Movie review by Greg Carlson

Michel Gondry, the music video maestro who champions a handmade, do-it-yourself craftiness in the process of making his films, might never top “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” which has thus far been the strongest realization of his work as a director and Charlie Kaufman’s as a screenwriter. Sadly, Kaufman is not on hand to sculpt the story of “Be Kind Rewind,” Gondry’s tale of Passaic, New Jersey misfits who shoot their own low-tech versions of features including “Ghostbusters,” “Rush Hour 2,” “Driving Miss Daisy,” “2001: A Space Odyssey,” and “King Kong,” to name a few. Gondry calls this process “sweding,” and despite the movie’s anachronistic VHS time-warp, members of generation YouTube will smile at the remakes, mash-ups, and collages.

With characteristic calm, Mos Def plays Mike, a counter jockey at Be Kind Rewind, a dusty rental outlet that has so far avoided upgrading its inventory to DVD. Mike’s obnoxious pal Jerry (Jack Black) inadvertently erases the entire collection of tapes, and out of desperation, foolishness, and perhaps a smidgen of stupidity, the buddies shoot fifteen and twenty-minute condensations of hit movies with a beat-up camcorder and special effects that rely heavily on cardboard, wire, and any other unwanted junk that happens to be lying around. Their sketchy renditions cause a sensation in the neighborhood, and pretty soon supply is buried under an avalanche of demand.

Corporate suits arrive to levy a multi-billion dollar fine for copyright infringement, and Gondry manages a few sly asides about big media’s clampdown on creativity that echo some of Lawrence Lessig’s astute comments. Oddly, viewers of a certain vintage will identify striking similarities between the premise of “Be Kind Rewind” and the “Blockblister” sketches of Nickelodeon’s “The Amanda Show.” Charges of plagiarism are as tricky as the funhouse mirrors of “The Lady from Shanghai,” though, when the director’s raison d’etre is the intertextual flattery by imitation of homemade fan films, which have been around for a very long time.

On another level, “Be Kind Rewind” speaks to the intimate connection between audiences and their favorite films, and even though many of the “sweded” titles would not qualify as classics, the trippy digests point to an obsessive zeal that has manifested in the real world in works like Gus Van Sant’s “Psycho” and the recently resurrected “Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation.” At a certain point, however, aping one’s heroes pales in comparison with making something unique, even if Gondry likes to have it both ways. Ultimately, the filmmaker presumes that his efforts deserve an audience, though the vast majority of the amateurs encouraged by Gondry to pick up a camera and “swede” their own favorites end up making mediocre or awful garbage entertaining only to the participants.

The best aspects of “Be Kind Rewind” follow the directive that originality is more valuable than the replica, and the production of a documentary about Fats Waller by the Be Kind Rewind team and members of the surrounding community sound the movie’s expressive blue notes. Reminiscent of “Cinema Paradiso,” the exhibition of “Fats Waller Was Born ‘Here’” nearly transcends the silliness that constitutes far too much of the movie’s running time. It is pure fantasy to imagine that a no-budget, black and white biopic fabricating both the birthplace and the resume of a jazz musician who died in 1943 would fill the streets with bewitched and mesmerized passersby, but for folks who believe in the power of moviemaking, it sure is nice to think so.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Any person hoping that director Doug Liman would recapture some of the pulse-quickening glory of his past successes should steer clear of “Jumper,” a disappointing and empty-headed hybrid of action and science fiction with no reverence for the strongest concerns of either genre. Based on the 1992 novel of the same name by Steven Gould, Liman’s movie version changes several key incidents present in the book, and few of those alterations make any sense. It took multiple drafts and a handful of writers to concoct the screen version of “Jumper,” and every person involved seems to have forgotten to include memorable characters and a coherent narrative. The end result is a movie that wants to go everywhere, but ends up stuck in one place.

