So it was pretty brilliant to cast him as a lone samurai walking through a post-apocalyptic wasteland on a mission of faith. The Denzel persona is much more endearing when he doesn’t just give verbal beatdowns, but full-on swordsman massacres. Actually he’s a little different in this one too – quiet and kind of crazy from being alone.

The movie is by the Hughes Brothers, who I really like even though they haven’t made a movie in 9 years, and that was FROM HELL. Good for them getting Mr. Drama to do something like this. I guess he does those Tony Scott thrillers and stuff, but that’s about as loose as you’d expect these days. It’s been a long time since RICOCHET, that’s for sure.

I read somewhere that Denzel was one of the first choices to play Blade. I’m glad his MO’ BETTER BLUES bandmate took it instead, but it’s funny – I always thought the idea of Denzel as the Daywalker was ridiculous. Now here he is 12, 13 years later doing what he referred to in Entertainment Weekly as “Blade stuff,” and convincingly. His fighting is mostly of the “you come up to me and threaten me, but then I do a couple quick moves that leave you whimpering on the ground” variety – so old, but so enjoyable. But there are a couple full-on multiple attackers fight scenes, and those are fun too.

The fights are by Jeff Imada (BOURNE movies, BLADE, John Carpenter movies), and Denzel was trained by Dan Inosanto (Bruce Lee’s #1 student, “the Professor” in REDBELT, “Sticks” in OUT FOR JUSTICE). There’s been alot of hype that the Hughes’s had them do the fights in long takes, no disorienting cuts or closeups like you and I hate. Despite what you may have read it’s only the first fight that’s in one take, and I’m not sure it’s true that Denzel did all the fighting, because that one’s all in silhouette. But the action is all good, from barfights to bandit encounters to a ridiculously escalating gunfight. This is one of the only movies this year with a battle involving Academy Award winner Denzel Washington, sitcom star Mila Kunis, Punisher Ray Stevenson, Gary Oldman, a gatling gun, and HARRY POTTER’s Michael Gambon as a friendly grenade-tossing cannibal. I mean, that’s not an ensemble, that’s a motley crew.

Denzel’s mission is to carry his Bible west, because a voice told him to. Manifest destiny. But he goes through a small town (like one in a western, except with the headquarters in an old movie theater) where Gary Oldman happens to be a leader desperately seeking a Bible so he can use its words to rope in “the weak and the vulnerable.” He’s a pretty one-dimensional bad guy, more of a symbol than a character, but Oldman plays him kind of real instead of playing him PROFESSIONALly.

They try to get this Eli to hand over his Bible, but he refuses and walks out of town, so Oldman’s goons go after him. Most interesting is Stevenson, who I didn’t recognize without his skull t-shirt. He continues his streak of strangely sympathetic and eloquent murderers. Man, give that guy some more roles. He’s great.

The details of the world are there – how they get water, how they barter, who to be afraid of, how to hunt a cat. I think the best scenes are little moments of happiness for Eli – when he finds some good shoes and struts around in them; when he listens to Al Green on his iPod and cleans himself off with KFC moist towelettes. There’s talk of how in the old days people threw away what people would kill for now, and you see the value of little things. FOr example Oldman shampoos Jennifer Beals’s hair – it’s like a luxury vacation in a travel-size bottle. Even the most powerful guy around can’t get shampoo very often. I mean, it’s a little bottle like you get free in a hotel, and to them it’s like they found a diamond or something.

So it’s a good character, good performance, good setting, but to tell you the truth the story is not quite there. I think it gets bogged down in Bible talk in the second half. It’s not too preachy (just a simple guys-who-believe are better than guys-who-exploit theme) but it gets distracted from the asskicking, and then doesn’t have a climax big enough to recover. It does have an interesting surprise that makes you want to watch the movie again to see if it makes sense, but I’m not sure the significance of that twist, if any. It’s cool, but is it empty? I think it might be. I’m not sure.

