John Carter (of Mars)

As usual, I haven’t read the book. Or books. I suppose it’s kind of shameful given that Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom series is basically the reference for all sci-fi/fantasy that came after it, and I consider myself such a fan of the stuff. I do really like Frank Frazetta’s illustrations of it but that’s not really good enough. I know so very little about the real deal; but that could be for the best, as it made the movie that much newer to me even though everything in it has been tread so repeatedly in other stories.

It’s simple enough I guess. This guy John is a badass, gets accidentally transported to Mars, meets some aliens and an attractive lady, jumps really high and beats the bad guys. As usual the jumping really high part was what appealed to me the most. I didn’t care that much about all the backstory stuff, which includes a shadowy society of immortals who think they control the universe and all that. They were a little interesting but their admitted indifference kind of made them less menacing.

The best aspect of the movie is the visuals. It’s just really well put together. The alien race, the Tharks, while sometimes looking a bit cartoony are really quite believable; perhaps a bit moreso that the blue cat people from Avatar. Some of John’s jumping action is a bit wobbly but it’s still plenty fun to watch. I saw it in 3D, and it wasn’t bad, but I think sitting near the side of the theater degraded it a bit. I was seeing double sometimes.

Next up is the acting; I can’t really find fault with the majority of the cast. There are some damn fine actors in there, including McNulty from The Wire, Julius Caesar and Mark Antony from Rome, and Willem Dafoe as one of the Tharks’ voices. They all do a great job with the dialogue they’re given. Taylor Kitsch is… not great. They could have done better. Lynn Collins as the Martian princess is a much more enjoyable casting.

The dialogue often seems a bit tired, which is to be expected given that the source material has been used so thoroughly already, but I think if the writers had taken it in a different, more pulpy direction it could have been better. I really loved the funny bits, and wish there were more of them.

Reading reviews beforehand may have colored my opinion a bit, but I think the majority is right. It’s a very fun, well-made, but hollow movie.

The Troll Hunter

Norway’s pretty cool. It’s the home of black metal, Kvelertak, and a bunch of fjords, and it’s got probably the best average quality of life on the planet. Oddly their movies don’t seem to pop up on the global radar much though; this is the first I’ve heard of one. I’ll certainly be on the lookout now.

This is a kind of muckumentary/shakycam thing, a bit more like Cloverfield than anything else. It’s supposedly a bunch of footage that was discovered in some way that’s explained in the opening text, and it’s all just been put together into a movie. Originally it was supposed to be a documentary about bear poaching, made by a group of college kids, but it turned out the poacher wasn’t hunting bears. Trolls are real and they’ve been wandering outside their territories, and somebody’s trying to cover it up with fake bear attacks. One man is given the task of keeping the monsters in check, and the intrepid group of college kids are eventually allowed to tag along and document the atrocities.

The biology and diversity of the trolls is taken from legend and folklore. Not everything made the cut; the more fanciful bits like speaking human language and playing games of wit were thrown out in favor of making the trolls into massive, dumb predators who eat rocks or whatever else they can find. The film has pretty blatant environmentalist undertones. The destruction of the trolls is an affront to nature and the preservation of Norwegian history, all that sort of thing. And yet, the film maintains a not-quite-that-serious vibe, bringing on laughs once in a while and not really prompting that much reverence for the creatures; that’s directed more on the beautiful landscapes.

The trolls themselves are of course computer-generated, and they look great. The animation isn’t perfect all the time, but it didn’t matter that much considering the strangeness of the several different kinds of trolls. The most grating aspect of the film was the shakycam. I remember there being a lot of fuss over people getting sick at Cloverfield screenings; those people should avoid this one at all costs. It gets pretty brutal with the shaking. Also, since it’s supposed to just be raw footage spliced together instead of a professionally edited movie, the cuts are frequent and often jarring. The sound was probably the best part though. It made the scale of the creatures much more believable.

To top off the goodness, the closing credits were accompanied by a track off of Kvelertak’s self-titled release from last year, which is an incredibly fantastic album and extremely appropriate for this movie.

A bit about the theater. We went to the E Street Cinema in Washington DC. This is the first time I’ve been there and it certainly won’t be the last. They show lots of great limited-release films, and had posters for a whole bunch of movies I hadn’t even heard of. Once we got into our theater, which was very small but still had semi-stadium seating, we were treated to a live, albeit somewhat nervous introduction by one of the staff who seemed genuinely happy to see so many people in attendance for this movie in particular. The crowd was cool, the sound was great, and the screen was just fine. It was just an all-around great time.