Hayden Christensen, who replaced actor Tom Sturridge following the start of production, plays David Rice, a young man who discovers that he possesses the ability to teleport anywhere in the world merely by concentrating on where he would like to be at any given moment. Like Kurt “Nightcrawler” Wagner of the X-Men, Rice’s power carries with it the suggestion of super-heroism, but the callow punk prefers the trappings of unearned cash and expensive toys to helping others. Rice’s materialism might have been a theme worth exploring, but “Jumper” has the attention span of a butterfly, never alighting on one idea long enough.

Instead, Rice bounces around the globe, familiarizing himself with top vacation destinations until he feels confident enough to whisk his childhood crush Millie (Rachel Bilson, as blank and nearly as bland as Christensen) off to Rome for a private tour of the Colosseum. In the meantime, another “jumper” named Griffin (Jamie Bell, whose character should have been the movie’s main protagonist) reveals himself to Rice, confirming that a group of shadowy operatives known as Paladins methodically hunt and destroy teleporters. Little reason is given for the zeal of Paladins, but white-haired leader Roland Cox (Samuel L. Jackson, shouting), who pursues Rice like Javert chases Valjean, proclaims things like “There are always consequences!” in a booming voice.

Liman has a gift for staging frantic action, and “Jumper” contains a few scenes in which the movie’s premise is fully realized. Logical or not, Griffin can teleport large objects (like double-decker buses) with him as long as they are moving, and the result is a moment or two of genuine spectacle trapped amidst the wreckage of a story about which nobody cares one iota. “Jumper” is certainly made for teenage boys, and its preoccupation with mindless fighting and chasing, as opposed to a genuine interest in the culture of the places selected as “jump sites,” is a millstone around the film’s neck.

Strangest of all is the movie’s treatment of Rice’s mother, played by Diane Lane in a virtual cameo. Unlike the novel, Mrs. Rice harbors a secret of her own, but the film leaves the mother-son relationship frustratingly unresolved, and a late scene feels utterly half-baked, as if something more substantive should follow. Instead, “Jumper” retreats into the recesses of adolescent wish fulfillment, where it is as shallow as a puddle.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Academy Award nominee Julian Schnabel makes films that often focus intensely on the trials of a reflective (some would say self-obsessed) male protagonist. “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” adapted from French “Elle” editor Jean-Dominique Bauby’s 1997 memoir, follows Schnabel’s previous two features, “Basquiat” and “Before Night Falls,” in such a manner, fixating on a person who sees the world with a particular and idiosyncratic vision. Bauby suffered a massive and virtually completely paralyzing stroke in 1995, and the result left him bedridden and totally dependent on the care of others. He was able to control the muscles of just one of his eyelids, and eventually dictated his thoughts through blinks that corresponded with letters of the alphabet.

Schnabel depicts a great deal of the film’s action from the first person point of view of the incapacitated Bauby, played effectively by Mathieu Amalric. Working closely with ace cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, Schnabel labors to bring the viewer inside Bauby’s so-called “locked-in syndrome,” which approximates the sensation of being buried alive. The arresting opening sections of the film shift in and out of focus along with Bauby’s consciousness. Double exposures, shifts in light, and rapid fades to and from black share the limitations of Bauby’s post-trauma. In one highly stylized shot, the audience witnesses the sewing shut of Bauby’s eyelid from his vantage point. The moment is not for the squeamish.

Schnabel’s training as a painter lends the proceedings a self-conscious artiness, but the purposefulness of the sequencing, which replicates Bauby’s snail-paced cycle of days, often sucks the air out of the film and leaves viewers in want of something meatier to chew over. Schnabel might have desired to excise the risk for melodrama inherent in a showdown between Bauby’s mistress and the mother of his kids, but he lacks the skill of a Bresson, and doesn’t quite pull it off. Instead of approaching transcendence by withholding necessary scenes, “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” is more apt to make us wonder where the key interactions went.

Amalric, who spends most of the movie with his face frozen in a droopy-lipped mask, is a terrific actor, and Schnabel fortunately includes scenes of Bauby’s memories, (including a vacation to Lourdes with a pious lover) which give the performer an opportunity to move around. The supporting cast is strong, and Max Von Sydow is every bit his legendary self as Bauby’s nonagenarian father, dominating the screen in a pair of excellent scenes.

