Recently in Fantasy Category

Writer-director Robert Zemeckis wisely chose the most unquenchable of stories for his technological marvel. Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, already filmed with everyone from Michael Caine to Patrick Stewart, George C. Scott, Vanessa Williams, and Mr. Magoo in the role of the skinflint who learns to give, can hold its own even surrounded by the most dazzling of special effects.

I actually gasped at one moment as the camera flew over London. It was not just that the Victorian setting was so meticulously created, though I plan to go back just to revel in the details. It was that I had never before seen a camera move so fluidly through so many different vantage points in the midst of a convincingly immersive 3D experience. It evokes a visceral sense of buoyant jubilation and freedom that immediately connects us to the movie's setting, making us feel completely present in the story as it unfolds.

We meet Ebeneezer Scrooge (voice of Jim Carrey) as he is bidding farewell to his partner, Jacob Marley, now laid out in his coffin. Scrooge literally removes the coins from Marley's eyes. It may be a custom, but money is money. Seven years later, Scrooge is well into his bah, humbug mode, turning down a Christmas dinner offer from his nephew Fred (voice of Colin Firth), turning down a charitable donation, and grudgingly agreeing to allow his poor clerk Bob Cratchit (voice of Gary Oldman) a day off to celebrate with his family. Scrooge goes home to eat his gruel by himself when, in one of the film's most thrilling effects, Marley's flickering greenish ghost appears, heaving the heavy weights he bears through the door ahead of him. As we all well know, he is there to announced that Scrooge will be visited by three spirits who will teach him about Christmas past, present, and yet to come.

Our familiarity with the story is an anchor in the sea of new visual stimuli, and it keeps our focus on what is happening to the characters, even when the technology goes slightly askew. Zemeckis said that the good news about making a motion capture film is that you can do anything. Whatever you imagine can be realized. But, he added, the bad news is that you have to do everything. The blank screen is there and every single detail, every button on every coat, every log in every fire, every reflection, shadow, and snowflake have to be separately created in three dimensions and designed to interact with every other element we see. Some of the figures are more solidly created while others seem a bit stiff and rubbery. Firth's Fred is particularly awkward. Some of the scenes are hyper-realistic while others, like a dance at the Fezziwig's Christmas party, play with space and weight, not always in aid of the story. It gets too frantic, especially during a non-Dickensian insert of a chase scene that has Scrooge shrinking like Alice in Wonderland. The decision to double up on voices (Carrey plays all three spirits, Oldman plays Cratchit, Tiny Tim, and Marley and Robin Wright Penn plays both Scrooge's sister and his girlfriend) is distracting and occasionally confusing.

But oh, there is a visual sumptuousness here to rival even the merriest Christmas celebration. Scrooge's flights through time, the glorious bounty of the Ghost of Christmas Present, the Victorian streets, the costumes, the warmth of the fire, the magic of Scrooge's first dance with Belle -- make this an instantly indispensable classic. It's all there, Scrooge's bitter loneliness to his thrilling giddy-as-a-schoolboy realization that he can change, and that the power of giving is greater than any power of having. And for the people who gave us this great gift, God bless them everyone.

A show of hands, everyone. If you think it's a good idea to begin a movie for children by killing off a young boy in an industrial accident as his father looks on, raise your hand. Anyone?

I didn't think so. And yet, that is how Astro Boy comes to be in this updated version of the Japanese animated series that achieved popularity in the U.S. as a television series in various versions over the years and more recently as a computer game. The title character (voice by an Americanized Freddie Highmore) is a robot re-boot created by brilliant scientist Dr. Tenma (voice of Nicolas Cage) to replace his son Toby, who was killed at Dr. Tenma's lab when he tried to get in to see an experiment. Devastated by the loss, the scientist creates a super-robot programmed with the memory and mind of his dead child. And then he rejects the robot as an inadequate substitute. Even if the rest of the movie were "The Care Bears Meet My Little Pony," the loss and grief of the first 20 minutes are so totally dissonant that the film cannot recover.