Didn’t think I’d write this much.

Game of Thrones – Season 1

Winter is coming yo.

So this is show is awesome. HBO is good at making stuff. Of course it doesn’t hurt that it’s based on one of the most highly praised fantasy book series ever, and the writer George R. R. Martin is a producer and wrote one of the episodes. It also has a fantastic cast, and a pretty decent budget.

It’s a story of family ties, honor, idiocy, betrayal, scheming, war, and a little magic. The several houses of Westeros vie for the throne for different reasons while a gathering darkness threatens everyone’s existence in the cold North. A host of interesting characters, including the inimitable Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister and Sean Bean as Eddard Stark, have long conversations about their idea of how the world works and make lots of mistakes; unlike in a lot of other shows, these mistakes come with definite prices. Much like in The Walking Dead (the comic, not really the show), no one is safe. It lends a sense of danger unlike I think I’ve seen in television before aside from shows like The Wire or Breaking Bad.

While it is a sort of high fantasy, there is very little in the way magic, and I’ve seen no elves or dwarves anywhere. There’s a lot of dragon talk but you’ll have to watch the show to find out how that works out. There is some sorcery, but it happens behind closed doors and is regarded by pretty much everyone as something that should be avoided at all costs. It’s kind of refreshing to see something this realistic in this setting.

These past ten episodes have ranked up near the top for me, and I can’t wait for more. I’ll probably break down and read the books before the next batch comes around.

Thor

“I’m Thor.” “You’re Thor?” “Well it hurtth.” (not taken from this film)

I don’t know much at all about the comic-book version of Thor. My knowledge of Viking lore is mostly gleaned from Neil Gaiman books. Still, this movie seemed like it could be fun, and the reviews are pretty good. Having both Kat Dennings and Natalie Portman in the cast certainly can’t hurt.

Thor is the son of Odin the Allfather, king of Asgard, which is seemingly a planet or something instead of a spiritual realm as in the mythological version. The inhabitants of Asgard are a techno-magically advanced, powerful race of superhumans/aliens who’ve been trolling Earth for the past few millennia, posing as gods. Odin and his brother Loki are vying for their aging father’s throne, and Thor’s brash ways bring him to restart an age-old war with the Frost Giants, another alien race on another planet. This affront to peace makes Odin very angry; he summarily grounds Thor until he learns his lesson.

This brings us to Earth, where Thor the disenfranchised meets the lovely scientists Natalie and Kat stormchasing with their old-man co-worker. For a while Thor oddly thinks that he’s still the big man, but eventually figures out that he’s been a bad boy. This realization marks an almost immediate change in his attitude, and after a selfless act he’s given back the hammer and goes back up the rainbow bridge to kick some brotherly ass.

It’s not what I’d call a really good movie, and while others are calling it the best comic-book movie since The Dark Knight, I’m not sure I agree. I think I enjoyed Iron Man 2 a bit more. It is indeed an entertaining film, mostly due to its self-awareness; the movie knows it’s a bit ridiculous, and piles on the funny. If not for that it would just be stupid. The only performance that I really thought was truly good from an acting standpoint was Loki’s, played by Tom Hiddleston. The rest were just silly. Likeable, but silly. The visuals were pretty nice but too plastic for my liking, and the action kind of fell into the same trap as Sucker Punch by having little or no consequence.

Still, the funny saves it. Thor’s time on Earth being a jack-ass is fun to watch, and whole rainbow-bridge thing just cracks me up a bit. It’s a fun movie, and you could do worse than going to see it in theaters; just skip the 3D if you can.

Sucker Punch

Do you like music videos? Do you like two-hour music videos? Then Sucker Punch is the movie for you!

The initial hype for this thing wasn’t very misleading, really. It had tons of awesome things presented rather spastically in a short trailer with little in the way of plot or character hints. It didn’t include much dialogue though, which helped to make it seem better than it actually is. The bits that it did include were a bit iffy, I thought. Maybe a little too straight-forward, what with the list of items and all that. It was very easy to look past that though and concentrate on the fact that it would be a movie about a bunch of pretty ladies fighting robots and orcs with machine guns and katanas.