Some viewers might feel that Schnabel holds Bauby at too great a distance, refusing sentiment in order to sidestep the traps that would plunge the movie into the realm of the maudlin. Not surprisingly, the film crackles to life when Schnabel assembles certain abstractions; the opening and closing credits, designed by the director, are expressive bookends. In the former, titles are layered with close-ups of milky x-rays. The latter shows a montage of massive shelves of ice reattaching themselves to glaciers as the film is run in reverse motion. It is a beautiful and startling effect.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Tamara Jenkins, whose semi-autobiographical debut feature “Slums of Beverly Hills” managed to wring some humor out of desperate living, attempts more of the same with “The Savages,” a blackly comic movie of the week with most of the melodrama and sentimentality left on the cutting room floor. This is not necessarily a bad thing, and what remains might please moviegoers interested in emotionally conflicted, adult children faced with the challenge of caring for an aging parent who can no longer care for himself. No director could ask for better performers than Laura Linney (Academy Award-nominated for her role) and Philip Seymour Hoffman, but Jenkins saddles them with a script (also Academy Award-nominated) that spins its wheels for an unnecessarily long running time.

Linney and Hoffman play Wendy and Jon Savage, siblings who find themselves quickly at odds over how best to address the needs of their nearly estranged father, now on a slippery slope into dementia. Following the death of his longtime companion, Lenny Savage (Philip Bosco) can no longer live in the home they shared, and the Savage children wrestle with the decision to place him in a nursing home. Despite expository hints that Leonard left much to be desired as a father, Wendy finds herself tormented by guilt even as Jon proceeds swiftly, and with conviction, to find an elder care facility that will accept the old man.

Jenkins possesses an eye and an ear for all kinds of familiar, everyday details inherent in a brother-sister relationship, and “The Savages” succeeds as a rare examination of something that many would argue is one of life’s most emotionally draining trials. Additionally, we are also witness to the broken dreams and unfulfilled potential of the Savage kids, who aspire to careers in theater (she as a dramatist, he as a Brecht scholar). Reduced to temping, stealing office supplies, and applying for multiple grants, Wendy’s shortcomings are compounded further by a dead-end affair with a married man.

The depressing milieu of “The Savages” virtually challenges viewers to stick with the movie, and by the halfway point, some people will be checking their watches and eyeing the exits. Because the film is deliberately character driven, many of the middle scenes come across as inert, or as prelude to something more important that never happens. When Jenkins offers glimpses of vintage fare like “The Jazz Singer” and “Night and the City,” classic movie fans will want the camera to linger on the clips to alleviate some of the tedium.

Linney and Hoffman are two of the current cinema’s finest actors, and both bring vulnerability and humanness to their roles. Jenkins has named the pair after two of J.M. Barrie’s most famous characters, and by replacing the adjectival surname Darling with Savage, makes transparent her dramatic intentions. In one scene, a young actor escapes his abusive tormentor by means of the kind of flying harness that would be used in a stage production of “Peter Pan.” In “The Savages,” Barrie’s popular theme is inverted as Jon and Wendy are forced to grow up, whether or not they are ready, willing or able.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

A staggering and singular piece of intimately personal storytelling that recalls many of the director’s adored 1970s period piece inspirations like “Days of Heaven,” “McCabe & Mrs. Miller,” and “Chinatown,” Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood” is one of the year’s most memorable movie experiences. Despite acknowledging Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel “Oil!” as its source material, Anderson uses the book merely as a jumping-off point, erasing most of Sinclair’s sprawling social and political tableaux as well as the literal-minded debates on war, Bolshevism, and labor unions. Instead, Anderson is concerned with the moral and mental decline of his central character, allegorically renamed Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), an unstable oil wildcatter who loses his sanity as he finds a fortune in the black gold of California in the first quarter of the 20th century.

