The film's marketing campaign only barely tried to preserve the mystery of Eli's book, and that was probably less out of a need to keep that plot point a secret than it was out of a feeling that giving it away would turn potential viewers off.  On the surface, The Book of Eli is a well-shot and coolly-acted mashup of genre film styles that should appeal to any film geek.  The Hughes brothers take a samurai, drop him into a western, and then set the whole thing in a post-apocalyptic future.  The events of Mad Max could easily be taking place simultaneously on the other side of the globe, and at the same time it wouldn't seem strange to see a posse ride up on horseback.  The film references classic western showdowns complete with dust sweeping across an empty street, but it also borrows the hacked and taped-together aesthetic from Beyond Thunderdome and it winds up being a most unsuspecting descendent of Zatoichi.  There's a Boy and his Dog poster on the wall when Eli is captured, and there's a shot near the end that looks ripped almost exactly from the recent classic Children of Men.  All of this adds up to a film that's fun to watch even if it's only a geeky blend of genre tropes, but Eli is still much more than that.

 As Denzel Washington's character Eli attempts to protect what may be the last surviving copy of the King James Bible, the typical man-on-a-mission motif is given a little more depth.  There are plenty of films where a loner walks alone across a wasteland on some kind of trek, but Eli's mission is noble and perhaps even sacred.  He's not a man of God and the movie makes sure to point out early on that he is no saint.  While he's generally kinder than others around him and unwilling to cheat and use others, he's not above profiting from violence or from others' misfortune.  He's not a holy man, and yet there is something righteous about him that even some of his enemies can sense.  Like Clive Owen's character in Children of Men, Eli is a damaged but capable hero who knows that his mission must succeed, even if he isn't exactly clear on what that mission is.

Gary Oldman's Carnegie, on the other hand, is part mustache-twirling villain and part pragmatist.  He doesn't mind abusing and manipulating people to get what he needs to survive, but he doesn't go so far as to come off as a sadist.  He's trying to wrestle some order out of the chaos of a world where people have turned to violence and cannibalism to survive, and it's easy enough to see how his vision of control over the handfuls of people left in the world is self-serving but also might not be such a bad idea.  After all, civilization in Eli's world isn't just crumbling, it is on the very brink of extinction.  Water, food, money, and shelter simply aren't enough to sustain people who are running out of hope as quickly as they run out of supplies.  Carnegie understands the power that a fully-formed, elegantly-scripted religion can have on a group like that, and while he may want to control people with it, he's essentially doing what so many leaders and tyrants have done before him.

So while the external conflict is one of swordfights and showdowns and chases down dusty roads, the film's deeper conflict is one between the forces of religion that always seem at odds.  Eli is guided by faith, blindly doing the work that he believes the Lord has asked him to do.  Carnegie is ready to wrangle that kind of faith to keep people from tearing the last remnants of the world apart, but he doesn't believe in the message as much as he does the message's power.  It's a classic struggle between the ideas that the Bible contains, and the way in which people use those ideas for something that they are not.  I love that a movie where Denzel Washington slices off arms and heads with a futuristic machete can really be about the way that people use and misuse the things that they believe in.

The Hughes Brothers have made a very Christian movie that is in fact not very pro-religion.  In fact, the very state of things in the film may be the result of religious tension that has finally boiled over into an apocalypse.  They paint religion with a cynical brush, where even in a world with a tiny population that doesn't read or remember anything about religion, men like Carnegie will always be around to exploit people's fear and need for hope.  Eli is on a noble mission to save the book, but he's not even exactly sure where he is going or what the value is in what he's doing.  That doesn't say much about the correctness of his belief, only that his faith is strong enough to guide him through 30 years of unimaginable peril.  Eli could just as easily be crazy as he could be 'saved' or righteous, and I think that in the end, the Hughes brothers do a smart thing by not paying off his quest with a renaissance of Christianity.  