That’s pretty much what we got, except the actiony bits are surrounded with some sort of dreamish story about some sad girls stuck in either an asylum for insane babes or a whorehouse, depending on which way you look at it. It’s also very restrained in order to fit the PG-13 bill, which I think is what kept it from reaching that lofty, masturbatory height that the trailers advertised. I thought I would be able to enjoy the actiony bits more than I ended up liking them; I suppose it might have been due to my relatively short sleep last night but I almost nodded off a couple times while robots were exploding. The music was pretty cool though, especially the inclusion and rather prominent featuring of “Army of Me” by the wonderfully strange Björk Guðmundsdóttir, which almost had me invested in the scene. There were some other neat songs as well, almost all used during the action scenes, which all felt very much like music videos.

Outside of those parts the movie is pretty bad. The acting is almost universally terrible, even by the rather accomplished character actor Scott Glenn, whose Yoda-like character’s catch phrases failed in their supposedly endearing aim and just ended up being annoying; Jon Hamm’s abbreviated role could have been better if his most interesting scene hadn’t been cut due to the MPAA’s lameness, and the principal cast can’t make the dialogue interesting. There were just so many long, static scenes of boring exposition that could have been replaced with more visually entertaining pieces while allowing the viewer to figure things out on his or her own. The list of MacGuffins just seemed stupid to me.

As usual, Zack Snyder made a movie that only he could make. It’s very recognizably his style; washed out colors, lots of slo-mo, and subject matter yanked from old Heavy Metal issues. I liked 300 when I first saw it, and I respect his version of Watchmen in most respects. This though, his first venture into “original” territory, seems lacking. It’s like he tried to pack every awesome thing he could think of into a two hour, PG-13 movie. Not gonna happen bro.

Tangled

So I probably wasn’t going to ever see this movie, but it looked like it might not suck, and my attempts at spontaneity kind of made it the only option when we got to the theater on Saturday night. The selling points for me were Disney’s attempt to bring back their old character style in the new medium of CGI, and the casting of Zachary Levi (Chuck) as the voice of the male protagonist.

The story of course is that of Rapunzel and her ridiculously long hair. As I recall though the hair wasn’t really magical in the original story. Here it’s given the power of glowiness and healing/rejuvenation, which is what makes the old hag keep her locked up. I can’t remember what her reason was before. Anyhow, Prince Charming isn’t a prince, instead a bit more of an antihero with a heart of gold and all that, pulling out the parkour and the fake skate-boarding at every turn. We also have an intensely annoying sentient horse playing an antagonist-turned-good-guy, and some evil twins. We follow goldie-locks and Sean White through an adventure filled with emotional turmoil, misunderstood ruffians, natural disasters and familial stress, always accompanied by generic Disney musical numbers, the majority of which made me want to leave the theater.

That’s the problem I have with these things now; Pixar has spoiled me with great movies devoid of cheesy and unnecessary musical bits, and usually good characters and story. In this film, Disney seems to be clinging to the crappier bits of their legacy and not really forging any new ground. I suppose it might be entertaining for its target demographic, but I’m decidedly not a part of that anymore.

That said, the 3D aspect was pretty well done, and I did like the majority of the characters’ visual design. So that’s what I can say about it; It’s pretty, but mostly lame.

Hellboy Vol. 6 – Strange Places

I’ve decided I’m going to write about each Hellboy trade paperback that I buy after I read it from now on, because they’re great. To summarize what’s come before this one, Hellboy is a demon who came through a portal opened by Nazis and now he’s trying to be a good guy, but his apocalyptic destiny keeps on creeping up on him and getting him very annoyed. He’s fought a lot of mythical creatures and spirits and always had a witty tagline.

Each volume usually has two or more stories of varying length. This one has two, the second of which includes an epilogue and sketches from a couple of aborted attempts. They’re both excellent, and I think I may have enjoyed this volume more than most of the others for its simplicity and foreboding.

The first story, The Third Wish, begins with a trip to Africa and the introduction of a possibly ancient witch doctor who pushes Hellboy into an undersea adventure inspired by the same story on which Disney’s The Little Mermaid is based, only way darker and shorter. He’s dragged into a cave by Ursula’s counterpart, the Bog Roosh, who is basically a giant fish/eel with boobs. Actually it was a trio of mermaids of some relation to her that brought Hellboy to the cave, and in seeking reward they pretty much all manage to get murdered through Roosh’s manipulation of their wishful intentions like some sort of evil djini. Hellboy’s not a fan of that so he brings out his right-hook and does a little damage. The doomish part is brought into the picture through Roosh’s claim that she needs to destroy Hellboy to prevent the apocalypse, which just makes him madder because although he doesn’t want to accept his destiny, it’s beginning to wear him down.