Despite his proven skill as a director of large ensembles, Anderson also jettisons many of the novel’s supporting characters, ditching the businessman’s family to reshape Plainview as a completely isolated man. The movie suggests that Plainview adopts his son H.W. (Dillon Freasier) following the death of a worker killed in a drilling accident. Other alterations, principally the shift in focus from the son (the book’s central protagonist) to the father, allow Anderson the opportunity to pay complete attention to Plainview, who is artfully embodied by Day-Lewis in yet another sensational performance in a career full of them.

Anderson has always been wonderful with his performers, and Paul Dano, playing brothers Paul and Eli Sunday, is a perfect foil for Day-Lewis’ Plainview. Eli rises to prominence as a faith healer and minister in the Church of the Third Revelation, and the bitter rivalry that develops between the young preacher and the old oilman develops in a series of scenes of increasing intensity as the determined men try to outdo one another. Dano is not as accomplished a performer as Day-Lewis, but his calculating evangelist proves every bit as fascinating as Plainview, and their final scene together packs a punch that leaves many audience members reeling.

Jonny Greenwood’s brilliant, unsettling score rings out like nothing less than a herald of the apocalypse, and several of the movie’s scenes are rendered more frightening with Greenwood’s music as counterpoint to the images. Amidst all the Old Testament thundering, Anderson also takes time to remind his viewers that he has a sense of humor, although its inclusion in “There Will Be Blood” is as black as Plainview’s petroleum. Two favorites examples are Kevin O’Connor sharing the information that he is a “brother from another mother” and Day-Lewis slurping and bellowing “I drink your milkshake! I drink it up!”

“There Will Be Blood” has already been a critical success, and many writers have noted both the movie’s similarities to 1970s material (Anderson ends the movie with a dedication to Robert Altman) and its indebtedness to “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” and “Citizen Kane.” The comparisons are apt, and by the conclusion of “There Will Be Blood,” it is clear that Anderson has proven himself a filmmaker of the first rank.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Legendary French filmmaker Alain Resnais returns to playwright Alan Ayckbourn for source material, adapting “Private Fears in Public Places” for the screen. Known as “Coeurs” outside of North America, “Private Fears in Public Places” offers the octogenarian a prime opportunity to explore one of his long-held thematic obsessions: loneliness and the ways people deal with it. Connecting the often unfulfilled lives of its six Paris inhabitants in sometimes surprising ways, the movie transcends its theatrical origin, even if Resnais never seems particularly bothered by it in the first place. Although the quality of the piece never comes close to the director’s best known movies of the late 1950s and early 1960s, it will please viewers seeking wistful, bittersweet romanticism.

Real estate broker Thierry (Andre Dussollier) lives with his younger sister Gaelle (Isabelle Carre), a frustrated single who seeks companionship through contacts made in personal ads. Thierry shows apartments to Nicole (Laura Morante), whose engagement to moody boozehound Dan (Lambert Wilson) appears less than stable. Additionally, Thierry’s seemingly prim co-worker Charlotte (Sabine Azema) moonlights as a personal caregiver for the verbally abusive father of bartender Lionel (Pierre Arditi), who works at Dan’s favorite watering hole. Additionally, Charlotte loans Thierry videotapes of her favorite television program, and he discovers mysterious erotic content after the episodes have ended.

Most of the characters also intersect in other pairings, and with the exception of Nicole and Lionel, who often disappear from the action, Resnais nimbly juggles the storylines. Much of the movie is composed of fairly short, fairly tidy scenes that have the effect of building upon one another as terminal velocity is reached. Some of the outcomes are satisfying, while others seem to demand more explication. A few of the characters also act out with almost hypocritically confusing actions, which will delight some and frustrate others. Charlotte in particular would provide a psychoanalyst with a meaty case study.

The purposely artificial quality of the production design enhances the tone of the movie, and Resnais occasionally chooses to peer down at the characters from an overhead angle, a tactic that evokes the attitude of a casual god observing laboratory specimens. Rooms are visually divided in two, from the severed apartment Nicole considers renting in the first scene of the movie to the sleek beaded curtain behind the hotel bar where Lionel pours drinks. To top it off, Resnais also keeps the snow falling from start to finish, which blankets the proceedings with wintry beauty.

