It's everything I dreamed it would be.

The Polar Express

(2004)

The Polar Express careers along the uncanny valley, fuelled on fatal, carbon monoxide-rich festive fumes. I’d avoided this one for a decade, pretty good going, but I figured, since it was Robert Zemeckis, I ought to at least ticket-inspect it at some point. Representing the director’s first ill-conceived plunge into performance capture, an affliction that would last the best part of a decade (thankfully we were spared his Yellow Submarine remake), The Polar Express is exactly as hollow and dispiriting as I expected.

Worse, it’s the stuff of nightmares. Waxy, dead-eyed children climb aboard this adaptation of Chris Van Allsburg’s children’s book, powered by the thinnest and least charming of plotlines on their way to the North Pole. The stops fail to muster interest or evoke magic, the kids are downright disturbing, and Tom Hanks, essaying five different roles (this is his Dr. Strangelove, folks), is entirely lacking in presence or charisma.

One of his, besides the main conductor, is an especially unnerving Santa, who appears to be recovering from facial reconstructive surgery. The elves are freakish, and the array of both traditional and (rubbish) original Christmas tunes do nothing to staunch the rapid loss of merriment and cheer of anyone unfortunate enough to be distracted by the ghoulish spectacle. It’s evident from his subsequent ventures that Zemeckis’ motives and belief in performance capture were sincere, but they translate here into the most cynical, aesthetically distressing yuletide experience imaginable.

Not all such excursions are doomed to failure; Spielberg showed how it could be done with The Adventures of Tintin, and I might give The Polar Express that, just possibly, it has some level of merit when seen in 3D. But, if you have to watch it with goggles on to get anything from it, that’s Exhibit A in how lacking in nourishment the pixel feast is right there; one requires at least an approximation of a movie without it. Beowulf held a certain car-crash quality, whereby you could see certain things working amid the misconceived execution, and A Christmas Carol, despite being entirely redundant, is underpinned by solid source material. There’s nothing to recommend The Polar Express.

I’m smarter than a beaver.

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This entire edifice you see around you, built on jute.

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I’m the famous comedian, Arnold Braunschweiger.

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I think it’s pretty clear whose side the Lord’s on, Barrington.

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Death to Bill and Ted!

Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991) (SPOILERS) The game of how few sequels are actually better than the original is so well worn, it was old when Scream 2 made a major meta thing out of it (and it wasn’t). Bill & Ted Go to Hell , as Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey was originally called, is one such, not that Excellent Adventure is anything to be sneezed at, but this one’s more confident, even more playful, more assured and more smartly stupid. And in Peter Hewitt it has a director with a much more overt and fittingly cartoonish style than the amiably pedestrian Stephen Herrick. Evil Bill : First, we totally kill Bill and Ted. Evil Ted : Then we take over their lives. My recollection of the picture’s general consensus was that it surpassed the sleeper hit original, but Rotten Tomatoes’ review aggregator suggests a less universal response. And, while it didn’t rock any oceans at the box office, Bogus Journey and Point Break did quite nicely for Keanu Reev

Just because you are a character doesn't mean that you have character.

Pulp Fiction (1994) (SPOILERS) From a UK perspective, Pulp Fiction ’s success seemed like a fait accompli; Reservoir Dogs had gone beyond the mere cult item it was Stateside and impacted mainstream culture itself (hard to believe now that it was once banned on home video); it was a case of Tarantino filling a gap in the market no one knew was there until he drew attention to it (and which quickly became over-saturated with pale imitators subsequently). Where his debut was a grower, Pulp Fiction hit the ground running, an instant critical and commercial success (it won the Palme d’Or four months before its release), only made cooler by being robbed of the Best Picture Oscar by Forrest Gump . And unlike some famously-cited should-have-beens, Tarantino’s masterpiece really did deserve it.

Poetry in translation is like taking a shower with a raincoat on.

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Piece by piece, the camel enters the couscous.

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Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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