The obvious comparison is THE ROAD, and I thought this might end up being the post-apocalyptic action movie that the Weinsteins wanted you to believe THE ROAD was when they made all those horrible trailers. In THE ROAD they’re travelling east and in ELI he’s traveling west, but they’re not complete opposites. ELI is more fun and mainstream, but I think it’s also trying to be more thoughtful than it can handle. It can’t really compete with THE ROAD for raw emotion and hope in the face of devastation, so honestly it could stand a little more popcorn. And maybe a little more color – I’m kind of sick of every movie being washed out to almost look black and white. But they probly didn’t know what THE ROAD was gonna look like when they made this.

A better comparison might be TERMINATOR: SALVATION. Both have action scenes and settings better constructed than their stories. And, sorry to say this ELI, but SALVATION looks better and the action is more exciting. It has more money to spend, so the desecrated landscapes look like a real place as opposed to the fakey Photoshopped landscapes of ELI. But ELI doesn’t get as dumb as SALVATION, it doesn’t have the same legacy to live up to, and the story is at least more focused. So it wins overall.

All of the recent post-apocalypse movies have been enjoyable in different ways. But all of them make me want to call the hospital and ask for Dr. George Miller.

Despite all this, it’s pretty fuckin great to see Denzel playing a post-nuclear samurai. So I definitely recommend this. And I hope the Hughes Brothers don’t take another 9 years for their next one.

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On the other hand, I kind of love POLAR EXPRESS and BEOWULF and paid to see both of them twice in the theater. Never on DVD, but I’d gladly go back to see either if they were re-released in 3-D again. I love the strong atmosphere of these worlds that Zemeckis creates, and the way he moves the camera around them. I guess here he’s God and the only way He knows to show us things is through His perspective, so we can float through every crack or groove on a wall or hover high into the sky looking down on the settings and characters like they’re ants in our ant farm.

In the case of POLAR EXPRESS some of its flaws actually added to my enjoyment – it’s got kind of a spooky WILLY WONKA vibe anyway so I got an unintended haunted house kick out of the creepy, glass-eyed look of some of the characters. That doesn’t make up for the cameo by the Steven Tyler elf or the horrible song the kids sing on the back of the train, but still. I gotta admit I enjoyed the movie. And BEOWULF, I realized the second time watching it, actually has a real smart script to take us through its bloody, morally ambiguous tale of rollicking 3-D monster-fighting, demon-fucking adventure. Plus I have a strong personal belief that any 3-D movie where the hero bursts through a man-sized sea serpent eyeball while puffing out his chest and shouting his own name is a worthwhile artistic endeavor. That more than makes up for his hair looking like a doll’s and some of his friends not seeming to know how to make eye contact.

So now I find myself in a weird place because I’m seeing reviews of A CHRISTMAS CAROL and wondering what these people are talking about – it seems like they never noticed the flaws of the motion capture before, just now figured it out and are trying to throw all the sins of those previous movies onto this new, improved one. I guess it’s just me and good old positive Roger Ebert here, but without reservations I would say this is a genuinely good movie. It has what I liked so much about those other two while mostly wiping out the problems. Zemeckis finally found a balance with his characters – they look more detailed than, say, Pixar’s elegant designs, but they exaggerate reality instead of trying to mimic it. Scrooge, for example, has an impossibly long nose and chin like a caricature, and a hunched back that tapers into an unhealthily slim waist. Then if you look closely you can also see the blemishes on his skin and the peach fuzz on his nose (with one hair a little longer than the rest). It’s fitting that this was released by Disney, because what these characters look like is animatronics at Disneyland. I don’t see you pricks going after the Pirates of the Caribbean calling them lifeless zombies (and if you do I better not catch you).

Jim Carrey plays Ebenezer Scrooge, a miserly old man who hates Christmas. After the death of his long-time business partner Jacob Marley, Scrooge becomes nah I’m just fuckin with you obviously you know what this movie is about. There have been over ten thousand previous versions of this story on film, and a bunch of them are good. SCROOGE starring Alastair Sim is probly the best I’ve seen, although I think Bill Murray’s version in SCROOGED might have the most convincing transformation at the end (SPOILER). What makes Zemeckis’s version unique is that this weird ass mo-cap medium actually does bring you into the story in a way that hasn’t ever been done before – it embraces the satirical exaggeration of the story in a visual sense, but also makes it feel like a real place, like you’re really there.

