The Polar Express (2004, PG)

This computer animated family features is based on the 1989 book by Chris Van Allsubrg.  While the CG is not nearly as impressive as Beowulf (which had freakin' awesome animation!), I must admit that it is pretty visually similar to the art of the original book.  The story is about a boy whose belief in Santa Claus is waning and a train to the North Pole pulls up in front of his house to take him and some other children to see Santa.  Maybe it would be more accurate to say that the movie is inspired by the book rather than based on it, because the book was like 20 pages and the movie was an hour an a half, so you know they padded it significantly.  They definitely added more adventure to the movie compared to the simple wonderment of the book.  Kind of interesting is that Tom Hanks (Big, Toy Story) voiced almost every adult male character in the film including the main character's (Hero Boy) adult narration, the train conductor (who probably has the most lines in the movie) and Santa Claus.  Eddie Deezen voiced Know-It-All Boy (I love the names of these characters: they didn't introduce themselves to each other in the story, so we have only their characteristics to go off of) but you might recognize the actor more from his role as Mandark from Dexter's Laboratory.  Man, that's a great cartoon voice.  Also the singer in the elf band looks remarkably like Stephen Tyler from the band Aerosmith and is in fact voiced by him.  It doesn't focus on the religious significance of Christmas, but on the presents (they're kids, after all) and on the family/love atmosphere.

The Long Goodbye (1973, R)

This is a film about the iconic private detective Phillip Marlow.  It's rated R, but a pretty soft one.  In most aspects I would peg it as more of a PG-13: some language but not very often, a couple scenes with violence but very little blood and very short in duration, but there were quite a few boobies (Marlowe's neighbors are hippie chicks and are one of the lighthearted humor aspects of the film).  Marlowe is played by Elliot Gould (MASH, Ocean's Eleven [and 12 and 13], American History X), who I still think of as the dad from The Big Hit.  Also, a young Arnold Schwarzenegger has a short appearance as mob muscle (you can identify him because he looks like he just ate two other wiseguys), and Henry Gibson (the head Chicago Neo-Nazi from The Blues Brothers) plays a doctor at a clinic.

He Died With Felafel In His Hand (2001, NR)

This film is an understated Australian comedy (with dramatic aspects).  It follows a struggling writer and the numerous friends with whom he shares a rented house.  Well... more of attempted writer... he spends most of his "writing" time in the film just staring at his typewriter rather than writing things he's unsatisfied with.  Anyway this is a quirky ensemble story told as vignettes over the course of a year.  The opening scene in which main character Danny finds his friend dead with a felafel in his hand (hence the title) is actually very near the end of the chronology.  Most of the characters have pretty deadpan expressions on their faces throughout the movie (with occasional emotional outbursts) with absurd things happening around them (or sometimes because of them).  It feels a kind of like a cross between the shows The Kids In The Hall or Monty Python's Flying Circus and the film The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou in that way.

The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993, PG)

This claymation feature is about Jack Skellington (who is a skeleton), the Pumpkin King and the figurehead of Halloween Town.  In this story there is a realm for the mascots if you will of each of several major holidays.  Jack is getting tired of Halloween, and he finds some magic trees through which one can travel to the other holiday towns and stumbles into Christmas Town.  The gist of the story is that Jack thinks Christmas looks pretty cool and he wants to give it a try.  I wanted to love this movie more than I did, because of its huge cult following, but it was still fun.  The animation was quite good: not quite as seamless as a Wallace And Grommit film, but then again it was far more visually complex.  I like to see actual stop-motion claymation features... it just feels like the film has more heart when they have to get their hands dirty (literally) to make it.  I also enjoy a computer animated feature from time to time, but the fact of the CG is not a selling point for me.  I thought it was really cool that the creatures in Halloween Town were both spooky and cute at the same time, so the visual style was my favorite part of the movie.  The film was also quite well-saturated with musical numbers and some dancing.

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010, R)

This Finnish film starts with an [American?] excavation crew trying to unearth "the original Santa Claus" from beneath a mountain just across the Russian border (from Finland).  The main character is a little boy named Pietari whose father -and many of the other nearby families- are reindeer herders.  Pietari looks up the old tales in some books and finds out that the original Santa is far more fearsome than the Coca-Cola mascot we know today, more like Krampus (link to Wikipedia article).  Northern European films that I've seen have had a really solid ratio of quality: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Dead Snow, Let The Right One In... there's not a bad or mediocre movie in the bunch!  However I've had an unfortunately low ratio of movies that I've liked out of films that were written and directed by the same person.  Fortunately the Northern quality won out in this case.