It's like "Pinocchio" crossed with "Blade Runner" as Astro Boy goes through an existential crisis in discovering that he may have Toby's memories and emotions, but he also has hands and butt cheeks that turn into artillery. He ends up being treated as a human by robots and a robot by the humans he meets, abandoned children living on the planet that everyone else has left because it is deemed no longer habitable (and yet somehow they are able to order pizza). In the midst of all of the shoot-outs there are some moments that have charm and some images that show some wit, especially an enormous junked robot that Astro brings back to life with a charge from his blue power source (unfortunately carrying the initials of an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory). But then the President (voice of Donald Sutherland) wants to use Astro's technology for evil, and everything comes down to shooting. Any nuance or imagination or point is lost in the battle, and so is any reason to see this film.

Vampires are everywhere these days. There are the Romeo and Juliet-style stories of Twilight and the steamier True Blood as well as the love triangle of the CW's Vampire Diaries. And now there is "Cirque Du Freak," based on the best-selling series of YA novels by Darren Shan, who shares his name with the title character.

I think it is because in this open-minded and permissive era it is hard to find a reason to keep an ordinary romantic couple apart. In the old days, parental disapproval, not having enough money, or societies' strictures could fuel an entire movie until the happily-ever after ending. But these days it is difficult to create narrative tension to keep a couple separate for 10 minutes, much less two hours. That may be great for society, but it is tough on story-tellers. And so in order to get transgressive, a bit of cross-species romance seasoned with the risk of death and the prospect of an unleashed id can make a story very captivating.

Teenager Darren Shan (Chris Massoglia) feels that his life is just fine. He gets good grades. Kids at school like him. His parents are proud of him. He has a life-long best friend named Steve (Josh Hutcherson of "Bridge to Terabithia"), who is restless and unhappy.

Darren does not want to admit that he also has his restless moments and is not always comfortable being what Steve calls "perfect boy." Darren wants to make sure we understand that he is no longer close to a former friend who has become "a freak," meaning that he does not dress like an ad for a soft drink. He is not sure that he will be satisfied with what his parents tell him is "the path to a happy, productive life: College! Job! Family! And one day, if you're lucky, you'll be yelling at a teenager of your own."

And there's Darren's lifelong fascination with spiders, not studying them, more communing with them. Steve is obsessed with vampires and dreams of becoming one himself. They pick up a mysterious flier about a freak show and sneak out to see it. When Darren steals a poisonous spider and it bites Steve, Darren agrees to give up his life as a human to become the vampire's assistant in exchange for the antidote.

It makes some changes to the story in the book series but it is true to the tone -- a nice combination of teenage angst and outrageous grotesquery, with the implicit recognition that sometimes it can be hard to tell the difference. Massoglia and Hutcherson come across as bland at times, but then they are sharing the screen with a snake-boy and a lady who not only has a beard but is the mesmerizing Salma Hayek. The story can be exposition-heavy as it lays the foundation for the next episodes in the series by starting up a war between two vampire factions. But it benefits from small details around the edges that attest to the fully-realized world of the novels. It balances the scary moments with humor. And it has good guy and bad guy vampires, a rock music-loving snake boy (Patrick Fugit, one of the film's highlights), a woman whose limbs regenerate, a super-tall guy who kind of looks like Edgar Allen Poe, and a world of freaks that knows how to make the Cirque feel like home.

"Honey, I'm home" takes on a cheerfully creepy new meaning in "Monster House," a fresh, fun, and deliciously scary animated film produced by Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future) and Stephen Spielberg (Jurassic Park, Jaws) and it is a great choice for a Halloween treat.

Every neighborhood has that house. You know, the one the little kids tiptoe past and the one where the bigger kids dare each other to touch the front door. In D.J's neighborhood, it's the house across the street, owned by mean Mr. Nebbercracker (voice of Steve Buscemi). He yells at any kids who come near the house or anyone who touches his lawn.

It's just before Halloween, Mr. Nebbercracker is taken to the hospital, and D.J. (voice of Mitchel Musso) has been left with Zee (voice of Maggie Gyllenhaal), a teenage babysitter who pretends to be sweet and responsible in front of grown-ups, but who, once she knows D.J.'s parents have left, tells him to stay out of her way so she can hang out with her slacker boyfriend Bones (voice of Jason Lee).

D.J.'s best friend Chowder (voice of Sam Lerner) comes over, and they begin to observe the increasingly scary things happening at the Nebbercracker house. When Jenny (voice of Spencer Locke) comes to their neighborhood selling cookies and starts up the front walk to Mr. Nebbercracker's house, D.J. and Chowder try to stop her. (She crisply informs them that if they are mentally challenged she is certified to teach them baseball.) But she discovers that the house is as dangerous as they say, and they decide to investigate.