The second half is more explicitly about the great evil that he is meant to bring to world. The Island is a desolate ship graveyard full of strange castles and skeletons, one of which was once a prophet of the Ogdru Jahad (the giant slug-bug monsters in space), and it just so happens he’s waiting for some blood to spill on the ground and wake him up, and Hellboy unfortunately obliges. There’s then a pretty lengthy discussion on the origin of Earth and the Ogdru Jahad and Hellboy’s supposed failure to embrace his future. Of course he ends up kicking ass and goes home but it seems like he doesn’t have a whole lot of hope left. The epilogue is a discussion amongst several observing spirits/ghouls about the doom that continues to approach to to Hellboy’s refusual to die, and then we’re treated to some awesome sketches and stuff.

Mike Mignola’s writing is consistently engrossing. The voice of Hellboy is always a great contrast to the stuffy olde-english way in which almost all of the other characters speak, although their language always makes for delicious prose, like “Little fish, little fish. Pretty as you are… oh but I will make of you such a horror.” Love this stuff.

THE AMAZING SCREW-ON HEAD™ and Other Curious Objects

I’ve been collecting Mike Mignola stuff for a somewhat respectable while now, and yet I haven’t written a thing about it. That’s kind of indefensible because Mignola is the metaphorical knees of the bee. This is particularly evident in the collection of shorter, but very entertaining/beautiful stories. I picked up the hardcover at a local comic shop because I couldn’t not buy it once I saw it.

The main story is of course THE AMAZING SCREW-ON HEAD, which was the basis for a TV pilot episode that never aired but was totally awesome (Netflix that sucka). Only this one story was written and Mignola says in the story notes that nothing more will be, as he doesn’t have anything else. That’s a real shame. It focuses on the title character who is essentially the head of a robot who can screw himself into a bunch of robot bodies for various tasks, and takes orders from Abraham Lincoln. He’s pretty much a secret-agent dude in the same sort of way that Hellboy is aside from not really having a dark origin. He goes around fixing supernatural problems. In the story, his target is Emperor Zombie, who was a master of ancient languages. This matters because of reasons you should find out by reading/watching the issue/episode. It’s much more of a comedy-based venture than Hellboy and most of Mignola’s other works, although it has about the same level of fantastically doomy stuff that makes it so damn interesting. Very fun but sadly brief read.

The collection includes five other very short stories, one of which isn’t really even a story, but they’re all great. The Magician and The Snake is particularly interesting because the writing credit is given to Mignola’s seven-year-old daughter. Those who read Axe-Cop know this can mean very awesome things. It’s a pretty sad story; melancholy coupled with the non-sequitur consciousness of a child is a great combination. It got the Eisner award for Best Short Story in 2003.

The rest of the book is filled out with stand-alone drawings and sketches related to the stories. Mignola’s art is a very different sort of thing, lots of black and seemingly simple shapes used in concert to create all kinds of atmosphere. I can’t saw I always like it, but there are so many frames that just pop so sharply that it makes me feel like no other style would work for his stories.

Avatar: The Last Airbender

The only other Nickelodeon show I think I’ve seen is Invader Zim. Now that I’m not 8 years old anymore, I generally don’t tune into that channel. However, I am a nerd, and according the the current nerd consensus, I am required to watch this show that aired a few years ago. I remember seeing ads in stores and whatnot for it and being generally dismissive of them. Apparently I shouldn’t have done that. It took a crappy movie to bring the discussion of this show’s merits up enough to get me interested.

So the show is about this kid Aang who is the reincarnation of a line of powerful “benders,” or people with the ability to manipulate the traditional elements with martial arts. He’s been frozen in a giant ball of ice for a hundred years while the world is ravaged a by a war that began in his absence, perpetrated by the obviously evil Fire Nation. He’s discovered by a brother and sister from a Water tribe and thus begins their three-season adventure and quest to end the war.

Since Aang is a kid, he hasn’t had time to master the four elements; he was born an Airbender and he’s pretty good at that, which is a good thing because all the other Airbenders are dead at this point, presumably from a sort of Herodic holocaust meant to get rid of him, which he missed by running away and getting himself frozen. He still has to learn the other three though and in a specific order for a reason that isn’t really explained beyond a traditional association with the four seasons. This leads to a lot of traveling and meeting esoteric characters of varying interest in locales firmly compartmented into the four elemental categories. The core cast grows a bit, including the antagonists who are really quite well developed, although those who are given special attention of course eventually join the main group to be good guys.