This Is Not A Movie (2011, NR)

That's a lie!  It is a movie, but it is not rated.  Though it's a foreign film (Mexico), it takes place in Las Vegas, Nevada (US) and all of the dialogue is in English.  The title caught my attention, because is strikes a resonance withe the Rene Magritte painting, The Treachery Of Images, which shows an image of a tobacco pipe with the words below "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" ("this is not a pipe")... because it is not a pipe, it is an image of a pipe.  Cool concept.  After watching the film, I'm not so sure that is the reference in the title.  Anyway, the story is about a man sitting in his Las Vegas hotel room waiting for the world to end (it's presumed in the story that the entire population of the planet knows that the end is coming and at what exact time, though there is very little contact with the world outside the hotel room) and talking to himself trying to figure out who he is.

He-Man & She-Ra: A Christmas Special (1985, TV-Y7)

I haven't seen He-Man since I was a little guy, so I don't remember hardly any of it other than what a couple of the main characters kind of look like.  This was a TV special that was about twice the length of a normal episode (just under an hour without commericals), and it ends up with the first time Christmas is celebrated in Eternia.  It starts off with preparations for the twins' birthday party (I presume He-Man and She-Ra, or at least their human alter-egos, are the twins) which [the queen?] notes is a similarly large and similarly timed celebration to the Earth holiday of Christmas.  I guess she's been to Earth before and/or heard about it?  I'll say right here (and you can probably deduce from my post so far) that this movie is intended for people who are already He-Man/She-Ra fans.  If you're nostalgic for those characters and shows, then this will be a fun holiday special for you.  You'll see a smorgasbord of characters you've been longing to see all in the same place at the same time.  But, if you're not already a fan, then you'll be lost in the absurdly-descriptively-named characters and cheesy dialogue.

2012: Science Or Superstition (2008, NR)

Another documentary about the 2012 Mayan prophecy and the end of their calendar, this one predates my previous reviewed film by a year (and is far superior in quality).  While it doesn't review non-Mayan theories that tend to coincide with the 2012 end date, it does review the actual Mayan culture and their creation and end-time myths in far more detail.  This film also spends quality time reviewing actual astronomy and what will be going on with the relative locations of the Earth, the Sun, and the Milky Way galaxy.

It got to the point early on in the film and managed to keep good density of new information.  They interviewed a nice selection of scholars who I am otherwise unfamiliar with but who are hopefully legit (I did notice that their credentials at the bottom of the screen said "Author of [book]" rather than "Professor of [science] at [respected university]"... oh well).

2012: Mayan Prophecy (2009, NR)

Not to be confused with the 2009 action/drama starring John Cusack, this direct-to-video documentary is about the origin of the ancient Mayan prophecy/calendar end and other theories/prophecies with a similar date.

This film had a pretty slow start with repetitious CG graphics, so it looked kind of like they didn't have much to say, but it did get more filled in with content a little later.  The first half, after a brief mention of the Mayan calendar ending on 12/21/2012, was mostly about various theories by mathematicians, historians and sociologists (sometimes using ancient cultures as a starting point) that all point to huge and often mysterious changes to be expected around 2012 as well.

Bruiser (2000, R)

The movie is strangely sort of a cross between Falling Down and Office Space.  It's directed by George Romero (Day Of The Dead) and the title of this film comes from the name of the fashion magazine that the main characters work for.  The main character works for Bruiser magazine and makes a good deal of money but still gets stepped on a lot.  One morning (after his status quo is established), he wakes up with a blank white mask where his face should be.  It's a flexible mask (likely latex for the filming), so it moves with his mouth/etc, but it's still eerie and the eyes are pinprick holes in stead of larger eye-shaped openings.  That messes with his head enough that he snaps and gets back at some of the people that have been taking advantage of him.

The Sleeping Beauty (2010, R)

Not to be confused with the similarly titled Sleeping Beauty starring Emily Browning (Sucker Punch), this French film ( originally entitled La Belle Endormie) is a small twist on the original fairy tale.  It's in a slightly more modern setting, but that doesn't impact the film very much, especially at first.  The interesting thing about this story is that most of it follows the sleeping 6-year-old princess Anastasia (unconnected to the daughter of Czar Nicholas of Russia) through her dreams during her prolonged slumber.  It's kind of like Alice In Wonderland but a little less wacky or like The Wizard Of Oz minus the ensemble cast (there are other characters in this film, but the only main character is Anastasia).  Each dream or story segment often works as its own short story (the first one especially feels more like the climax of another story) and often feel like a classic fairy tale. 

The movie very much changes gears for the final segment after she wakes up 100 years later but looking 10 years older (not sure why the difference), at which point the film becomes more of a romance movie.