The Book of Eli winds up being about the power of the Bible and the strength of faith without ever preaching that one has to subscribe to its message.  That's a pretty uncanny feat in my mind--to make a film that reveres faith and the Good Book without requiring an altar call, and while pointing out that in any desperate situation, the same book and same qualities in people can lead to terrible things.  When Eli delivers the book to an organization that is not trying to re-indoctrinate people but that is simply trying to preserve the pieces of essential human culture that have been destroyed, there's a powerful moment when the Bible feels holy and good in a way that it usually doesn't in films where it's assumed that the viewer is coming at things from a Christian point of view.  It's a wise choice by the film makers and it reminds me of all of the things I admire about people who are guided by faith and ideals, and indeed all of the things about the Bible that are powerfully good when they are not corrupted.

I don't think that The Book of Eli is a perfect film by any stretch--Mila Kunis and Malcolm McDowell are badly mis-cast and the film doesn't know where to end, dragging just a few minutes past what would be a dramatic final shot.  But there are so many things that the Hughes' get right, from the wonderful score to the camera work that lets the action breathe to the fight choreography to the belief that the audience doesn't need to have the details of the world spelled out in exposition.  It's truly a remarkable movie, and one that thrilled me in moments and moved me in others.  The studio was wise to keep the Bible and the film's religious themes out of the trailers, but it's a strange world where so many badly-produced Christian films fail to make their point, when one well-thought-out and entertaining R-rated one winds up being the perfect reflection on and celebration of faith.

Gilliam returns to his trademarks--a rich and visually-inventive fantasy world that is an escape from a grimmer reality, a young an innocent lead who is kind of stumbling through the story, fanciful animation--and there is no denying that this film is kin with with his earlier works.  But where Brazil had a clear through-line that followed a single character, it is sometimes hard to know which character Parnassus is actually about.  Dr. Parnassus would make a great protagonist if the story ever focused on his journey, but too often it wanders off to follow his daughter.  The daughter would make a good cipher, but the movie never commits to telling her story as it veers off to follow Tony.  Tony is a catalyst and there's clearly more going on with him than anyone in the film knows, but the audience is kept in the dark too, making it hard to care about the decisions he is forced to make.  In the end when all of these story arcs are weaving together, the film falls apart by trying to eek some meaning out of the place where everyone ends up.

I've grown tired of Tim Burton's "look," so much so that something like his upcoming Alice in Wonderland holds no appeal for me because I feel like I've seen it all before.  Gilliam is in danger of falling into that trap too, as the look of his films continues blur into sameness.  He does some impressive things inside the Imaginarium, but none of it is rendered with the kind of budget that would make it really jaw-dropping.  Sometimes the cartoony backdrops look fun but they don't work as well as the models and practical effects in his earlier films.  I wonder if the digital realm allows directors like Gilliam a little too much leeway to follow fantastic paths that don't really serve the story?  In interviews, Gilliam seems keenly aware that tools are just tools, but when there are effects that are so off-putting that that pull you out of the movie, maybe the wrong tools are being employed.

I want to love every Gilliam movie and I had high hopes for this one.  It's not terrible by any stretch, but it just doesn't connect the way that it should and that seems to be the fault of the story.  For a movie about the power of storytelling, it's incredibly frustrating to get to the end and realize that all the technique in the world can't save a story that doesn't know where to go.

All of that stuff works great on a conceptual level and the directors have clearly thought this all through.  They've designed a world that makes sense and it feels like a natural evolution of our society, just modified to suit people who can't walk in the daylight.  The movie is well-designed and it makes the most of its seemingly limited budget.  A lot of the film has that slightly fuzzy 300 or Sky Captain look where the backgrounds are entirely created with CGI and blended into the foreground with a soft focus.  They compose memorable shots, dress the characters appropriately, throw in classic vampire iconography, and generally tell a story that I want to see more of.

But the film isn't a complete success because the script feels like a draft.  The characters are all there and the plot moves along just fine, but the dialog gets awfully stiff and corny at times.  Characters tend to state the obvious, or they have quirks that sound good in a treatment but don't really work without the right words on the page or direction behind the camera.  There are a couple of convenient ways out of situations that I wish were dealt with a little more smartly--when your hero is saved at the last moment by someone who hasn't even appeared in the scene until he's needed, it's just lazy writing.  Aside from the script, the music is pretty underwhelming and at times downright ugly.  The movie also employs a few too many loud jump scares when it could rely just on the creepy dread that is inherent in the story.

