Judging from the commercials, you might be forgiven for thinking that this is the story of Denzel Washington heroically saving a plane full of passengers from certain death, but the film’s barn-burning crash sequence is over by the 25-minute mark. What follows is an intense portrait of a self-destructive man in what seems like a death spiral.
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Back in the eighties, there were a lot of films (and television shows) that tried to cash in on the success of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Who would have thought that this breezy trifle, written years before Raiders, would come closer to capturing the spirit of the original film than Spielberg’s sequel of the very same year?
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The high-tech motion capture technique that director Robert Zemeckis uses here has improved considerably since 2004’s The Polar Express, but not enough to recommend that he use it again. True, the creepy thousand-yard stares have been cut down to about a hundred-and-seventy-five yards, but when it comes to inserting lifelike characters into fantastical environments, there is more effective technique called using actors, that worked much better in little film called 300.
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Contact is a nobly intentioned but ultimately unsatisfying adaptation of Carl Sagan’s only novel. It details the circumstances surrounding the first clear sign of intelligent life in outer space and their effects on the life of a young and idealistic radio astronomer named Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster).
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The Polar Express absolutely yearns to be regarded as a perennial “holiday classic.” It wears not only its heart on its sleeve but also both lungs and a kidney. It certainly shares a lot of themes and ideas with other holiday favorites and that’s part of the problem. Story-wise, there’s not a lot new here. There’s not much that isn’t new, either. That’s another part of the problem.