Scrooge is such an icon that, like Mickey Mouse we get so used to him we forget to look at him sometimes. But when it comes down to it he’s not supposed to seem like a real guy you would know, he’s completely absurd (think of the scene where the guys come asking for donations for the poor and he talks about his love of prisons). So to exaggerate him visually is in a way more appropriate than a real guy.

But these cartoonified people are grounded in a reality. The way Zemeckis uses 3-D doesn’t so much shoot things out of the screen at you as pull you into the room with the characters. In the scene where Cratchit shivers at his desk trying to warm himself from a single candle I almost expected to see my cold breath in the air.

At the same time, I think A CHRISTMAS CAROL makes a stronger argument for this “performance capture” notion than the other two did. I got a laugh from BEOWULF’s Anthony Hopkins character, who just looked like an unnatural Anthony Hopkins. Why not just use live action for that? And with POLAR EXPRESS I don’t see why it couldn’t have been animated by animators. But in this case it’s a movie that follows the tradition of letting different actors (George C. Scott, Patrick Stewart, Michael Caine, Mr. Magoo) perform their interpretation of the character, but with an actor who wouldn’t be able to do it when limited to the powers of his own flesh and bones. Carrey is real good as Scrooge, but I don’t think I’d buy him doing it under a bunch of makeup. And Gary Oldman’s Bob Cratchit is much shorter than he is in real life (is Tiny Tim’s problem genetic?) but not as short as he was in TIPPY TOES. The magic of mo-cap!

I’ve read some complaints that some of the scenes in the movie remind people of a theme park ride. I don’t get that one. To me that’s part of what makes the movie fun and unique and worth paying the two extra bucks for the 3-D glasses. The story involves ghosts flying Scrooge around to show him things, you’re telling me Zemeckis shouldn’t make those scenes thrilling and cool? I gotta disagree. And I can’t afford to go to Disneyland every year, I’m not gonna complain if they bring it to me. Some of the ghosts reminded me of The Haunted Mansion, and that’s a compliment.

I mean it’s not like this is SYRIANA or something. It’s a traditional Christmas Eve ghost story, it makes sense to be swooping around. Just because we’re used to versions based around the limitations of the stage doesn’t mean it’s wrong to present it a little differently to take advantage of a different medium.

Other than the medium, though, it’s a fairly traditional adaptation of the story. The ghosts are a little spookier than in some versions, especially Jacob Marley, whose jaw comes unhinged during the conversation (an embarrassing thing to happen to a ghost). It’s fair to say that they don’t have enough scenes with Tiny Tim to fully develop that part of the story, but I didn’t have a big problem with that since we already know what his deal is.

While some people criticize it for telling the story slightly different from usual, others are down on even telling the story at all, saying we don’t need another version of A Christmas Carol. Well, we don’t need to eat sweet potatoes either, but I’m still gonna do it. This reminds me of our recent discussion of the PSYCHO remake and the debate about re-telling stories. I think A Christmas Carol is an example of a story so good that I like to see it told in different ways by different people every year. In my opinion it holds up. I guess it’s different from a remake because it started as a story on paper, so we can pick and choose which actors and images to associate with it and which tellings of the story are our favorites. Personally, I think this is a good one to add to the library. I might start thinking of some of these images when I think of the story, other people might not, and the story will live on.

See also:

FINAL FANTASY

THE POLAR EXPRESS

BEOWULF

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Hey, how about a PG-13 possession movie from Michael Bay’s remake outfit Platinum Dunes? What better way to show he means business? Hooray!

Actually, despite all indications, this isn’t that bad. I think it has moments of greatness and that it has more thrills and imagination than most modern horror movies. As a director Goyer’s much improved. He’s got atmosphere and suspense and organically works in some really inventive digital (and sometimes rubber) monstrosities. I think he must’ve been working real hard on the directing though and didn’t get a chance to read over the script after he got to the end.