None of the film's shortcomings kill its momentum entirely, but they keep it from being a classic.  It's technically competent, exceptionally well designed and thought out, and it has the makings of a truly great metaphorical tale about class and race and greed, but it never really makes the most of all of that.  I'd gladly line up for a sequel, but I hope that the directors can find someone to hone the script so that it matches the creativity of their ideas.

It turns out that Guy Ritchie is the perfect director to make a modern film out of a period hero who's already had numerous runs on the screen.  Ritchie keeps the movie propulsive, the action balanced with the story, and the characters charming from beginning to end.  It's a typical science vs. mysticism kind of Sherlock Holmes story and if you've ever seen or read a Holmes story, you'll know where this one is going from the first five minutes, but that shouldn't keep you from enjoying the journey.  These stories work best when we can relax and let Holmes solve the mystery in his own unique way.  And unique is what Ritchie, Robert Downey Jr., and Jude Law bring to the Holmes mythology that makes this film so much fun.

Ritchie's film isn't the stodgy or stuffy Sherlock Holmes that people might remember, but it's not unhinged or overly-stylized either.  The film could have easily lost its way with a nu-metal score or with lots of unnecessary CGI, but it managed to somehow feel classic and modern all at once.  I wasn't sure that I'd like Robert Downey Jr. as Holmes and it took a few minutes for me to get used to his approach to the character but once I settled in, I realized that he was great.  Jude Law makes a perfect Dr. Watson.  He's always torn between the proper world he should resign to and the dangerous world that Holmes inhabits, and his internal struggle is one of the things that moves the story forward.  

I hope that this film does well and that people realize that a well-made big-budget movie is worth supporting.  We could get a couple more Holmes films with this crew and they could all be lots of fun, or we could wait for the next League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.  I hope that the studios and that people who sort of aimlessly trek off to the movies recognize the difference.  When movies like Old Dogs fail and movies like Sherlock Holmes succeed, it gives me hope.

The world of CGI film making has given us some incredible, impossible images.  A movie like 300 couldn't even exist a decade ago, at least not with THAT look.  David Fincher flies his camera through coffee pots and under chairs not because it serves the story but because he can and it's more interesting than a straight dolly shot.  We could have seen a Lord of the Rings trilogy where Gollum was played by an oddly shaped guy in a suit and makeup, but the version we got is just so much better because of those terabytes of pixels flying off the screen.  Of course the CGI world has given us some real stinkers too.  Van Helsing's monsters would have looked much better as puppets and the Star Wars prequels, for all their whiz-bang, left characters behind as they focused on wave after wave of digital clone troopers and exotic beasts.  This technology is here to stay, and it's transforming the way movies are made to such an extent that we may start to take for granted the wonderful things that film makers will throw at us.  But with all of the successes and failures, the amazing feats and the woeful misapplications, the fantastic and the laughable, I can honestly say I've never seen something quite as astonishing as Avatar.

There are long segments of Avatar that may be completely computer-animated, but I just couldn't tell.  So much of the film is fantastic and other-worldly that it seems impossible to think that any of it was filmed as practical sets, models, or locations, but then it is all so seamlessly believable that it's impossible to tell where the camera ends and the computer begins.  Well, for the most part.  There are certainly some shots of the main characters where the laws of physics as we know them don't seem correctly applied, but for the vast majority of the film, there's nothing to question.  I know that the plants and creatures aren't real, but they don't stick out like the sore thumbs that similar effects brought in Star Wars.  I know that the mech suits and gunships aren't real, but they look perfectly integrated with the scenery and the whole thing is just a perfect illusion.  I wouldn't say that there was any point in the movie where I thought that the six-legged horses actually existed somewhere, but I was never distracted by the fact that they looked less a part of the scene than the actors.

It's easy to forget sometimes that film is always and has always been an illusion.  The earliest special effect was crude--a guy stood in front of the camera then they stopped rolling, he walked away, and they picked back up and it looked like magic.  To people who had no film vocabulary, this probably seemed like real magic--withouht understanding the techniques of film editing, it probably looked impossible.  It must have been incredible and it must have inspired people all over the place to think about what other tricks they could play with the camera.  I think Cameron has done the same thing with Avatar.  We know that the world isn't real, that this is all a manufactured illusion, and I don't think it's necessarily photo-real or grounded in any particular way (the way the effects in District 9 were, for instance,) but Avatar is so complete in its illusion that it's utterly engrossing.  At no point did the effects sizzle for the sake of sizzling.  Everything served the story and made the experience of watching the film as fantastic as the Avatar experience seemed to the film's hero.

