Eight Below - * * *

Viewed on the big screen - 2/28/06

Eight below is a great family movie, with a few frightening moments. It's about a musher (Paul Walker) who ferries scientists around Antarctica with his team of sled dogs. If you've seen the movie trailer, then you know they eventually have to leave the dogs and fly back to their main base. And then, with the storm of the century bearing down on them, and the Antarctic winter just around the corner, they're forced to leave the dogs.

This is where the real story starts. I have to say, watching these dogs try to survive was like a great National Geographic or Animal Planet documentary. For days after seeing the movie, I kept thinking about these dogs and their will to survive. It's rare I think of animal actors this way. Kudos to their trainers.

The musher, separated from his dogs and now living in Oregon, feels so much guilt about leaving the dogs that he must find a way to return and see what happened to them. Walker, while seeming like a member of the Rob Lowe gene pool, made me believe in his loss. But I have to wonder what the whole thing would have been like with Vin Diesel playing it as a comedy? We'll never know.

Because the movie takes place in a frozen environment, it feels a little like March of the Penguins. Interestingly, it also used some of the same elements as Alive, the story was about the people who survived in the Andes mountains for months by resorting to cannibalism. It even used Alive's use of subtitles where they would flash the date and then how many days the dogs had been alone. I realized, while writing this review, that Frank Marshall, the director of Eight Below, also directed Alive. This type of story is obviously important to him.

If you watch with children, just remember there are a few moments of peril and a really scary leopard seal.

Firewall - * * *

Harrison Ford is one of the biggest movie stars in the world. He's been in some of the biggest movies--some of my favorite movies. But these days, he seems like he's struggling to make a really great movie. When you talk to people about him, they either say, "Man, what's he doing with Calista Flockhart (Alley McBeal)?" Or, "He's too old to be doing action films." Perhaps this is why Ford is working hard to make Indiana Jones 4.

So, how is Ford's latest movie, Firewall? A solid thriller. I was entertained. It's on the same level as movie like Flight Plan. One of the reasons Firewall is better than most is its villain: Paul Bettany. As all screenwriters know, the hero is only as good as the villain. Bettany plays a man who will stop at nothing to have Ford break into his bank and steal a lot of money. He has taken Ford's family hostage. He kills his own people. Without this strong antagonist and Bettany's acting to back it up, the movie simply wouldn't be as interesting.

This is the first movie I've seen where Harrison Ford appears to play someone his own age (60+). He gets beat up by younger guys. He has problems that Indiana Jones would fly through. But it still won't be enough for his critics.

I heard that Ford turned down the role that Michael Douglas played in Traffic. And its his turning down roles that seem more challening than the average thriller that will keep the critics coming at him.

The Island - * *

Viewed on DVD -- 2/18/06

If the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, then The Island is the reverse of that axiom. All its parts are stronger than the whole, and the story is ultimately crushed by this faulty design.

The "parts" of this movie are sometimes very strong. The director, Michael Bay, who gave us the equally problematic Armageddon and Pearl Harbor, excels at creating beautiful pictures, big explosions, and an interesting soundscape. But when it comes to the story, Bay always seems to go off course. It's almost as if Bay and his screenwriters thought that whenever they didn't know what to do, they should blow something up. And, I admit, some of the action scenes are simply breathtaking--comparable to set pieces in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. There are too many of them.

The Island is about what could happen if human cloning were turned into a business. Ewan McGregor is Lincoln Six Echo, who is living in what appears to be a Utopian society. And, like all the other people, Six Echo wants to go to "The Island." The Island is the last habitable place on Earth, and each week some lucky person gets drawn in a lottery to go live in paradise. Six Echo is curious, and he soon discovers the truth behind the lottery and everything else going on.

The Island borrows from many movies--but most heavily from THX-1138, Blade Runner, and Logan's Run. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but in this case it ended up reminding me of how interesting those movies were, and how unfocused The Island is.

I keep thinking, a few days after watching this film, that this could have been a really great movie. The Island has top-notch actors with McGregor, Scarlett Johanssan, Sean Bean, and Michael Clarke Duncan (I have a feeling that most of Duncan's part ended up on the cutting-room floor). At its best moments, The Island reminds us of how cool Sci-Fi movies can be. At its worst, it reminds us of what can happen to great ideas in the wrong hands.

Metacritc score: 50/50

Brokeback Mountain - * * * *

Review coming soon.