The idea’s not bad. It’s a Jewish version of THE EXORCIST. The lead (who looks too much like a model, but does fine anyway) has a weird experience with a goofy looking 4-year old she’s babysitting. He tells her “Jumby’s ready to be born” and hits her. After much hallucination and medical, paranormal and historical research she unravels a convoluted backstory involving her unborn twin, her secret grandma’s unborn twin, The Holocaust, and demonic possession. The script relies way too much on the grandma doing spooky narration to explain all the history and rules of the demonic business, and the more she gets into the story the more laughable it gets. It’s just too corny and convenient for her to explain everything, and I challenge you to still be taking it seriously by the time she gets to the part about Nazis doing experiments to turn brown eyes blue. It’s just too much and it’s not like DRAG ME TO HELL where it has a straight face but won’t mind if you laugh. This one invokes Auschwitz. It’s serious.

Plus, she learns that her parents never told her she was a twin, and that they would’ve named her unborn brother Jumby. And she doesn’t ask what the hell kind of name “Jumby” is other than a name out of some kid’s campfire ghost story. Who names their kid that? And then her is name is Casey. You know, the Beldon twins. Casey and Jumby Beldon. The poor kid goes to school, everybody’s saying “Mecca lecca hi mecca hiney ho,” asking him to grant their wishes.

(I talked to someone else who saw the movie and he said that Jumby was not their name for the kid but their nickname for the fetus. I can’t figure that one out either if that’s true.)

Okay, the more I think about it the more I think most people will hate this, and I can’t blame you. But let me just say this in its favor: it satisfies in the Crazy Fucked Up Shit department, a department ignored by many of today’s bland horror movies. I watched the unrated DVD cut but if it’s anything like most unrated cuts it’s probaly not too much more extreme than what they showed in theaters. If I’m right about that it shows that they’re really finding ways to work around the PG-13 rating, same way they work around any form of organized censorship. They’re not gonna get away with saying fuck two times or showing any pubic hair, but they can give your kids night terrors until they’re old enough to vote. They’ve really pushed the PG-13 rating in THE DARK KNIGHT, DRAG ME TO HELL, and I think WAR OF THE WORLDS might be the one that started this, that was pretty god damn harsh for your thirteen year olds. That’s kinda funny too because they created the PG-13 rating because they thought Spielberg was going too far with PG. Maybe they’re gonna have to create PG-15 for him and David Goyer.

Anyway, THE UNBORN starts with a great dream sequence: she’s out for a jog or walk or something, and she sees a kid’s glove abandoned on the concrete. Then she notices a ghoulish kid standing in the street, missing a glove. She looks at him, creeped out, afraid to say anything. Next thing you know he’s not a kid, he’s a dog standing there wearing a mask of a kid. (maybe she wasn’t looking closely enough at first.) She follows the dog into some woods, finds the mask abandoned in some wet leaves, so naturally she starts digging a hole with her bare hands and finds a monstrous dead-looking fetus. And then its eyes open.

It’s a great scene, like something out of the first NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, when the dreams were still surreal and not gimmicks. And the dog reminded me of that human-faced dog from part 2 that I forgot about until last time I watched it. My favorite part. We see other things throughout the movie, sometimes hallucinations, sometimes real: swarms of bugs, bugs crawling out of eggs (ooh, birth symbolism), a pitbull with an upside down head, an old man who contorts his body into a weird bug shape, a face that’s mostly teeth. Lots of new ideas for disturbing imagery, not just the old standbys. They got Gary Oldman and Idris Elba to play exorcists for credibility, but it’s these weird images that actually do the trick.

I’m not saying it’s a good movie, because I don’t think it is. But for the Platinum Dunes crime syndicate it represents a small step toward clean living. As far as I know it is not only their first non-remake but also for the first time employing the use of the human imagination. You (and especially they) could do worse than THE UNBORN.

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