That may in fact be the film's greatest achievement--that the film making technology does for the audience essentially what the technology IN the film does for the characters.  The central Sci Fi concept at play is the idea that some of the characters can jack into a machine to allow them to control a living, physical being that's been grown from human and alien DNA.  I would have liked some more exploration of the ethics of this concept and the inner struggle of the people who spent much of the movie acting through their avatars, but that's a minor qualm.  In order for this idea to work meta-texturally, the film has to be completely engaging and almost overwhelmingly captivating.  Thankfully, it is.  It took my eyes a few minutes to adjust to the 3D, which was not unlike the moments that it took the hero to get used to the perspective of the world through his avatar.  After I had bought into the look of the film, I never looked back because the movie never gave me a way out.  It was a pure escape to an incredible alien world and while Star Wars tried this over and over, it just never quite got it right with those prequels.

It might seem like the story of Avatar is an afterthought to the experience, and to a certain extent, that's true.  The story, on paper, is not likely to be much more captivating than many similar stories. You could remake Avatar in the wild west and not miss nearly a single story beat.  But the magic of movies is that they are never just about the story as words on a page--the images and music, the pace of the editing, the acting, and in this case the 3D effect all create an experience that is completely unique to the medium.  The story isn't all that unique, but the way in which the story is told is unquestionably fantastic and it's something that could only be that fantastic as a movie.  Sure there are a few scenes of mind-numbing expository dialog and a few characters who deserve to be more than just character types, but the plot is clear and uncluttered and the conflicts are full of drama.  James Cameron isn't one of my favorite directors and I think he makes some pretty safe choices in Avatar, but there's no way to deny that he directs some amazing action sequences and that he can hold down the character beats when he slows down enough for them.  

Will Avatar hold up over time?  Will the effects in this film eventually be eclipsed by something else?  I don't know for sure.  The morphing in Cameron's T2 seemed amazing at the time and it looks almost quaint now.  I imagine that people will eventually catch up, the technology will get cheaper, and the average summer blockbusters will look just as good and rich as Avatar in a few years.  At the moment though, James Cameron is the only person who has taken it to this level.  I would still prefer to see the technology and money behind Avatar in the hands of someone who could make a more intellectually audacious movie, but I'll settle for seeing this kind of populist movie as long as it's made with as much care and attention to detail as Avatar.  I don't think that this movie has necessarily changed the game, but it has certainly upped the bar.  If we are just now seeing the result of a generation of film makers who were inspired by Star Wars, I can't wait to see what the kids who are awed by Avatar come up with.

The problem is that no matter how beautifully designed the film is, and no matter how catchy the songs are, and no matter how well the whole thing is made, the classic Disney fantasy just isn't too relevant anymore.  Sure, it's fine dream fodder for six year old girls, but it's clear that even the writers have a hard time making sense out of the story of the princess who just needs a prince to make her dreams come true.  Disney actually did this successfully with Enchanted but with this animated feature, the film makers seem to be of two minds.

First, they go heavily against the grain with a princess character who values hard work over wishes, and who is determined to make her dreams come true without a man and without magical intervention.  The film gives her a great foil in a lazy, stuck-up prince who is more interested in partying with many ladies than he is in finding true love or doing anything valiant.  It's not quite a role reversal, but it does have the making of a great modern twist on the Disney fairytale.  But somewhere along the way, the movie just grinds to a stop and switches directions.

By the end, our hero and her prince have fallen in love, and they've both given up their old dreams to simply be together.  She wants him more than her dream, he wants her more than his rich allowance, and so all the hard work in the world isn't going to get her what she'd been working for the whole time.  Once the two finally marry and kiss, they are turned back into humans and everything magically works out.  She gets what she wants, plus a husband, he gets his money back, plus a wife, and somewhere along the way that lesson about hard work has turned into a lesson about wishing on stars, believing in magic, and relying on a man to complete the picture.  