This follows in the grand tradition of adventure stories with middle-school-aged heroes (and heroines), the big, scary world of the story standing in as a metaphor for the big, scary world of adolescence and adulthood. Jenny, D.J., and Chowder get no help from parents or the babysitter, not even from the police (voices of Kevin James and Nick Cannon). They have to learn to rely on skills they did not know they had. They show themselves and each other that they have the wisdom, curiousity, determination, loyalty, and courage to take on whatever lies beyond home, family, and all that is familiar.

The clever and involving script, the fluid and realistic movement of the characters (using the same rotoscope-style techniques developed for The Polar Express), and the unaffected and appealing voice talents of the young actors keep us on the side of the young adventurers. The house itself is imaginatively anthropomorphic. And the mystery is solved with a satisfying resolution that is sad and even a little scary but less spooky and more reassuring than the usual thriller.

Parents should know that this movie is intense, especially in its 3-D format, and may be overwhelming for young kids or those who are easily scared. Even though most of the frightening stuff is in the "boo!" or fun-scary category, it still may be overpowering for some audience members, even though by the end of the story almost everyone comes out of it as well as possible. There are some graphic images and some jump-out-at-you shocks. A character steals medication to sedate the monster. The resolution of the mystery may be reassuring to many in the audience but may be disturbing to others. Spoiler alert: the source of the house's destructive power comes from an overweight woman whose cruel treatment led to madness and death. Parents should also know there is brief crude humor and potty jokes that should appeal to kids and a sweet kiss.

Families who see this movie should talk about how bullying and teasing can have profoundly damaging consequences. They should also talk about things that they once found scary and then discovered not to be so scary after all.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy scary comedies like The Cat and the Canary, The Ghost and Mr. Chicken. More mature fans of scary movies will enjoy Poltergeist. Classic movies that beautifully evoke a child's point of view on creepy neighborhood houses include To Kill a Mockingbird and Meet Me in St. Louis. Older audience members might appreciate the way producer Zemeckis made the same house look both inviting and terrifying in the otherwise unimpressive thriller What Lies Beneath.

Oh, dear. #TransformerFail

I truly loved the first Transformers movie. It was everything you need in a big summer explosion movie, with stupendous special effects, shot through with heart-thumping adrenaline, with just enough character and storyline to allow us to catch our breath and keep us interested. Our hero, high school senior Sam (Shia LeBeouf), is befriended by a car that turns into a friendly robot called Bumblebee, one of a cadre of good-guy transforming robots who fight against the bad-guy robots, called Decepticons. He is aided by a beautiful girl who is very good with cars (Megan Fox) and an armed services division led by Captain Lennox (Josh Duhamel).

This sequel has some great special effects, but the story and the characters are poorly handled and the pacing is a mess. When the robots give a better performance than the humans, we have a problem. When the action is so complicated we can't figure out who is where and in some cases why they are there, we have a bigger problem. When the characters are so irritating we begin to consider rooting for the bad guys, well, you know what kind of a problem we have. And when the racial humor gets so completely out of hand that it becomes uncomfortable at best and genuinely disturbing at worst, it's a serious problem.

LeBoeuf is always appealing, Fox looks good stretching over machinery, and the movie briefly takes an interesting turn when both human and transformer characters show that they can learn from their mistakes and switch over to the side of the good guys. A stop at the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum leads to Jetfire, an engaging junkpile of an autobot.

But it is too loud and it all goes on much too long. The bloated running time is well over two hours, overstuffed with pointless and increasingly annoying attempts at comedy -- Sam's mother accidentally gets high and talks about his sex life, Sam's father doesn't get high but talks about his sex life, good guy robots talk like the end men on a minstrel show, and Sam's college roommate is a loudmouth who wants to get with some ladies and shrieks like a little girl when he is scared, which happens a lot. There's another series of confrontations between a clueless bureaucrat and our know-better heroes. But the last movie's clueless bureaucrat somehow switches sides. I would complain that this is not adequately explained, but I don't really care. By this point, I began to think the Decepticons might have a point about how they could do better with our planet than we could.