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November 19, 2004

National Treasure

(out of four)

Now here's the thing about buried treasure: It begs to be found. The more elaborately its guardians try to hide it, the more their egos secretly want to be congratulated for their cleverness. National Treasure is one of those satisfying scavenger-hunt pot-boilers — think Lara Croft or the Mummy movies — in which a team of good-guy "treasure protectors" races against a bunch of greedy profiteers in search of "a treasure that redefines history for all mankind." It's a tomb-raiding adventure movie several notches below Indiana Jones status, although it desperately wants to convince you otherwise by having its characters repeatedly complimenting one another on what "geniuses" they all are.

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Posted by Peter Debruge at 12:29 PM | Comments (0)

November 10, 2004

The Polar Express in IMAX 3-D

(out of four)

Chris Van Allsburg's charming Christmas tale, The Polar Express, contains one of the most straightforward lessons to be found in all of children's literature (with the possible exception of Taro Gomi's helpfully titled Everyone Poops), and yet its simple message is more than enough foundation to make a great Christmas classic: ''Sometimes seeing is believing, and sometimes the most real things in the world are the things we can't see.'' That sentiment doubles as the founding paradox of Christian belief, but The Polar Express isn't one of those churchy ''true meaning of Christmas'' movies. It's a good, old-fashioned North Pole adventure brought to life with the most state-of-the-art animation technology money can buy, and there's really only one way to experience it:

See The Polar Express on IMAX 3-D or don't see it at all.

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Posted by Peter Debruge at 10:47 AM | Comments (0)