There are some fantastic segments in the movie, and most of the supporting characters are great.  There's a little cajun firefly who steals the show, a horn-playing alligator who is always funny, and a voodoo villain who gives the film some great, creepy, psychadelic moments.  Taken out of context of the story's failure, all of those elements are great.  But when it all comes together, I couldn't help but feel bad for the kids who go into it.  I'm sure they will be entertained and that it'll be another princess to adorn cakes and for kids to dress up as on halloween, but it all feels so unnecessary.  If Disney would let kids enjoy Snow White and Cinderella and put all of that Disney magic into making a story that's fresher and more relevant, maybe we'd all have something really special.

Enter Bruce Willis.  Here's a pretty normal guy, just a cop caught up in an extraordinary situation, putting his wits and his survival instinct to good use.  Die Hard does everything right--from isolating Willis from any real help (and without any shoes, ) to setting up character moments that pay off later in the movie.  There's no unnecessary exposition and the film never drags.  The little conversation about Holly's company-issued Rolex serves a purpose in characterizing her weasley co-worker and it establishes her position at Nakatomi.  When the watch is later unlatched to drop Hans to his death, it's a subtle moment--no one says "Time for you to drop out" or anything stupid--it's just a well-written way to tie things up.

Die Hard 2, on the other hand, takes most of what is good about the original and throws it out the window, opting instead for a lazy sequel approach. Sure, it's bigger and there are a couple of memorable shots/scenes, but watching the films back to back, I really realized how forced the second film is. There's a call back to Al, the cop who talks Willis through the first film, but it serves no purpose other than to give that character a cameo. We get to see the nosy reporter from the first film get knocked out again by Holly, but he doesn't wind up making the film any more tense and his insertion into the story doesn't have much of an effect on the plot. The airport is great setting for a caper, but it's almost too big, and the bulk of the movie consists of Willis getting from one place to another as he tries to stop the terrorists and figure out their plan.  When Willis mutters his "Yippie Kie A" line under his breath, it feels like the perfunctory insertion of a catchphrase where it worked so organically in the original.

I don't hate Die Hard 2 and I certainly DID enjoy seeing it on the big screen again, but it's the kind of sequel that I hate to see.  It seems to lack a basic understanding of why the first film worked so well, and in that it takes an original piece of cinema and turns it into a rote franchise.  Perhaps there never should have been a sequel--the characters themselves remark several times throughout the second one that these extraordinary things keep happening to them and they are right--what made the first one so cool was the unexpected nature of the conflict.  Once we've set up Willis as an action hero who gets in the middle of things, it's far less interesting to see where he's going to go.

The sets and character designs are fantastic, the script is full of dry humor for the adults and moments of inspired comedy for the kids.  The voice cast is impeccable, and the music gives the whole thing a wonderfully light-hearted tone.  I'm not much for kids' movies these days, but this year has given us a number of really good ones.  One could argue that films like this one or Up or Where the Wild Things Arearen't really made for kids, but the fact remains that they are perfectly kid-appropriate.  I don't think every 9 year old is going to find Jason Schwartzman's petulant teenage character hilarious, but he's drawn with enough detail that kids will understand where he's coming from.  Mr. Fox is daring and charismatic and more than a little full of himself, and I think kids can see that he's likeable even if some of the things he does put his family in danger.  And then there's the possum, who steals every scene he's in and gives Mr. Fox a down-to-earth sidekick. 

This is a movie full of real, adult problems.  It uses adult language including a clever way to get around swear words, but it never gets boring or forgets that kids are watching.  In the film, Mr. Fox is hitting mid-life and he realizes that his house isn't what it could be, that his job isn't rewarding, and that he's not getting any younger.  His son is awkward and rebellious, but at the end of it all, he just wants to be like his dad.  Mr. Fox's life isn't perfect, and yet his problems aren't external--there isn't some greedy land developer plowing up his den or a nasty boss making his life hell--his problems come from his own perspective on the world.  This could all be plodding and talky but Anderson makes all of it fun without making it trivial.  The movie reinforces Anderson's theme of sons pining for acceptance from their fathers, but it doesn't feel as whiney and the characters aren't as desperate as those from some of his other films.  It doesn't pander with fart jokes or pop culture references, but it includes laughs and action every couple of minutes.  I don't really know where Anderson pulled this movie from, but I sure hope that he makes more like it.