FINAL FANTASY: THE SPIRITS WITHIN

You thought reality TV was bad? How about movies based on video games? At least Tomb Raider had Angelina Jolie in a push-up bra. This feature debut from Hironobo Sakaguchi stars Ming-Na Wen (from Mulan and ER) as a young scientist who’s gathering together spirits to defeat the phantoms (don’t worry, you’ll know which is which) that are destroying what’s left of humankind. Lots of pretty but impossible explosions add to the confusion. The art direction (is that what they call it in video games?) is an amalgam of Aliens, Blade Runner, and Fantastic Planet. A nod to Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis makes it all oh so neo-pagan. The actors who dubbed the voices for this piece of post-biological dreck are veterans (Alec Baldwin, Donald Sutherland, and James Woods among them), but fortunately for what’s left of their careers, their faces are not recognizable. Well-muscled, clear-skinned, with asses shaped like puffball mushrooms, these characters are so real-looking you’d almost swear this is a film and not a blown-up video game. Almost.

— Peg Eloi