked, so he takes a vial of blood from the test subject, gives it to Anna, and tells her to carry it to the survivor’s camp. Neville then turns to face the onslaught of infected creatures, pulls out a grenade, and blows the lab up in order to save humanity.

My Reaction: I was kind of disappointed with I Am Legend because absolutely nothing happens in the first 30 minutes of the film! That whole time was spent in establishing Will Smith’s character, showing his daily routine, and hinting at what happened. The first vampire creature appeared right around the 30-minute mark, at which point things started to get a bit better. But that first part of the movie? What a snooze!

I also didn’t like how most of the story hinged on how Neville just happened to be a virologist who could sit around in the post-apocalyptic world and develop a cure. I mean, I’m willing to accept a certain amount of coincidence in movies, but that was a big one that was really hard to swallow.

After watching the film, I decided to go read the Wikipedia entry about the original novel, and I have to say that it sounded infinitely better than this adaptation. One line in the summary over there reads:

Neville sees the destruction of the infected survivors as a right, a moral imperative even, to be pursued for his own — and in turn the human race’s — survival. But at the end of the novel, he has a glimpse of a future society in which infection is the norm and Neville is a murderous deviant.

To me, that seems like it would have made a far more interesting theme than the standard Hollywood cleanup that we got in the latest adaptation, where Neville is turned into a typical hero who sacrifices himself to save the world. No wonder so many fans of the original novel were upset with the liberties taken in the film!

Overall, I Am Legend suffers from slow development, a boring plot, and an uninspired ending. I give the film just 2 stars out of 5, and wish I had read the original book instead!