Resnais clearly relishes observing human behavior, and the movie regularly incorporates scenes in which messages are perhaps sent but not received, or signals go misinterpreted. Small humiliations are depicted with affection, and serve as rueful reminders of our own embarrassments. “Private Fears in Public Places” is also quite funny, and Resnais coaxes many slyly humorous bits from the seasoned cast. None of the characters in the story are novices in life, and the suggestion of their collective life experience serves as a welcome contrast to movies celebrating callow youth just coming of age.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Writer-director Noah Baumbach’s most recent movie, “Margot at the Wedding,” is a polarizing experience that will alienate at least as many viewers as it enchants. Critic-proof in the sense that it wholly embraces the selfish, sadistic, and shitty narcissists whose frustrating lives it illustrates, the movie serves in some ways as a grim companion to Baumbach’s previous outing, “The Squid and the Whale,” a stronger film in virtually every capacity. Gruesome, hateful characters don’t necessarily translate to gruesome and hateful moviegoing experiences, but “Margot at the Wedding” defies its audience to sympathize with its inhabitants, a pack of emotionally damaged jackals who practically lick their chops at the opportunity to snipe, whine, and grouse at one another.

As the title character, Nicole Kidman uses her icy charisma to terrific effect. Traveling to her sister’s nuptials with all kinds of self-serving motives, writer Margot spends most of her time inappropriately blurting family secrets to her curious but confused son Claude (Zane Pais). She also mines family pain for her short stories. Margot’s sister Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh, whose husband is the film’s auteur) plans to marry the clownish, unsavory, and unemployed Malcolm (Jack Black), and Margot immediately disapproves of the match, peppering her commentary with barbed, contemptuous insults.

As a director, Baumbach displays an almost reckless confidence that his audience will appreciate a plotless psychodrama that clearly contains a splash of Bergman and a jigger of Chekhov. It’s refreshing to find a dark-hearted movie with such well-known performers, but the psychological warfare waged among blood relations, friends, and neighbors has a tiring effect. The metaphoric rotting tree, under which Pauline and Malcolm intend to be married, is the least subtle of symbols, and its fate is sealed as soon as it is glimpsed in Harris Savides’ gray-hued cinematography.

Given the centrality of the family tree motif, “Margot at the Wedding” might have been a more powerful experience had Baumbach spent as much time with the children as he does with the adults. The filmmaker’s uncanny understanding of the pain and challenges of adolescence, perfectly tuned in “The Squid and the Whale,” is only hinted at here. Claude, his cousin Ingrid (Flora Cross), and neighbor Maisy (Halley Feiffer) form a trio with as many possibilities as the grown-ups around them, but short of a scene or two, Baumbach leaves their inner lives unexplored.

The movie’s disjointed, episodic structure is also its principal cinematic strong suit. Aided by editor Carol Littleton, Baumbach stitches moments together with an array of interesting juxtapositions and jump cuts. Often, we enter or exit scenes in the midst of the action, a stylistic device that intensifies the movie’s sense of anxiety. While some viewers might argue that too many people spend too much time crying or running and falling down, Baumbach locates the humor that emerges from our ability to identify with humiliation, even if the movie presents it in concentrated form. At one point Pauline defecates in her drawers, and Margot’s response is to remind Claude that sooner or later, this will happen to all of us.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Jason Reitman’s film of Diablo Cody’s screenplay “Juno” can be a frustrating concoction that pits sweetness and warmth against manipulative calculation. It is already the hipster movie of the moment, destined to rotate through several cycles of praise and hatred before it develops a major following theatrically and then on home video. Essentially a “Knocked Up” for the current high school generation, “Juno” largely employs a predictable plot template to detail the comic misadventures and life lessons learned by the title character, a 16-year-old smart-mouth who always knows exactly what to say. As Juno, Ellen Page cements her reputation as a talent to watch, even if her character speaks more like a jaded grown-up than someone born in the 1990s.