Each season ends with an epic battle of sorts, in line with the Tolkein method of fantasy, which is a pretty solid method to follow. These battles lead up to the finale where Aang has to face the Fire Lord, and make the decision whether to kill him or let him live, since this is a kid’s show the outcome is pretty easy to predict for the most part. I think it ended well enough though.

It isn’t all business, far from it. Especially in the first season it’s a very goofy show, pretty much what you’d expect for an American kids’ comedy, but usually not embarrassingly so; it borrows a ton from Japanese animation in both drawing style and cultural themes, but leaves out most of the crap. Its been said that a lot of it is very similar to Studio Ghibli’s stuff which is anything but a criticism. As the show progresses it gets less and less goofy and more ominous, while keeping the light-hearted fun from being totally stifled with somewhat filler-y bits. The action scenes are always a treat, and some of the romance is almost entertaining but usually just pretty awkward.

There are a bunch of references to other shows, not all animated, like the creepy violin crescendo from Lost after Aang realizes he’s on a weird island, and one episode is filled with anime references in a string of dream sequences. Incidentally both of these episodes were in the third season which I thought was by far the strongest.

It’s a pretty fun show all told, although I don’t think it really hit me as hard as most people I’ve heard talk about it. Certainly not as much as it affected M. Knight Shamalamadingdong. I don’t plan on ever watching his interpretation; this show should not be brought to the big screen, it’s just too much of a comedic/action epic to treated properly without making it stupid, as proven. So if you’ve written the show off based on that monstrosity, please reconsider and check this out for some good clean fun. It’s on Netflix instant watch, so there’s not a whole lot stopping you.

The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, The Unbeliever

I think I started reading this first trilogy about three to four years ago. My transition to a more technologically focused life has made my reading habits become very drawn out. I’ll often put a book down for months at a time, especially if it bores me at all. Unfortunately these books are in the old style of very heavy description, and thus are quite often a bit of a chore to get through. However, they are not bad books, and not your average fantasy series.

The main difference from every other fantasy story I’ve ever read is that the protagonist is a bit of an antihero. An unwilling, angry, self-hating guy with leprosy. He’s transported from his miserable life as a writer whose career has been ended by his disease, to your average fantasy world full of very Tolkein-esque creatures and lore. In the first book, he establishes his disbelief of this reality very strongly, even though it feels exactly like real life; as a leper though his concept of reality has become a dismal one, and he takes this land of health and vigor as a threat to his mental self-preservation. He ends of doing some kind of nasty stuff in this world he claims to be false, and can’t help but hate himself even more. The people of The Land somehow painfully look past his misdeeds, as he is of course supposed to be the fabled savior of legend, reincarnation of Berek the Half-hand (he lost two fingers to his leprosy), bearing the white-gold ring of wild magic, which happens to be his wedding ring from our world.

Then there’s a lot of arguing, Covenant saying “Hellfire!” about 357 times, a bunch of walking and riding horses, and battles of good vs. evil. Most of the story is filled with tragedy at least in part brought into play by Covenants refusal to accept his place as the savior. He goes back and forth between worlds a few times, and each time the real world becomes more and more dismal while The Land follows suit. It’s a pretty difficult read really; not a lot of happy stuff happens. There’s a jovial giant character, but as the story goes on his mirth diminishes, understandably considering his situation of being the last of his kind, for which whose demise he blames himself somewhat unjustly. Of course the end results in a kind of victory for good, although Covenant’s take on the whole thing is still largely one of dismissal, even in the face of death. He’s a pretty frustrating guy.

As a whole I enjoyed the story, it just took a really long time to read it. I think if it had compressed the descriptive stuff and made the characters a little fuller, I would have sped through it much quicker and had a better grasp of the message. As it is though I don’t think I’ll be reading the second trilogy. It’s just too much of a task. Still, it’s an interesting look into the mind of a man who cannot accept that his life can change from a state of decay, and yet pushes away any hope of health in order to continue his painful existence. Remind me never to get leprosy.

How to Train Your Dragon

It got good reviews and has Craig Ferguson in it. I had to watch it.

I gathered from said reviews that it was a bit better than most kid movies of today, and it is, kinda. It has dragons in it for one thing. Sometimes they even look cool. The humor isn’t always watered-down for the little ones. I’m sure it’s quite awesome in 3D (I watched it in 2D. I don’t like wearing those glasses or paying the extra bucks).

