Robert Zemeckis, part XIV: Snowpiercer

THE POLAR EXPRESS

Zemeckis' first mo-cap cartoon is blessed with not just a great deal of appealingly colorful design, but a whole new second volume in Tom Hanks' Encylcopedia of Amusingly Stupid Voices, too.  But reach beyond these attractive (albeit sometimes clunkily-animated) surfaces, and all you have left is the hollowness that lay at the heart of The Polar Express, a genial-as-shit nothing of a movie that I can't quite bring myself to even really dislike, yet shall never, ever truly enjoy.

2004

Directed by Robert Zemeckis

Written by William Broyles, Jr. and Robert Zemeckis (based on the book by Chris Van Allsberg)

With Daryl Sabara/Josh Hutcherson/Tom Hanks (The Boy), Nona Gaye/Chantel Valdivieso/Meagan Moore/Tinashe Kachingwe (The Girl), Eddie Deezen/Jimmy Pinchak (Know-It-All), Jimmy Bennett/Peter Scolari/Hayden McFarland (Billy), and Tom Hanks (The Father, The Conductor, The Hobo, The Puppet Scrooge, Santa Claus, and The Narrator, the Boy as a Man)

Spoiler alert: insofar as this movie has a plot in the first place, moderate

Cardboard Science: Do you wanna go to lunch, or do you wanna go to the moon?

DESTINATION MOON

Opening the decade with a big nuclear bang, this hyper-conservative Cold War tale of human advancement through atom-based capitalism remains influential—and pretty damned good on its merits, too, despite its frankly laughable assumptions about the way the world works.

1950

Directed by Irving Pichel

Written by Alford Van Ronkel, Robert Heinlein, and James O'Hanlon (based on the novel Rocketship Galileo by Robert Heinlein)

With John Archer (Jim Barnes), Warner Anderson (Dr. Charles Cargraves), Tom Powers (Gen. Thayer), and Dick Wesson (Joe Sweeney)

Spoiler alert: moderate

Cardboard Science: Five brave men go to probe the mysteries of Uranus

JOURNEY TO THE SEVENTH PLANET

Cardboard Science returns for 2016 with the worst old crappy sci-fi film we've so far reviewed.

1962

Directed by Sid Pink

Written by Ib Melchior and Sid Pink

With Carl Ottosen (Eric, some brand of mission commander), John Agar (Don), Peter Monch (Karl), Ove Sprogoe (Barry), Louis Miehe-Renard (Svend), and Ann Smyrner (Ingrid)

Spoiler alert: moderate

I have an index now! part II: Chronological

Every movie reviewed on Kinemalogue, sorted by year of release, with two sections, the first being films released since the year this blog began (in reverse order, going back to 2013), the second being films released in the years prior to its institution (beginning in 1920, and going forward)

Steven Spielberg, part XXVIII: Yes, "geniality" is one of my metrics for these things

THE TERMINAL

A movie I'm apparently not supposed to love at all, but it turns out I do anyway.

2004

Directed by Steven Spielberg

Written by Sacha Gervasi, Jeff Nathanson, and Andrew Niccol

With Tom Hanks (Victor Navorski), Catherine Zeta-Jones (Amelia Warren), Kumar Pallana (Gupta), Chi McBride (Mulroy), Diego Luna (Enrique Cruz), Zoe Saldana (Dolores Torres), Barry Shabaka Henley (Thurman), and Stanley Tucci (Frank Dixon)

Spoiler alert: moderate

I have an index now! part I: Alphabetical

Every review on Kinemalogue, sorted alphabetically

Steven Spielberg, part XXVII: Who am I here?

CATCH ME IF YOU CAN

As a piece of very minor Spielberg, Catch Me If You Can certainly has its charms—but it has so much fewer of them than you'd have every right in the world to expect.  And thus it avoids high-pitched fun, yet it disdains any really penetrating insight into what makes its weird protagonist tick, too.  So if it's not the worst of both worlds, it remains very far from the best.

2002

Directed by Steven Spielberg

Written by Jeff Nathanson (based on the book by Frank Abagnale, Jr., and Stan Redding

With Leonardo DiCaprio (Frank Abagnale, Jr.), Christopher Walken (Frank Abagnale, Sr.), Nathalie Baye (Paula Abagnale), Amy Adams (Brenda Strong), Martin Sheen (Roger Strong), and Tom Hanks (Special Agent Carl Hanratty)

Spoiler alert: more-or-less N/A; moderate, if you want to be a stickler