“Juno” is the kind of movie that constructs a much cooler version of the world we actually inhabit; glittering D.I.Y. pop adorns the soundtrack and kids talk on vintage hamburger-shaped telephones. Juno’s accidental pregnancy can scarcely muster a raised eyebrow from her doting dad and step-mom, and sometime boyfriend Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera, terrific as ever) carries himself with such poise and maturity, you’ll wish you knew someone like him when you were in high school. Juno’s support system is so strong that if it weren’t for Ellen Page’s charm, the whole thing might collapse under the weight of its just-obscure-enough pop culture references.

By the time Juno has decided to give her baby up for adoption to a seemingly perfect yuppie couple, the story has settled in to a comfortable, if predictable, sequencing of events. In spite of the Oscar buzz already in the air for Cody’s script, the movie’s structure is formulaic. By far the film’s biggest liability is that everyone talks, thinks, and sounds like a single person. The cast works wonders in the attempt to differentiate, but the movie almost entirely avoids showing anyone who doesn’t agree with Juno’s flippant handling of every situation, or doesn’t let loose with a perfect rejoinder to every statement.

Only Jennifer Garner, who plays the woman desperate to be the mom to Juno’s baby, transcends the screenplay’s homogeneity. Amidst all the moments designed to tug at our heartstrings, Garner’s Vanessa Loring is the lone soul who earns it, giving her character a depth that initially seems hidden underneath the vaguely creepy façade of perfection she maintains with jingle composer husband Mark, a good but ultimately miscast Jason Bateman. Bateman is always a joy to watch, but he fails to make a convincing case that his emotionally stunted, selfish manchild would actually watch Herschell Gordon Lewis movies or listen to Sonic Youth (even if he does favor their cover of the Carpenters’ “Superstar” over “Daydream Nation” or “EVOL”).

Reitman, whose “Thank You for Smoking” skipped along at a brisk pace even while it tackled politically charged subject matter, just as deftly handles the action in “Juno.” Juno’s sarcastic quips pile up so quickly, fans will likely turn out multiple times, scanning for the ready-made catchphrases that bring to mind “Napoleon Dynamite,” another seemingly unassuming crowd pleaser that could run for miles. “Juno” works just as hard to win over its viewers, and that is not necessarily a bad thing.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

A nimble blend of politics, sex, and modern history, “Charlie Wilson’s War” is ten times more fun than a cinematic civics lesson ought to be. With Mike Nichols behind the camera and Aaron Sorkin at the typewriter, the movie’s liberal disposition will surprise nobody, but the film contains a tacit approval of hawkishness that lends the enterprise a sobering subtext. Conservatives will seethe at the suggestion that clandestine, Reagan-era armament of Afghan Mujahideen set the table for the Taliban and the rise of terrorism perpetrated by Islamic extremists, but the filmmakers are not afraid to connect the dots provided by George Crile’s 2003 book “Charlie Wilson’s War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History.”

With its trio of Academy Award winning performers in starring roles, “Charlie Wilson’s War” might have easily been a bloated prestige picture designed to reel in trophies even as it put audiences to sleep. Fortunately, Nichols and Sorkin streamline the source material into an aerodynamic bullet train, and the movie’s 97-minute running time turns out to be one of the film’s biggest assets. Nichols also understands better than nearly any director that a spoonful of comedy helps the political exposition go down, and makes certain to skirt didacticism whenever satire and farce will do.

Stepping into the shoes of the Texas Congressman known as “Good Time Charlie,” Tom Hanks works his self-deprecating charm into overdrive, emphasizing Wilson’s predilections for whiskey and women without losing sight of the man’s keen interest in world affairs. Wilson’s very friendly relationship with Houston socialite Joanne Herring (embodied seductively by Julia Roberts), involves him in the anti-Soviet cause, and in a blink, he’s helped appropriate substantial piles of cash to provide anti-tank and surface-to-air missiles to fighters in Afghanistan. Aiding and abetting Wilson is surly C.I.A. operative Gust Avrakotos (Philip Seymour Hoffman), whose rapid comebacks and quicksilver wit perfectly complement his intense expertise and unwillingness to suffer fools.