The story is of a young Viking who doesn’t seem to be shaping up to be a good Viking. He’s special. Just like all you wonderful kids. His widower dad is blind to his specialness and is shamed to have such a weakling son, who of course becomes a hero by the end because of his wonderful specialness, saving the stupid adults from their always stupid ways. Great message.

Anyway, you’ve got the usual group of stereotypical kids providing a foil to the protagonist kid, belching the usual lines. They might’ve been the most annoying part of the movie for me. Them and the protagonist’s extreme ease in “training” the dragons as the story progresses. Instant domestication! Yay! There’s got to be a better way to do that. I guess it’s just my cynical self no longer able to embrace the simplified child-view that’s always been present in entertainment for young folk. It’s all just gotten so cliché.

There were funny bits that made it watchable, but really, I don’t think I’m a kid anymore.

Alice in Wonderland

 

So Tim Burton made an Alice in Wonderland movie. Great. I got pretty excited when the first screen grabs came out; it looked like what I imagined a Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland movie would look; dark, gritty, and unsettling. I think at one point during the making of this film, it was just that. Then somebody decided that would be a bad idea and started emptying the crap bucket into holes created by the removal of the good parts.

So yeah, I didn’t like it. I didn’t see it in 3D which could be part of why it sucked, as the visuals seemed very soft and blurry, and the compositing of real-world elements was almost universally horrible. Very often the animations of some characters seemed awkward, which was probably what they were going for, but it didn’t work for me. For a movie that is primarily meant to be a visual work it really failed I think.

Aside from that, the plot was very simple and yet managed to feel disjointed. I guess that’s okay though since Lewis Carrol’s story wasn’t exactly the most easy-to-follow thing ever created. I think it would have been a better idea to stick to the original story instead of going the Hook route and making it a revisit. Sure, you get rid of the possibly dangerous element of kid actress whose clothes don’t always stay the same size as her body, but it’s just not as whimsical or interesting.

As I stated in the first paragraph, my impression from the first released images was a very dark film. It’s not really. Some of it’s kind of edgy, but it’s a very safe, PG movie. Of course since it is PG you have to learn something (shudder), which lead to a cringe-inducing final scene of Alice deciding things for herself and being oh so very empowered in the faces of a bunch of nitwits. Gah.

I didn’t really like any of the characters. Johnny Depp didn’t fit his role, Helena Bonham Carter had too much heart for the Red Queen, and Steven Fry’s Cheshire Cat wasn’t nearly as creepy as the animated version. Burton really should have left his comfort zone and hired some different actors for this movie. The girl who played Alice who’s name I forget was very bland and uninteresting, but at least she was pretty. I think the only character that I thought was done pretty well was the March Hare; he had the right randomly violent antics for it.

Altogether, a disappointment.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

Terry Gilliam is one of my favorite directors. He was in Monty Python’s Flying Circus, but was rarely seen; he did the funky animations. As such, he has an eye for wacky and entrancing visuals, mostly in a very musty sort of dirty universe. The Imaginarium shows he can also pull off a very nice clean look as well, although he keeps the slightly horrifying off-kilter feeling so very present in films like Brazil and 12 Monkeys.

This is a beautiful film; beautiful sets, visuals, and people. The majority of the real world is shown in a dirty setting with fanciful costumes amid slightly seedier parts of what I believe is England. In the Imaginarium, which is actually (mostly) the inside of the Doctor’s mind, the scenes are very reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland or perhaps Mirrormask, displaying a variety of mythical and fanciful landscapes.

The people, for me, were the best part. Possibly the fact that will bring the most people in to see this film is that it was Heath Ledger’s final performance. It’s a good one; not quite as good as his role in The Dark Knight, but it could have been if he had been around for the whole making of the film. He died half-way through. His scenes are all outside of the Imaginarium, and his character is replaced by Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell inside. This of course was not originally the plan, but it was made to work, possibly improving the film as a whole. We also have Lily Cole’s elfinly beautiful face to look at, which might have been my favorite part of the movie. Tom Waits plays the devil and does a smashing job of it. Mini-Me’s in it too.

The story is not the most original in the book. Like Avatar the film relies primarily on its visuals to make itself worth your while, but it’s definitely less derivative than Cameron’s blockbuster. What I really liked about it was its refusal to explain everything for the audience. I left a little confused, but that’s okay! I think it’s better for a movie to leave some questions for further viewing.

A fitting send-off for an actor who ended too soon.