The Polar Express

The Polar Express (Director: Robert Zemeckis)

Zemeckis, of course, is an iconic director. His claims to fame are foremost the Back to the Future trilogy and Forrest Gump. Then you have other easily recognizable titles with Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Contact, Cast Away, What Lies Beneath, Romancing the Stone, and Death Becomes Her. He is another that hails from the Spielberg "school," and he was a part of the "Amazing Stories" series. He was also a producer on "Tales From the Crypt," and numerous other films, notably Peter Jackson's cult film The Frighteners.

Warner Brothers and Zemeckis may have just opened up a rivalry with Pixar and Dreamworks with a stunning display of animation that moves realistically using actors wired to computers to capture motion, much in the same way Gollum in Lord of the Rings was animated. Here, Zemeckis takes Chris Van Allsburg's Caldecott Award-winning children's book and duplicates his illustrations, a treasure trove for the eyes. They have expanded his book into a full-length motion picture, which is a feat considering the source material is around 30 pages and it's mostly drawings.

Tom Hanks, in his third Zemeckis collaboration, is six characters. The most amazing feat and the introduction into the possibilities of this technology is Hanks' portrayal of the main character, a boy. This means, anyone can act any role they want with this technology as long as they know what they're doing. Men can play women and vice versa, and adults can play children and so on. It is the culmination of a strange, yet delightful, year for Hanks where he may have done his best acting work ever in films that were received with mixed opinion, the first being The Coen Brothers' The Ladykillers in March and Steven Spielberg's The Terminal in June. He is obviously enjoying this multiple duty as he plays the stern but big-hearted conductor, the ghostly hobo, Santa Claus, and others.

And what about the movie? The movie is concerned with giving you a breathtaking trip through a snowy countryside, and simulations of roller coasters are common. The ultimate show-off scene involves the journey of a lost train ticket as it finds its way back onto the train. In many ways, it's an amusement park ride, a thrilling one, but with very minimal story. That's not a bad thing, and certainly it's meant to be a delight ultimately for kids. It's got the magic of a holiday film, but It's A Wonderful Life it ain't.

Although the animation is spectacular, second to none, digital cartoons have yet to figure out how to make humans look human. The characters move like humans, they've got that down, but the look is still yet to be perfected. People can, at times, much like in Pixar's films involving humans, look a little too shiny. But the amazing parts are little things, like how a dress sways while a woman walks. This film, above all others, gets that down perfectly.

Since The Incredibles has a beefier story, that movie is a little better than this one, but they are both highly enjoyable animated features and it will be interesting to see which one wins out, and it will be even more interesting to see if these films can garner Oscar nods in the Best Picture category, not just Best Animated Film. It's one of the side stories to look for when Oscar buzz runs rampant.