Sorkin has honed his ability to balance bleak, darkly comic cynicism with I-told-you-so piety, and his screenplay demonstrates the best example yet. The dialogue is so crisp and sharp, it makes you wish people were able to speak with such consistent bite in the real world. Sorkin has a knack for both illuminating and simplifying the messed-up ironies inherent in the U.S. political machine, and once the dust begins to settle, the audience shares Wilson’s indignation at the refusal of his colleagues to spend a measly million dollars to finance schools in Afghanistan after the tide has turned against the Soviet Union.

Of course, the idea that Wilson was able to get everything done with a wink and a drink plants “Charlie Wilson’s War” firmly in the tradition of Frank Capra’s Capitol Hill fantasies. This breezy approach enhances rather than diminishes the movie’s sparkle, except in the few instances when the filmmakers opt for seriousness. Scenes in which villages are strafed by U.S.S.R. attack helicopters feel out of place, especially when Nichols takes us into the cockpits for some subtitled gallows humor. Minor complaints like this, however, can scarcely stand in the way of the movie’s grand old time.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Richard Matheson’s 1954 cult novel “I Am Legend” makes another big screen appearance this week, and like its cinematic predecessors, it fails to capture the essence of the original story. Trading vampires for poorly designed, super-powered zombie creatures that look like they are on loan from a videogame is only one of the mistakes. The movie’s biggest crime is a flagrant refusal to believe in Matheson’s sobering apocalypse and see it through to the end. With films like “Children of Men” and “28 Days Later” already demonstrating dazzling retro-futuristic design in the tradition of “Blade Runner,” the bar has been set too high for “I Am Legend” to clear.

Following a sensational first section that vividly renders Manhattan as a weed-infested wasteland, director Francis Lawrence totally chokes, piling on the carnival ride shocks without the smallest hint of finesse. Old-fashioned suspense would have better served the material, but Lawrence seems incapable of believing in the intelligence of the viewer. As a result, the monsters are never scary, and the movie’s reliance on sub par CG imagery makes the whole enterprise feel half finished. “I Am Legend” is good until the night seekers turn up. The early, off-screen suggestion of their power, evidenced in the way Neville nervously checks his watch as daylight slips away, is more ominous than phony villains hewn mostly out of pixels.

At least Will Smith is a terrific choice to play Robert Neville, transformed from the “Average Joe” protagonist of the novel into a super-fit military scientist whose immunity to a plague of biblical proportions has made him a likely candidate for last man on earth. Whether he is working alone, interacting with a German Shepherd, or playing opposite others, Smith makes the most implausible of scenarios feel credible. His typical grit and determination suit Neville, whose mental struggle with the psychological implications of his predicament adds a thoughtfulness often missing from action heroes. Smith’s presence will undoubtedly secure substantial box office returns.

Despite being the first film version of the story to use Matheson’s super cool title, “I Am Legend” essentially ignores the meaning, opting instead for a diluted conclusion that deletes the book’s most essential plot element. Neville’s neighbor Ben Cortman (one of the novel’s cleverest touches and most interesting characters) is replaced by the boring Alpha Male (Dash Mihok), a ghoulish cue ball left with nothing to do other than writhe, shriek, and leap around unconvincingly. Practically all of the novel’s other surprises are excised in favor of less satisfying battles between Neville and the horde.

Two scenes that do not appear in Matheson’s story stand as embarrassing examples of damage that can be done by misguided additions. In one, Neville conveys the strain on his sanity by imitating the voices in “Shrek.” The odd moment is at best a grotesque display of product endorsement and at worst an amplification of the minstrelsy of Eddie Murphy’s Donkey. In the other scene, Neville delivers an embarrassing lecture about the power of Bob Marley. Someone should have mentioned to Lawrence that nothing is worse than being told about the emotional importance of something. To paraphrase the old saying, if you need to explain, they wouldn’t understand.